AMA & Hangout with Contributors (April '25) | Yaron Brook Show
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Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, indeed, is all you need. The radical fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual right. This is the Yaron Brook Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Yaron Brook Show on this Saturday, April 26th. And we are going to do our monthly AMA. So we'll be taking questions from a panel.

of contributors to the Ron Brooks show and also from anybody who wants to participate on the Super Chat. So get ready with any questions you might have.

I apologize for not doing a show yesterday. I wasn't feeling well, and just the day ran out on me as I thought I would feel better later. I didn't. But I'm back and feeling good today. So here we go. Let's see. There will be a show tomorrow, probably at around 2 p.m. as well. And I think I'm going to discuss...

Peter Thiel and Jordan Peterson did an interview, or Jordan Peterson interviewed Peter Thiel, and there's a really interesting segment there on sacrifice where Peter Thiel pushes back on Jordan Peterson's definition of sacrifice that I think I'll talk about. So that will be tomorrow, probably 2 p.m. East Coast time, same as today. All right, let's get started with our panel. Let's start with John. Hey, John.

You're muted. Hey, thanks, Yaron. Thanks for all you do, and glad you're feeling better. Appreciate that. I think I'm joining I don't know how many people who are finishing your sentences. It's either your vocabulary has to be more expansive or mine does. I don't know. My vocabulary is limited. It's always been limited, so...

And, yeah, it worries me. I'm becoming very predictable. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Here's my question. It's not a gotcha, but I think the Secretary of the Treasury, Besset, I thought I had heard that he was maybe one of these guys that could corral Trump a little bit, wasn't strong on tariffs, blah, blah, blah, blah. The last...

Speech he gave, good God, it sounded like he was right out of Trump's depth of economic knowledge. What's going on? Is your assessment of Bessett changed or what are your thoughts? I mean, I don't know Bessett that well. I accepted the kind of the common interpretation of he's a

He's a hedge fund guy. He started with George Soros. So he's George Soros is hedge fund, which which means he's well attuned to kind of global macroeconomics and understands these things. But he wanted to be Treasury Secretary of Donald Trump. That's a huge mark against him. Right. So that is that suggests that he was never that great.

You know, people who have worked with Donald Trump in the first administration and you saw what happened to them and what happened to their views. So I think he knows better. I think he absolutely knows better.

But I think he also has cut the kind of deal with the devil where he says to himself, if I'm going to last, if I'm going to be here, if I'm going to do what I want to do or hold on to the power that I now have, I don't know him well enough to know kind of what motivates him. Then I'm going to have to do my best to rationalize to the best of my ability what Trump is doing.

So he's trying to come up with convoluted excuses and explanations for Trump, which I think he knows are false. But he feels like he has to do it in order to survive and maybe, you know, try to try to do the best he can to explain to the market what Trump's thinking and calm the market by saying,

Yeah, in spite of this, it's not as bad as you think. And and and there's some good good stuff could happen. And so he's trying to spin it positively. It's just very difficult to do, given what's happening. You know, I think he knows better. Is he a laissez faire capitalism guy? No, he's not. But he knows the damage of of tariffs. Maybe he's bought into some of the nationalist stuff of we need to bring manufacturing back.

which is unfortunate because it's complete economic BS. But yeah, it's so hard to tell because how much of what he's doing is tainted by power lust, right? But just wanting to be treasury secretary and wanting that kind of control and that kind of power is very hard to tell. I don't know him well enough and haven't followed him over the years, other to say that he seems like he was a successful hedge fund manager, particularly under Soros.

Thank you. Although I can understand why Maga's going nuts. I'm surprised they're not going more nuts, given that he came from Saurus's world, right? Saurus is the definition of the devil, according to Maga. So the fact that he is friends with Saurus and learned his craft from Saurus, you would think Maga would go crazy about that. All right, thanks. Thanks, John. Adam.

Well, I was going to ask something else, but we'll probably have a second turn. So I'll turn to Soros because I had an indirect personal interaction with him when I was teaching at the new school, the economics department was getting graduate students from Poland and

who were sent there because Robert Heilbronner, the head of the economics department, was a semi-Marxist, sort of. He was a market-oriented Marxist, a very unusual combination, but, you know, Marxism is full of this kind of combined stuff.

And I had taught computer encryption to Polish graduate students in economics who would be in university faculties because I expected that they would be given PCs to do their quantitative economics work. And with the

Early Unix was designed to send files and messages over standard telephone lines, PC to PC. And learning encryption and how to encrypt their messages served them very well because in Poland they organized...

Komite Tobrony Robotnikow, which was the committee that essentially gave intellectual and economic and political advice to the Solidarity Movement. And the Solidarity Movement was able to communicate through the encryption at the universities so they could coordinate Poland-wide communication.

And then I figured out that by a few years later, the Soviets probably were able to decrypt those messages, or at least were close to. But there was a new generation of modems being developed for 2400 baud modem communication.

And there were several standards proposed, and all but one of those were rejected. And the rest of the standards developers were stuck with inventories of between a few dozen to a few hundred modems using a different standard that at this point nobody else had.

So I approached Heilbronner, I knew that he was a friend of Soros, and suggested that they buy a hundred or so of these modems, in fact the entire inventory of one of the Japanese firms that was not accepted as the standard. And Soros arranged for...

a Japanese traveling as a salesman to bring a suitcase full of the new type of modern that the Russians couldn't read to Warsaw. And they were distributed among the academics who were supporting solidarity. Yeah. So they would be able to communicate in secrecy. Uh,

And in general, I think Soros did everything he could to have the Russians lose the Cold War. So how did he become the bête noire of the right?

Well, because of his actions, because I think what happened was he started he definitely was he fought against communism in a sense that he spent his money trying to undermine communism. But once the wall came down, he became the number one funder of kind of far left causes. Every cause from from radical environmentalism to.

to anything that smacked of woke, he was the funder of it. You know, he funded the campaigns of many of the, you know, defund the police attorneys who were running on Democratic tickets in different places. He became he was the largest funder of leftist causes in America.

He also, and here it's not clear that it's bad, but from the rights perspective, you can understand it. He also became, he funded a lot of causes in Europe that were associated with anti-right, you know, funding the kind of the anti-right. So he spoke up and funded a lot of stuff that was anti-Orban in Hungary.

And he funded a lot of the kind of the left wing movements throughout Europe and some of them pretty far left. So there's no question that Soros has funded pretty much every bad cause out there. You know, I don't know how personally involved he has been in distributing the money. He probably put it into a big foundation and appointed some people to run it and the people he appointed did.

He's probably a leftist, but aligned with him. I've read at least one of his books, The Open Society, which was based on kind of open society as a concept that comes from Karl Papa. And he really despises capitalism. He's very antagonistic to anything laissez-faire capitalism.

And he is very much kind of a pretty far left, not a communist, because he believes he's a he's a Democrat. He believes in he believes in democracy.

But he's pretty far on the left wing of the Democratic Party, I'd say, and of leftism kind of internationally. So, yeah, I think he did commendable work in fighting the communists. He definitely positions himself, and I think it's true, as very anti-authoritarian. And he views the ultimate – the primary risk of authoritarianism coming from the right side.

in the post-fall of the Berlin Wall and to spend most of his money supporting leftist causes and fighting right-wing authoritarianism. So he's a real mixed bag, but tilts towards, particularly in the last 30 years, towards pretty bad stuff. Thanks, Adam. It's good to know that they were doing this. And Solidarity played a huge role in ultimately bringing down the Soviet Union and bringing down the Berlin Wall.

They were the first ones to really show the Eastern Europeans they could stand up against and make a case against the communist dictators. So, yeah, it's kind of cool to find out how they communicated and stuff. Well, the KOR also gave them intellectual guidance, which was very important.

One of the things that Americans don't know about Eastern Europe is that even during communist times, there were institutes of praxeology teaching Austrian economics in Warsaw and Prague. Yep.

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And there was a lot of translation worked on on Austrian economists, but also Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand was being translated to many of these languages, being snuck into Eastern Europe. And I've met people from that era in Eastern Europe who were involved in the anti-communism movement who said that they were reading Ayn Rand in secret during the 1980s. So, yes, the intellectual ammunition that they received was

Ultimately, that's what led to the fall, I think, of the Soviet Union. All right, let's go and thank Adam. Steve? What do you think? Some of your positive shows don't have an impact. I went to the symphony for the first time, which was quite enjoyable. Oh, good, good. Thanks for that. What did you listen to? What was the program?

It was mostly singing. The anchor piece was like Carmina Burana or something like that. Carmina Burana. Carmina Burana. Carl Orff. Yes. Lots of singing, lots of languages. That's pretty cool. Carmina Burana is pretty cool. It's a really cool piece. Very dramatic. Yeah. My question is about...

I guess the pushback we've been watching against the deportations to El Salvador, this feels kind of like it's a real rearguard action in a lot of ways. If you think about it, since 9-11, we've seen a fundamental assault on due process in general in the United States, very incrementally.

And some things that pop to mind is like our inability to sue the government over them spying on us or when we blew that guy up in Yemen, which maybe he should have been executed. But the Justice Department memo basically was like, well –

He's out of our jurisdiction, and we can't do due process, so we'll just shoot him with a missile. You have to add that he was an American citizen. It wasn't just anybody. It was an American citizen. Specifically because he was an American citizen. If he wasn't an American citizen, I wouldn't be so worried about it. So I guess, from my perspective, if you can blow American citizens up with missiles, it's actually not that much of a stretch. You can take people off the streets and drag them to El Salvador. And I guess...

I've been really surprised at how surprised the judiciary seems to be by all this. From my perspective, they've kind of like stood around and watched a lot of this happen over the last 25 years. So I guess like better late than never. But I'm pretty worried that like, and especially picking up like these two guys and like anchoring on, well, should this guy from Maryland have been deported or not? Or were they violating this court order? It really feels like it

This is the fundamental question of like, should we be grabbing people and sticking them in a prison in a foreign country without anyone like thinking twice about it? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot going on here. I mean, I basically agree with you that, you know, all these issues should have been brought up a long time ago. You know, I'd be talking against like the Patriot Act, which is constantly being renewed.

even though the threat is, by most accounts, pretty minimal these days. It's continuing to be renewed. Snowden is considered a traitor to the country because he revealed that the NSA is spying on us when, you know, the response should be thank you for letting us know this is important. And he's still considered and nobody's even talking about granting him

a pardon, even though they gave a pardon to, to what's his name, uh, from WikiLeaks, who is like, this guy did really illegal, immoral things. And Snowden, you, you know, maybe he didn't do it right. Maybe he should have done it differently, but fundamentally what he did was, I think, uh, beneficial to, to, to Americans and, and consistent with his oath to the constitution rather than his oath to his commanding officer. Uh,

So I think ultimately he's a hero, and yet he's not going to get a pardon. So, yeah, I think this has been going on for a long time. But also, you know, there was actually a war. Part of the problem is that that war was never declared, right? War on terrorism is not a war. I mean, so war was never declared. Congress never declared war. Congress never declared victory. Right?

So what could end so you could end whatever special like emergency powers. And what we've got, what we've got into the habit is allowing the president to kind of declare an emergency every few years. I think we have right now executive orders declaring 65 different emergencies. Right. There are 65 emergencies in the United States right now because they never rescinded. Right. So Obama declared emergencies. Bush declared emergencies. Trump first time declared emergencies. Right.

And then we never question them. We never challenge the one when they file them. And then they just become more and more bold, emboldened in terms of the stupidity of the emergencies that they declare. And their violation of rights become bigger and bigger. And yeah, you know, slippery slopes do exist. They don't just exist. They're everywhere. Slippy slope is like a principle of morality and a principle of politics. Once you...

