Trump; DeNaturalize; Electric Cars; Venezuela; Loureiro; Australia; Podhoretz | Yaron Brook Show - Yaron Brook Show

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
A lot of them, fundamental principles of edom, little self,
Christ and the individual wats.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
This is the.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
Show, all right, everybody, welcome to you one book show
on this Thursday, December eighteenth.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
I hope everybody is having a good week. And uh, I.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Guess we're getting ready for the weekend. I you know,
I mean weekend before Christmas. It's it's the holiday season.
Uh and uh yeah, time is just flying, flying, by flying.
We'll soon be in twenty twenty six. All right, let's
I guess let's just jump in.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Let's just jump in with the news for this Thursday, December.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
Eighteenth, and you know, we'll start with Trump's speech to
the nation yesterday. You know, his his polling numbers are
really really low, even for Trump.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
They're very very low.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
People are his political party, the Republicans, are panicking about
the midterms, you know, eleven months from now, and people
upset by the rising cost of living and by what
they're calling their affordability crisis. They can't afford stuff. And

(01:42):
I think there's also just a lot of angst around
Ice and around which I don't think is very popular
at all, even among Republicans.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Is not super popular.

Speaker 3 (01:52):
More than most stories coming out about American citizens being
taken and treated really really horrifically.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
And and just just the whole attitude of going after
people at work.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
I think is is Americans don't like it. So generally, again,
napolling numbers are down, and he is, uh, you know, he's.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
Unpopular and struggling, and the Republicans are really scared that
they're going to take.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
A huge beating next year. I mean, usually the party
that is not in the White House does very, very
well in the off year congressional elections.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
This year, they think that's going to happen. On steroids,
that is, that's going to be even greater. And you
can see that by the fact that there's so much
emphasis and so much focused on the redistrict redistricting fight
to try to get to manipulate as many congressional districts
to be Republicans as possible in order to try to

(02:59):
in order to try to secure that election.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
In twenty twenty six. Somehow. You know, I'm not good
at political progostini forecasting.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
Let's use that word. It's easier, So you know, I
don't know if it's true or not. I see the
popular eleveny numbers, and the president is very, very unpopular,
there is no question about that. And the history does
suggest that the off ye elections the party outside of
the White House that very well. So I think those

(03:28):
are kind of those are statistical facts. How it plays
out between now and November, it is impossible to say
is they going to be a recession? Is they not?
Is there going to be some kind of surprise? Does
Trump have some kind of fun policy huge fun policy
success that people latch onto, although I think people are

(03:51):
focused really on the cost of living issue, but I
don't know. Housing prices come down because of something happening.
It is impossible to say what's going to happen in
November of next year. So it's the election, but clearly
Republicans are panicking anyway, is talking yesterday. His little speech

(04:12):
yesterday was seemed like one of those you know, a
little bit panic speech. I mean, he didn't say anything new,
He repeated everything that we've already heard from him, all
couched as things were horrible under Biden. I inhabited the

(04:33):
worst situation possible. I've done my best, I really put
into motion, and things are really good.

Speaker 2 (04:41):
You just don't know it. But things are really good
and they're going to get even better.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
Twenty twenty six might be the best year in all
of American history for the economy.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
So we're going to do phenomenally well. Just be patient.
And by the way, you're going to get huge refunds from.

Speaker 3 (04:55):
The IRS in April, the biggest ever in all of
them are in history. So a lot of stuff like that,
and how great he is, and how jobs are coming back.
Eighteen trillion dollars from tariffs and investment as a consequence
of tariffs. The number was actually from Taft's directly two
hundred billion. And investments who knows, I mean any of

(05:18):
those investments real, so who knows?

Speaker 2 (05:24):
You know.

Speaker 3 (05:24):
So Biden and immigrants were at fault, and whatever problems
you have, as as he's done for ten years now,
whatever problems you have, it's Biden and immigrants fault. So
you know, drug prices are coming down, everything's coming down.
Just wait and see how amazing life is going to

(05:46):
be in the year to come. It really, you know,
it really does. Did sound a little desperate. Again, nothing
he said was was different in the past. I mean here,
you know, this is what he said one year ago.
Our country was dead. We were absolutely dead. Did you
guys feel dead? I mean all of you guys dead.

(06:10):
Our country has was ready to fail, I guess go bankrupt.
I don't know, fail, totally fail, not just a little
bit failed, totally fail.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
Now we're the hottest country anywhere in the world.

Speaker 3 (06:24):
Hottest country. Now the stock market's up. That's that's good.
I'm glad. The STOCKMA gets up. STOCKBOE is up two
years in a row, over twenty five percent on the Biden.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
So I don't know if that counts for anything.

Speaker 3 (06:41):
Uh, and the stock markets didn't think that we were
dead a year ago, he says. It's it's not done yet,
but boy, are we making progress.

Speaker 2 (06:51):
Nobody can believe what's going on.

Speaker 3 (06:54):
I mean most people can actually believe it, and they're
not too happy with what's going on.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
No backtracking, no backtracking.

Speaker 3 (07:01):
From tariffs, although of course he's excluded so many things,
he's rejected so many things that tariffs are, you know,
a signific lower than what he initially proposed. They're still bad,
but they're not anywhere near as high as they were.
He's got deals with China, He's he's done things to
lower the damage to reduce the damage he originally caused.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
Tom Boss announced a new program.

Speaker 3 (07:27):
There is going to send checks of one thousand, seven
hundred and seventy seven hundred and seventy six seventeen seventy
six dollars to members of the military, an initiative that
he had just finalized. He's calling it the Warrior dividends,
Warrior dividend. Department of War is issuing warrior dividends. We're

(07:48):
not fighting anybody, but we're issuing warrior dividends. People were questioning,
where's the money coming from? Doesn't he need congressional approval?
How's he going to do this? I mean, there's seventeen
seventy six at one point four five million troops out there.

Speaker 2 (08:06):
That's a lot of money. Uh, you know, how do you?
How do you?

Speaker 3 (08:11):
How does how does he Where does he get the
money from? Well, it turns out that all he is
doing is he's repositioning money that already been allocated by
Congress to provide a military families with a housing allowance,
and he's taking about half of that housing allowance and

(08:34):
he's calling it a seventeen seventy six Uh, you know,
warrior dividend.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
So no, new money. That's good because you know.

Speaker 3 (08:45):
We're spending more than we can afford anyway, but it
is it is deceptive because this is money that was
going to military personnel anyway. But you know Trump announced
it yesterday as if this was new money that you know,
he was.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
Supporting our troops.

Speaker 3 (09:01):
I mean, this is what he does, right, You get
politicians to do, but he does it more than anybody else.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
I guess. You get.

Speaker 3 (09:12):
You have damage caused by tariffs or other government policy,
and the damage is usually focused on a particular group farmers,
you know, working class Americans, whatever, And.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
What do you do. You start throwing money at them.
You you subsidize them.

Speaker 3 (09:30):
So we got the twelve billion dollar bill in addition
to the farm Aid, in addition to everything we get farmers.
In addition all the subsidies, we provide farmers an extra
twelve billion to compensate them for tariffs. Kind of funny.
So that he said was tariff money. Then the seventeen

(09:50):
seventy six money he said was tariff money. But it's not.
It's already been appropriated. Money is fungible. It's just money
that the trisery, the trad really borrows. It's all borrowed money.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
Uh and yeah, so.

Speaker 3 (10:08):
You know he's he's really been coached now, you know,
because he was out there saying there's no affordability crisis.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
You guys don't know what you're talking about. Things are
cheapen out than they used to be. The inflation is negative,
Prices are coming down.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
Not only have they stabilized, not going up, they're coming down.
According to Trump. Well that didn't work, because you know,
everybody knows inflation is positive. The inflation number this morning
was two point seven percent lower than people expected, but
it's quite you know, it's still.

Speaker 2 (10:43):
Two seven percent.

Speaker 3 (10:44):
It's still not anywhere close to two, which is the
Fed's target, and it's not zero, which is my target.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
So he can't.

