New Recording (draftDictatorship -- Is that Where We Are Heading?; World Happiness Day | Yaron Brook Show
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The Radical Fundamental Principles of Freedom. Rational Self-Interest and Individual Watch. This is the Yaron Brook Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Yaron Brook Show on this Thursday, March 20th. Bit of an unusual hour, but sometimes we have to do these in the evenings. The day is full of...

All right, today we're going to cover two topics, basically. A little tired of the news. It gets repetitive. It's like every day is the same thing. We'll cover more news. We'll cover a lot of the news tomorrow. Tomorrow will be a newsy show. But I thought I'd just step back a minute and given the intense pessimism out there that, you know, is based on some facts and maybe based on the news as I've presented it here.

And ask the big question, are we indeed heading towards a dictatorship? Is Trump going to be a dictator? Is he a precursor to a dictator? Is this the inevitable path in which we are heading? So we will talk about that today. Try to lay out the evidence. It's hard because we're talking about the future.

unknown. We'll lay out kind of the evidence for dictatorship or not dictatorship. We'll see where it takes us. And then, I don't know if you know this, I didn't know this, but today is World Happiness Day. World Happiness Day. So I hope you were happy today because it is World Happiness Day. You're supposed to be happy today. But one of the things that happens on World Happiness Day is that the various, I don't know, happiness organizations out there

report to us, and the mainstream media reinforces this, who is, which countries are the happiest countries in the world and which are not? Scandinavia. Super happy. The rest of us, not so much. The U.S., given our wealth, downright miserable. So I thought it would be a good time to just look a little deeper into these happiness studies. And in particular, there was a good article today by Yasha Monk,

M-O-U-N-K, M-O-U-N-K. Yes, I'm on about happiness and about happiness studies and about the happiness rankings. And what actually are they measuring? What exactly are they doing? Ooh, today is also Hitler's birthday. Okay, random fact and irrelevant, although relevant, I guess, the dictators, but not very relevant to happiness. Other than the fact that he's dead, that's relevant to happiness.

Okay. In the meantime, I'll remind you that you can ask questions. You can ask me anything, anything, really anything you want. All the things that are bubbling up in you that you would like to ask about me. Well, no, it turns out it's not Hitler's birthday. All right. So forget it. Forget what I said. Not Javid. The algorithm was wrong. Anyway, I will remind you, I will remind you

to ask questions. Again, you can ask me about anything you want, about the topics we're talking about today or anything in the world. I will try to answer. I can't answer everything because I don't know everything, but I'll try. Finland is supposedly the most happy country in the world. You can ask me why, although I might talk about that when we talk about happiness. And yes, we can talk about anything. So it's an opportunity for you to shape the show, ask questions, and it's also an opportunity for you to

value for value exchange value for value i i do these shows you provide me with a value in return by asking me a question with the dollar assigned to it if you don't ask it if you don't ask a question you still want to support the show use a sticker sticker um and um so uh go ahead uh you know uh uh uh add uh you know add um

Add your questions. Jonathan just asked me a whopper of a question, but I've got an answer for it. But you'll have to wait. You'll have to wait. Not going to get a quick answer from me. You know, it has to be a considered answer, and we're going to have to check out the evidence. I might have to pull out a few websites on that one. All right. No, no, no, no.

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How do you make an Airbnb a Verbo? Picture a vacation rental with a host who's showing you every room like you've never seen a house before. Now, get rid of them. There you go. No host ever. Now, it's a Verbo. Make it a Verbo. Oh, wait. I'm ignoring the chat. Ignore the chat. Ignore the chat. No, you guys are all wrong. But it shows. So the question Jonathan asks is which country has the hottest women? And...

Yeah, I mean, everybody has their biases here. I guess I'll reveal my biases later in the show. We should do a kind of a lighthearted show about hot women and hot men and stuff like that just to break it up a little bit and just have a little bit of fun. Maybe somebody could sponsor that show. Sponsor a show for $1,000 where we just have fun, where we don't talk about anything serious anymore.

and just have a blast. You're getting closer, guys. You're getting closer. Yeah, Blaze has it. All right. All right, let's start. How are we going to go from that to dictatorship? You're destroying me here, Jonathan. You're really making this hard. All right. So I don't know if you saw the news today, but...

I think Britain, the UK and France and Germany have all placed warnings on to those who are traveling to the United States. It turns out that citizens from those countries have been stopped at American airports. And one, I guess, Frenchman, they took his phone and they looked at his phone, I guess in his private chat on his phone,

He had some negative critical comments of Trump. He was immediately kicked out of the country. He was, you know, French. They don't need a visa to come into the U.S. But his phone was confiscated. It was negative. It was here for conference. Negative comments on Trump. He was kicked out. We're deporting people without due process. There's talk about ignoring courts. There's talk about impeaching judges we don't like.

There's talk about rescinding broadcast licenses to broadcasters that might insult the president. There is talk about increasing, significantly increasing, the power of the executive and decreasing the power of the judiciary. We're already seeing that. Trump...

has mentioned and many of his supporters have reaffirmed this, that he will run again in 2028 in spite of the Constitution saying you can only have two terms. The military brass has been completely replaced with what one has to conclude are Trump loyalists, who people who are first and foremost loyal to Trump and maybe only secondarily loyal to the Constitution.

Certainly, we know without any doubt that the people heading up the Justice Department and the FBI right now and some of the attorneys, attorney generals locally, clearly and have expressed this, that they view themselves as representing Trump and not the Constitution and are loyal to Trump and not the Constitution. So are we heading towards

I mean, add to all that the fact that Trump admires dictators. I mean, his strategy of negotiating with Putin is to basically give Putin everything he wants. He hasn't started negotiating with Xi, but it's hard to see how, you know, what exactly the negotiation with Xi is going to look like. We know he had a bromance with the brutal dictator of North Korea. I mean, he really likes these guys. He,

He seems to like Erdogan of Turkey, another strongman authoritarian. And, you know, he has expressed, he has said things that suggest that he would like to be, he would like to be a...

He would like to be a strong man. He would like to be able to, I mean, basically what he would like to do, and he said this, he would like to be able to make decisions and have them followed without being second guessed by the courts and by Congress and by the media and by everybody else. And he'd like to be shown some respect when he walks into a room. He'd like people to stand up and salute, basically.

So does this all suggest that we're heading towards a dictatorship? And again, add to this the fact that there is a real phenomena out there of Trump zombie syndrome. People are loyal. They are willing to accept anything for Trump. They're willing to do anything for Trump. They're willing to...

accept anything he does. They refuse to question his decisions. They can't say a negative word about him. And they seem to go brain dead. They have, you know, answers to every question. Any time you criticize Trump, they have standard answers that the tribe has produced, that is produced through the MAGA, through the zombie network. And they just mow them back just as

I think every authoritarian gains these masses of just acquiescent, mindless followers. And we definitely have that here. And then there are people around him that have expressed even more consistently authoritarian viewpoints than even he has. So he is supported in his quest, I guess, to

by people who agree with him or people who actually think he should go even further. So are we heading towards a dictatorship is the real question. And I think that all of that is true. And certainly we are more likely, because ultimately the future is not about certainty, but about probability, we are certainly more likely to be heading in the direction of a dictatorship than

than at any point in the past that I know of and I could think of. Never have we had a president, not FDR, not Teddy Roosevelt, not Wilson, not even Biden and Barack Obama, who had such authoritarian tendencies and had such a, you know, mindless following as Trump does. Never have we had a president who behaved like

such a gangster, very much like Putin, as we do Trump. Never have we had a president, ever, who has had less regard for the Constitution, for the separation of powers, for the American system of government, really for America, qua idea, the American idea, than Donald Trump. So there is no question, in my mind at least, that we are

The probability that we're heading towards a dictatorship, I don't think out of Trump for reasons I'll get into, but ultimately we're heading towards dictatorship. The higher probability that that's going to happen in our future than at any point in the past.