Once you grant them the right to stick people in faraway prisons and with no monitoring and no end date and no consequences, then, yeah, the next step is, you know, they're sending people off to El Salvadorian jails just because they feel like it and nothing more than that. But there are a lot of things like that, right? So part of this is that, is the fact that we have –

basically been ignoring the violations of the rule of law for 30 years and maybe longer. But there's also the other thing which I pointed out the other day on the show. There's the idea that for at least 10 years, maybe longer, we've been dehumanizing immigrants, right? They are the other. They are somehow evil. They're illegal immigrants. You know, they're really illegal. There's something really

They're not completely human, right? It's okay to do whatever to them. And now we're paying the consequences. Now this administration will do whatever. And when you say something, well, they were legal immigrants. And of course, that's step one. And then you dehumanize the next other group, whether they're citizens or not. So it's the many slippery slopes here that

We have not stood up against the government and against our politicians and against the culture over and over and over again that are coming to fruition, that are manifesting itself now in what's explicitly a violation of rights. I will say this. It's good that people are at least waking up now. It's late. Is it too late? I don't know. And nobody seems to – the one thing nobody seems to be doing is defending immigrants. That's out.

Everybody's like, say, yeah, they're illegal, deport them. But you should do due process, right? When you send these people back to hell, do it legally. Do it according to the law. All right. How about not sending them back to hell? That is not even on the table, right?

I mean, they're talking about sending people back to Venezuela who escaped there because Venezuela became communist, right? They're talking about sending people back to Iran. They're talking about people sending back to brutal regimes ever because they hear, quote, illegally. And it's horrific. Yeah. Do you see a world where, like,

Because I just feel like when it's the Hawley administration or the Vance administration, the next logical step is just to declare these people terrorists because terrorists seems to have a very expansive definition these days. Well, that's what they've done. That's what Trump has already done, right? I mean, how is he sending himself out of jail? He declared an emergency.

He defined membership in certain gangs as terrorist gangs, like the two gangs – the cartels in Mexico are now terrorist organizations. The El Salvadorian gang, MS-13, is a terrorist organization. The Venezuela gang, which is not even clear it's a gang, is a terrorist organization.

And he's just rounding up terrorists and sending them to jail. I mean, we all do that to terrorists. And now will we be expanding the definition of terrorists beyond criminal organizations? Once you assign terrorists to a criminal organization, well, maybe people can fraud a terrorist. Maybe American criminals are terrorists. And Trump has already said it. Maybe we should send American criminals to Salvadoran jails. And if ultimately we find out that they're actually innocent...

Well, we can't bring them back because now they're under the jurisdiction of El Salvador. So our hands are tight. And it's just I don't understand how people are not like as outraged as some people are about this. I don't understand how more people are not just horrified by the implication of this and what is possible in the future in terms of how bad this could get. Now, the good thing that's happening is I think there's a good chance Trump is really going to fail.

And that'll make it less likely that Vance wins and more likely that we get some centrist Democrat next time, which which is, I think, our best hope at this point. So we will see. But, yeah, I agree with you completely in terms of where we're heading. And even if we get a centrist Democrat, we know they will fail ultimately. And we will get at some point we will get a Vance or Hawley equivalent guy next.

That is the trend. Unless we reverse things at some point here, unless that is the trend and that, that I don't know. That's going to be very, very tough to reverse. All right. Thanks, Steve. I'm Len. Let's check in with golf legend John Daly. I only spend on Odo, America's social casino. You know, I've won a couple of majors. And on Odo, I've won majors, grands, and epic jackpots on their classic Vegas slots with huge, huge bonus rounds. Odo Casino adds new games and awards players free coins every single day.

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Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, indeed, is all you need. Yeah. Good afternoon, Yaron. Good afternoon. So my question is related to sea lanes. And kind of let's start with the specific around the hooties and stuff. And I

As much as I despise the idiot, or I should call him an idiot, but I don't like Vance. Like you said, he scares me. But was he completely wrong to say that, well, maybe Europe should be stepping up more here to do something with the Houthis? And what about the Egyptians? I mean, they're the ones losing all kinds of money with the Suez Canal, and the U.S. gives them ridiculous amounts of aid and all that. And the Chinese, how come these other countries aren't being asked to...

to step up and take care of this problem. And at the same time, maybe just on a broader kind of view, you know, you've indicated a number of times that the U.S. military should have one very overarching aim, which is protecting the sea lanes. And I guess my question would be,

You know, like, why the U.S.? Like, why? I mean, I understand the national interest for U.S. and all that stuff, but, you know, why isn't the rest of the world being kind of asked to step up here a little bit? Because in many ways, they seem to be affected a lot. Sure, and I think they should be. But the issue is really, historically, after World War II, before World War II, really leading up to World War I, the protection of the sea lanes was

was a British endeavor. The British did that. That's what the British did. And really, there was a passing of the torch after the Second World War. And the assumption was, first, the country that does it should be a free country. Do we really want the Chinese to be patrolling the sea lanes in the world? And, you know, that could lead more to conflict than to anything else. So the idea was the United States should do it, partially because it's a free country, but also, and it has the weapon system, it has a navy capable of doing it, and also...

After World War II, the rest of the world was devastated. The United States had allies, but they were all too poor to participate. I think one of the few things that Trump got right first time around was—and Ayn Rand really said this in the 60s and 70s, I think—wait a minute, Europe is rich now.

Why are we defending Europe, right? We don't need to defend Europe. Europe can defend itself. They've got the money. They could buy the weapon systems. We'll sell them to them. Or they could develop them themselves. They have the capability of deploying a navy that can patrol certain of the sea lanes. Maybe we can cut a deal with them. They get some sea zones. We get some sea lanes. We keep the Russians and the Chinese out of it. But the free countries of the world now patrol the sea lanes.

And that's probably where we should be. But the reality is that no European nation has a Navy or, or, or an Air Force capable of doing it right now. They just don't, right? The British, Brits are the closest. They could, they, they can deploy ships into the Red Sea, but, but not much. Um,

You know, Japan might be able to do, but Japan is very far away from that part of the world. And it's got its own problems in China. And maybe Japan should be responsible for like the sea lanes in China. Because the other big bottleneck is the South China Sea. That's why the Chinese want it, but also the Malacca. I think it's the Malacca Straits. It's like where Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia kind of those, that area, very narrow straits, lots of pirates in history.

Maybe Japan gets an India maybe could join a coalition that patrols that part of the world. So so you need somebody to do it. I agree that ultimately the shift needs to be to involve the Europeans more. I think it's a mistake that the United States hasn't demanded that in the past.

I said 10, 20 years ago, I think the U.S. should leave NATO and that'll force the Europeans to step up and do more to protect themselves and build up kind of a military force that could be deployed. But the reality is right now, in spite of Vance, is that the Europeans can't do it. They just don't have it. And trade to Europe is important to the United States. That is, it's not right to say...

You know, this is just a European problem because the fact is that we import stuff from Europe. A lot of the parts that we use and our sophisticated stuff comes from Europe. We need Europe to do OK. This is one of the reasons we should be involved in Ukraine until Europe can defend itself. We should be helping Ukraine until the Europeans can help Ukraine by themselves. We have a vested interest in keeping Europe free and relatively prosperous, but

So that's Europe. But long term, they should defend themselves and we should be moving in that direction. And again, I think that's the one good thing Trump has done. He does it in a vulgar bully kind of way, which is unfortunate. With regard to Egypt, I think the United States is very sensitive to the fact that the Egyptian regime, which is quite pro-US and is...

the U.S. views it as very essential to stability in the region, is probably not very popular in Egypt, and that the alternative to it is the Muslim Brotherhood. And the Muslim Brotherhood is probably quite close to the Houthis, right? I mean, they're Sunnis, they're not Shiite, but they are radical Islamists. So the last thing the U.S. government wants to do is destabilize Egypt.

and because of that, because of what, you know, kind of the mayhem that could cause. So Egypt participating against the Houthis, even though Egypt in the past, Egypt went to war in Yemen in the 50s or 60s. At some point, Egypt actually sent troops to Yemen to try to, exactly your point, it was crucial for them that shipping could flow up the Red Sea, and they actually deployed troops there. But I think now,

Nobody wants to see Egypt fall into the Muslim battle. We don't want to give them an excuse. I have said that I think the people who could take care of the Houthis and the way you actually end it, because it's very hard to win a war from the air,

is the Yemenis themselves, the non-Houthi Yemenis who's been fighting there in the civil war and the Saudis. The Saudis have been fighting the Houthis for many, many years. They stopped because America demanded that they stop because of humanitarian reasons. They were killing too many civilians using American weapons. We should re-encourage the Saudis and, and, and support the Yemenites in the North of Yemen to fight and to,

you know, help them with air support, but let them do the ground fighting and get rid of the Houthis that way. Okay. So just very quickly related to that, going back to sort of like Europe and maybe the richer countries in Asia, the freer countries. I mean, would it be legitimate for the U.S. to say, okay, guys, look, today we know that militarily you can't do it. While you get built up and all that stuff, here's a bill, right? Like,

$50 billion a year or something because it needs to hurt a little bit to you guys so that you actually step up to the mark instead of just sitting back and letting us take the ball. I think that's completely legit. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think sending them a bill –

I think that it's already happening in a sense with Ukraine. The Europeans now are supporting Ukraine a lot more than the U.S. It's going to shift to Europe, and I think that's ultimately a good thing. Although I'd like to see the U.S. support Ukraine a lot more, get this over with, get to kick the Russians out, and then shift to the Europeans.

I don't know if you saw today Zelensky and Trump met at the Vatican. It's a pretty iconic picture of them sitting, it looks like St. Paul's Cathedral, completely empty, huge space, and them sitting on two chairs, huddled together, talking. And Trump then tweeted something that was pretty harsh against Putin. So maybe Trump is moving away from his...

crazy position but of course he could change his mind in five minutes so we'll see what a twit yeah it really is he really is and zielinski is there you can see he's got the passion he's trying to explain stuff to trump and it's like i feel sorry for zielinski or poor guy is still trying to talk to him as if he's talking to a rational but i would also say what the united states should say is look guys we're leaving nato in five years 10 years um and i would say to the south koreans

you know, we're probably going to reduce our forces in South Korea significantly over the next five to 10 years. Yeah. Let's figure out how we can work with you and the Japanese and the Taiwanese and so on to hold back China. But most of the burden for all of that is going to fall on you guys. You're rich enough to take care of it. We'll give you support. We'll back you up. We'll sell you weapons. We'll even allow you to go nuclear, which I think the US should allow them to do.

But you guys are going to be responsible for the front line against China. We promise to back you up, but we won't fund it all. And I think that's the right approach. And then the United States can back away from the world in a healthy kind of way while supporting free countries. And the alliance should be kind of an alliance of free countries. So the United States should be in the background with the free countries of the world taking the lead. Agreed. Okay. Thanks, Jaron. Yep.

Thanks. Holden. Hey, Ron. I wanted to ask what you thought about what you thought about the correct objectivist position on transhumanism is. Well, what do you mean by transhumanism?

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Using – basically turning humans partially into cyborgs and using technology to make it so that we can edit genes and whatnot. So I'm all for it. I don't know what the objectivist position is because you'd have to ask Ayn Rand for that. And I don't think she – the concept existed back then and she certainly didn't have as far as I know an opinion about it.

So I wouldn't say it's the objectivist position, but it's my position is anything that enhances human, the capacity for human beings to flourish should be done. If we can use gene editing to make us smarter, if we can use gene editing to make us free of disease, if we can use gene editing,

You know, to make it stronger, though I'm not sure being stronger is that valuable in and of itself. Maybe we can, you know, because for physical labor, we're going to use robots in one way or another. If we can use artificial hearts to replace failing hearts, if we can replace arms with artificial arms, as we do today,

If we can enhance arms by some mechanism that you can strap into and suddenly gives you a robotic arm, all of that is good. Chips in the brain, I mean, I worry because I don't want the government to get control over that chip and control my brain. But to the extent that something useful can be done with chips in the brain, I'm cool with it.