Speaker 3 (10:55):
He keeps saying affordability crisis gone, inflation's gone, prices coming down,
but it's not true, which doesn't usually bother people at
the White House. But it bothers people at the White House.
Not because people in America aren't buying it. This is
a lie that actually affects the bottom line, that affects
the They know because they go to the grocery store

(11:17):
and they're upset. So the consequence of that is they're
really coaching him to talk about the economy in a
different kind of way, kind of recognize that people are
facing financial hardship. But he just has a hard time
doing that, right, He has a hard time doing that
given it's under his watch. So you know, to him,

(11:40):
the stock market is surging and he's doing all the
right things, and he cares about America and that's enough
that that counts for everything. So yep, anyway, we'll see
how this how much this worked in terms of convincing
anybody of anything. And again, this was kind of one

(12:03):
of those speeches where he just talks about all his
great achievements and many of them are just blatant lies,
unrelated to anything truthful. One thing that did happen today,
I think it's today this morning. The website, the website

(12:23):
that allows people to set up bank accounts Trump accounts.
They're called I mean, why wouldn't they be called Trump accounts,
which is a type of text advantage saving any investment
account that was part of the big beautiful bill. So
just to let you guys know, you can now set

(12:43):
these up. They function as individual retirement accounts, but they're
for your kids, so as a parent, you can set
up an account on behalf of a child age eighteen
or younger and put five thousand dollars in there.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
A year and I guess it's it's tax free, it's p.

Speaker 3 (13:05):
Tax And now I don't know if it acts like
a roth IRA.

Speaker 2 (13:10):
I don't think so.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
I think you may be tax when you withdraw the money.
But you can you can deposit the money in there
tax free.

Speaker 2 (13:20):
You can get the form. It's IRS form four five
four seven four five four seven. You can.

Speaker 3 (13:28):
You should fill it in with your twenty twenty five
tax return, which is due you know, in before April
twenty twenty six. And you can also you can you
can do that also at Trump Accounts dot gov. You
can go there and set it all up and and
elect make the election I guess the four five four

(13:48):
seven election there.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
So you don't have to fill out a form with paper.

Speaker 3 (13:54):
After filing the form, the Treasury is going to confirm
that the account has been opened with an authentication process,
which means they're can authenticate that your child is an
American citizen.

Speaker 2 (14:06):
And therefore eligible for this kind of account.

Speaker 3 (14:10):
Beyond that, if debate if the child is born in
twenty twenty five, and this will be two through.

Speaker 2 (14:18):
Twenty twenty eight.

Speaker 3 (14:20):
Parents can elect to receive one thousand dollars from.

Speaker 2 (14:28):
The government from other parents, from other parents who pay
their taxes. They're no income requirements.

Speaker 3 (14:36):
Everybody's eligible as long as their kids are US citizens and.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
We're born between twenty twenty five and twenty twenty eight.

Speaker 3 (14:41):
So don't forget to elect to get your thousand dollars
subsidy for your kids. You can't touch that money, but
your kids can. It goes into that account now in
addition to that right, so let me just see, the
money would be deposited in a Trump account sometime before

(15:06):
July for twenty twenty six.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
According to DIRS, if you trust those.

Speaker 3 (15:10):
Guys children tenor under giving you all the details so
you can get your you can get your money, and
you can get your text free account. Children are the
ten or under born before January one, twenty twenty five,
right who wouldn't qualify for the one thousand dollars you
know deposit from the government could get a two hundred

(15:33):
and fifty dollars contribution if they live in a zip
code where the medium income is one hundred and fifty thousand,
dollars or less.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
So it's not about where that you have a.

Speaker 3 (15:45):
Median income of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars or less,
but whether you live in a zip code that has
you might want to move into a poorer area, guys.
So the money is aimed towards lower income family least
based on the zip code. But as far as I
know that is on now that money, that money is

(16:09):
not from the government, So that money, the two hundred
and fifty dollars doesn't come to you from the treasury,
from other taxpayers. That actually comes to you directly from
the Dell Foundation. It comes to you from Michael Dell
and his wife's foundation. They contributed six point five billion

(16:30):
dollars I think for these two hundred and fifty dollars
contributions into Trump accounts for children ten honder you know,
as a as a charitable as a charitable thing. That's
that's from the Dell Foundation right now. If you live
in Connecticut, I think there's another two hundred and fifty

(16:53):
two hundred and fifty you can get and that's now
from the from another foundation, Rate Value Foundation. If you
live in Connecticut can get another two hundred and fifty anyway,
a lot of money going into these childhood accounts. It's
also true that employers can contribute into these child children

(17:15):
accounts twenty five hundred per worker per year, but that's
part of the five thousand limits, so you can't put
more than five thousand in there. The tax to foot
the employee can do to twenty five hundred. You can
do as a pairent twenty five hundred. Trump accounts investments
are restricted to broad US equity funds, index funds brought

(17:37):
US equity index funds, y only US.

Speaker 2 (17:40):
I don't know, but okay, they.

Speaker 3 (17:43):
Must track a qualified index, can't use leverage, and they
can't exceed the annual fees expenses of ze point one percent.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
So yeah, this will be profitable for people.

Speaker 3 (17:53):
Like Dalio is only matching Dells two hundred and fifty
in Connecticut?

Speaker 2 (18:01):
I think it's in Connecticut. Yeah, where's the poor part
of Connecticut? Most of Connecticut is poor.

Speaker 3 (18:08):
Connecticut is as very high inequality as they call it. Right,
You've got very rich people in parts of it. Most
of Connecticut is quite poor. A lot of poor areas
in Connecticut, you know at Hartford, all the cities. Basically
you know, all the places where it used to be
the hub of insurance and things like that. Regulations have

(18:30):
driven them out that they're out of there, and and
a lot of a lot of.

Speaker 2 (18:35):
Poor people there. Let's see.

Speaker 3 (18:38):
Uh, yeah, these are great. So uh these accounts, you
get to start them. I'm all for tax deferred accounts.
I'd rather just defer taxes. I'd just rather figure out
a different way to tax people so we didn't have
to create all this complexity, but more complexity in our
tax code.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
People love this. The government loves us, all right, So
that that's that part.

Speaker 3 (19:07):
One of the real scary, really scary proposals that Trump
is making right now.

Speaker 2 (19:15):
Is this idea.

Speaker 3 (19:16):
We've talked about it a little bit in the past,
but it wasn't yet a former proposal.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
Now it's a formal proposal. Trump is actually.

Speaker 3 (19:27):
Asking the the uh uh you know, whoever is responsible
for immigration, the immigration authorities, to start significantly increasing in
the number of people who are de naturalized. De naturalized, Yeah,

(19:51):
people like me who became naturalized citizens of the United
States in my case twenty something years ago, twenty two
years ago. And the idea is to take away the
citizenship and deport them, so literally take away their passports,
take away the citizenship.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
So you know, there used to be maybe one hundred
people a year that they used to supply to.

Speaker 3 (20:20):
People who they discovered committed major fraud when they applied
for the citizenship or you know, things like that.

Speaker 2 (20:30):
Now the idea is that you do it.

Speaker 3 (20:33):
There's a quota now, so he's asked them for between
one hundred and two hundred people a month to identify them.
People are worried because remember Trump's deponing people right now
who have applied for asylum or who are in some
of the way in the process of in the legal

(20:54):
process of immigration.

Speaker 2 (20:57):
They're being deported because they made.

Speaker 3 (20:59):
An error or because they had a typo, or because
they didn't you know, they lied, but an insignificant lie
in their application. They're out, they're gone. And now the
idea is that they're going to try to find people
who might have lied or might have been not completely

(21:22):
truthful in their application, and they're going to take it back.
They're going to just retry it. David's asking if it's constitutional.
I don't think we'll know until one of these people
takes it to the court and drives it.

Speaker 2 (21:37):
I don't know what the law.

Speaker 3 (21:40):
And the constitutions say about this. It seems to me crazy,
It seems to be wrong. It seems to be you
can't do it. If somebody since getting citizenship has committed murder,
we don't take away their citizenship and deport them.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
We put them in jail for the rest of their life.

Speaker 3 (22:01):
So the fact that you, you know, Lighten wasn't caught
in your application doesn't seem right to me. Of course,
it depends on the level of fraud that was committed.

Speaker 2 (22:12):
It was really faut But.

Speaker 3 (22:17):
This is borderline, and it's clear that this is mainly
there to harass people. It's mainly there to find his enemies,
find people he doesn't like, find people who hold believes
he doesn't approve of, and go out and harass them.
That I think is the primary, the primary, you know,

(22:43):
purpose of this. It has not he to do with
anything else. So whether the extent of which is constitutional,
to the extent of which is supplied correctly, I mean,
think about all the people who've you know, I don't know,
did I make a mistake when I applied from a
thing that I put a wrong date down, that I
put one of the forms not exactly match what we're

(23:04):
supposed to.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
I don't know, does anybody know? Does anybody remember?