And that has to do with Trump and it has to do with the people around him and J.D. Vance and how much more evil, principled evil J.D. Vance is than Trump. Trump's just a thug. J.D. Vance is an ideologue. And the nature of his following, the nature of this mindlessness, whether that mindlessness and charismatic following is

to J.D. Vance is going to be one of the key questions, or whoever follows Trump is going to be one of the key questions that determines whether we go in the direction of authoritarianism or not. But I think my conclusion, even given all of that, is that it's still highly improbable that the United States becomes a dictatorship in, I don't know, over the foreseeable horizon, let's say over the next, what are we now, four

Let's say over the next 12 years, this president and the next one, or maybe even over the next 20 years. Well, I think the probability, it's possible. I don't think yet that it is probable. I don't think yet that it is past the 50% possibility. You know, I...

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I think that it is still much more likely that we somehow muddle along. I don't see a liberty freedom revolution happening, but I do see muddling along. Now, why do I think this? Partially, it's the fact that Trump, in spite of attacking judges and disrespecting judges,

And in spite of the fact that with the two planes, they weren't turned around in spite of the judge's order to turn them around, has generally not tried in contradiction with rulings of courts, even when the rulings of the courts, even by objective standards, are not particularly strong. So there have been many, many, many now rulings against the Trump administration that

In basically all the cases, they followed the rulings and appealed and they were going to higher courts. And so far, in spite of all the rhetoric, in spite of everything, the Trump lawyers and the Trump administration and even the Trump Justice Department, as despicable as many of its members are, seem to be willing to follow the courts, follow the rule of law, you know, appeal, appeal.

And take many of these cases to the Supreme Court and see if they win or lose. And when they do lose, like they lost to the Supreme Court the $2 billion that had to be paid out of USAID to previously execute a contract, I think they're paid. So, yeah, two planes didn't turn around. There's some ambiguity there. They were already in the air and so on. But they haven't sent more people to El Salvador. They haven't deported more people since the judge stopped it, stopped the deportation. So...

I definitely think, I definitely think you could argue here that the Trump administration is not making aggressive attempts to circumvent judges' views. Indeed, they seem to be following them. They seem to be appearing in court, making arguments, not very well necessarily, but making arguments, going to the appellate courts, filing appeals.

And at this point, even asking the Supreme Court to give some guidance to the lower courts in terms of whether they're behaving appropriately or not. Because there is a constitutional question about whether a local court, a local federal court can put together a national, what do you call it, constitution.

God, what is the word that is escaping me? But basically a halt to an activity on a national scale when they were only local. Or is that just an appellate thing? More courts have ruled this way under Trump than any other president. And he's only been an officer two months. He's also done more to upset the courts. So but there's a constitutional question here that the Supreme Court should answer. And yeah, an injunction. Thank you, Bonnie. So it is.

It is completely legitimate. There are real constitutional questions here. But so far, we don't see him doing things that are completely off the grid. Now, it's true, a lot of the executive orders, again, questionable, you know, putting in play the Alien Extradition Act bill.

when there's no war, active war going on is questionable. And of course, hopefully that'll go to the court, the Supreme Court, appellate court, Supreme Court, and they'll rule that it is indeed inappropriate. But we will see. Maybe, maybe they'll, I'm not an expert on that law. Maybe, in spite of the fact that it's only been used three times in war, maybe there's a reason to use it here. It seems dubious to me. But let's see what the courts decide.

Some of his other rulings have been, yeah, overly sweeping, ignoring Congress's will. Although even here, it seems like they are going to try to go to Congress to try to get legislation passed. We will see. So they are being tentative. They're not yet have the audacity, the certainty, the conviction to actually go full-blown authoritarian.

Why that is, we can speculate. The other thing is, you know, when Germany went for Hitler, there was almost no resistance. The German public just accepted. They basically just rolled over. Some of it was fear, initially, but a lot of it was just acceptance. Things had been bad, and what the hell, let this guy try. Let this monster try. And as Dr. Peikoff explains in Nominus Parallels, educationally, they had been conditioned to

prepare them for exactly this. I just don't get that sense in the American people. They're not quite ready for a dictator. They're not going to go quietly into the night. They're not going to just follow orders. They're not going to just line up and do what they're told. There's still a significant element of this country that opposes Trump. In spite of having the best polling numbers ever for Trump, his favorability rating is only 47%.

His unfavorability rating is over 50%. So there's still a majority of Americans, or at least 50% of Americans, who don't like Trump. And I think most of those people would resist Trump becoming an out-and-out authoritarian. And even among the 47 who support Trump, if he really took that extra step, I'm hopeful, I'm guessing, but in a hopeful way, that many of them would rebel against him.

There is a significant number of intellectuals, not intellectuals on the far left who are panicking and hysterical and just flipping out over Trump, but a significant number of center-left, center-right, or even conservative intellectuals who clearly oppose Trump, who constantly make arguments against Trump, and so far have not been silenced and have a real following. They're not just voices in the dark. They're not just in the middle of nowhere,

They really have followings. And some of their following, just like some of my following, voted for Trump. But if it came really to Trump was not becoming a dictator, authoritarian, would those people turn against Trump? I think they would. We've seen that with some of you who voted for Trump, I think, and are now regretting it. If he came an out-and-out dictator, authoritarian, moving in the direction of dictator, I think more and more of you would regret it.

There still is a deep respect for free speech. While it is eroding, it will erode. Trump would want to erode it. I think the courts have been pretty good on free speech. And again, until I see real evidence that Trump is going to ignore the Supreme Court, I'm pretty confident that the Supreme Court defending free speech is going to be respected by the powers to be, at least by Trump. Now, J.D. Vance, who knows? So,

My conclusion is that America is still, there's still enough respect for liberty, still enough respect for freedom in America, still enough respect for the system of government as Americans understand it, call it democracy, call it representative government, that you're not going to get away with completely abandoning it, completely trashing it. The chipping away will continue. The erosion will continue.

And that's why I say we muddle along. Things are going to get worse politically. Things are going to get less free in a variety of different dimensions. And indeed, in some areas, in some areas, and mostly by accident, Trump will do good. And those are the areas in which he will, because of the people he's appointed, increase economic freedom. Those are the areas that will flourish. Those are the areas that will be good. Those are the areas will be successful.

And, you know, maybe some people will learn something from that. So while I find the Trump administration an abomination, while I think he is probably the worst president in American history, both in terms of character and in terms of action, and I find his foreign policy to be truly despicable, I just don't see America succumbing to dictatorship. Dictatorship's

Often either require, and dictatorships usually require a people who are either supportive of the dictator, enthusiastic about them, as often is the case among populists in Latin America. There's mass support and a significant majority of the population wants this guy to rule over them, at least for a while. Or the population is passive, uneducated.

As would be the case in, I don't know, when the communists took over Russia and I'm sure in North Korea and other places. You know, maybe Italy, Mussolini's Italy is different. But I think Mussolini, by the time he became dictator, was gaining massive support. And there was really, there was nobody really opposed to what he stood for. He was a socialist who had turned into this new thing. Really, he was the first called fascism. But it was really socialism with a strongman attitude.

And there was really nobody there to oppose him, nobody to argue against it. There was no spirit of freedom or history of freedom or history of liberty in Italy. There was nothing. Italy had been until very recently just a series of city-states and occupied territories by the great powers. And then it would be reunited. It would be not reunited, united really for the first time as Italy was.

under a king, and then it developed kind of semi-democratic. But there was no sense of we're a free people, we're for freedom. Indeed, communism was very, very popular in Italy in the early part of the 20th century. And it is indeed from the communists that the fascists gained support. Not only did they use communists as a

foil against which they rise. That is, we're here to save you from the communists. But the communists who are already inclined towards authoritarianism ultimately become the strongest supporters of the fascists. Same thing happened in Germany. The communists were the foil, but ultimately they were part of the support. They were part of the support. America has 250 years of fighting for freedom and liberty.