So yeah, if you could take a drug today that makes you more competent, makes you more able, more productive, and has no downside, I would be for it. I don't think we can trust the drugs that we have, so I would be careful with everything that's being promoted and sold. But I am for human flourishing. If you can use technology on human beings to make human beings better, we should do it. It would make the Olympics a lot more fun too.

It would make the Olympics a little ridiculous, yes. Yeah, I mean, I know you're aware of this, but like every, whenever I look up about transhumanism, it's always conservatives talking about transhumanism and how they're so against it. Oh, they hate it. They hate it. And I saw like Candace Owens. I know like our comedy person here in the show. She was, I recently saw this on X. She was reacting to Elon Musk

Or basically she was talking about Elon Musk, and she's like, I don't trust him because his relationship with God is not well-defined. And he – it seems like he just wants to –

We need to look for ulterior motives here because he wants to turn us into robots and all this. And there's like – it's just – it's like I could barely – it hurts me almost because I know this is like the recipe for antitrust and what we're seeing, like the anti-technology and anti-science sort of –

of the people right now. It's just so pervasive because she's so popular too. I look at her comments and all of them are in agreement and there's no pushback and all of them are like, we love you, Candice, for this. Yeah, remember it's a social media bubble so don't get too excited about

I mean, how many people in the real world out there, I don't know if you hang out in the real world out there, do you meet who are excited about Candace Owen? Probably not that many. So it's a bit of a bubble, so we shouldn't overdo it. But it is absolutely the case that the right has always been anti-tech, particularly the technology as applied to human beings. I mean, there was the famous biotech commission that...

George Bush deployed a sign that wrote up this memo that basically was against life extension, and they were very much against technologies that would extend human life. So curing disease is okay, but not extending human life. They're very much against gene editing, particularly if gene editing is used to enhance. If it's used just to cure diseases, that's okay, but don't enhance gene.

And so what you get is both on the far left and the far right, you get a real anti-tech mentality on both sides with the far, you know, the far right focused primarily or the right more broadly, I'd say, focused primarily on tech that enhances human beings is something they reject completely. You know, that's God's job. It's not your job. So, yeah, you know, we don't have allies. Yeah.

Yeah, it's very sad. Yep. Thanks, Holden. Jacob.

Hello, you're on. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. On ambulance one. It's frustrating how evasive we are on self-defense because I was because of the laws of war. So I was thinking when I was in Taiwan, how easy it would be to stop China and just say, hey, if you invade, we're blowing up a pretty gorgeous dam. Or for Iran to say, hey, if you keep this up, we're going to blow up all your oil refineries. It's not we have to use very expensive bombs and

to precision guide every ammunition. Do you think that's part of the problem of the modern world? Oh, no question. I mean, the reality is, I don't know how many hundreds of millions of dollars or maybe it's billions of dollars now the United States has spent on the Houthis. The Houthis are still blocking trade. The Houthis are still launching ballistic missiles into Israel and

or trying at least. But so, you know, you can use all the precision weapons in the world. Unless you find a way to break the will of your enemy to fight, you will not win. And it's very difficult to break the will of the enemy to fight using precision weapon systems. And they're very expensive, as you said, and it takes a very long time. And again, it's not, you know, these, if you just...

go around killing jihadis, well... It'll take hundreds of years. Yeah, I mean, and also they think they're going to heaven. So if the jihadi friend of mine has been killed, oh, I'm next. This is cool. I get 74 virgins or whatever. So...

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That is not. So the rules of war, definitely the case. You could unquestionably destroy all of the Houthis infrastructure, the infrastructure that allows them to feed their people, the infrastructure that provides them for war machinery, the infrastructure that provides them with electricity. Just destroy all that and then

You know, let them I used to say about Iran, give them the infrastructure their ideas deserve, which is basically the Iron Age or something like that. Right. Destroy every semblance of Western technology that they own, you know, from factories to to power plants to ports that don't have sailboats in them, everything. And you'll see how quickly they crumble.

Do you think that would be a good containment strategy for China with Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan? The dams in particular, but they have a lot of dense urban cities. If you just draw a line in the sand and say you invade or you have soldiers cross this boundary, then because I was looking at the three gorges, if you blow that up,

That's 50, 100 million people gone. I don't think China is that suicidal compared to the Middle East. Sure. But of course, that's mutually assured destruction because they launched nuclear weapons in the U.S. and there's no end to it. It's that's really, really bad. All China needs to be convinced of is that we would take seriously whatever commitment we made.

And for that, if we took out the Houthis, if we took out Iran, the Chinese would get it. They would say, oh, OK, whatever this new regime is in America, they're serious. And they would back off. I also think that the stronger we enable the Taiwanese, the Japanese, the South Koreans, and the stronger our fleet is in the Pacific, the lesson said, China doesn't want to lose the war. China is very cautious. It's not like Putin. Putin is in that case.

And it really is with Putin. It really is a one party, one person rule. He determines it all. China is much more ruled by kind of a consensus at the top. Xi is very powerful, but he has to appease lots of special interest groups within the Communist Party. And they can't afford to lose. Putin can't afford to lose, partially because the population in China is less tolerant of losses. They value human life, I think, more than the Russians do.

So just make it clear to them that even if it was a conventional war, they would lose. And then they would – the whole thing would – the whole dynamics of it would change. And then I don't think we have to contain China. Then we just have to continue containing it through strength and then basically work in whatever ways we can to – or –

To liberate China, and I think you do that through education. I just see my girlfriend's Taiwanese, and she's on Little Red Book a little bit just for recipes.

But there's all kinds of posts there where it's similar to Russia where it's like, hey, the Ukrainians are actually Russians. And then she's seen in the past five years that ramp up for the Chinese side of, well, the Taiwanese are a long lost family. We need to reunite them. Of course. And it's just ramped up. And with the current next three or four years, I don't see that policy change. It was like, what could the Asian countries by themselves do?

given U.S. instability, because I don't have faith that Trump or Vance would do a show of force required, that what could they do independently to stop China? Well, they could ramp up their own weapon systems and they could build nuclear weapons. So that would be the solution. And I think Japan is starting to think about it. But it needs to ramp up. It needs to do a lot more. It needs to do a lot more. So but

You have to remember, too, that when you read these chats on... Yeah, I know there's a lot of bots. Again, it's a bubble. It's screened. It's censored. So whoever is not on board, you're never going to hear their voice. So it's a very curated experience when you go on these chats in China.

So, yeah, I don't think the Chinese people, particularly those who've now achieved middle class status, want to go back to being poor, want to engage in a war. And they certainly they might talk the patriotic talk, but if they lose, they will not be happy. And I don't think the Communist Party can afford tens of millions of people, potentially hundreds of millions of people not being happy with them. So, I mean, the solution is America's strength.

And a projection of American strength. And I don't know what the solution is given this administration. It's somehow, yeah, we're stuck with these guys for four years. Maybe by accident they'll do some good things. I don't know. Thank you, Yaron. Sure. Let's see. Alejandro. Hello, Yaron. Can you hear me? Yes, can hear you. So my question actually was on literature, maybe. So I know you had said

that you thought Ellsworth Toohey in The Fountainhead wasn't actually a real character, in the sense that no one in the real world could replicate him, I guess. Yep. And I was wondering if you thought the same thing about the positive characters, like Howard Roark, and if the way he behaves, no one really in the real world would behave that way, like the way he behaves. And I was thinking, is it the same kind of dynamic? Yeah.

No, I don't think so. Because I think there's something psychologically impossible about a Tui just because of the way we're psychologically structured. I don't think one can acknowledge one's evil in the way he does and survive. Now, I think there are plenty of Tuis that do what Tui did in the book. The difference between Tui and the characters in real life is he was completely self-aware.

And I don't think a Paul Krugman or Jeffrey Sachs or Candace Owen even are aware of what they're doing. They've evaded so much that they are, you know, they're deluding themselves so much. Tui is not deluding himself. He knows exactly what he's doing, and that's what makes him an impossibility. With regard to the good guys, there's nothing to delude. I think the good guys are definitely possible.

The more irrational culture, the more difficult it is because the more difficult it is to grow up untainted by the anti-reason and altruism in the culture. And even if one shakes it off as an adult, it's hard to get rid of all the psychological baggage one carries. But I don't think it's impossible. And so I think the heroes are definitely possible.

you know, to various degrees, but I think they all are possible. There's nothing psychologically, there's nothing inherent in human nature, there's nothing inherent in our psychology that would make them impossible, like there is with Thuy. Because being a hero is the opposite of evading. It's actually a commitment to reality. That's really all it is. It's 100% unequivocal, uncompromising commitment to the facts and to reality, commitment to being rational.

And I don't see how that can be impossible given that that's the fundamental nature of man. For example, the scene where I'm

Howard Rourke rips up the check that Peter gave him. Like, is that how someone in the real world is supposed to act? Like, if someone gave you $500 for something, maybe you didn't like it. Like, are you really supposed to, like, rip up the check? I mean, like, I just don't know anyone. Well, if it was $500, I would certainly do it.

Maybe it was $5 million. I'm kidding. But no, yes, absolutely you rip up the check. So I know lots of examples where that has literally happened and where people have done the equivalent of rip up the check. I mean, have I been offered money to do things, a lot of money, to do things that I thought would compromise my integrity and therefore said, no, I'm not doing it? That's ripping up a check, right? So...

Absolutely, you can live up to those standards. The ripping up of the check doesn't seem to me that big of a stretch. It's just money. Objectivists have a much healthier attitude towards money than the left or the right. I mean, to us, it is just money. And money that's not reflective of the real value that I'm producing, like, who cares? Why would I want it? I don't really want it.

So I don't want money for the sake of money as an objectivist. So ripping up a check is the easiest thing to do. I mean, consistently living up to your integrity, consistently being an egoist, not letting altruism taint anything you do in the face of social pressure, living up to your values every single minute of every single day. None of that is easy in the way in the world we live in today.

I'm not saying it's easy, but certainly I can't think of any particular action that Rourke does that I would say, yeah, wouldn't do that. I mean, maybe except the first sex scene with Dominique. I mean, I wouldn't encourage anybody to try to mimic that. But other than that, I mean, would you... I mean, here's a good one for all of you guys, because most of you are guys, but...

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The woman you love...

Marries and I assume sleeps with a second hander like Peter Keating, then marries and sleeps with your friend. God, Waynand. No, no. What am I talking about? And then. Well, Keating and then and then what's her name? What's his name? Gail. Gail. Right. Gail Waynand. And and then you marry her and you're fine. You know, you have you know, it's OK. Yeah.

So I find people have a lot more baggage when it comes, for example, to sex and their relationships than they have towards checks. Checks are easy to rip up. To actually hold on to the love of a woman in spite of her doing things that seem as crazy as what Dominique does and still holding on to that and knowing the value she represents and

to you and still sticking by her and loving her, that is pretty amazing to me. And it's funny because nobody ever seems to question Ruach on that, even though I doubt many people would actually be able to live that, actually do that.

I guess that makes sense. Just the money scene was kind of shocking to me because like no one even knows he designed the building. It's like he doesn't get any bad things, but I guess it's kind of like a personal emotional. Absolutely. It's a personal values thing. He knows it's, he knows what happened. He knows this money is ill earned and he doesn't want it. He doesn't want ill earned money. It's a good question. All right, Andrew. Hey Ron. Um,

I heard a Catholic Democratic congressman who's at the Pope's funeral say that life is all about loving each other, forgiving each other, and not judging each other. And one of my first thoughts was, you're not going to hear that on the Ron Brooks show. I'm all for love. Well, not indiscriminately. Not indiscriminately, no. And one of my other thoughts was,

About volition, though, on a serious note about not judging each other, like, do you think that there's a connection between denying volition and this idea of not judging? I mean, probably, yeah. I mean, if...