Speaker 3 (23:16):
And so now it's about yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:20):
D naturalizing. I didn't even know that thing was around.

Speaker 3 (23:23):
But why not if if you can get away with
everything he's getting away with, why not keep pushing it
and pushing and pushing the envelope and see what happens.
I mean this, This man is a is a hater.
Whether something's constitution or not makes no difference to him.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
Of course, he's a he.

Speaker 3 (23:43):
It's not even that I think Trump necessarily cares one
way another. He's married to an immigrant. It's that he
wants issues that are red meat for his supporters. He
wants to throw the red meat. He wants to distract them. See,

(24:04):
I'm doing more than I promised.

Speaker 2 (24:05):
See, I'm not only deporting illegal immigrants, underporting US citizens,
underporting everybody doesn't look like you guys, well not exactly.

Speaker 3 (24:16):
But you know something like that. See, he's giving them
red meat, red meat.

Speaker 2 (24:23):
You know.

Speaker 3 (24:23):
And the response under the story we're putting this, people
are saying, we need to pump those numbers. But this
would be a great start, Like one hundred and two
hundred is not enough for him. He says one hundred
and two hundred per month. That's like just a little
bit of a two thousand people per year. I mean,
he might as well have said you might as well

(24:45):
not have said it. It's not worth anything.

Speaker 2 (24:47):
Right.

Speaker 3 (24:51):
Other people are saying, how hard I pronounce the F
in F. Yeah, I voted for this, like they're not impressed.
Not impressed one hundred or two hundred a month.

Speaker 2 (25:09):
Try one hundred one thousand, dude, you don't have that
many years left in office now.

Speaker 3 (25:22):
I don't know how many of these commented potatoes actually
understand what he's actually proposing. I don't know how many
these commentators are just Russian or Chinese or Uranian bots.
Who knows. You know, somebody says, wow, three people a day,
great job, like.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
Full of cynicism.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
So uh yeah, I mean, you know, it's hard for
me to tell what's real and what's not real on Twitter.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
Hard for me to tell, all right, uh the term

(26:25):
All right, let's see.

Speaker 3 (26:30):
So for Today, for Today announced that it is going
to take it's unbelievable, a nineteen point five billion dollar
charge of on existing electric car projects. This is just

(26:54):
four years after Ford announced that was making the largest
investment in the company's history, seven billion towards expanding its
range of electric vehicles. We're all in in twenty twenty one,
Ford president said today they are taking a nineteen point
five how do you invest seven billion and taking nineteen

(27:17):
point five billion charge from shutting down a program? God,
I mean nineteen point five is a massive loss, right,
it's F one fifty lightning the all electric version affords
F one fifty truck. The best selling truck conique in
America is that they've killed it. A new factory in

(27:41):
Tennessee that was going to produce electric truck models is
shifting to internal combustion engine vehicles. In addition, Ford a
GM is announced it's going to take a one point
six billion dollar charge.

Speaker 2 (27:55):
It's a lot less as.

Speaker 3 (27:58):
It cuts back on its electric vehicle plans, and the
European Union is moderately let's not make too much of this,
but moderately loosening its rules that would effectively ban combustion
and engines by twenty thirty five.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
So there's generally a.

Speaker 3 (28:18):
Move away in the West of farm elective vehicles driven
really by by by two things, by by two things,
and you can decide which one you think is bigger one.
It's just lack of demand, particularly in America. I don't
think this is true in Europe and in America, Americans

(28:39):
don't want electric cars or you know, a significant majority
of Americans don't want the hassle of charging the car,
and you know, having a range of five hundred miles,
particularly if you live in outside the center of the city,
it doesn't make any sense. So a lot of Americans
just don't want the cause, so demand is weak. At

(29:02):
the same time, you know, just a note that Tesla.
You know, Tesla had the best selling call in the
world in twenty twenty three. It's a one point two
million units, and in twenty twenty four was still the
fourth best selling car in.

Speaker 2 (29:19):
The United States. So you know, Tesla is still selling
a lot of electric cars and there's a lot of demand.

Speaker 3 (29:28):
But in the United States demand is slow and US
automakers have no competitive advantage when it comes to electric
cause indeed, they're very expensive for the Americans to make
and they don't make money on them.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
They just don't make money on.

Speaker 3 (29:45):
The governments stops subsidizing them. So the subsidies that were
passed in the Obama era have been phased are phased out.
They're gone, and.

Speaker 2 (29:56):
They're also you know, the US is just they used
to be.

Speaker 3 (30:02):
I think the bidendministration allowed California to impose an electric
vehicle mandate, and basically the GOP is reversed that, so
California is not allowed to unilaterally imposed a electric vehicle mandate.
So that's one reason that there's just not demand.

Speaker 2 (30:21):
It's hard to make money.

Speaker 3 (30:22):
That subsidy has gone, so there's no money in it
in that sense for the automakers, and that's.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
Why they were drawing from it. But I think just
as big as maybe bigger, is the fact that.

Speaker 3 (30:38):
China dominates this market. I mean, it really isn't even close.
The Chinese make most of the electric cause in the world,
I think it's seventy percent because of high quality, the
batteries are better. They make almost all the batteries. So
to the extent that you want to build a car
in the United States, shift buy batteries from China with

(31:00):
tariffs and everything else involved, and you can't compete. I mean,
vote can build an electric car, can't compete with the
Chinese electric cause. Now the United States has imposed one
hundred percent tariff on Chinese electric cars, so you can't
import them. I mean you can if you want to
pay one hundred percent of tariff. But one of the

(31:22):
reasons the Europeans are panicking is because Chinese electric carts
are selling in Europe, you know, and they just they
can't compete. The European carmakers cannot compete. They can't compete
in price, and they can't compete in quality. The Chinese
cause are good. In the rest of the world. Chinese

(31:46):
electric cars are dominating. Indeed, in much of the world.
They are now in a lot of kin of high
growth countries that are you know, developing countries.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
Electric cause are.

Speaker 3 (32:02):
The majority of cars being sold, and a majority of
the electric cars by far.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
A Chinese cause. When I was in Israel this last time,
I rented a car and they gave me a Chinese
hybrid suv. It was great. It was a really good car.

Speaker 3 (32:18):
It was as good a cause as a regular non
hybrid suv that they could get from Japan. From all
the US they make good cause. So the reality is
that American and European companies are not competitive, and Americans
put up one hundred percent tariff to stop importation and

(32:42):
you know, so there's less pressure for the Americans to
invest in electric cause, which means that fault even further
behind the Chinese competitors.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
And if in the future.

Speaker 3 (32:54):
A big if, but if electric cars become a dominant technology,
the US won't be able to compete.

Speaker 2 (33:02):
I mean, four GM will just go bust because they
can't compete with the Chinese.

Speaker 3 (33:08):
And Europe who allows Chinese electric cars in will at
least face competition and the auto companies will have to
get better at it and they'll have to make more investments.
So it depends on whether you believe that electric cars
will become market dominant. And part of that question, and

(33:29):
this is maybe a third issue which maybe is more
important than.

Speaker 2 (33:33):
The others, and that is.

Speaker 3 (33:36):
To electrify all cars, you need a grid. You need
to be able to produce huge quantities of electricity. You
need to be able to replace all the energy produced
by fossil fuels and cars with electricity. Means a lot
new power plants, a lot more capacity on our grid,

(34:00):
which we just don't have, and demand for power is
being focused on AI. You know, then you have to
build a whole more infrastructure for these for these automobiles. So,
you know, Europe has really really expensive electricity prices and
they're shifting everything to electric cause.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
Which makes no sense. It'll make it'll make it very
expensive for people to charge their cause. Uh. And where
they're going to get the power from.

Speaker 3 (34:29):
Now, if your fans you'll find because you have all
these nuclear power plants.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
But in the uh, you know, in the rest of Europe,
what are you going to do? What is Germany going
to do?

Speaker 3 (34:46):
All right, now, let's not celebrate too quickly the death
of electric cars in America. There's still electric cars being
produced in America. Hyundai producers an electric car in the US.
So does Kia.