And while it is absolutely true that our understanding what that means, of what constitutes freedom, what constitutes liberty, has eroded dramatically. We don't really understand it. We don't know what it is. And the reality is this country elected Donald Trump. It's still going to be very difficult for Americans to accept the defeat of their system and to hand it over to a dictator. And I just don't see Americans doing that. I think as cowardly

as cowardly as our senators and congressmen are today, I think some of them, if it really came down to Trump is somehow declaring himself a dictator or doing things that are clearly unequivocally unconstitutional without any question, even by the most generous interpretation of some conservative legal scholar, they would rebel ultimately. They would stand up to him. They're afraid. They're afraid right now.

And that fear will keep them under control for most things. But I think they all have limits. I think the American people have limits. Now, the 20, 30, 40 percent of America, I don't know how much it is, that are MAGA or that are just accepting of anything he does, that just mouth back the lines that they've always been taught. I mean, how many times did I hear just today on Twitter the line, you go fight in Ukraine? They rehearsed this.

Because I blame Trump's weakness for this. I don't know if you saw the declaration by Putin saying that anybody who is in occupied lands that Russia has occupied must either immediately become a Russian citizen or leave Russia.

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cross over back to Ukraine. They have to, they have to, so these are territories that are Russian and people there have to be Russian with Russian passports. And he's giving them opportunity to gain a passport or leave. And I said, okay, this is, this is, he's been emboldened by Trump's weakness. And the response I get, I could have predicted this, right? The response I get is you go fight in Ukraine as if anybody's asking any of them to go fight in Ukraine. So

Yeah, I mean, that mindlessness, I don't know how many people. I have no sense of how deep MAGA goes, how wide it goes, how many people actually buy into it. How many people voted for Trump because they hated Kamala? How many people voted for Trump because they hated woke and they hated the left and everything? How many people voted for Trump because they remember the first term and they kind of remembered it fondly because the economy did well and they forgot all the bad stuff?

And they really didn't expect Trump version 2.0 to be as destructive as he is. So it's so at the end of the day, I think the number of really, really committed is relatively small. And let's and I think that the American people will resist and that we will not face a dictatorship over the next 12 years, hopefully not in the next 20 years, but in the next 12 years now.

I'll say this. There is a possibility. I think it's still small, but there is a possibility, a small possibility, that Trump's overall policies are going to lead us into some kind of financial disaster, some kind of economic crisis that will be very difficult to come out of, and that Americans will get desperate, and they will seek easy solutions, and they will look for a strong man, and maybe that won't be Trump.

but maybe it's the guy who follows Trump. Maybe he's from the left. Maybe he's from the right. I don't know. Probably from the right. We will see. We will see. So I think the thing to watch is whether he listens to the courts, particularly the Supreme Court, the appellate courts, and then the Supreme Court, and to see kind of how Congress aligns if that happens, what happens in Congress if he ignores the Supreme Court. So far, there is no indication that...

that that is what he's going to do, ignore the court, although there are people in his sphere, in his influencing him, who would like him to just ignore the court. I don't think Trump wants to be that. He wants to be, but I don't think he's quite willing to take that risk. Now, three years from now, who knows what happens? I don't know, but I don't think he's willing to do it now.

And I don't think he will just during this administration. I think it's one thing to say district courts don't have authority over this, which in some cases might be true. And a completely different thing to say the Supreme Court is ruled in a particular way and we're ignoring it. And I really don't see, I don't see that happening yet. But we will see. We will see. There's still a significant residue of evidence

enlightenment of enlightenment ideas and enlightenment spirit in America. It hasn't all gone. Now, they're chipping away at it. It will go ultimately. It will go ultimately. The collectivists are chipping away at it. The nationalists are chipping away at it. And ultimately, their goal will be to sacrifice the individual to the collective. And for that, they will ultimately bring forward a dictator. I just think we still have time. We still have time.

All right, let's shift to something completely different and a lot lighter. So today is World Happiness Day. And typically around this day, the media reports on this study that comes out every year, the World Happiness Report. World Happiness Report, this is amazing. That ranks countries based on happiness. This year, as has been true the last few years, all the happiest countries in the world are in Scandinavia.

In particular, Finland. Now, Finland technically, technically is not Scandinavia. The Finns freak out if you say they're in Scandinavia. They're not related to Scandinavia, to Swedes, Norwegians and Danish. Their language is completely different. And in many respects, they don't anyway. But for our purposes, geography wise, yeah, they're part of Scandinavia. So Finland is

followed by Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden. I don't know why Norway is not here. Norway, by far the richer of those countries, is not on the list. So Finland, Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden are the four happiest places on planet Earth. The United States, on the other hand, which is a country that is far richer, far richer,

than any one of those countries in terms of GDP per capita, even adjusted for purchasing power, in terms of size of home, type of car, any measure of just wealth, stuff that we have. The United States is richer. The United States is in 24th place out of 147 countries. And it's somewhere between Lithuania and Costa Rica. Like that's the level of happiness in the United States. Lithuania and Costa Rica.

That's pretty bleak, pretty bleak. Now, I don't know how many of you listening are from Scandinavia. I guess this time of evening, probably none of you live, although I'm sure many of you are listening, you know, after the fact, because I know I have a lot of people listening in Europe.

I've been to Scandinavia a few times, quite a few times. Been to Denmark a lot, Norway a few times, Sweden a little less, but I've been to Sweden. I've been to Finland a couple of times. And you go to these countries and, I mean, they're great countries. I love countries, particularly, you know, I'm particularly fond of Denmark and Copenhagen. I love that city. And all these countries are pretty cool. Oh, Frederick from Sweden is here. That's good. So he'll be able to verify or confirm or not what I'm about to say.

And, you know, you go to Scandinavia, you hang around the streets and you walk around and you might even hang around with some students and drink and whatever, go out to dinner with Scandinavians and so on. And the word happiness in describing them is not the first thing that comes to mind. I mean, Scandinavia is cold and dark and their culture are very reserved. They're not particularly expressive emotionally.

They're kind of uncomfortable socially. If you read, you know, Scandinavian fiction, particularly if you read their, what do you call it, crime novels. Oh, my God. I can't think of a darker culture anyway. They are not. I mean, I just watched two TV shows, one in London,

Oh, no, both Swedish. Both Swedish on Netflix. And no, it's...

Not not happiness again, not the word that that would be in the top of the list. It's just it's amazing places. They're fun places. But laughing, smiling, having a expressing themselves, having a good time. Things you associate with behavior linked to happiness, confidence, enjoying life, love their careers and so on.

Very reserved, very duty-oriented, do stuff. Anyway, what's going on? What is going on? Well, in order to figure out the conundrum about this incredible success of the Scandinavian countries in this World Happiness Report, you have to go to the report and figure out, okay, what are they actually measuring? What are they measuring? Well, it turns out

I mean, you'd think there'd be like a whole questionnaire and some objective measures and subjective assessments and some kind of algorithm that tests all this. And no, it's one question. One question. Here's the question. And I want you all to think about how you would answer. Please imagine. And by the way, the sample sizes are pretty small. But here's the question. Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to 10 at the top.

Suppose we say that the top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. If the top step is 10 and the bottom step is zero, on which step of the ladder do you feel you personally stand at the present time? This is called the control ladder. Now notice what it doesn't ask. It certainly doesn't ask about happiness.

What it's asking is, given what you can imagine are the possible outcomes in your life, where are you right now relative to where you think you could be at this point in time? And if you're not particularly ambitious, and if you don't have big goals, and if you are not surrounded by people who've achieved maybe great things, then it's likely that you say, eight, nine, this is it. But let's say you're ambitious.