If everything is determined, how can you judge, right? I mean, he was just destined to do that. He's got no say in it. You're judging. What are you judging? You're judging a machine. You don't judge machines, right? You don't judge. So if human beings are just machines, they're predestined. The problem is that Catholicism is mixed on the issue of free will, right? Most Catholics believe there is free will. They don't agree with Augustine.

So they actually argue for free will. I think their argument is more, who are we as human beings to judge? That's God's job. God will judge. He is responsible for

for judging. Don't make yourself into a god by judging. Don't trust your own mind. Don't trust your own reason. Don't trust your own evaluation. That, I think, is more where the Catholics are coming at it. Luther and Calvin, at least certainly Luther, were very anti-free will. So they were very much on the side of, yeah, I mean, whatever happens, happens. And you're either going to hell or heaven, and that was determined before you were born. So...

Nothing you can do about it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they believe in a judgment day, right? Where God ultimately judges. Yeah. But they believe in the Protestants or at least those Protestants believe in a judgment day where God just fulfills what he's already, what has already been decided. Right.

The Catholics have more of a conception of a judgment day where people are judged right there. In other words, they're not just fulfilling their destiny. They're actually evaluated. But it's God's job to do that. It's Jesus who tells you to love everybody. It's his job to send people to hell. Out of love, of course, only because he loves you.

Yeah, I'm just like very interested in this, in the passion around denying free will. Well, I mean, yeah, free will is easy. I mean, there's a strong incentive to deny free will because you can get away with stuff, right? Because it wasn't me. You know, it's I had no choice. I mean, that here's the thing. Denying free will allows you not to judge yourself. Yes. That's the main thing it does. Forget about judging other people.

You can't judge yourself if you deny free will. And I think that's the cash value of denying free will. The absolute opposite of objectivism. Absolute opposite of objectivism. Absolutely. Yeah, and the cash value of judgment is you can have indulgences and you can take a lot of money from people. That's part of it. And you can sin and then just say, I'm sorry and confess. And, you know, and indeed one of Luther's

arguments against the Catholic Church was this whole idea of indulgences and this whole idea of confession, and then you're absolved of all sin, and you go to heaven, and he said, that's all nonsense. You can't be absolved like that. Yeah, and even take confession before you die. That doesn't get you into heaven, according to the Protestants, because what gets you into heaven was determined before you were born, which is a very, very weird position to hold, but that's what they hold, and

Augustine, they are Augustinians in that Luther is much more Augustinian in that sense than the Catholic churches, even though Augustine is one of the fathers of the church. All right. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Let's jump into some of the super chats. We'll do the $50 and $20 super chats, and then we'll go from there. Not your average algorithm. I'm not sure Gnosticism is always a rejection of altruism.

It's not as if we all start as altruists, then get sick of it and view narcissism as the alternative. Many people are brought up by narcissistic parents. They think it's the only way to be. I mean, maybe that's the case. But I think even narcissistic parents teach their kids altruism in one way or another, because I think even narcissistic parents feel like their kids need to be good altruists, because even the narcissists

view altruism ultimately as the only option for morality, and they want their kids to be moral. And narcissism is kind of an emotional, non-cognitive, non-rational rejection of altruism. So I'm not saying they think about it, they consider, they look at alternatives. No, they just emotionally reject altruism, and they embrace narcissism as the only alternative because it's

it's emotion, you know, it, they either do, it's either narcissism or kind of a hedonism nihilism combination. And of course, hedonism is also part of narcissism. So,

It's narcissism or nihilism or pragmatism, which are all forms of rejecting altruism when there's no rational alternative for it. And it's all done emotionally, and it's probably done relatively early in life so that it's not easy to identify the point, and it's not easy, and it's not done as a consequence of some thought process.

thoughtful thinking through. One thing for sure, it's not genetic. Gnosticism is a perspective on the world. It's a particularly set of orientations, values, that it's a set of ideas at the end of the day. And we are not born with ideas.

We're born with inclinations. We're born with capacities. We're not born with ideas. We're not born with a predestined approach. Now, maybe something like being a psychopath, you're born with. Maybe there's something messed up in the brain that makes certain connections impossible. I don't know. But there's very little, but there's almost nothing in terms, there's nothing in terms of ideas that we're born with.

And, you know, certainly certain psychological diseases we might be born with. But even then, we need to know a lot more about biology to be able to determine that. All right, let's see. James, our objective is too happy to be successful in politics. Objective is too happy to be successful in politics.

Not just our ideas being too radical, but our sense of life is too foreign for voters today. They want rage and hate and authoritarianism to rally behind. So I'm not sure what you mean by too happy to be successful in politics. You know, we're not successful in politics. How can we be too happy to be successful in politics? We're, you know, too eager maybe is what you're trying to say. Maybe objectivists are too eager to be successful in politics when it's way too early to

And yes, I definitely think that we are too eager to think about politics. It doesn't mean we shouldn't participate in politics when it serves a purpose, but we're too, we don't realize how early it is and part of it being early in terms of educating the culture is

is not just that the ideas are radical, but that the sense of life is radical. The sense of life is the opposite of the evolving sense of life of the American people. The American people's sense of life is devolving, moving away from what it used to be into, as you described, a kind of an angry, hateful tribalism, which leads to authoritarianism. So yeah, I think we've got a long road in front of us

given all that.

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Apollo, this has been asked before, but what is your take on the physical type when it comes to women? I've been single now too long and have noticed I flip-flop from one type to another. Am I being whimsical? No. I mean, the fundamental is physical type doesn't matter that much. And a focus on the physical type is disruptive and...

prevents you, I think, from finding the right woman. I think the fact that you keep raising this suggests that it plays way too much of a role in your looking for the right kind of partner. You know, a physical type, you know, at the margin matters, but it matters very little.

At the end of the day, what you want is somebody who has a values affinity with you, somebody you can love for the values that they have, not for their body type or for their face or for the color of their hair or the color of their eyes. Who cares? All those things are, you know, they're optional, whereas what's really important, what's really going to bond you to another person is their character, are their values. So,

One of the reasons you're flip-flopping is because it's not that important. So drop it. Stop thinking about it. Stop considering it. You know, you need to use one of those dating apps that doesn't have photos, doesn't have pictures, because a picture doesn't tell you that much about a human being. Just go based on what they write and what values are reflected in that writing. And particularly, particularly if you have...

Being single for too long. That is, you fail to, then you need a new strategy. And maybe the new strategy is forget about physical appearance and then see where that takes you. And I'm not saying it's unimportant, but it's so much less important than everything else that don't let that be the obstacle to finding somebody you can really have a connection with and live a happy life with.

Q2 sent us Trump just wrote his toughest comment on Putin after meeting with Zelensky in Rome. Is it possible Trump can come to his senses? He got first person experience of support Ukraine has in Europe. I don't think it's possible for Trump to come to his senses because I don't think he has any. And I know I know a lot of you guys think I'm too tough on Trump, that I'm too

I'm not objective. I've got some version of Trump derangement syndrome or something. But no, as I've said many times, I don't think he has proper senses. I don't think he can come to his senses. I think that he's acting like, you know, again, like bullies act. And, you know, he's bullied Zelensky and Zelensky's fighting back. Good for Zelensky. And he thought that Trump was, he thought that Putin was going to

recognize how great he was, A.E. Trump, and just accept what Trump wants him to do and behave the way Trump wants him to behave. He thought that would just happen. And it's not happening. And he's disappointed. So I definitely think he's disappointed in Putin. I definitely think Putin is behaving in ways that he now doesn't understand because he doesn't have a proper way of thinking about Putin. I don't think he's going to gain one.

So I think emotionally he's pissed off at Putin right now. And he's pissed off because Putin keeps bombing civilian population centers. And to that, for Trump is some kind of red line that he keeps crossing, particularly given that Trump has said, stop it. And Putin keeps doing it. And it's like Trump is he doesn't get why is Putin doing this? I mean, he's not very smart. He's just not. He doesn't understand. He doesn't. He can't comprehend Putin. He can't understand Putin.

Because he can't, because he's not smart. I mean, he thinks in very simplistic terms. And to understand him, you have to think in simplistic terms. You know, I thought this other gangster would cut a deal with me and everything would be great and we'll divvy up the world. And it seems like he's more ambitious than I thought he was. He's actually serious about this violence.

He actually wants the stuff. Okay, maybe I'll have to do something about it. But it's not some realization of, yeah, dictators are dictators and they're the bad guys and Ukraine's a relatively free country and we should support. There's none of that going on in his mind. He can't abstract at that level. So you have to think of what it would mean for perceptual level mentality. And look, I'm telling you what I say about Trump. I'm telling you because I think everybody understands

I think the world is not objective about Trump in terms of how bad he is. I think he's much worse than people think. Barry Wood. Barry, nice to hear from you. Thanks for being an uncompromising voice of reason. Thank you, Barry. Really, really appreciate it. All right, let's go back to our panel. Let's see. Yeah, this is all got scrambled. Okay, start with John. Yeah, you're on...

I saw the interview with Christina Laporte, the author of the section. I detected a very strong emotional attachment. This wasn't just an interview per se. Describe, if you would, your connection with Christina. How long have you known her and

Uh, she, uh, I've, I'm reading the book. I think she's a terrific author. Uh, but tell me more about her. Um, I really know her through her husband. I mean, I know I've known her husband was on the board of the Ironman Institute for many years. Um, uh, Peter Laporte, he was on the board before I, I became CEO. So going back to the nineties, um, he's a doctor, he was a doctor in Orange County, California. Um, and, um,

So Peters was on the board when they hired me. And, you know, so I've known him since the mid-90s. Christina, I've known as long. So I've known them as a couple, right? So I've known Christina since then as well. Christina and Peter and Leonard Peikoff, their kids were trained by Lisa Van Damme.

who then was a teacher of my kids. So they hired her. They were the first ones to hire her. So they go back in objectivism a long time. Peter in particular goes back into objectivism to the New York days of the 1970s, I think. What else can I tell you? I mean, they've been friends. We've been friends for a long time. Christina's also an occasion person.

helped me out medically that is at least once that I can remember I had a medical ailment that was weird and strange and and she helped get kind of the emergency room physicians to do what they needed to do to to to figure out what was going on everything was fine in the end but but but she was very she's a bulldog right I mean if you've got her in your if you've got her in your corner

You want a doctor like that. I wish I had another – I wish I had a personal doctor like that who's going to really, really fight for you, right? And, you know, I could say more, but I feel like, I don't know, some of it's personal to her and her relationship with other people because she's done this, you know,

defending you as a doctor stuff to other people I know, friends of mine. So she's saved people's lives. So yeah, I mean, she's an impressive, as a doctor, she's very impressive. And I have to admit that when I read her book, given that I'd known her for a long time, right? I had no idea she could write. I had no idea she had this kind of imagination, this kind of a skill to put a plot together. It's like, to me, this is like,

mystical you know i can't do it i have no idea how people do it and and i i've known as a doctor and this very passionate you know this very passionate woman and it and and i read the book and it was like where did this come from i was expecting i was expect i wasn't expecting you know i wasn't expecting much and it was better than i much better than expected so

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Hopefully that answers the question. Yes, it does. Thank you. Great. Adam.

The fiction that we read generally has characters who stay in character, have the same personality throughout their lives. Now, in my personal experience, the two women I have been closest with in my life, one of them had a personality change.

after her pregnancy. And it wasn't depression, but it's known among psychologists that either depression or some other personality change very often follows after pregnancy. And the other one had a very radical personality change after menopause.