Speaker 2 (34:59):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (35:00):
Ford is not killing its entire electric car divisions. Uh,
it is is still going to be producing electric cars.
It's just on a different platform at a slower pace.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
Uh. You know.

Speaker 3 (35:14):
Uh for they're backing. They're now they just announced and
you a five billion dollar investment in a new what
they call universal ev platform.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
Uh they are.

Speaker 3 (35:28):
You know, Folly is still talking about this being a
model T moment for Ford in terms of creating a
mid U a a small to mid size car that
is electric that is cheap.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (35:41):
So they're still trying to stay competitive. But but yeah,
I mean following himself, following himself. You know, he bought
a Chinese, a Chinese electric car like show me su seven.

Speaker 2 (35:58):
I think it's an SUV show me s U seven.
And he he had it shipped from Shanghai to Chicago.
And this is the CEO of Ford Motor Company. And
he drove it around for six months.

Speaker 3 (36:12):
And his conclusion was he didn't want to give the
call back. It was such a pleasure to drive. He
did not want to give the call back.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
So these are a good cause.

Speaker 3 (36:27):
And you know, in many respects.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
Electric cause might be the future. I don't know, but
it might be.

Speaker 3 (36:33):
Right, it's easy to integrate with tech all the self
driving cause like like the.

Speaker 2 (36:40):
Way Mos and the and all the others are all electric.
Cause you know, soon not only the Tesla will be
self driving, but the Tesla you buy will be self driving.
It'll drive you wherever you want it and at night
when you go to sleep, you can actually you will
be able to program to then go and participate in

(37:03):
the pool of self driving taxis and you can make
a little bit of money on the side. So uh,
you know, it could very well be that electric caused
all the future doesn't mean goums to subsidize them. They shouldn't.
But it also means that American.

Speaker 3 (37:23):
Car companies, if they want to survive into the future,
you know, should should think about how they're going to
compete with these Chinese cause and maybe the conclusion is
they can't. And maybe the conclusion is we're all going
to be driving Chinese electric cars in the future.

Speaker 2 (37:44):
Right now, why would you buy an electric car?

Speaker 3 (37:46):
Buy an electric car because technology is better integrated, It
accelerates faster, uh, and it'll be self driving in a
way that a tonal combustion engine will will will not
be quite as good at because of the better integration
of the electronics.

Speaker 2 (38:07):
That's my understanding. But yeah, lower the tariffs, lower the barriers,
eliminate the subsidies, get rid of all of that, and
bring on competition.

Speaker 3 (38:22):
Let's see who wins. You know, at this point, I
don't know. I don't know who wins in America in
tonal combustion, probably for the.

Speaker 2 (38:30):
Foreseeable future, but ultimately who knows.

Speaker 3 (38:37):
Maybe maybe they'll have nucleop plants inside. Maybe maybe maybe
to be something else. I don't know, But let's have competition,
real competition.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
It is.

Speaker 3 (38:49):
It is interesting though that you're really seeing in the
world right now a really a a move away from
from climate change hysteria, from climate change ysteria.

Speaker 2 (39:07):
So you know that I think is uh that I
think is good.

Speaker 3 (39:12):
There really seems to be that a lot of kind
of the arguments about about this about electric cause or
based on climate change, you really not seeing much of that.
That is really not what's driving the agenda right now.
And in that sense that's good and that you have
to say.

Speaker 2 (39:33):
A lot of that a lot of that has to
do with with the work Alex did.

Speaker 3 (39:41):
By the way, let me just mention this because this
is this is in the news and it's important and
I don't know what the result is yet. Yeah, well
I do know what the result is. And anyway, there
was a proposal today to an amendment for a bill

(40:02):
that was would have it was called the Speed Amendment,
but the amendment thirty five to speed to ensure that
only truly affected people, not anti developer activists, can sue
under the you know, the Environmental Protection Act to stop projects.
I mean, this had been huge because most of the

(40:26):
projects are being sued and slowed and stopped not by
affected people, not by people who might have something to lose,
but but just by environmental random environmentalist groups.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
This is an amendment.

Speaker 3 (40:38):
I think Alex really lobbied hard for educated people hard
about and try to pass it did not pass, you know, hopefully,
hopefully it'll pass in the future. But this the speed,
the speed the speed A bill is is huge, huge,

(41:01):
and from what I understand is it's something that Alex's
is again very much promoting under the ban of let's build,
let's let amerke a build again, you know, and he's
encouraging tell your presentaive to vote yes on the Speed

(41:22):
Act and Amendment thirty four, thirty five, and thirty six.
The amendment thirty four didn't pass, but you know, I think,
I think what he really wants is for the Speed
Act to pass, which would make it a lot easier,
a lot easier to build projects in the US.

Speaker 2 (41:39):
It would be a lot is easier.

Speaker 3 (41:41):
To build rail lines, pipelines, infrastructure, infrastructure in the US.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
So let's hope this is a bill that actually passes.

Speaker 3 (41:50):
You can find you can find Alex's article on how
this speed Bill, which is basically permitting reform.

Speaker 2 (41:58):
It's a major reform around permitting.

Speaker 3 (42:01):
You can find alex is writing on that he's a
sponsors for the show on alex Epstein subset dot com,
follow apps Alex and and yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:11):
Call call your representatives when he asks you to.

Speaker 3 (42:14):
That's good, all right, what do we want to do? Venezuela? Okay,
So Venezuela. Trump is umping the upping the pressure this time,
kind of trying to create some kind of oil and
balgo or at least a partial, a partial blockade of

(42:36):
Venezuela oil export, basically saying that any oil being used
on some of these sanctioned ships will be stopped by
the Americans and confiscated, which basically is forcing these ships
to stay in Venezuela harbor or not to come at all.
They're staying away from Venezuela because they're afraid that the

(42:57):
US will just confiscate them. And so that is that's
the latest, a partial blockade of Anezuelan oil. The rationale
for this is kind of interesting, right, So until now
everything's really been about fentonol and drugs and drug trafficking
and maduros and drug traffick and everything, and now the

(43:18):
rationale is shifted to a rationale that you know, these
guys I think got from objectivism, they think they got
it from US.

Speaker 2 (43:29):
You know, for.

Speaker 3 (43:31):
Years, I think Lena Peacoff was the first one to
really talk about this. Although Ironman might have talked about it,
I can't remember, but Lena certainly did. And that is
they talked about the fact that the United States did
nothing when Arab countries Iran is not Arab, but Muslim countries.
Iran said, Arabia and other countries nationalized the oil that

(43:54):
had been developed, found, developed, exploited by American and European
all companies, and that America has shown weakness, particularly under
the Eisenhower administration, by allowing them to just take it,
nationalize it and and and you know, violate the property
rights on scale of American producers, and that America should

(44:21):
have protected their property rights and made sure that these
countries could not do that, even if it meant military conflict.
I mean, Lenda had spoken about this many times. I've
spoken about it a few times in the early two thousands. Anyway,
Trump was using that rationalization or justification for this partiable locate.

(44:45):
He is now demanding there a turn of exporporated US
oil assets returned to the United States, right and until
he does, he is he is going to keep this
partial blockade on. And he went to the thing about

(45:06):
nationalization taking from American companies and on. There's an American company, Chevron,
that still works in Venezuela. And probably the only reason
Venezuela has an oil industry, any kind of exports, any
kind of exploitation of its olders, is because of Chevron.

Speaker 2 (45:24):
They don't have the technology themselves to do it.

Speaker 3 (45:27):
So yeah, I mean, but yes, I think on the
Chavez a significant amount of US assets were stolen by
the Venezuelan regime. So Trump is using that excuse right now.
Just a few days ago, he was saying that his
goal was to stop Gang Madua from sending gang members

(45:49):
to the US and holding drug traffickers. Now it's about
returning our oil assets. You know, it's a moving target.
His reason is a moving target. Even when he does
something reasonably good, it's hard to tell why he's doing
what he's doing. A lot of confusion around this. Does

(46:10):
he really want to top on Maduro? Trump won't say
he wants to top on Maduo. He won't actually say that,
or doesn't he will He use military action to do
it or won't he He's a little worried about Maga.
Mega doesn't want a war. He promised them no wars.

Speaker 2 (46:26):
Now. I don't think it would be a very long war.
I think he could topple the Maduro regime very quickly
and very effectively without risking a lot of American lives.
But I'm not sure Mago would view it that way.
I don't know. He did bomb you on.