And you know what's possible. And you're striving. And you want to, you want to, you assume you're going to do better in the future. And you think the best life is something grand. You might say a five or six. Because I'm still heading to the best. A culture that is satisfied, unambitious, content, is going to score very high. People in that culture is going to score very high. A culture of ambitious strivers,

competitive, with a competitive nature, trying to achieve more are going to say less. How is this related to happiness? Do we even know what happiness is? Do we have any kind of measure happiness? If we ask people if they're happy, is that it? I mean, happiness, if happiness is a state of being that results from the achievement of life-affirming values, then we're

You know, how are you going to measure that? And how many people actually are self-aware enough to know? So, you know, we don't have an accurate measure of happiness, but it is interesting that if you, you know, this is about some kind of measure of life satisfaction. And again, if you're not ambitious, you're satisfied. Things are good. Things are okay. This is as good as it gets. I'm a 10 because it's as good as it gets. Ambitious people can always do better.

are going to rank themselves lower in this school. And satisfaction doesn't correlate necessarily with happiness. Just one obvious example of this is you'd expect that countries, places where people are truly happy to have very low occurrences of real mental health problems. So for example, it would be a little strange if a very happy place had a high suicide rate or a very happy place had high usage rates.

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And yet, Scandinavian countries have some of the highest suicide rates and highest antidepressant usage rates of any country in the world. I mean, Finland and Sweden persistently experience some of the highest suicide rates in Europe, and they rank in the top five EU countries in suicide, according to at least one statistic. So it doesn't seem consistent. You can't have high suicide rates and be happy. It doesn't make any sense.

Now, it turns out that if you change the measurements, so there are two scholars. This is from this essay by Asha Monk. The World Happiness Report is a scam, is a sham, not a scam, a sham, because they're pretty open about what they're measuring. Anyway, two economists, Danny Blankenflower and Alex Biston, they put out a recent paper where they actually use different measures, like eight different indices, right?

They didn't use one metric of life satisfaction. They used eight survey questions, which have been used in different countries around the world. The first four of these questions measured different dimensions of positive effect and

They're based on asking whether respondents experienced enjoyment yesterday, whether they had a good time, whether they smiled or laughed a lot, or whether they felt well-rested. Again, I'm not sure we're measuring happiness, but it is interesting the kind of questions these people ask. The next four questions measure different dimensions of negative effects. They ask respondents such questions as whether or not they experienced sadness yesterday or whether they worried a lot during the day. So this is a measure of anxiety.

whether they experienced anger and whether they were in physical pain. And what they find is quite startling, I guess, if you're a big Scandinavia fan. While Denmark, for example, comes out like number two on the latter test, it does really bad on the others. Indeed, when you measure it on the do you smile or laugh test,

They come out 111th out of 164 countries. They don't smile and they don't laugh. And if you go to Denmark, you can see that. And even on the negative effects about anxiety, they're 93 out of 164. So they don't exhibit the outward appearance of joy. And they seem to have a lot of anxiety. But they're the happiest people in the world because they're content. Or because they were just accepting that this is life. On this test, Finland, the number one country, falls to 51st place.

And countries like Japan, Panama, and Thailand, where people smile all the time. That's why I'm a little suspicious of this measure, because people are smiling constantly in Thailand. Now, maybe it's because they're really happy. But, I mean, if you want to get the best service in the world, in terms of hotel, restaurant, stuff like that, Thailand is the place. I mean, they're constantly helpful and smiling and friendly and amazing, right?

So Japan, Panama, Thailand, very happy, according to this other metric. And in the United States, what you find is there's really a lot of difference by state. Residents in West Virginia are pretty miserable. I would be too if I lived in West Virginia. They rank 101st out of 215 countries. They're about as happy as really poor places like Sri Lanka and Mauritania. But others do really, really well. Hawaii,

Yeah, I mean, how can you be unhappy in Hawaii, Minnesota? I guess it's not about the cold. North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas. Other than Hawaii, all cold climates. Maybe you cold-loving people have something. I don't know. Maybe you're onto something after all. All at the very top of the list in terms of

happiness in terms of happiness according to this measure. Again, not a particularly good measure, but a very different measure than the other one. Anybody want to guess what the happiest country in the world according to these measures, you know, smile, laugh, on the one hand, you know, exhibit joy, and on the other hand, negative points for anxiety, which country has the best in terms of

that study. Anybody want to guess? Finland? No. Finland's 51st. Finland drops to 51. Canada? No way, Canada. Canada, no. I mean, DPRK, the Democratic Republic of Korea. No, no, no, no. Brazil? Huh. I don't know where Brazil ranks. I need to look that up. Korea, no. Nigeria, no. South Africa, no. US, no. China, no. China's close. Spain, no.

This one is actually pretty cool. And it's a country I've never been to, which is kind of sad. Taiwan, Taiwan, like China, but free. And I think that's right. I mean, my sense of the Chinese was vibrant, positive, energetic, friendly, even individualistic. But of course, they're in China, so they're unfree. And it's Taiwan, according to these measures, again.

Generally, 34 U.S. states have higher levels of happiness, according to this other measure, than Finland. So look, I mean, none of these studies mean much, right? None of these studies mean much. Bhutan, no. In spite of the fact that they have a gross happiness index, Bhutan doesn't score highly on happiness anyway. Indeed, one of the best measures of happiness, one of the best measures of satisfaction is

is are people leaving or people coming? And net migration from Bhutan is negative. People are leaving in large numbers because they're not happy. In spite of the happiness index, gross happiness index, they're not happy. They'd much rather prefer that the government focus on GDP than on happiness. So, I mean, all these studies are ridiculous. None of them are actually capturing the essence of happiness.

In a world in which we don't really define the term, you know, you can't really expect good results from any one of these. But it is interesting. It is interesting to see how the questions, the way you ask the questions, the way the question is framed will determine what it actually are you measuring and how...

How much people attribute to this latter question, how much they're willing to go with, and how mindlessly the media just accepts this. I mean, how many times have you heard, happiest places on earth, Scandinavia, Finland, happiest place on the planet, all based on one very, very, very suspect study? Suspect, not suspect, just in a sense that it's dishonest, it's completely honest, but

In a sense that what it's measuring is something completely different than honesty, than happiness. So now moving to Finland will not solve all your problems, it turns out. This is just a fact that came out in the Yashar Monk article that is not related to happiness, but is kind of an interesting statistical fact. I've heard this. I've read this elsewhere. And I think this is true. Do you know why people live longer?

in what are called blue zones, you know, the countries like Sardinia and Okinawa, where people live longer. And supposedly if you eat like the residents of the blue zones, you will live longer too. Do you know why they live longer? Anybody know? It's the vegetables, the walking. What is it about the lifestyle? What is it about them that causes them to live longer? This isn't the entire explanation, right?

Chandler says fresh fish and sunshine. Yeah, a lot of cultures have fresh fish and sunshine. Yeah, Nabi. Nabi has it right. Nabi has it right. Bonnie says genes, vitamin D. Nabi has it right. It's bad record keeping. Basically, blue zones are distinguished by poor record keeping. There's a high number of people defrauding the government by overstating their own age.

and continue to collect pension checks, for example, for deceased relatives, or just not knowing how old they are. And since they gained a reputation of living long, they just tag on a big number to it. So yes, there seems to be evidence. I don't know if this explains the entire fact. I don't know if this is true of all the blue zones. But certainly, some of the blue zones...

have real problems with record keeping. These people claiming to be 100, maybe not. Maybe they're only 85 or 90. Maybe not exactly right. It is interesting that they're all in places where the record keeping doesn't exist and of an age where you can go back 100 years and yeah, the record keeping wasn't that great back then.

All right. Hopefully you found that interesting and a bit of a reprieve from the news shows that we get every single day and the week over. All right. A few reminders. Ask questions. This is your opportunity. Stump me or ask me something that you're really curious about or something that you're just interested in or whatever. Ask me questions.

And it's a great way for you to provide value for value, given that you're here and assuming you're enjoying the show. By the way, if you're enjoying the show, please like the show. Press the like button. We've got a lot of questions. It's good. We've made the money for the first hour, which we're hitting right now. Second hour has a goal. So help us achieve, help me achieve the goal. So keep the lights on. And of course, again, it's in your interest to keep this show humming along if you're enjoying it.