Do you think that this is something that is more general and is only ignored by writers for artistic purposes? Or is that something that you have also encountered in real life? I think it's definitely something that is more general that happens in real life and

This is the thing. The more, or put it the other way around, the less conscious you are of what I meant called building your own soul, the less conscious you are about creating your own values and using your volition in that way, the more susceptible you are to biological changes within your own body. The more susceptible you are to

Hormones, you know, influencing you in more dramatic ways in both pregnancy or childbirth and menopause have big impacts on the hormones, the women, the hormonal for women. And, you know, and the same thing happens to men as men lose, as the amount of testosterone they produce goes down with age. Exactly. Exactly.

how it all plays out, right? And what are the elements that are volitional? What are the elements that are not? And what kind of character do you have to build to avoid the changes that happen because of the hormonal issues? I don't know. I think that's an interesting question of psychology. And we will know it hopefully one day. And we need to know a lot more about how

The brain works and our hormones work in the brain and how are they affected and so on. And then we need to know a lot more about what it means to build a character and what it means to create a soul. So all of this is – so there's an interaction between the two. There's no question. You know this when women have periods –

You know, you could say they're a little bit more emotional. You know, different women respond in different ways. But there's definitely some change because there's something going on in their bodies that is affecting their behavior. It doesn't change their capacity to think rationally, but it could change the way they respond to certain things. They could change their stimulus. So I think there's a lot more that we need to know about this. Now, why is it not in literature? I don't know if that's true that it's not in literature. I think...

In literature, I mean, I'm blanking out on examples, but it seems like characters do change over time in a lot of books. People mellow when they get older. You know, Javar Jam definitely changes over Les Miserables in his character and so on. Not for hormonal reasons, for other reasons. I think you see...

In fiction, you see some of that, even if you don't. And some fiction focuses really strongly on that. You know, I don't know. Igmar Bergman movies are pretty pretty inflicted with this kind of these kind of character changes that people go through. Best I can do. Thanks, Adam. All right, Steve. So we've been hearing a lot more than I would like about trade deficits or as maybe some call them foreign investment surpluses.

One of the things that critics of tariffs often do is they concede the point that there is a trade deficit and that it might not be good. Not all critics, but I would say a lot of critics. I'm looking at articles about, well, yeah, there is this trade deficit and maybe it shouldn't be there. Where did this come from? Because it's not the news thing that we've just started hearing about. It's been around a long time.

And I guess no one's been able to or tried to say that this isn't a real thing and we shouldn't care. Because it seems like in the popular consciousness, there's just this implicit acceptance that it's a bad thing. People have been saying we shouldn't care for a long time. Going back to the

18th century, pre-Adam Smith, there were thinkers in England saying, we shouldn't care. This is a natural course of events. There's nothing wrong with a trade deficit. There's no issue here. They're there. And Adam Smith, of course, says it. And then most economists, Ricardo, of course, comes up with comparative advantage. And almost everybody agrees with that. But there's a constant push against it by people who

who feel like they're losing as a consequence of foreign competition. So just like there are always people trying to protect themselves domestically from, from competitors that people who feel like, but wait a minute, I've been, I've been working the fields forever and I'm, you know, and this wheat is coming in from this other country. It's much cheaper than the weed I make. I'm going to lose my job. I'm going to lose my farm. And you are in that sense. You are. And, and,

I'm going to go to my congressman and I'm going to advance change. And this in America has been going on since the early 19th century, right, since the beginning of the country. And what's interesting is that most of the regulations and controls that we had were at the state level and they weren't at the federal level, but there's always been this demand by local producers to be protected from outside forces. And then there've always been economists who have...

exploited that, right? They understand that there are these people out there who hate tariffs because they believe it's hurting their business, justifiably or not. And they come up with theories to explain it because you can make a good living or you can become pretty prominent by being the one guy who's anti-trade, who thinks trade deficits are a real problem. And this is Navarro, right? Navarro, 25 years ago, 30 years ago probably, came out of Harvard and

and looked around the field of economics and said, I'm not going to stand out if I just practice normal economics. There are too many economists. They all say very similar things. What can make me stand out? Well, I can resurrect mercantilism. And that's what he does. And he's marginalized in the profession.

He's marginalized by the media until Donald Trump comes and elevates him to a senior position because he's the one economist he can find that actually agrees with his zero-sum perspective in the world. Yeah, I guess I just see more like just like in like the news, the way the news writes about this. It's like it's like less dismissive of this concept. Yeah, I think they're becoming less and less dismissive because they realize that it carries political weight.

Right. So a lot of Americans now, I'd say a majority of Americans really don't. A majority of Americans are anti-free trade. A majority of Americans approach. A majority of Americans are pro tariffs. Maybe not the Trump crazy tariffs, but a solid majority of Americans are pro tariffs. They believe in mercantilism because mercantilism is perceptual level. And that's where most people are. And they bought into it. And so.

the media and the intellectuals are going to reflect to the people back what the people in some cases already believe. So they might not by completing the mercantilism, but at least they'll humor them by saying, yeah, we realize there's a problem, but this isn't the way to do it or something like that. And of course, the other thing is there are real economic problems in the United States, right? There are real issues. And those real issues have to do with

a lack of growth in manufacturing, a lack of economic growth more broadly. GDP could be growing at 5%, 6%. It's not. Some jobs suck and people are still stuck in them. There's just a lot of economic problems. And instead of actually doing the work to figure out what's going on,

Like too much regulations, too many controls, too much central planning, too much government involvement. They're looking for easy outs and blaming the other. This goes back to a theme I've been talking about for 10 years now. Blaming the other is an easy out, right? Let's blame the other. It's those manufacturers in China. It's those manufacturers in Mexico. They're the problem. So rather than all our regulations and all our controls and all our central planning, couldn't be that.

Last thing I'll say is if anyone wants to see the logical endgame of these policies, go to Brazil. It actually has a trade surplus, and you can buy a Toyota Corolla. It doesn't resemble the Toyota Corolla you buy in the rest of the world. It's a Brazilian-made Toyota Corolla that says Corolla, but it's like a crappy car. And you know where it's made? It's made in Manaus. It's made in the middle of the Amazon, which means to get the parts there—

You have to take a boat up the Amazon and then to get the car to where people actually buy the car, which is in Sao Paulo, there's no train, right? There's no train through the Amazon. So you literally have to take it by boat down the Amazon River along the Brazilian coast to a port to unload it.

And why Manaus? Because it's the central planning, right? At some point, the Brazilian government decided that they want to develop Amazon. So they created a tax-free zone in Manaus. So if you build the Corolla in Manaus, you don't pay taxes.

So, yeah, it grew. Manaus grew like it's a two million people city or something. But it's like the most inefficient supply chain you would ever do. Nobody would ever want to build anything in Manaus. It's just stupidity on top of stupidity. And this is the kind of stuff that keeps a country like Brazil poor and very poor. And but, yeah, I mean, not just Brazil. Think of Argentina. Argentina.

before Millet, not only taxed imports like tariffs, it taxed exports because it didn't want Argentinian farmers to sell their produce outside of Argentina because then there wouldn't be enough in Argentina, they reasoned, right? And you couldn't import stuff because they tariffed the imports. And so you got a situation where you're taxing imports and exports because

I don't know if they were running a deficit or surplus. It doesn't matter at that point. At that point, you're screwed no matter what you do. And what you get is poverty and destruction. Let's check in with golf legend John Daly. I only spend on Modo, America's social casino. You know I've won a couple of majors. And on Modo, I've won majors, grands, and epic jackpots on their classic Vegas slots with huge, huge bonus rounds. Modo Casino adds new games and awards players free coins every single day.

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Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, indeed, is all you need. It's, yeah, it's pretty pathetic. Yeah, so it's sad that I'm going to have on Thursday, I'm going to have an economist whose name now slipped my mind. Anyway, one of the lead trade economists, he's like, I think he's more of a

I mean, he studied political science, but I think of him as a trade economist, one of the leading trade economists today who's done a lot of research and done a lot of studying of deficits, suppressors, all this stuff.

And we'll talk about the history. We'll talk about the McKinley tariffs in the 19th century. He actually wrote his dissertation on the McKinley tariffs and whether they helped the United States grow faster or not. So it's going to be fun. So I'm really looking forward to that interview. That'll be on, I think it's Thursday night. I'm going to have him on. And yeah, that'll be good. So yeah, but the ignorance out there is just astounding. And what's astounding is that

As you say, people take the ignorant side seriously enough to try to appease it. Yeah, they're right about this and that. So, but what about this? No, they're wrong about everything. And, you know, it's like when I say Trump's wrong about everything and I get pushback as being non-objective. But the truth is he is wrong about everything. So what can I do? I wish it wasn't that. All right. Um, I'm Len. Actually, continuing on this topic of trade, um,

And I know you kind of touched on this. Yeah, but you're Canadian. You're Canadian. And we're sick and tired of subsidizing you guys. I know. And it's exactly on that topic, actually, I want to ask you. Is it is it so economically? Leave the political for a second. Economically, is it a valid retaliation on tariffs?

to tax the exports and I'm thinking specifically here of electricity because that is not something that's easily replaceable it's not something that you know unlike the food example you just gave where you can go and purchase somewhere else easily I mean is that a valid kind of thing to do because it shouldn't be penalizing Canadians to do that it's raising some revenue now of course our government wasted some we're useless so

I mean, what do you think? Yeah, I mean, I think of all the retaliations I've heard of, it's the one that I thought was the best, right? I mean, Canada sells to the United States electricity. Just raise your rates, which is a tax based on Americans. And now, of course, in a free market, the government couldn't do that because the utility would be, right? So you wouldn't do that. But in the world in which we live today, yeah, it's a fairly...

I think it's much better than tariffs, and it hurts who you want to hurt. Canada could also do it on oil, right? The United States imports huge amounts of oil from Canada, increase the price. Now, it could be that that will encourage more production in the U.S., and it might not be in your—and the same could be about electricity. It could be. But—

In the short run, it's emotionally appealing and less damaging to yourself. In the long run, it might – if you have to sustain it over the long run, it probably backsfires. Yeah. I was thinking it's almost like instead of just raising the rate, it would be like, okay, retaliatory tax or something. People see other bills kind of thing. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

I mean, I'm currently in Hawaii right now, and I tell you, the prices here are just out of this world. Where are you? In Hawaii. In Hawaii. Oh, Hawaii is one of the most expensive places anyway. Yeah. Because of the Jones Act. Yeah. The Jones Act. And I'm willing to bet that if I was to ask 100 people here, maybe one would know that

what it even is. Like the level of ignorance that people have on the world and things is just beyond comprehension. It's actually quite depressing, to be honest. It is very depressing. I agree with you. It's the most depressing thing out there. I agree. Yeah, it's the Jones Act. It's also the limited real estate in Hawaii, which drives up. And then Hawaii is also one of the most

heavily taxed and heavily regulated states in America. It's very left. Yeah. And that's another reason. So all of that combined is, is, is why Hawaii is very expensive. And the thing is about Hawaiians is they're like, that's okay. Cause it keeps people out and we don't want, we don't want more people. Yeah. No, I, I, I definitely detected that under the typical rudeness and stuff that you get with the socialist places. Yep.

We don't get the rudeness in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico should be a lot cheaper to live in than it is. And the reason it's like the electricity and all of that, and all of that is because of the Jones Act. Yeah. Crazy. Yeah, it really is. Hold on.

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Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, indeed, is all you need. Hey, Euron, I wanted to ask, because I kind of grapple with this, how do you know someone's views are so abhorrent that they're not worth debating? Because I see that you don't debate certain people when you talk about it, and I wanted to know what gets to that point where you can't debate them? Because I understand a lot of people, but I can't articulate why. Yeah, it's hard. I mean, I think Leonard Peikoff...

He talks about this a little bit in the article on moral sanction, which is in the new book that came out. It's an old essay that came out in a recent book. But I think the basic principle is, should they know how evil their ideas are? Is the information available to them?