Speaker 3 (46:40):
And Mega ultimately opposed that, and I ultimately Maga fell
into fall into line. He'd probably take out Maduro and
Mego would fall into line. But there is quite a
bit of opposition online to what he's doing with Venezuela
in terms of not in terms of killing the drug guys,
but in terms of is he going to go to
war or not? Is he is to being taken over

(47:01):
by Neo kon by by the neocons, particularly Marco Rubio,
secretary the.

Speaker 2 (47:14):
So we will see Venezuela.

Speaker 3 (47:18):
Is still hard to tell what exactly Trump wants to
do there. In the meantime, we've got a massive build
up of UFS troops, planes, ships in the South Caribbean
here and Puerto Rico, a massive quantity of of again,
all kinds of airplanes including uh, surveillance airplanes, refueling airplanes,

(47:41):
and you know if combat airplanes. And of course you've
got the the largest Jewish aircraft carrier in the world,
the Ford, the USS Ford in the Southern Caribbean.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
So if he wants to take.

Speaker 3 (47:55):
Out Maduro, he's he's got the the assets, the military
assets to be able.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
To achieve that.

Speaker 3 (48:04):
You might have heard that a nuclear physicist, an expert
on nuclear fusion and on plasma, was murdered the other
night at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts. His name was
Nunu Loiel Loio. He was originally from Portugal. Another one

(48:30):
an immigrant, Oh god, but anyway, he was murdered. He
is a very senior nuclear scientist at MIT, a well
known very very well known within the world.

Speaker 2 (48:41):
Of nuclear science.

Speaker 3 (48:43):
And he is highly respected and you know, seemed like
seemed like a good guy. And he was basically found
wounded in his home, taken to a nearby hospital and
died within a few hours. They've ruled in a homicide,
but no motive has been released and as far as

(49:03):
we know, there are no suspect. There's also no evidence
of breaking into the house, so you know, nobody knows
exactly what's going on. This happened about a day after Brown,
the shooting at Brown. Of course, the shooting at Brown.
There's yet no suspects, They have no leads as far
as we can tell, nobody under you know, they haven't

(49:24):
arrested anybody. And there was even a time where people
thought maybe maybe it was the same person, maybe Brown
and Boston not that far away, and maybe the same
person who didn't done the shooting in Brown then killed
killed this scientist in Brookline. So this is truly horrific,

(49:48):
really really horrible. Well, one line of inquiry, at least
one line of inquiry in Israel by Israelian intelligence, and
this is being reported extensively in his Alien newspapers, is
the possibility that the scientist was killed was murdered by
Iranian intelligence, by a hit by the Iranians, in a

(50:14):
sense retribution. If you will you kill our nuclear scientists,
will kill your nuclear scientist.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
Now, there's no evidence.

Speaker 3 (50:24):
That lo Rieiro was Jewish, although he was clearly pro Israel,
and it stated explicitly that you know, advocated explicity for Israel,
maybe involved in some extent with the Israelian nuclear program.

Speaker 2 (50:41):
Not clear.

Speaker 3 (50:42):
Nobody knows, but it is interesting that Israelian intelligence is
looking into the possibility that the Iranians are behind this.
The US is not commenting so, and the people investigating
the murder are not commenting on that line of investigation, but.

Speaker 2 (51:04):
Israel is checking it out. They are worried that.

Speaker 3 (51:08):
The Uranians are going to since they can't hoot Israel directly,
they will try to hoot Israel indirectly, and maybe killing
a nuclear physicist is symbolic in some way, and particularly
if he has some connection to Israel.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
So really horrible news, really horrible.

Speaker 3 (51:27):
If this is the Iranians and this is now a
campaign of Theirs, we will see.

Speaker 2 (51:33):
This is still at the level of speculation, still at
the lever of speculation.

Speaker 3 (51:38):
What's not the level of speculation is u Wan's quite
successful ongoing attacks on Israel. From a cyber security perspective.

Speaker 2 (51:49):
The latest attack was a ssecurity attack on Neftali Bennett's
telegraph account. I don't know you could hack a telegram account.

Speaker 3 (51:59):
I thought the Christian was so strong that you couldn't
tack it, But it sounds like the Ranians hacked his
telegram account. It also sounds like the Uranians have also
managed to hack a number of Israeli targets, including twelve

(52:19):
years of interld in Israeli Justice Department, ministry documents, including
emails and all kinds of sensitive information hacked. They've released
hundreds of hospital records, including those of Israeli soldiers that
included data on things like blood type and things like that,
personal details of American Israeli security officials, including Israeli generals.

(52:44):
So Iran is aggressively hacking, aggressively hacking Israel.

Speaker 2 (52:49):
Israel is the leader in the world in cybersecurity. So
it just tells you.

Speaker 3 (52:54):
It just shows you that this concert war between the
hackers and the cybersecurity people.

Speaker 2 (52:58):
The hackers seem to be that seem to be on.

Speaker 3 (53:04):
Of gain ground, and it's an ongoing I guess it's
ongoing permanent battle.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
All right.

Speaker 3 (53:12):
Australia is now kind of the Prime Minister of Australia's
responded to the Bondi Beach terrorist attack and and basically
his responses being two things.

Speaker 2 (53:22):
One strict gun laws, strict the gun laws, and two.

Speaker 3 (53:29):
Stricter hate crime laws, not anything specifically against Islamists.

Speaker 2 (53:39):
Uh jihadis, Muslim brotherhood.

Speaker 3 (53:43):
No, because that would pinpoint a particular type of of
of hate crime.

Speaker 2 (53:48):
We can't do that.

Speaker 3 (53:49):
No, it's generally, you know, any any advocation or threatening
violence against people based on characteristics, including race, sex, and religion.
Uh and and and just heightening that up and making
it worse, anything including for example, threatening to damage a
place of worship is going to count. So they can

(54:09):
name is Islam. They can name is Islam. So they're
trying on the edges. And of course hv slaws are terrible.
They're way too ambiguous, they're way too broad. But uh,
you know, when when it was asked about, uh, what

(54:30):
what kind of things would capture?

Speaker 2 (54:35):
You know, they they they they they don't really know.

Speaker 3 (54:37):
Right if people use language that clearly dehumanizes unacceptably having no,
they have no place in Australia. But if they haven't
quite crossed the threshold of violence. So the new litization
is going to lower the threshold a little bit. But again,

(54:58):
this is what happens when you know, don't name the enemy,
you don't name the threat, you don't name who's exactly
doing what they're doing. It's Islam, it's not I mean,
there might be nasty Jews who say horrible racist, anti Australian,
anti Muslim, anti whatever stuff. But there's no sense in

(55:23):
which Jews are mowing down Muslims. They could be Christian
groups that it just hate filled groups that's say horrible,
horrible things about people, atheists.

Speaker 2 (55:33):
I don't know, but.

Speaker 3 (55:34):
There's no evidence to suggest that they're going around shooting anybody,
whereas Muslim groups, let's say hateful things. There is plenty
of evidence that people affiliate with those groups go about
shooting people, burning down the synagogues, committing property crimes.

Speaker 2 (55:57):
Beating people up. Yeah, maybe they should be treated differently.

Speaker 3 (56:07):
It turns out, for example, that you know, it turns
out that these again these at least one of the
cherifs was well known to Australian security and that he
not only participated in various demonstrations and was affiliated they
knew with ISIS. I mean, just an affiliation with ISIS
would be reason to at the very least monitor and

(56:30):
potentially put in jail. But he also participated in the
big demonstration outside the Sydney Opera House on October eighth.
So this is way before Israel did anything anything to
justify the calls of genocide.

Speaker 2 (56:53):
And so and and they were if you remember, they.

Speaker 3 (56:58):
Were talking about gas the Jews.

Speaker 2 (57:02):
They were yelling, gas the Jews. Send the Jews to
gas chambers. Not Israel. Not israelis gas the Jews.

Speaker 3 (57:13):
So those of you think this was about this was
about those people who think this was about Israel, this
terrorist attack.

Speaker 2 (57:22):
No, no, it's much deeper than that. It's about Western civilization.
It's about the Jews.