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And different levels have different levels of perks. So please, Patreon, try it out. Great way to support the show on a monthly basis. All right. Should we jump into the questions? Let's jump into the questions. Lost a lot. Yeah. Okay. Let's see. We always start with the highest denominated question, and that is Jackson. Jackson.

Jackson says, I'm happy to hear about the Department of Education. Trump signed an executive order basically shrinking it dramatically with the intention of doing away with it. However, if the Supreme Court eventually rules that Trump can do that, do you think it potentially gets us closer to dictatorship through state education, i.e. national education in mega states? Well, I mean, that is definitely a possibility. And that's why the fight against

is not over the Department of Education. The fight is over state-run education. The fight is over government education of any kind, any level of government. I think that he can, what he's done so far, he probably can do. What he did today, he probably can do. It hasn't shrunk that much, but it is a big step towards freeing up states to determine their own educational standards.

Now, it's true that some mega states and DeSantis has already come out and says how much he loves this because now he can really get down and dirty and shape education that he the way he wants it to be shaped. And this is why school choice is so essential. This is why providing opportunities for private schools to open in states and to compete with so-called public education, government education is so important. This is why allowing parents to homeschool is so important because

But yes, I think red states are going to take this as an opportunity. Now they have even more control over education to beef up their, you know, their cultural, their mega cultural ideas in terms of education and replace the left as the as the as in the thrust of what the educational content is going to be.

But on the other hand, blue states will provide a counter to that. So you won't get one monolithic country. You'll get a country with a variety of different standards of education. And that's better. Let them compete in a sense. And again, a lot of red states are combining an emphasis on, you know, their ideas as part of education and integrating, for example, more religion into education.

That is also combined with the fact that red states are also pushing forward with a lot of programs to provide for education choice, education saving accounts, vouchers, and all the other types of things. So there is a – I think this is a positive move. Look, anytime you can dismantle an anti-freedom institution, anytime you dismantle an authoritarian institution, which the Department of Education clearly is –

That's a plus. And then the fact that there's still going to be authoritarian institutions now at the state level, okay, it just means the battle, the fight needs to keep going. We need to keep moving forward. And this is another element where I think

There's a sense in which we're moving away from, there's a sense in which some of what Trump is doing, I said this about energy and deregulation, but some of what Trump is doing is going to move away from dictatorship. So, for example, a dictatorship would want a very strong Department of Education. My suspicion is,

that somebody like J.D. Vance does not approve of doing away, getting rid of the Department of Education. Somebody like J.D. Vance wants the federal government to have a strong Department of Education and need to shape federal education policy to be supportive of Christian nationalism, which is his ideology. So, yeah, it's...

And I suspect that while this is popular with Trump and with certain parts of the MAGA movement, the more intellectual parts of the MAGA movement, the more Catholic parts of the MAGA movement, the more ideological parts of the MAGA movement, the one that are committed to national conservatism, probably regret this action and would like to see a much, much stronger Department of Education at the end of the day.

Okay, Arum says, would love to hear show with Keith Weiner, Monetary Metals. Also unrelated, I think the way for you to grow audience is to use network effect. Talking to other influencers, maybe fans can crowdfund to get you on other channels. Yeah, I mean, I've said this over the years. I mean, if you guys are listening to other podcasters, super chat them to have me on. Encourage them to invite me on the show. Find different ways to incentivize them.

to have me debate them, have me interviewed, have, you know, be on their shows. So absolutely. That is a huge way to expand. And I agree, networking is the way. The challenge is, I've done a lot of it. I continue to do it, but it has to be a lot more and it has to be with bigger channels. And that is much more likely to be successful if you guys take it on.

and really go to these channels and ask them to do it as listeners to those channels than me going around asking, right? I mean, I'd love to be on trigonometry, as it's called in England. And I've asked them a couple of times and they know I'm out there and they so far are not interested. So, but I'm sure if they hear from enough of you, from enough of you, maybe that'll change.

This is a Kissin, Konstantin Kissin, his podcast. Love to be on that podcast. But so far, when I've appealed, they haven't rejected me, but they've delayed and postponed and found excuses not to do it. But if they had a feeling that a lot of their listeners really wanted this, they would do it. Let them know. Liam, first, they came for the immigrants and I didn't speak out because I was not an immigrant.

Then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me. Yep. I mean, that is right. We have to speak up. Chiganometry. Chiganometry. I mean, we have to speak up against these actions of the Trump administration. They're truly horrific.

And the flippant way in which they deal with it, the flippant way in which they answer questions, the disregard for human life and human of individual life is truly despicable and disgusting, truly despicable and disgusting. And, you know, we need to speak up, speak up, speak up. Absolutely. Mary Lynn, isn't Muhammad Khalil entitled to due process even though he's evil? Absolutely.

OK, let's take that first. Yeah, of course. He's definitely entitled to due process and he's getting due process is in the court system. I think right now the judge has ruled that it should be adjudicated in New Jersey rather than in New York. I'm not sure exactly why, but it's been moved to New Jersey. He is going to get his day in court. But the law here is at least the law that applies to him is immigration law.

has he violated the immigration statutes? And you could argue, and certainly I would argue, that immigration laws are wrong and problematic, although I do think some laws respecting whether you can become a citizen or not should be in place. But there is an argument to be made. And, you know, there's on one side a free speech argument, on the other side there's an immigration law argument.

And there's a real argument to be made that he has violated immigration law. He has violated the terms under which he received the green card. And that violating those terms makes it legal, legit to deport him. So he is getting due process. He absolutely should get due process. He's not only a human being, but he is a green card holder. So he is almost a citizen. And he certainly has due process rights as a consequence.

But I think he's getting it. And I think a court will decide his fate ultimately based on immigration law consideration. Again, you could argue the immigration law is wrong. Happy to. But that is the law right now. And they are acting based on the law, as far as I can tell. So I don't think he's a case where if they'd thrown him into a truck,

Put him on a plane and he wakes up in Afghanistan. Yeah, he has no due process. That would be horrific if they had done that, which is basically what they did with the Venezuelans sending him to prison in El Salvador. They did that exactly. They had no due process, zero, zilch. With Khalil, they actually are putting him through the process. He's getting it. Second question she had.

Doesn't Trump executive order against anti-Semitism violate the First Amendment? Well, yes, but it's the same context in which the First Amendment is being violated by laws that the whole Title IX, the whole laws that say that universities can't, what do you call it? They can't accept racist speech. You know, so...

What he is doing really is expanding the scope of what counts as protected classes. And he's including Jews as a protected class. Now, none of that law is right. The federal government has should have none of that. The universities themselves can decide that.

If they want anti-Semitic speech or not, whether they approve of racist speech or not, that is completely the responsibility in private property of the universities. And what the government is saying is because you get money from the government, you are bound by our conditions. And some of our conditions have to do with, quote, hate speech or, quote, unacceptable discriminatory speech, harassment.

And now we're not only including the Ku Klux Klan and racist speech. We're now also including anti-Semitism. It is a lot that has to be scrapped. And I think the most fundamental that has to be scrapped is any support of government for the universities. It has to be driven down to zero. And then the universities can really claim private property. And then they can have whatever speech codes they want.

And then, of course, the whole idea that the government should be involved in what is discrimination, what isn't discrimination, certain provisions of Civil Rights Act would have to be repealed. But that's not going to happen. So what Trump is doing is under the Civil Rights Act, expanding the protected class to include Jews. That's my understanding.

Stephen says, do you think Donald Trump is saying he's going to run in 2028 just so he isn't classified as a lame duck during his second term? No, I think he says it because he would really like to. He doesn't see why he shouldn't. I think there's certain people around him encouraging him. And I think that he doesn't know exactly how it's going to happen, but he's hoping for some kind of constitutional miracle that makes it possible. And

He might get to that point where he ignores the Constitution. And then again, we'll have to reconsider the dictatorship question. But he might get to the point where he says, yeah, I'm going to run to help, you know, enforce the Constitution. And his generals won't enforce it. And the FBI won't enforce it. And his Justice Department won't enforce it. And Congress won't impeach him. Who's going to stop him? And he might be counting on that. But I think he'd really like to run. Michael says the true test is who the GOP will nominate in 2028.