What extent do they have to evade in order to know? So first, you have to say, the younger you are, the more forgiving I would be, right? Just had less time to be exposed to the world and be exposed to the different ideas and be exposed to what's going on. So a college student who advocates for communism, you know, okay. But if you're now in your 30s and you've got a college degree and

and you're kind of in the world and you're still a communist, yeah, I don't know if there's any point in talking to you, right? I mean, it's just a waste of time. Now, if you're an intellectual and you continue to hold these ideas, then, yeah, you're beyond, you know, that's just disgusting and you need to reject. So like a Noam Chomsky or some of these communist economists who

It's, yeah, it's very, you feel dirty debating them because they're really evil people. And you can make that determination based on the fact that they're not, they've had, their commitment as intellectuals is to learn. It's a study. It's the know. Facts are staring them in the face and they're ignoring them. They're evading them. So the evil is unequivocal, right? So I think it really goes down to age and exposure. You know, if somebody's older, right?

You know, but they've never gone to school and they've never really read books. And it's the guy or gal who's, you know, working for a living. And they've never they've never really delved into any of these topics. And they're still a communist because I don't know. I'm much more tolerant of that than I would be of some smart kid from, you know, who's gone to Yale or Harvard and now is still a communist. You're hopeless if you are.

That makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. So like kids that I at my school that like I could be, you know, it's like not to debate them really on communism or whatever. Not at all. Not at all. And it's good for you. I mean, it's sharpened your own ability to debate. You might convert one or two of them. So it's definitely worthwhile doing. But, you know, it's your professors that you need to judge more harshly. Right. Yeah. 100%.

Thanks. Thanks, Holden. Okay, Jacob. Question for you on energy levels for people. So when I was younger, going into college, I was diagnosed with ADHD and I took that for four years.

Ended up being just a deep depression. Got out of it, but I remember back when I needed to study or needed to do work, the hyper-focus and hyper-energy levels I had went on the medication. And I've been trying over the past two, three years to get that, clean up my diet, cut down alcohol by 80% to not let it. But in a rational world, would...

the mind-altering substances be more common, or what do you think is the rationale? Or, yeah, I'll leave it there and then let you go for it. You know, it's really hard to tell, and it is a medical question at the end, which I don't think I'm qualified really to answer. I mean, I suspect that a lot of the ADHD stuff is being diagnosed out of the laziness of teachers and parents who don't want to deal with hyperactive kids. I mean, my...

My mom basically said if I'd been born 10, 20 years later, she would have put me on drugs, right? Because I was too much. It was hard to handle me. I was too much energy, right? Now, not to say that there isn't such a thing as ADHD that makes it impossible for you to focus and therefore you do need drugs in order to allow you to focus. But I think it's overdiagnosed because...

They don't want to deal with the hyper energy that a lot of us have as kids and is healthy and that our school system is not built to deal with. And we should think about how schools could be better designed and curriculum be better designed to deal with kids who have a lot of energy.

So my question was more geared towards adults and jobs. So if I have a new initiative coming in and I want to hyper perform, do you think in a rational world that there would be a for three weeks period?

you're going to take ADHD or Ritalin or whatever the medication is at a small dosage. That way you can perform for 14 hours a day and really excel. Then you can taper back on and off or stuff like that. Do you, how would you think that would evolve in a free market and a healthier society? I think in a healthy society, in a free world, I think we could use drugs like that, but we'd have to know a lot more about the effects of the drugs and,

a lot more about the effects of them short-term and long-term. You wouldn't want to sacrifice your long-term health for getting a short-term boost to your energy. But yeah, it goes back to Holden's question about transhumanism. I don't have a problem if you could show me the science that something really enhances my performance and it doesn't have long-term negative consequences to use something that enhances my performance if it doesn't have those consequences. So I don't consider that cheating at all.

to take something that makes whatever I do better. I just worry today that we just don't know enough about these drugs because we don't know enough about the human brain. We're already taking a lot of drugs that we don't know exactly what their impact is on long-term consequences. So I don't think it would be a problem if

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you had the kind of information and knowledge that would be required to make that trade-off between the short term and the long term. Yeah. Because I just remember when I was on them, it was, you would wake up in the morning and you'd immediately start the day, have energy where now without it's a struggle to get up. And it's like, okay, I got to push through the day. Whereas before, so I know it's just an interesting thought I've been having. It is. And, and,

If the difficulty you're having in really pushing through the day, if you think it's not psychological, if you think it's physiological, then it's definitely worth talking to a doctor about and trying to figure out

You know, maybe a little bit of both. Maybe a low in vitamin B12. Maybe there's something, you know, who knows? I don't know. I'm not a doctor. But it's low in testosterone. You know, there's a lot of things that could be going on. So it's worth investigating, right? Yep. Yep. Thanks. Sure. I have the hardest time in the world getting up in the morning. Like I have no energy when I wake up in the morning.

And it builds during the day. I get energy during the day. But the morning, like I have to take an hour with my coffee sitting basically doing nothing before I can get up and actually do something. Yeah, my weird part is it's slow in the morning and then right around like 7 p.m. I just get bursts of energy until midnight or 1 a.m. I used to be like that. I mean, I've always been like that. You know, I could sleep in. I never was very productive in the morning. But give me an assignment at 10 p.m.,

And I could work on it till 3, 4 in the morning and be super, super, you know, energized and focused. So we have different cycles. And I think that is natural. I think those are natural cycles. And drugs could, William says, exercise before coffee. The problem is how do you get the energy to go and exercise? I can't muster the energy to go exercise when I wake up. I need an hour of exercise.

to recover from sleep so that I can go and exercise. It's literally the case. My wife is like so frustrated because she wakes up, she's full of energy, she wants to do stuff, she wants to talk, and I'm like, don't talk to me. And she said, you just slept. That's the point. I can't deal with it, right? So I need nothing, right? And then in the evening, like at night, I'm full of energy, I want to do stuff. And she's like, I want to, you know, this is, I'm done. I'm done.

So, yeah, we have different cycles. We live in different – and it's – I don't know how to change them. I don't know, you know, exactly what to do, how you adjust. But everybody says forget exercise. No, exercise is fantastic. You feel so much better when you exercise. And when you're strong and when you're in shape, you just feel better about the world out there. You engage with the world at the physical level better.

in a much better way. And I don't really hate, I mean, I hate to exercise while I'm doing it. That's why I have a personal trainer who forces me to do it. Force is good sometimes. But I'm kidding. But it's, I don't mind exercising. I kind of enjoy it. Alejandro.

Hello. So my question was on kind of there's a distinction between

let's say, laws inside the country and outside the country. And I was thinking, for example, I think you're in favor of using enhanced interrogation on terrorists if we capture them. What happens if we get a terrorist attack in the US, maybe in a minute, and it's not foreign terrorists, but they're domestic terrorists? Are we allowed to use enhanced interrogation there? And then what changes? Is it like when it's a domestic terrorist?

It's like our lives are less valuable, so the government can't do everything as strict, whereas foreign tariffs, it's not like that. I'm just wondering how you distinguish between the two. Well, I mean, enhanced interrogation methods, I think, are only appropriate in cases of emergencies, in cases of where people's lives are at stake. And if you don't get the information immediately, then, you know, people are going to die.

And in those cases, I don't think you completely differentiate between the two. That is, if there's a domestic terrorist and he knows where the bomb is and the bomb is under some school and the school is going to blow up and 200 kids are going to die, you get the information from him. And my view is you do whatever the hell you need to do in order to get it. Now, those people who believe that you don't get good information from enhanced intelligence

then you shouldn't do it. I don't believe in doing it for the sake of being sadistic. But you do whatever you need to do to get the information. If you give him a truth serum, I don't know what it is. So I don't differentiate between the two when the situation is an emergency. I also think that outside the country, in the middle of a war, there is no due process.

You don't you don't when you're shooting at a foreign soldier or foreign terrorist, you don't say I have to go in front of a court of law before I can shoot at him. It's a war. It's a shooting war. And you have to do whatever is necessary to win that war. When it's domestic, they you know, unless it's this horrific emergency I described, they have due process. Now, that due process could ultimately include shooting.

if it's necessary, absolutely necessary, some kind of enhanced interrogation methods. But, you know, you really have to think about what kind of circumstances that make sense and when it would make sense. You know, if somebody is a terrorist, they're blowing up buildings, they're killing people, they have no right to life. And, you know, whatever you do to them is legit. It's a question of is it effective, and it's a question of,

If they're domestic, have I followed the law? And the law should explicitly say when it's okay to use these kind of methods, call them.

And so but I guess you wouldn't say, for example, like if someone took one of our soldiers hostage in like Iraq, we'd be allowed to use enhanced interrogation maybe. But if that happened in the U.S., like that wouldn't rise to that level. Right. Because there's maybe due process or something like that. Yeah. I mean, it depends on. Yeah. It depends on the magnitude and the urgency of the emergency. Right.

And even if it's urgent, some due process that we know this guy really is a terrorist and he really has this information before I try to get it out of him. What is our level of knowledge of this? And then how urgent is the situation and how dire is the situation? That is, what's at stake? All those things would have to be taken into account and they'd have to be special processes.

I don't know, courts, special tribunals, special ways in which to deal with this, given the nature of this as an emergency and given the nature of it as violence is being inflicted and is on a continuing basis. It's not just a one-off. You have to really think it through and come up with a legal theory of how to do this. I'm not saying I've thought it all through exactly how you would do it. You'd need a legal scholar to really do that.

I'm just giving the principles, I think. All right. Thanks, Alejandro. Frank says we exercise because of all the crap we eat. That's not true. We exercise because as you age, you lose muscle. And if you don't exercise, it doesn't matter what you eat. As you age, you lose muscle. So even if you eat the best diet in the world...

You will lose muscle as you age and you have to exercise or engage in physical activity that builds muscle. You know, go run, chase down some buffalo or take a plow and go, you know, work the land. But you have to do something physical to keep muscle from atrophying.

But the reality is that past the age of 40, your muscles start atrophying. And that is really, really, really bad.

That is a really, really bad phenomenon. And you will suffer dearly as you age if you allow it to happen. So it's worth, and I've seen it, it's worth investing the time on building that muscle up so that it doesn't atrophy. And one of the muscles that atrophies can be your heart. So that's why you also need to do cardio because you need to beef up that muscle called the heart. And maybe the cardio is only high-intensity interval training. That's fine. But you've got to do something. Otherwise...

the heart will lose, I mean, your muscles will lose volume and lose strength, and you will get to the age of 60, 70, and be frail. And that means you fall, your bones break more easily, you can't keep your balance because you haven't built the muscles up, and it's, the cost of exercise is nothing. It's nothing as compared to the cost of suffering a weak old age. Now, you know,

The older I've gotten, the more I know people who are old. You know, when you're young, you don't know people who are old, grandparents, but they're like distant. You don't really think about them. But suddenly your parents are really, really old. And suddenly some of your friends are really, really old. And you can see it and you can see how frail they become. And if they haven't taken care of themselves, not just about eating, but in terms of building up at least some reservoir of muscle, some reservoir of good heart,

The suffering they go through is just, it's not worth it. The time I spend exercising is trivial in comparison to what I hope will be the benefits as I grow old. And you could argue that I'm doing pretty well at, what, 60, almost 64, maybe because of that, partially because,

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I'm fairly strong and I'm fairly in good shape. All right, Andrew.

Right. Good message on mind-body harmony there. Frank, exercise doesn't mean running marathons. Like you have to adjust your exercise to your needs. Running marathons is probably not good for you. It'll ruin your knees. It'll ruin your joints. It'll do all that. So think about what kind of exercise is good for you. So like everything else, just like with food, you have to figure out what the appropriate diet is. You have to figure out at a given age what

And given your goals, what are the right exercises to do? Don't run marathons. I mean, don't run a lot. Don't run. I mean, I'm against running because running, particularly running out in the street, even if you're young, pounds your back, pounds your knees, pounds all your joints, and it's not good for you. But if you can do like high intensity on a bike or high intensity on an elliptical or something like that, I do ellipticals because I've got a bad back.

maybe from the running I did when I was young. And it's fine. It doesn't do damage to my back. And if I do it right, it doesn't do damage to my knees. Swimming is very good. Swimming is really good for you. So swimming is great for cardio. And it also builds particularly upper body strength. You should think about how you're doing something to build lower body strength as well because your legs are really, really important. They keep you upright.