Speaker 3 (57:28):
Being the coal the Canarian the coal mine for Western civilization.
All right, Finally, on Tuesday, it's two days ago, one
of those prominents, I think intellectual forces on the American
rights died died in America at the age of ninety five,

(57:51):
just a month before his ninety sixth birthday. That is,
most of you probably have never heard this name, but
it's Norman put A Hover. None but Hoitz was one
of the founders of the New Conservative movement. To the
extent that it was of a movement, he was definitely
one of the people who founded it. He was the

(58:12):
founder of commentary magazine that, for a long period of
time was one of the leading intellectual magazines in the
United States and the premier voice for intellectuals. He founded
the new conservative movement with Irvin Crystal, who was.

Speaker 2 (58:31):
A little older than he was. I mean, this guy
was active. You know.

Speaker 3 (58:40):
The story is that even as he was ninety five,
the book he was reading was a new translation I
think of the of the Iliad of the Odyssey I
don't have in fun of me, and he was comparing
it to an older translation and seeing the differences in translation.
So this guy was a real literary scholar, very well read,

(59:06):
very well educated, very smart, a really good writer. I
disagreed with much of what he wrote, although you know,
the also things that I agreed with and uh uh
and and thought he was right on. He he definitely
shaped much of the intellectual landscape, helped shape.

Speaker 2 (59:31):
The intellectual escape on the right. Uh.

Speaker 3 (59:33):
He was an avid anti communist and was part of
I mean, he had started out as a leftist, not
quite like Oven Crystal, who started out as a Trotsky
a communist.

Speaker 2 (59:44):
But Ohwitz was never a communist as far as I
can tell.

Speaker 3 (59:47):
But he started as a left and like over in Crystal,
was mugged by reality and and became a conservative, and
thus the coining of the term neo conservative.

Speaker 2 (59:58):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (59:59):
You know, to that, he I think originally coined as
a in in derision, not as a positive, but but ultimately,
you know, the movement kind of embraced it. He grew
up in Brooklyn, and in in Brooklyn, New York, lived
in Manhattan pretty much most almost all of his life,

(01:00:23):
and you know, was writing into his nineties. So while
I disagreed with him, while he had opinions that I
you know, we disagreed on on many, many many things, uh,
you know, in terms of some his found policy views,

(01:00:43):
I agreed with. Some of his domestic views I agreed with.
But generally he was an intellect. He was a real intellectual.
I enjoyed reading his stuff. It was it was always
well argued, the writing style was always good. He was
incredibly influential. And yeah, it's sad to see people like
this pass away. You know, he belongs to a different

(01:01:05):
kind of generation. His son, his son is now I
think still the editor of Commentary Magazine.

Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
Commentary Magazine is still being published.

Speaker 3 (01:01:16):
It's lost a lot of its influence with the dramatic
decline in the New Conservatives influence and the fact that
they no longer have much influence on the right. They
are very much on the way out. That you know,
it's become neo conservative, has become a real derogatory term.

(01:01:38):
The new right hates they guts, Maga hates they guts.

Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
Nobody wants to have anything to do with the neo cons.

Speaker 3 (01:01:45):
So Commentary magazine has faded and is not that relevant anymore.
It used to be, certainly during the Bush administration used
to be the thing everybody read. But even in the
seventies and eighties, sixties and eighties it was. It was very,
very extensively read, and a lot of Democrats, kind of.

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
Democrats kept goal of the offer state, Democrats who were
national security democrats, Democrats who had a strong positionist security,
all wrote for for a commentary magazine. I used to
be a subscriber. I used to read it a lot.
Havn't I still subscribe.

Speaker 3 (01:02:27):
I think electronically get the email on a regular basis.
But it's just not it doesn't represent kind of where
the world is heading. The views represented it stated, they
don't are not that representative.

Speaker 2 (01:02:40):
But Hosts was Jewish.

Speaker 3 (01:02:43):
The magazine, many of the writers, and the neocon movement
in general was associated with American Jews. That now is
one of the black marks on them right with the rise.

Speaker 2 (01:02:54):
Of anti Semitism.

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
Uh so, yep, he passed way on Tuesday. Now, my friends,
is the news this Thursday, December eighteenth.

Speaker 2 (01:03:09):
Thank you for being here. Let's turn to the super Chat.

Speaker 3 (01:03:15):
I will remind you that this is a great way
to support the show and to ask your questions and
to dictate kind of what I talk about. I answer
all your questions and therefore you get a voice in
the show when you ask a super chat question. I
also want to remind you of our sponsor. We've already

(01:03:39):
mentioned Alex Epstein, so check him out. Alex Epstein do
subsect dot com. I want to mention I ran institute
and I ran AARI Live, which.

Speaker 2 (01:03:52):
God, I got an email about it.

Speaker 3 (01:03:54):
Earlier today about the promotion. Let me just see if
I can find the email. If not, yeah, if I
remembered who the email was from, that would help.

Speaker 2 (01:04:06):
But I can't. Somebody's taking over sending me the emails
to promote whatever it is we're promoting. All right. Remember it's.

Speaker 3 (01:04:19):
It's not that I know an Institute live. You're getting
some of the best voices in objectivism. You can take
courses from them. You can do it live, or you
can do it. You can listen whenever you want, you
can do homework or you can not. I mean, it's
super flexible. The whole idea here is to make it
as flexible as possible. You don't have to apply, you

(01:04:42):
just have to sign up and pay. They're gonna be
There are a number of courses available. You can pick
and choose.

Speaker 2 (01:04:49):
What you want to take, and then again you can
do it at your own time.

Speaker 3 (01:04:55):
So yeah, there is a you run Brook show, then
books show discount that you can get. It's twenty six
twenty six YBS ten, twenty six YBIS ten. Here are
the courses that are available on Wow, there's a lot

(01:05:19):
of them.

Speaker 2 (01:05:19):
Okay, so a lot of courses.

Speaker 3 (01:05:21):
You're missing out if you're not looking at this objectivism
to Lineman's fiction Part one, this is again win to
twenty twenty five. Reactionary authoritarianism from Mussolini to the New
Right again went to twenty twenty six, communicating ideas public speaking.

Speaker 2 (01:05:39):
Guess who's teaching that? Wond who's teaching public speaking? Oh
wait a minute, that's me. I'm teaching that one. So
I'm teaching that one. So you can sign up for that.

Speaker 3 (01:05:50):
Then there's introduction to objectivest ethics also went to twenty
twenty six.

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
These all went to twenty two.

Speaker 3 (01:05:55):
No, the next one is the Philosophy of Objectivism Part two.
This is people who really part taking part one and
then in the spring is going to be objectives to
winance fiction Part two. There'll be moral virtues, man's meaning
of flourishing.

Speaker 2 (01:06:12):
Maybe that's Tara Smith. I'm not sure. Is that terror? Yeah,
that's terror. So that's of course with Tara Smith. There's
a Morality of Capitalism Part one. I think that's me
and Don Philosophy of Objectives in part one, and the
Philosophy of Objectives in part two, communicating ideas writing this

(01:06:34):
time that's with Keith Lockage and Morality of Capitalism Part two.
Those are in the summer of twenty twenty six. So
a lot on offer and it's a shame not to
take advantage of all this. Use your discount quote twenty
six ybs ten. Let's see.

Speaker 3 (01:06:59):
Capitalism sorry, Defenders of Capitalism Defenders of Capitalism dot com,
which is Michael Williams's program for leadership program the Walkies.

Speaker 2 (01:07:08):
Check out the website.

Speaker 3 (01:07:10):
Incredibly valuable program that really in depth, in depth defense
of capitalism from every perspective, economic, political, social, and of
course philosophical. So check out Defenders Off Capitalism dot com.
I've been involved in a program for a couple of decades.
Now all right, and I will remind you Patreon, Patreon

(01:07:35):
dot com check out your own book show and become
a monthly supporter of the show.

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It's incredibly valuable to get the monthly contributions. In that way,
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Speaker 3 (01:07:49):
You know, sit chat is it's always in suspense, It's
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Speaker 2 (01:07:54):
How much will I actually raise.

Speaker 3 (01:07:57):
In a month and a year functuates quite a bit
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But the stuff that comes in for Patreon and from
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Speaker 2 (01:08:15):
Remember this show is funded by you couldn't happen without you.
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Speaker 3 (01:08:23):
Reminder that on the seven thirty first New Year's Eve,
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Speaker 2 (01:08:29):
It'll be a.

Speaker 3 (01:08:29):
Review of twenty twenty five and looking forward to twenty
twenty six.