If it's Josh Hawley, would you consider leaving the country? Or if Trump approval rating sinks low enough by the end of this term, will they go with a normal candidate? Well, I think it's more likely to be J.D. Vance than Josh Hawley. And I don't think I would leave the country, just intensify the fight, continue the fight. I'm not about to give up. I'm not worried for my own safety, and I'll be quite a bit older in 2028.

But I'm not worried about my safety, and I want to keep fighting. So I have no intention to leave. Where would I go? So no, I can't foresee myself leaving because of any particular political candidate. Now, if it became clear that they were doing away with free speech and criticizing Trump or whoever the person was, was now deemed illegal, then yeah, I would leave. Maybe. I don't know where I would go. Europe, South America, whatever.

Taiwan, you know, I don't know. But no, I'm not going to leave just because a particular person becomes president, even if I despise them. I already despise Trump, so what more can you be? Ali, why some of people on the right, like Jordan Peterson, are diehard supporters of Ilhan?

Well, I don't know. It's hard to really, I mean, they diehard supporters of Elon because Elon is a diehard supporter of Trump, because Elon is a successful rich guy who is putting himself out there to fix the American government somehow, because Elon comes across as, I don't know, Elon has traveled from the left to the right, like many of these people.

And Ilan has now embraced all the symbols of the right. He's embraced Putin. He's embraced even religion to some extent, at least almost to the extent Jordan Peterson has. He's embraced MAGA. He's embraced a lot of kind of the symbols and a lot of the the the.

what you need in order to be on the right. Now, I think somebody like Stephen Bannon doesn't trust him because he still fears that Elon is too independent, independent-minded, and too much of an entrepreneur. But I think somebody like Jordan Peterson, I suspect he's enthusiastic by Elon's confidence, his success, and his embrace of all these right-wing cultural ideas.

Speaking of Italy, if the Renaissance was the precursor of the Enlightenment, why did it happen in Northwestern Europe instead? Was it the fall of Florence Republic and new Western Europe picking up on the Renaissance thoughts? I think fundamentally it happens in the Northwest because Northwest Europe is far more secular than

than Italy becomes by that point. So Italy goes through a period of the Renaissance where there is this liberating spirit of Greece and Rome, which secularizes much of society, secularizes the art, individualizes the art, exposes people to the ideas. But Italy still has this deep-seated Catholicism. Christianity is still deep-seated, particularly Catholicism in Rome.

Italy. And what happens with the Reformation, which is happening at about the same time, right, is that Northern Europe gets fragmented religiously. It gets, you know, it becomes more a whole different sets, all different sets of cults, all different sets of cultures, all different interpretations of the Christian theology. All, by the way, opposed to Catholicism. And the response in Italy is a counter-Reformation.

The response in Italy, one symbolic example of this, is the culture of Reformation, they send in artists to cover up the genitals of the figures Michelangelo has painted in the Sistine Chapel of the, what do you call it, the Day of, what do you call it in Revelations? Judgment Day, of Judgment Day. I mean, it's a magnificent, horrific, but magnificent painting.

And there were a lot of nudes there, male genitalia. And they all get covered up because of the Counter-Reformation. So there was an anti-individualism, anti-secularization movement in Italy that really made it difficult for, call it, free thinkers. And think of Galileo. Made it very difficult for free thinkers like Galileo to do their best work in Italy. So the center of gravity, whereas in the Renaissance, the center of gravity is...

Italy, Italian universities, Italian art schools, Florence, Rome, but Padua and Venice and Bologna, which had the oldest university. And with time, the center of learning, of study, of free thinking moves north to, you know, to the Netherlands and to France and to England.

At the same time, those countries also become richer, partially because they are more secular. They're more based on, they're now more based on trade. Italy is massively fragmented. These countries do very, very well during this period with trade, with an exploration across the sea.

And they accumulate vast amounts of wealth because they are relatively free. And you can see it in the arts. The art of the Netherlands is so much more secular than the art of Italy. Italy, even during the Renaissance, most Italian artists have to, to a large extent, portray biblical stories. In the Netherlands, Vermeer has none.

Rembrandt has some, Rubens has some, but most are secular themes. And basically Amsterdam becomes the center of secular learning. There are a number of thinkers in Amsterdam that are part of the Reformation. Erasmus, I think, is a leading one, but are independent thinkers. And they don't buy into Luther's

I don't know, theology of hatred and theology of predestination and all of that. And they are much more oriented towards freedom and towards religious tolerance than Luther and Calvin. So the Netherlands is really the key place. And then that center of gravity moves to England and France. And that's where you get these ideas and ultimately freedom.

You know, further down, you get Spinoza, and that's where you get the Enlightenment. But the Enlightenment really flourishes in England and France, right, with Locke and Newton, and then with, not Rousseau, Voltaire in France. But Spinoza is the guy who, by some accounts, is the guy who kicks it all off, and he's in Amsterdam. He's in the Netherlands.

I did a talk about Amsterdam is the birthplace of capitalism, which is online. You can find it worth listening to. I think it's really interesting, the history there. Chris, Scandinavia is the biggest producer per capita of heavy metal music in the world. Norwegian black metal, Swedish death metal, and Finnish folk metal, etc. Not the happiest genre of music. Your favorites, Yaron?

No, not my favorites. And yeah, that's right. And Germany is probably not that far behind. So yeah, not positive music, not happy music. This is hate and anger and yeah, not good stuff. Death metal.

James, wow, Tick History just gave a glowing review of Ayn Rand Conference. He said it changed his life. He has a massive audience. Over time, more high-profile people like him will discover and advocate this philosophy. Yes, I mean, I noticed Tick History a while back. Somebody pointed him out to me, and I went back and checked, and he had just read Ominous Parallels, and he seemed really, really cool. I encourage people at the Institute to reach out to him.

And ultimately they did. And I think Nikos talked to him and Tal talked to him and they invited him to come to the Ayn Rand conference in Berlin where he was one of the speakers. And he had a blast. I just watched the video where he reviewed the conference and he had a blast. He has 490,000 subscribers. Now, sadly, he says he's burned out. So he's stopping producing videos for a while. I hope that while is not for too long. I hope he comes back.

He comes back re-energized. But the video was great. Part of what he said was he needs to really study Ayn Rand's morality, ethics. He wants to be happy and he's not. He is riddled with altruism, with leftover altruism, and he needs to figure out how to get rid of it. So he needs to study Ayn Rand's morality, ethics, ethics.

Maybe you should come to my seminar in London on how to be an egoist, how to be a rational egoist. Somebody should propose that to him. Maybe if anybody has a connection to him, send him the link to my seminar that's in a week on the 29th, September 29th. There are only like three spots left, by the way, guys. You can sign up on PayPal, but

The best way is to go to my website, youronbookshow.com, scroll down to the calendar, March 29th, and there's a register link there, and you can register for the program. But it's on the 29th. It's going to be about how to apply egoism to your life, to your relationships, to love life, sex, career. It's just life, how to live as an egoist. It's going to be four hours, probably not more than like 14 people,

And I think we're up to 11 or something. So there are only three places left to please hurry because we're capping it at 14 because I've got a room for 15. 14 plus me is 15. So if you want to attend, please go do it now. I did not raise the price. So that if that was an issue, I kept the price at 250 pounds. Finally, what did I want to say? Yeah, if you know tick history,

then let him know about it. So maybe he can come. Maybe it'll be part of his rebirth, rediscovery. Jennifer, one can have a type one likes, tall, short, blonde, brunette, etc. But when looking for a relationship, those traits should not be the most important thing to look for, I would think. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think we have a type,

which is somewhat out of our control it's it's kind of a uh a subconscious thing it's it's a kind of a a value we develop uh very pretty young i think and i think it gets refined over time but but uh and partially based on our experiences and so on but ultimately it's not a it's not a determining factor it's just a an initial attractiveness factor you know i've

Often you find that you're attracted to somebody because of how they look, type. And then once you get to know them even a little bit, it's like, whoa, I mean, I don't want to have anything to do with them. Or no, they're nice, but I'm not really attracted to them because I know kind of their character and what they are. So no, at the end of the day, your lasting attraction, meaningful attraction is to somebody's character and not to the way they look and not to the particular features of their personality.