Andrew. Right. On an unrelated note, I wanted to just get your reaction to this formulation I've been thinking of in regard to is ought. And I haven't read Leonard Peikoff's essay on the analytic synthetic dichotomy in a long time. But so I'm not sure if he covers this angle. But I was thinking that, like, if you don't think you can get an ought from an is, you

It seems to me that you're missing something in the terms of volition. In this sense, you have to answer, like, do I want to live? Right? Like, as a precondition to morality, do I want to live? And then you also have to conclude properly that your life is your purpose, right?

If you don't have those things answered, if you haven't chosen your life as the standard, then you're going to not get the connection between is and ought. Because you determine the ought by reference to the standard of your life, what is good for your life or what is bad for your life. That's the essence of what I was thinking. I just wanted to get your reaction to it.

Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. But of course, you're starting with an objective, rational approach to ethics, which almost nobody does, right? And so they don't start there. And therefore, they start with kind of a mentality of ethics being about sacrifice or mentality of ethics about being about commandments. And therefore, they cannot...

go to the purpose is life or why should I live or life as a precondition for ethics. That's not where their mind goes. So yes, can you derive the arts of Christianity from is, is no, you can't. Right. And you also need to, you need to reconceive the whole field of ethics in order to see the connection between is and art. And also conceive it in terms of starting with your own choice, right? Like,

It is a choice. Yes. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Thank you. All right, guys, let's do a few of these super chats. Bobby says, thank you for engaging with the Bentley's philosophy club. We loved your insights. I appreciate that. I enjoyed it. That was fun. That was a few days ago. Thank you for the support. Michael says, at what point is looking past someone's someone you loves flaws and appeasement of immorality?

Well, it depends what the flaws are. I mean, are the flaws moral flaws? Are the flaws just stuff you don't like, but they're not related to morality? How much does it bug you? How much is it a problem? And what does looking past them mean? Does looking past them mean appeasing them? Does looking past them mean ignoring them? Is looking past them mean... So are you going to find somebody who's

flawless in a sense that they never do anything that you don't like, is that what you're looking for? Then you're going to be disappointed a lot in life. It depends on the nature of the magnitude of the flaws. Like you shouldn't tolerate moral flaws. Somebody lies to you, that shouldn't be, you shouldn't look past that. So when it reaches morality, don't look past somebody's flaws, someone's immoralities.

Do Europeans not have air conditioning because nihilistic environmentalists want them to suffer? No, not as a primary. I'm sure at the margin, that's true. That's why electricity prices are high. And electricity prices are high prevents them from buying air conditioning because they don't want to pay the electricity on the air conditioning. But the primary reason they don't have air conditioning, I mean, there are two primary reasons. One is a lot of Europe is in areas where it's cold and where the summers are not that hot.

And they've never really considered having air conditioning. I mean, if you live in Sweden, like the two days of the year where it gets a little warm, do you need air conditioning for that? And most people decide they don't. So one is a lot of Europe has weather that isn't really, doesn't really necessitate air conditioning. Now,

Or where the value proposition of air conditioning is just small. So yeah, Amsterdam might have a few weeks where you need air conditioning, maybe a couple of months. But do you want to invest in taking your old house and somehow figuring out how to build air conditioning into it for two months or two weeks of when you need it? And a lot of people make the decision of no. For example, the house I bought in Northern California, in San Jose, California, in 1993 had no air conditioning in it.

Well, I rented it first. I rented it. And when I rented it, it had no air conditioning. And a lot of houses in Northern California don't have air conditioning. And then I lived there for a couple of years. And as soon as I bought it, I put in air conditioning because it cost like $3,000 to do, I think, at the time. And yeah, you get two, three months where you're going to use the AC. And it's worth it. $3,000 is nothing to have AC for those months where you're going to use it.

So weather is one reason. The second reason, which dominates in the south of Europe, is poverty. Air conditioning is expensive. The unit's expensive. Installation is expensive. Particularly installation if you live in an old home is not easy. And then electricity, air conditioning uses a lot of electricity. Electricity is expensive, partially because of environmentalists, but partially because these countries are poor.

And if you're poor, you don't spend a lot of money on electricity. I grew up in Israel, which is very hot and very humid. We never had... I mean, I left Israel when I was 26. I never lived in an air-conditioned home in my life in Israel. And it was hot. I can't imagine today being in Israel without AC. Now, today...

Israel has air conditioning. Almost everybody has air conditioning. Pretty much every home in Israel has air conditioning. Why? Because they got rich or relatively rich. A lot of Europe is still poor. On a GDP per capita, a lot of Europe is still poor. And particularly areas that are poor but not that warm, not that hot, it's still marginal for them. So I think the environmentalists keep electricity prices high, right? But I don't think they go directly after the AC as far as I can tell.

Okay, Harper Campbell, thoughts on Zelensky's interview with Ben Shapiro. I haven't seen it yet. I did see Ben's conclusions over it, and I found it ridiculous. I mean, with all due respect to Ben, he suddenly discovered that Russia, they're the bad guys, and Ukraine are okay. And it was in America's self-interest that Russia not succeed. Like, this is, he presents it as this is what he learned. God, I mean...

Ben knew this. He's known it for years. He's been evading it because he didn't want to be antagonistic to his audience and he didn't want to be antagonistic to Trump's agenda. But I haven't seen the interview itself. I don't have time. I haven't had time. I haven't had time. I just watched Jordan Peterson interview Peter Thiel. And that was really interesting interview.

And I will talk about that on the show tomorrow, 2 p.m. East Coast time. I'll talk about Peter Thiel and Jordan Peterson. And there's some really interesting issues there around sacrifice. And since I've talked about sacrifice in the past and I've critiqued Jordan Peterson's view of sacrifice, since Peter Thiel pushes back on Jordan Peterson on the issue of sacrifice, I think it's really interesting to review it again.

OK, Liam, during Trump's first term, were his advisers more about restraining him while the second term his advisers are more about enabling them? I think the way to think about it is in the first term, Trump appointed advisers based on their level of expertise, reputation within the conservative movement. And he hired people who were.

relatively speaking, independent thinkers who had established themselves as experts in the fields that he hired them within the conservative movement. And they were, they were therefore, they, they had the ability to restrain him because they were independent thinkers to some extent. In a second term, the only criteria was loyalty to Trump, loyalty to him. Competence had no, no, no relevance. Experience had no relevance. Loyalty to Trump.

And therefore, they can't restrain him. They can only enable him. Liam, Rattlesnake TV said they emailed you to do another debate and you haven't got back to them yet. I can't remember an email from them. Maybe it slipped through. Encourage them to email me again. I also, I won't do all debate. Not every debate am I eager to do. So, you know.

Michael Sanders, the IMF now estimates Argentina's economy will grow at 5.5% in 2025, the highest in all of the Americas except for oil-rich Guyana.

Meanwhile, U.S. growth now revised down to 1.8%. Yeah, I mean, Argentina is doing amazingly well. Inflation is down again. The inflation numbers are down. GDP growth is up. Real GDP growth. And poverty is down. Millet, as I've been telling you, is doing the right thing. I'll do an update on Argentina in the next couple of weeks. I'll try to dig up all the relevant information and let you know. Michael, if printing money would end poverty, printing diplomas would end stupidity.

Javier Millet. Yeah, Millet is pretty good with words. That's pretty clever. James Taylor. Do you view Trump as more Mussolini than Hitler? No, not really. Mussolini was much smarter than Trump. And I mean this seriously. Mussolini was relatively intellectual. He started as a socialist. He was quite active in the socialist movement. If I remember right, he wrote. He was...

bad but he was he was thought he he had ideas ideas were awful and and he yeah anyway i i think muslim in spite of the fact that most movies and most presentations muslim have him being this idiot uh uh he he wasn't and he was evil and wrong but i don't think he was an idiot i i really don't think trump is smart i i think he's i think he he's not smart

And I think he's ignorant. And I don't think Mussolini was ignorant or stupid. And, you know, so, but in terms of, I don't think Trump is a racist in the way that Hitler was. And Mussolini was not a racist in particular. So that would be one thing in which he's close. What drives Trump? What's that? What drives Trump? Is it, I think you didn't think it was power or one of your guests might've said that. Yeah, I don't think it's, I don't think he cares that much about power.

I don't think he's a powerluster in a traditional sense. What drives Tump is what drives a narcissist. He wants to feel on top of the world, not in the sense of power, but in the sense of, you know, what's that? Being admired. Being admired, feeling in control, even if you're not.

feeling like you're the top dog, you're on the top of the pyramid, you're the best, like at the emotional level. And, you know, I think there's a certain, there is a certain thuggishness to him. So, I mean, there was that aspect of power I think he has where he enjoys the ability of

sending innocent people to El Salvador jail and not really caring about it. He enjoys that, the power he has over that or pissing off. He likes pissing people off. He enjoys the fact that he can sit there and write something on truth on Twitter and everybody flips out over it. And he's in the cover top of the news and the New York Times will write something about it. Like being the focal of attention. He loves that, right? He loves that. It's he's not driven by ideology. He's not driven by

And he's not driven by a kind of power lusting like some of the other politicians like J.D. Vance. He's driven by kind of the motion of, you know, I know I say this a lot and I know some of you are sick of this, but he's driven by stature. He's driven like a five-year-old who wants to be king of the hill. Like he's driven by a certain childish nature.

wanting to be looked up to. And this is why he admires dictators. He doesn't admire dictators because they have so much power per se. The thing he admires more about dictators is... Let's check in with golf legend John Daly. I only spend on Modo, America's social casino. You know I've won a couple of majors. And on Modo, I've won majors, grands, and epic jackpots on their classic Vegas slots with huge, huge bonus rounds. Modo Casino adds new games and awards players free coins every single day.

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Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, indeed, is all you need. Everybody respects him. Everybody looks up to them. Everybody stands when they walk into a room. Everybody yes-mans them. Everybody, I mean, it's like that cabinet meeting where I told you where everybody admires Trump and says nice things about Trump. That's what he likes. He likes that duration. And, you know, he...

He likes being able to do whatever the hell he wants. That's the other thing. That's the sense of power that he likes. He likes to be able to say, I want to shut down that industry and I want to promote that industry and I don't like China, but I like these other guys. He wants to be able to do that. He wants to be able to just do whatever he feels like doing.

He really is a babyish mentality. Yes. It's very much when I've been saying again for years that he has a five-year-old mentality in many respects. And I think that's true. All right, Clark, if objectivist think tanks and institutions never existed, would Rand's work still change the culture over time? I don't, I can't. Ayn Rand would continue to be influential. To the extent you have influential, people would create think tanks and institutions. You can't separate the two out.

The reason they're think tanks is because she's influential. And that's why they're successful. So institutions and think tanks would exist because she would continue to be influential. And it's a symbiotic or reinforcing mechanism. One reinforces the other.

All right, Harper Campbell, did you listen to Trump's interview with Glenn Beck? No. He said he has a massive bill of tax cuts and deregulation. He's working through Congress as we speak. Is this true? Do you believe him? No, I mean...

I think he might believe it, but that's not what's happening in Congress. There's no massive tax cuts. There's a continuation of the original 2017-2018 tax cuts. There's some tax cuts at the margin on top of that. But the whole thing complicates the tax system and makes the tax system more convoluted, not better. And there's nothing about deregulation going through Congress as far as I can tell.

So but but I don't think Trump is aware enough to know what's going through Congress. I really have a low opinion of the guy. I really, really do. After 10 years, some of you don't believe me.