Speaker 2 (01:08:34):
We'll go over all.

Speaker 3 (01:08:35):
The good stuff and bad stuff that happened this year,
and it'll be a great opportunity for you to support
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Speaker 2 (01:08:50):
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Want to support the show, you want to show your
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Speaker 3 (01:09:07):
To do the show, you can come for ten minutes,
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whenever you want. So, just come and make a contribution.
It'll go from one. It'll start at one pm Eastern time,
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Speaker 2 (01:09:21):
This is the place for you to make the contribution.
If you usually listen on Twitter or on the podcast
on some other format Facebook, that day, that's the one
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(01:09:43):
really really really really really.

Speaker 3 (01:09:45):
Helps and it's something that's incredibly valuable. And I will
be keeping track of how many how many contributions we
get and the number the quantity of the contribution. So
we'll have a goal around the number both of dollars
and the number of just sheer contributions that two dollars
will count.

Speaker 2 (01:10:07):
All right, I think that's all the announcements for now.
For now, all right, let's see let's sell David fifty dollars.
Thank you, David.

Speaker 3 (01:10:19):
Can you explain the term nominal as in wages or
GDP versus nominal waiters nominative GDP, which is the better
tool for analysis? Well, it depends in your context. Everything
depends on context. There's no one better tool. Nomenal just
means unadjusted for inflation. So in terms of GDP, it's

(01:10:46):
it's a total amount of whatever. GDP is measuring the
total amount of dollars. You know that the GDP is
reflected in GDP that happened this year, right, that's.

Speaker 2 (01:10:59):
What it's capturing.

Speaker 3 (01:11:02):
Usually when you see graphs of income or GDP, it's
not in nominal terms, it's in inflation adjusted terms.

Speaker 2 (01:11:12):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:11:12):
And you have to read the small type to find
out which inflation measure. Again, this is price inflation they're
using to adjust, right, but basically nominal is it's not
bringing if they If you've got a graph of nominal GDP,

(01:11:33):
every every point in the graph is in the dollars
of the date that it is. That it is your
twenty twenty twenty GDP isn't twenty twenty dollars.

Speaker 2 (01:11:47):
Twenty twenty five GEDDP is in twenty twenty five dollars dollars.
It's it's hard to adjust.

Speaker 3 (01:11:53):
It's hard to compare because whether the GDP growth has
been good or bad will depend on whether there's being inflation.
You could imagine there being a lot of inflation GDP
going up, but actually in real terms.

Speaker 2 (01:12:07):
You know GDP has actually declined. So what you want
for comparison's sake is you always want to compare real GDP,
which is the way it's usually presented. Real GDP is
inflation adjusted, the GDP nominal GDP is no adjustment has
been made, so it includes the effects of inflation.

Speaker 3 (01:12:34):
One of the big macroeconomic proposals out there that the
FED is always looking at is that they should target
what's called nominal GDP. They shouldn't target inflation. Per se,
they should target they should try to achieve a certain
growth in spending or in GDP.

Speaker 2 (01:12:55):
And you know, so they should adjust.

Speaker 3 (01:12:59):
The amount of money in the economy to achieve a consistent,
unchanging nominal GDP growth. Now, you could all be about
that's good or bad, but that is one of the
dominant monetary theories out there, or one of the most
dominant among the relatively free market crowd. Okay, David Ass

(01:13:23):
Also please explain how RAN's a is a is not
a platonic concept. If reality is, then isn't that the
same thing as saying any platonic concept exists as a
thing in itself. No, I mean, the whole point about
platonic concept is that the thing in itself exists in

(01:13:48):
a different dimension. Aristotle's point is the thing is the
thing in itself. The thing is the thing. There's nothing
else other than the thing. There's no other demansion. It
represents the thing. Plato said, you know the concept chair.
We have the concept chair, but channess. The essence of

(01:14:11):
chair is someway, and that's where we get the concept chair.
We get the concept chair from this channess. That provides
essential of what a chair is and Plato and Astart saying, no,
a chair is a chair.

Speaker 2 (01:14:28):
There is no something, there is no essence in a
different dimension, there's no something somewhere else. It's just a
thing is itself. The thing is what it is. I
think that's the simplest explanation. If you have follow up,
ask David. But I think that's phenomenal.

Speaker 3 (01:14:59):
Yeah, so that's it again. I'm looking at the comments.
Nominal is denominated in the time that it is attributed to,
whereas again, uh, real real is adjusted for inflation. A
is a is just a representation of a thing is itself.

(01:15:19):
A thing is a thing. It's not something else. And
it's also not in a different dimension. It's it's. It's
what it is.

Speaker 2 (01:15:28):
It's what it's right there.

Speaker 3 (01:15:34):
Now, maybe I'm not giving the best answer for that,
but it's certainly not platonic, and it's not intrinsic. It's
not saying all its attributes are in the thing.

Speaker 2 (01:15:47):
It's it's.

Speaker 3 (01:15:47):
It's not denying consciousness, because the next action is consciousness
is aware of a right. Consciousness is the way in
which consciousness is awareness of reality. Where of it all right,
I forgot to thank the stickers West thank you fifty
dollars sticker.

Speaker 2 (01:16:07):
Really appreciate that. Kim, thank you for the sticker. Let's see.

Speaker 3 (01:16:14):
Who else do we have stickers from? Oh, I think
that's it. Light on stickers. Oh no, we got Catherine
and we've got Xit. Thank you guys. So thanks for
the stickers. Yeah, not that many stickers today, so feel
free to jump in with some stickers.

Speaker 2 (01:16:31):
Let's get the numbers up a little bit.

Speaker 3 (01:16:33):
We're about one hundred short of our second hour goal
and we are in the second hour, so it would
be good if we could make that hundreds so we
could make the goal today. All right, So David says,
intrinsic was the word I'm thinking of.

Speaker 2 (01:16:53):
It doesn't imply intrinsicism.

Speaker 3 (01:16:55):
It doesn't imply that, for example, I don't know action
is in the thing, whiteness is in the thing.

Speaker 2 (01:17:03):
You know. It just means that the thing it is,
It is what it is, and you know our job
is as.

Speaker 3 (01:17:13):
Is as a consciousness, is to identify it and be
aware of it. It really is saying you can be
yellow and white at the same time. You either wellow
or you're white. You can't be both. You either a
square or circle. You can't be both at the same time.
Your a is a A square is a square, and

(01:17:33):
you know now to identify it as a square requires consciousness.
There's no squared nests in reality. They are squares as
identified by consciousness. All right, whoops, that's wrong, all right.

Speaker 2 (01:17:53):
Help a campbell.

Speaker 3 (01:17:55):
Many Starians blame the Treaty of Versailles for the rise
of Hitler. If the Allies hadn't been so draconian to
the Germans after World War One, Nazism would not have
been possible. Is this the lack of understanding of the
power of philosophy?

Speaker 4 (01:18:13):
No, not necessarily right, Like, philosophy is the ultimate cause
of history, but it's not the particular cause of history.

Speaker 3 (01:18:25):
It's not the only cause of history. It conditions everything else.
So if World War One ends differently, world War two
might not happen, or it might not happen when it happens,
or it might not happen.

Speaker 2 (01:18:40):
And the way it happens, I mean my view is
if Germany had been crushed. This is not historians view.

Speaker 3 (01:18:52):
This is me and a handful of people out there,
maybe some of them Mystaians, I don't know, but in
my view maybe Victor Davis Hansen agrees with me. But
in my view, if Germany had been crushed during World
War One, not penalized harshly, but kept around and you know,

(01:19:15):
the idea that wasn't really defeated, then I don't think
there would have been.

Speaker 2 (01:19:19):
World War two. World War Two is a consequence of yes,
bad philosophy, but bad philosophy colliding with.

Speaker 3 (01:19:29):
A Germany believed they could win, a Germany that believed
that they could win.

Speaker 2 (01:19:36):
They could have won World War One.

Speaker 3 (01:19:39):
Germany believes that they were betrayed by mysterious forces within Germany,
the Jews.

Speaker 2 (01:19:47):
Maybe that led to the defeat in World War One.
A Germany that believed.

Speaker 3 (01:19:53):
That, yes, they were the victims in World War One,
and now they're being forced to pay for World War
One through their operations and all of that.