But that doesn't change the fact that we all have a particular, what did you call it? Types. That's right. Andrew, collectivists view happiness as an alleviation of perennial loneliness. The loneliness is a feeling based on social reliance. Happiness eludes a collectivist. Loneliness is a feeling which you can't seem to cure thoughts. Yeah, I agree with that. I think that

It's very hard. It's impossible for a collectivist to really be happy. They can at most alleviate the loneliness by bunching up in a group, but it's never going to satisfy them because they never get a sense of self. They never gain the self-esteem needed to be happy. Happiness requires self-esteem. Self-esteem is the value that leads to happiness. And of course, self-esteem requires reason and purpose and the virtues and all of that. But it's at the end of the day self-esteem.

You have to love yourself, self-love, in order to be able to be happy. You have to love who you are. You have to like who you are, respect who you are, be confident in who you are, esteem who you are. Michael, how is Trump different than FDR? I would argue FDR was far worse and we didn't collapse in the dictatorship. No, I don't think FDR was worse. While FDR certainly was willing to push the Supreme Court to rethink the Constitution,

in order to get his way, and he was willing to pack the court. The Constitution allows him to pack the court and was willing to threaten that. I think at the end of the day, when the court decided against him, he respected that. He was not as arbitrary, as whimsical, whim-driven. He was not as thuggish. His foreign policy wasn't as bad. It was not good, but it wasn't as bad. He didn't admire dictators.

He didn't have respect for them. And indeed, as a war president, he was really good. And he understood that there was no such thing as Germany surrendering. There was, I mean, the condition was unconditional surrender. So, yeah, no, I think Trump is much worse than FDR. I mean, FDR got a lot of bad stuff done. That is true. But all the stuff he got done was within the context of

where the country is moving in anyway. And it wasn't an abrogation of the nature of the political entity that is the United States. Trump is. Trump is moving us away from what America means. Now, again, FDR makes my worst five presidents, but I think Trump is worse because of his character. I just don't think you can look away from

from how rotten this human being is, how deeply rotten he is, and how thuggish he is. He's a gangster who is now president, or gangster mentality. All right, Jonathan asked, which country has the hottest women? I guess this was what Jennifer was responding to. I mean, again, that depends on your type. You know, you can probably tell my type by my pick, my picks. I would say, I mean, the hottest woman for me is,

you know, I would say is Colombia, Brazil, and probably Israel, probably Israel. And what they have in common is a certain mixture of different people from different parts of the, of, of the world, a, you know, a, what would you say? A, a, a, a slightly darker skin, which I find more attractive again, as a type. And, and,

What would you say more? How do I say this nicely? A feminine figure. You know, a little curvy, right? Not the kind of, you know, a little bit of hips, you know, breasts. You know, so the curves of a woman. So without them being exaggerated, but the curves of a woman. So, you know, every time I go to Brazil, I'm pretty astounded by how

beautiful the women are and how attractive they are. But, and I don't go quite as often to Colombia, but a couple of times I've been there, it's quite striking. The part of what makes Brazilians, and I think Colombians to some extent, is the mixture of, I don't know what you want to call it, ethnicities. There's some native Spanish or Portuguese people

and uh and and uh and and and black slaves so you you've got or black maybe they weren't slaves you've got all that mixture and i'm i'm big on mixture i like the exotic i exotic appeals to me the the you know asian exotic is really pretty i find asian women really you know they can be really really pretty but a little a little too i don't know childlike almost and they don't have the curves

usually. So those are my, and again, in Israel, what you find is a lot of the women are kind of mixed. Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and even if they are Sephardi and Ashkenazi, which comes from different parts of the world, they're not from one place. So anyway, that's me. I'm sure you guys have different preferences. Is my wife exotic? Yes, definitely. And she's

A real mixture. Ross. Hi, Ron. Are you familiar with Michael Levin's work on bioelectricity? Potentially a few decades away from instructing cells to regrow organs and limbs, reversing aging, then creating new organisms from scratch. Mind-blowing. Yeah, I think I've read about it. Yeah, I mean, it really is. There's stuff going on in biology.

It's just mind-blowing in terms of this potential. We haven't really seen yet. It's not like AI was starting to see it. Biology, it's just really at the beginning. And over the next couple of decades, it's going to be a real revolution. I mean, this idea of being able to grow organs that are basically cloned from your own DNA, they're cloned from your own cells. They can now take a regular cell and

make it into a stem cell and then make it into a particular liver cell, kidney cell, something like that. And then growing over now, they haven't quite been able to do that completely, but that's what they're working on. And it's super, super exciting. If just these politicians would allow us to live that long and allow us to be free long enough, it truly could revolutionize biology forever.

And really allow us to live so much longer than I think any of us even imagine today. Harper Campbell, can you have Harry Vince Ryan and Jason Ryans on to discuss the evaluation of Trump's first two months and likelihood of dictatorship? I mean, I'll have them on. I had Jason on recently. I'll have him on again, I'm sure, later this year. I'll have Harry on again later this year. I think I know their evaluation. I think Jason Ryans would say likelihood of dictatorship very high relative to, I guess, Trump.

me at least, or higher than I think it is, Harry would probably be more aligned with my position. But Jason is much, much, much more anti-Trump than I am. And I am very, very, very, very anti-Trump, as you know. And Jason has good reasons. So, but it's, we'll get Jason back on and he can talk politics. Although, as I said, you can ask him there about the dictatorship and I'm sure we'll have Harry on soon as well.

James, why is the left not as good at establishing authoritarianism as the right? They control the entire bureaucracy and every intellectual mechanism in every Western country. Maybe they don't want it. No, I think that, well, there's a sense in which maybe some of them don't want it. But I mean, here's the thing. Communism, which is what the left is all about, has been thoroughly refuted. And people are just not interested in communism. You know, even Europe,

which used to have active, engaged communist parties in the 60s and 70s, by the 80s, communism was dead. It's finished. And the Berlin Wall fell in 91. In 89, that was it for communism. So while there's still young people, you know, all excited about communism, communism as a political movement is dead. It is finished. It is gone. And even socialism has lost most of its appeal. So the competition in the world today is about communism.

The degree, kind of the form of statism, which is not socialism and not communism. So the battle is to the right of center because socialism has been completely dismissed. And, you know, nobody wants, you know, mostly people don't want to be, Nazism is not going to win either. The combination of

So nationalism and racism is, again, I think, been being disqualified. It's it. Those are Nazis. They were defeated. They were beaten. They're gone. Right. They're gone. So what you have is a form of nationalism that might be in America, might be tied to religion, a form of nationalism that is tied in Europe around nationalism, specific nations getting away from the EU, getting rid of immigrants, etc.

So it has elements of the, you know, of the race, but now couch this culture, couch this culture. But it's really all on the right. It's the left is, it has no real political agenda separate from the right. They want the same kind of fascist policies as the right does. They don't want to eliminate markets. They want to control them. They want to regulate them. Like Labour in England, how much different is it from the Conservatives? It's as an economic policy.

A little bit more to the left and nationalize the railroads. The conservatives maybe wouldn't have, although they were leaning in that direction. It's like this hybrid mixed economy, leaning fascist, which pretty much everybody supports. And some have a social agenda of the left and a social agenda of the right. On economics, nobody disagrees except us. So on social issues, for most people today, the right is far more attractive.