Michael, amazing such a mean-spirited bankrupt culture like ours still innovates and pushes forward. Maybe you only need a few daggies functioning to keep the train chugging along. Yeah, exactly. A lot of daggies. And look, not everybody's mean-spirited. We notice the mean-spirited people because they're the one who make the most noise and they're the ones on social media. But a big chunk of the country just puts its head down and go to work and lives their lives. And they don't get involved in all this BS stuff.

A lot of these questions. Let me go through them and I'll give the panel one quick round after we do this. A non-javish algorithm. What did Ayn Rand mean when she said, when she referenced, referred to Kant as an idiot savant? She meant that he was a genius who had no connection to reality, that a genius who was kind of stupid when it came to dealing with reality and dealing with the world.

and therefore you're an idiot. But Savant, really, really smart. And that is represented by his philosophy. Martin, I listened to Johan Noberg's talk at LibertyCon in Prague today. It would be interesting if you had him on to talk about his upcoming book, Peak Human. Yeah, I mean, I think I've had Johan on my show in the past, way back when he put out one of his books. I like Johan. We're friendly. It would be fun to have him on.

Neil, how do you expect all these long-term military actions to take place when we have a new president every four years with different ideas? Well, you know, you can do a lot in four years. And I would like one president to have one president with one with good ideas, just one. That would be great. And maybe they would win a second term if they did that. And then they'd have eight years. And if those if I'm right about these military actions, they would actually be

They would actually work. And then maybe people around would look at that and say, oh, well, we should continue these military ideas because they worked. So let's get one good one. Jonathan, thanks for introducing so many people to the new textbook for Americanism. My pleasure. Everybody should read that book. And Ayn Rand, overall, safe to say you inspire millions. I don't know about millions, but I can settle on thousands. I wish it was millions. I wish, wish, wish.

Esoteric dichotomy. Thank you, Jonathan. Esoteric dichotomy. Hey, Ron, should there be movements for communities of objectivist families to move together to create private schools teaching kids teens reason? Yeah, I think that's – yeah, I do think objectivists need to do that. There are lots of objectivists in Austin.

I'm hoping they're sending their kids to good schools. If not, that they're thinking of founding their own schools. Apollo Zeus, I know you know great poker player Annie Duke. Yes. Would you say that men are better at poker in general, though, or not? If so, why? I have no idea. No idea. Annie Duke is better than me at poker by many orders of magnitude. So that seemed to repudiate the case. I know other really good players.

poker players. I mean, Julie, you used to work for me at the Institute. I don't think you wanted to play poker with her. She was really good. She was good at billiards. She crushed me at billiards. Yeah, I know. I don't have any reason to believe men are better at poker than women. It's a good question to ask Annie Duke.

She would have a good perspective on it because she's played with both women and men. Do you take your own the fact that there's a lot more male poker players than female poker players? Like how do you factor that in? Men typically are dumber than women in a sense that they're much more eager to go play risky games. They'll probably lose money at. Okay.

You know, the cultural reasons, you know, I don't know. I don't know. It could be psychological. It could be. I mean, you could argue men are more attuned to risky behavior than women and poker is a risky engagement, maybe. But can men do probabilities faster in their heads than women? I don't think so. Now, women are discouraged from math and the disincentives from pursuing math are

So it could be that men generally are more inclined to do statistics than women. And of course, you know, poker at a high level is a lot of statistics. But I don't know. I don't know that anybody's qualified to make any of those statements. So I certainly wouldn't. James says, I don't mean too eager to be successful in politics. I mean happy. I mean happy. Our philosophy is benevolent.

and about achieving happiness, and voters today gravitate towards hatred and negativity. That's all absolutely true. And it's hard for us to completely come to grips with how bad people are. Roland says he loves swimming. You know, swimming's really good for you. I don't like swimming. Let's be clear. I'm a good swimmer. I used to compete in swimming. I don't like swimming. It's boring. It's just unbelievably boring. It's monotonous.

It takes a long time to get to the level where you can swim long distances without getting completely out of breath and completely exhausted. And to get to that point is really, really hard. Whereas I can get on the elliptical. I can put on a book. I don't have to think about my form. I don't have to think about how my arms and whether I'm kicking. And I don't lose my breath. And I can sprint. I can go slow. I can control that fairly easily.

while listening swimming because it's a full body exercise. It takes a while for you to really get up to shape enough to be able to do it for long periods of time. And I find it, um, I find it very, um, very boring and very hard these days. So I don't do it. Um,

I used to love it when I was good at it. I think when you're good at it, it's easy to love something. And when I was young, I used to love the competitive aspects of it. I used to compete in swimming. That was fun. But just to swim back and forth and back and forth and back and forth in a pool, I guess I could listen to a book, but it's not the same because you're so focused on breathing right and the strokes have to be right. I don't know. Maybe I'm overdoing it.

I like numbers. China just called tariffs selfish. Can, care to unpack? Yeah, I mean, I don't know in what context they called it selfish. Yeah, I mean, China's trying to say to America, stop this nonsense, stop playing these games, stop being selfish. They would use, they're not using the term right, but it's all part of their campaign to dissuade America from doing it.

You know, Trump keeps saying, oh, I'm negotiating with the Chinese. I'm going to be nice. They're going to be nice. We're going to cut a great deal. And the Chinese keep saying, we're not negotiating. We haven't started negotiating. We don't intend to negotiate until he lowers tariffs dramatically. We're not going to negotiate under the threat of a gun. They're playing tough. And they can be much tougher than Trump can be. Trump is under a lot more pressure than the Chinese are. So they're going to use words like,

They're going to accuse Trump of all kinds of things in order to try to get their way. All right. Let's do a lightning round with our panel. So please make your questions or comments really short. And we'll try to go through everybody. I'll just go off the list I have up there. Holden, you go first.

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Don't wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash kids and family. Just go to Indeed.com slash kids and family right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, Indeed is all you need. Can I go second or something? Sure, John.

No, no question. All right. Emlyn. So, uh, you're on, you talked about your nuclear weapons for countries like South Korea, Japan. Uh, I would add Canada to that list. I think we should have them. And, uh, maybe this 51st state bullshit would be addressed in a very different way then. Yeah, I think, I definitely think Canada should have, I don't see any downside to Canada having nuclear weapons. I don't, I don't know that it changes Trump's BS, but, but,

But yes, it's I think basically every stable free country. I mean, one has to question whether the United States should have them at this point. But every stable free country should have should probably have nukes and they should all work together to prevent unstable, unfree countries from getting any any nukes. Yeah, agreed. Thanks. Yep. Alejandro. Let's see. Should men pay for dates or should it be like 50 50? What are your thoughts?

I think what you do, what would you think would maximize the probability of getting a second date? That is, I don't I don't think you should do anything that should jeopardize the possibility, if you like, the goal of getting a second date. So I think in the culture in which we live, it's still expected that the man pay for a date. Therefore, you should do it. Maybe in San Francisco, it's not. Then you shouldn't do it. I don't think there's a fast and hard rule here, you know.

I think you should – I mean, my wife likes to remind me that when we started dating, I had no money. I mean, I was living off of Army salary, which was nothing, and I kind of refused to take money from my parents. And I think she would almost always buy pay when we went out. We didn't go out anywhere fancy, but she would always –

pay for whatever we did go out when we were dating for the first time. It's whatever works, right? Whatever works in the social context in which you're doing it. I don't think there's any kind of rule here. And you guys know much better about what works today given, I guess, the dynamics of dating. Dating is something I haven't done in many decades. All right. Holden.

Alright, so I'll ask, how concerned do you think we should be about the Russia sympathizing going on? And I know it's a huge deal, but do you think it could get better with intellectuals like Ben Shapiro somewhat being...

Or like you could tell he's trying to like concede to his audience, right, by not taking a strong moral position like he should. But do you think that there's hope that there's going to be more support for Ukraine? Yeah, I mean, any resistance, even as weak as I think Ben Shapiro's resistance is, is good. I worry a lot about the anti-Ukraine and even the anti-Israel, although the anti-Israel is narrower on the right than the anti-Ukraine. I worry a lot about that because...

I think it's growing. I don't think it's shrinking. I think it's growing. So I do think we should be worried. We should be worried not about it in and of itself. We should be worried about what it says about the people and what it says about the Republican Party and the right more broadly, what it says about how they think about the world and how they think about America, how they think about morality. So that's why I think we should be worried.

And yeah, to the extent that somebody like Ben Shapiro comes around and starts criticizing Russia, that's a good thing. That's a good thing. Yeah, definitely. Good. Adam. I think that we overestimate the ability of good parents to pay for private schools. There are many parents who can't afford full-time private schools because

and don't have any alternative other than sending their kids to the government schools. However, there are two things that one can do. The first one, and I think it's the more powerful one and quicker, is to get on a school board and get the government schools under your board to adopt good curricula.

I've done it. I've been on a school board. I found that in a nine-person school board, I was the only one concerned about the curriculum. The rest of the school board members...

where lawyers and accountants are not really interested in philosophy of education. So that's a very powerful thing to do. And the other one for places where you can't get the curriculum in government schools to change is to have afternoon schools.

like the Jewish community schools that, you know, they're called Hebrew schools, but they're really Maimonides philosophy schools. And by the way, I think Maimonides was a much better Aristotelian than Aquinas. And

they're a very good cure against the disminding that goes on in government schools. I think that's all good advice. But I also think that private schools could be a lot cheaper to the point where I think most people could afford to send their kids there. But for that, we need a lot more competition and we need a move in that direction. And that'll happen if we allow for school choice and

That's the ultimate solution. But in the meantime, if that solution is impossible, then yes, these are, this is, this is all good advice. Let's see, who did we, we've got Andrew. Andrew gets a last word. He called me last three times in a row, but I won't take it personally. So you're the last one to join the call. I thought, yeah, but you said it gets mixed up the order. And I still, your name is always last on my order. No matter what happens. Now you admit it. Okay. So,

Do you connect the fears, extreme fears? I don't mean like rational concerns, but really excessive worrying about transhumanism and and A.I. Do you connect that with weakness in knowledge of free will?

I mean, yeah, it's weakness of knowledge of free will. And broader than that, it's weakness of knowledge of reason, of man's capacity to control these things. And that's certainly partially free will, but more broadly, reason. They don't trust rationality. They don't trust people to be rational. And as a consequence, they don't trust people to make the right decisions and good decisions, and they think they'll create monsters.

And I think it's also a very malevolent view of man. But it's definitely connected to free will. All of that is connected to free will. Now, what comes first is hard to tell. But at the end, it boils down to a rejection of the idea of free will. Yeah.

All right. Thank you. Sure. Okay. Jacob just joined, I guess, to ask a question. Rejoined. Yeah. Yeah. So you had that lightning round. Are you going to talk in the future about the India-Pakistan situation? Maybe get a little history there? Yeah, I'll do that. Maybe tomorrow. If not, then the first show I do next week, which I'm not sure exactly. Maybe Monday, maybe Tuesday. Okay.

When Hamlin talked about nukes, it triggered that thought. Yeah, they both have nukes. It's a problem. And, you know, nukes, you know, who knows who has the control over the Pakistani nukes? It could be some Islamist nut. So you have to always worry about stuff going on there, given Pakistan has a high proportion of Islamists and has nukes. It's the only country with a high proportion of Islamists with nukes.

Okay. Thanks, all. I'll be looking forward to it. Good. All right, everybody. Thank you. Can I get one in? What's that? Can I get one in? Sure. How bad is the power outage in Puerto Rico? Did it affect you? No. I mean, we're typically not affected because our condo has a generator. You know, it affects the traffic lights. It affects maybe some of the restaurants we go to. But it's not too bad. Most of the...

You know, wealthier places have generators. The grocery stores, the places like that all have generators. So you don't feel it that much unless you're relatively poor. Okay, thank you. Sure. All right, guys, have a great rest of your weekend. I will see you if you join. I will see you tomorrow at about the same time. Bye, everybody. Take care.

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