The left is nutty. It's nutty in a way that the right just won't accept. No differences between men and women. You can decide whatever the hell you want to be. And, you know, we must all sacrifice for the least able who are defined by race. No, but we rejected racism already. So woke, DEI, all that stuff, trans stuff, people are just not there. They're not interested.

And that's what the left is selling. It's not selling an economic program. Indeed, the working class used to vote for the left are now voting overwhelmingly for the right because an economic issue is helping the poor. There's no difference between the parties. So the only thing that differentiates Democrats from Republicans fundamentally is social issues. There is no energy behind communism. There's no energy behind the state owning the means of production.

Everybody knows that doesn't work. Everybody knows that's a disaster. But the state controlling the means of production, regulating the means of production, incentivizing the means of production, that everybody agrees is okay. And on that, there's no difference between left and right. Not really. Clark, both church and welfare state make justice towards helping the poor, but don't actually get them out of poverty. Both ideologies clearly think impoverished people are easier to control.

Yes, but also you can't get people out of poverty. The goal is impossible. They've clearly, you know, they're clearly wrong because they think they can get people out of poverty or they can help people in poverty by giving them stuff. And that's not the way to get people out of poverty.

So they have to fail, not because they want to fail necessarily. Some of them do, but not because they want to fail, but because the methodology they're going about is a methodology of failure. To get people out of poverty, what you need is to give them jobs. And what you need is capitalism and more economic freedom. That'll get people out of poverty. But that they're opposed to for other reasons. Notchavish's algorithm says Congress may be afraid of Trump, but other courts. I don't think so. I don't get the impression federal courts or the Supreme Court are afraid of Trump either.

I'm impressed by, I mean, not completely. I mean, they're mixed on the Supreme Court, but I'm impressed by their relative independence and intellectuality. It's the most intellectual branch of government by far. It's not even close. They write, they, you know, regularly I hear the judges submitted 110 page decision on X. I mean,

Trump has probably never written 110 pages in his entire life combined. So it's just, it's a different world, the world of judges. They're more intellectual. Now, that doesn't guarantee that they're good, but I think there's more of an independence there than there is in the other branches of government. Those are not elected, which makes a big difference. Not your average algorithm. The most horrible people throughout history...

use their words to convince the ignorant that they will fix everything. Yep, I think that's right. Michael, Tick History just put out a video about attending the first Ayn Rand conference. Yeah, it's an excellent video. You should all listen to it, watch it. It's really good. It's really good. It's really interesting, his psychology and what he got out of the conference and how he, like he said, the thing that struck him about the conference is how happy everybody was, how happy everybody was.

This is why you should attend Ocon and apply for a scholarship. Ayn Rand.org slash start here. Apply for a scholarship. Happy. People are happy. And that's what he said, right? And he'd never really met objectivists before. And suddenly it was a room full of intelligent, curious, happy people. Frederick, I always found it strange to see how people watch and enjoy these true crime movies, even books. I think their thinking goes, how awful. I'm lucky my life isn't like that. I'm happy now.

I mean, I don't know. I mean, I watch them and I watch them because I find there's always a heroic, hardworking, focused detective who solves all the crimes. Now, unfortunately, he's never happy. You know, they're usually miserable. But I find it. I find the characterization interesting. The dedication to their work. Interesting dedication to solving the problem.

the logic that they use to solve the problem. I find all that fascinating. And by the way, I thought the trilogy of, what was it? Woman with a Dragon Tattoo, I think it was called. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. That was, I really enjoyed those. I really, really enjoyed. She was such a great heroine. She was such a great character. I loved those books. I wish I could read them all over again for the first time. And it's too bad the author died

and couldn't write more. Richard, I asked a Canadian if they would become a 51st state to keep J.D. Vance or Trump from winning in 2028. He said it was worthy of consideration. That's pretty funny. And actually, what they should demand is six, what is it, six provinces or seven provinces? Each province should become a state. That's what they should demand. And in that case, yeah, they would completely change the composition of American politics.

Frederick says, your world happiness section of the show was especially thought-provoking. I'll rethink the subject more closely instead of looking for the factors that produced the high happiness in my thinking. Okay, not sure exactly what you mean there, but great. I'm glad you found it thought-provoking. Please think it through. And of course, now my final word on happiness, that was just kind of analysis of these other studies to some extent. Andrew says,

The left constantly signing alarm bells about totalitarianism on the right clouds instances of real threats to liberty. Yeah, but on the other hand, it's good that they're doing that because they're pointing out things that are real problems on the right. And there's a little bit too much hysteria. There really is. And in parts of the left, they're really convinced that, I mean, somebody told me the other day that they have friends, the women in particular, are convinced that

That we're heading towards that dystopian. What was that novel that turned into a TV series where the women are all just there for breeding? I forget the name of the show, but that, you know, it was that really that's what's going to happen, that that's what Trump and the right wants.

And we're heading in that direction of complete authoritarianism where women won't be able to own property. The hands maintain the handsmaid's tale. And they really believe that. So some women are moving their assets to the male relatives under some kind of deal because they're afraid that if they keep it, it'll be taken away from them because women won't allow. I mean, it's crazy stuff. Crazy talk. Crazy, crazy talk. Ian, are you happy?

How happy are you in Puerto Rico asking for a survey? I'm happy. I, you know, I'm happy pretty much everywhere I am, but I like Puerto Rico. It's, um, it suits my lifestyle. It suits this point in my life, this time in my life. Um, again, don't know how long I'll be here. Probably significant more amount of time. I'm pretty sure. But, um,

Yeah, for me, this is great. I like to travel from here. You know, it's good. It's good to be able to travel and spend time in other places. But I'm happy in Puerto Rico. Put me down is happy. Andrew, Michael Lewis book, wrote a book venerating bureaucracy, bureaucrats. It's bizarre to me why he did. If government works, workers are better than the stereotypes. It doesn't change that their functions ain't proper. Yeah, but Michael Lewis doesn't know that.

Michael Lewis thinks that the central planner is noble. He thinks that the bureaucrat is good and noble and so on. So he is very supportive of the bureaucracy and of big government. Always has been. He's a huge proponent of regulation, Michael Lewis. So no, I think he thinks bureaucrats are noble. I don't think he thinks they're improper at all. Somebody asked if...

Climate is similar to Israel. No, I mean, Israel has more seasons. We have fewer seasons. Israel has no hurricanes. Puerto Rico is more humid, primarily because it's more humid all year, whereas Israel is very humid, but only in the summer. Israel's climate is more similar to California, a little bit more humid than California, but otherwise similar in terms of temperature and in terms of like it doesn't rain in the summer in Israel, just like it doesn't rain in the summer in California.

Things like that. So it's very similar to California. The greenery is similar. Puerto Rico is a Caribbean island. It's a tropical island. Snow in Israel only very rarely. Sometimes snow is in Jerusalem, but rarely. There is one mountain in the north of Israel, which is on the border of Lebanon, Syria, and Israel called Harbour Miron, Miron Mountain.

And it snows there. So there you can go skiing. But that's the only place. The rest of the country, it snows a little bit once in a while. Like every two, three years. Some places, it never snows. Like Tel Aviv, it never snows in Tel Aviv. It never snows in El Hato in the south. But in Jerusalem, it can snow. And in the Galilee, it can snow. But again, rare. You forgot to comment to Keith. I don't know if I'll ever have Keith on the show. Maybe. I have to think about it. I don't like commenting on other people. But...

All right. What do we want to say? I don't like commenting on other objectivists. We can all judge people's works ourselves, and he seems to be doing quite well. I don't think he needs my exposure to my audience necessarily. All right, everybody. I will see you tomorrow for a news roundup, a news show at 3 p.m., I think, 3 p.m. Eastern Coast time.

2 or 3 p.m., one of those two hours. And yeah, it'll be a news roundup. So we'll catch up on the part of education and a bunch of other things by then. Reminder to those of you not subscribers to subscribe. Reminder to those of you not yet monthly supporters to go to Patreon and become members and enjoy the perks that membership provides you. I will see you all

Tomorrow. Have a great night. Bye, everybody.