Speaker 2 (01:20:02):
But you could argue that the problem. So if you
combine that and the resentment that happened, and the and
the but the confidence that they could win in the
next war, there's something hit that comes back from World
War One thinking we should have won that. So to
many of the generals, so to many people.

Speaker 3 (01:20:25):
If you combine that with bad ideas, you get what
you get. You get World War One in World War two.
But you know, it's not like Germany has fundamentally dramatically
different philosoph philosophical ideas today. It's just they don't go
in that direction, partially because of how they were humiliating

(01:20:46):
World War two, and partially because they're colliding with better ideas,
partially because they don't have a military I mean a
lot of reasons why. But the circumstances of the vinum
publicly impotence. It's not just ideas. So don't take idea
shape history as the deterministic.

Speaker 2 (01:21:07):
That's a yeah, that would be too deterministic. Bad ideas
of this nature cause this bad.

Speaker 3 (01:21:15):
Thing to happen. It doesn't quite work that way. Bad
ideas will call bad stuff to happen. But when how
it manifests us of what kind of bad stuff? All
of that depends a lot of what the conditions are
with the contextyle for the absorption of those bad ideas.

(01:21:36):
I think, though, that even if you had had less
draconian measures, given how World War One ended, I think
world War two is almost inevitable.

Speaker 2 (01:21:47):
The only way to.

Speaker 3 (01:21:48):
Avoid World War two was to provide a crushing defeat
to Germany and access powers in World War One, just
like the crushing defeat that Germany suffered war too pretty much,
I think protect us from Germany trying that one again.

Speaker 2 (01:22:12):
At least for a while. All right, thank you'll up
with Campbell. All right, we go quite a few twenty
dollars questions. It's good.

Speaker 3 (01:22:26):
We're still ninety six dollars short of our gold. Just
keeping you updated. So if any of you want to.

Speaker 2 (01:22:33):
Trade, participate, jump in and trade at whatever level you
can financially and want to given the value you get
from the show. All right, now you have a y,
I'll go with them.

Speaker 3 (01:22:47):
If life is so much better, why are people getting
more hateful and racist like we've never seen before. Because
like materially is better, life ideologically and spiritually is much
much worse. So we and this is the great irony
of the time. We continue to grow economically, we continue

(01:23:09):
to get richer, we continue to have better stuff, better toys,
better houses, better everything.

Speaker 2 (01:23:17):
But we have a rotten philosophy which helps us have
a rotten sense of life.

Speaker 3 (01:23:24):
For example, give you an example. One hundred years ago,
Americans didn't care about any quality. They didn't care about
the rich getting rich.

Speaker 2 (01:23:33):
They were happy with their own progress, and they wanted
to become rich, and they worked hard, and so if
the rich got richer, if there were billionaires, Americans mostly
didn't care today because spiritually they now ideologically care. They're
pissed off, they get angry, they're frustrated. Not because their

(01:23:57):
life is worse, their life is actually better, because some
people's life is even better. So envious increased dramatically in
the United States, and that is making people more bitter
and more angry. Or take for example, the welfare state.

Speaker 3 (01:24:14):
I mean, during the Great Depression, people were embarrassed except charity,
never mind money from the government. Many did not collect
on money that the government was offering them because they
felt it was an insult to take money from the government.

Speaker 2 (01:24:31):
Today, everybody is super happy to get money from the government.

Speaker 3 (01:24:36):
I think fifty percent of Americans get some subsidy in
some way or another from the government. So you can
see how mentality has changed. Sense of life is changed,
philosophy has changed, and that changes your attitudes. So people
are much more resentful, much more envious, much more hateful
and angry and racist, not because they're materially worst off,

(01:25:00):
but because the ideas that they hold are dramatically worse.

Speaker 2 (01:25:03):
Of worse, and they they've lost I think it's true
that they've lost a sense of meaning and a sense
of purpose in their life. They're looking for stuff. Sadly,
they're looking on all the wrong places.

Speaker 3 (01:25:20):
People exploiting that, bad intellectuals exploiting that, bad politicians exploiting that.

Speaker 2 (01:25:26):
So it's ideas to shape.

Speaker 3 (01:25:29):
People's psychological attitudes, not their material well being.

Speaker 2 (01:25:34):
This is true when Rome fell was Romans were.

Speaker 3 (01:25:39):
Relatively rich, and yet spiritually they had, you know, undermined
who they had been, and they no longer could defend themselves.
It wasn't a lack of wealth, it was a lack
of the spirit. So you have to think about what

(01:26:00):
is it that's undermined America over the last hundred years
that has made it so that even though we're rich,
we're still angry and fearful. Not to every's algorithm, w well,
it is more desirable to be an egoist and a
value of life. Hateful ideologies have an easier time spending.

Speaker 2 (01:26:19):
Is this due to cont or the world or the
world has never known egoism, so tribalism resentment is the default.

Speaker 3 (01:26:29):
I think it's a combination of content Christianity. But ultimately
you're right in a sense that they've never known egoism.

Speaker 2 (01:26:40):
They don't really know what it is. I mean, the
culture was more egoistic one hundred years ago, the culture
was less tribal one hundred years ago.

Speaker 3 (01:26:50):
But people today don't remember that, don't know that. They're
not familiar with egoism. And he has sense they don't
know what it stands for. They don't know what it means,
they don't know how to affect their life. Indeed, they're
afraid of it because they think it means being nasty
and being a horrible human being.

Speaker 2 (01:27:08):
So they don't know what it is.

Speaker 3 (01:27:10):
And and but they're and their ideas, uh and and
any sense of self interest, sense of pursuit of self interest,
pursuit of happiness is undermined both by Kantian duty ethics,
altruistic duty ethics, and you know, postmodernism again, which is

(01:27:31):
ultimately contient, but also but by Christianity, which tells them
their fall and being there's original sin, you know, and
and the angst and agony that I think Christianity ultimately
leads people towards. So it's a combination of all of
that that leads them away from egoism. I mean, Christianity

(01:27:55):
tells them that if they if they invase egoism, they'll
go to Hell.

Speaker 2 (01:28:00):
It's pretty powerful stuff. And to what extent is iron
Ran keeping the West alive today spiritually? Economically? I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:28:13):
It's keeping some of us alive, no question about that.
It might be economically in a sense that she has
a pretty big influence on the people in Silicon Valley
and why they're in Silicon Valley and their ambition and
their productive ness. But how much I just don't know
how to measure. I don't know how to tell.

Speaker 2 (01:28:35):
It's just impossible.

Speaker 3 (01:28:36):
A lot of people still read iron Rand, a lot
of people have red iron Rand over the last seventy years.
She's had a profound impact on people's souls. How that
manifests itself? How big of an impact? I wouldn't even
know how to start measuring that, So anything I give
you is anecdotal. James, what do you make of Sam

(01:28:58):
Harris's argument for taking certain hallucinogenic drugs that psychedelics can
force you to face things you're already aware of but
aren't giving enough priority to fixing.

Speaker 2 (01:29:10):
I mean, this is the question I would ask, how
does anybody know that? Right?

Speaker 3 (01:29:17):
So, when you're on a hallucinogenic drug, how do you
know that what you're experiencing is reality? How do you
know that the things that you're observing supposedly about yourself
are real?

Speaker 2 (01:29:33):
I mean, it strikes me that it's not real.

Speaker 3 (01:29:36):
That the whole point is of hogenic drugs is to
disconnect you from reality, disconnect you from consciousness as awareness,
and make you pray to the random forces within your
subconscious which maybe might lead you to some realization just

(01:29:59):
like a dream, but just as likely well not So,
there is just no basis in science or in now
understanding of the human brain, or in understanding of the
mind and consciousness to trust it. I mean, I mean

(01:30:20):
Sam and many people who take out lucinogenics say that
one of the revelations that they come to that there
is no eye, that the individual doesn't exist, that consciousness
is ultimately a social thing, that we're just all connected
to a But that's bullshit. So you felt something, you
felt that in why you under a lucinogenic drug. What

(01:30:41):
makes that real? What makes that truth? You can only
test a truth an idea about truth by its correspondence
to reality.

Speaker 2 (01:30:54):
The only way to identify reality is without senses, not
by imploding us sensors with the use of drugs. So
now I don't buy it.

Speaker 3 (01:31:05):
Now Again, it could be that these drugs do something
to the chemical balance in the brain. It could be
that they do something that for PTSD, or for depression,
or for whatever they they they are. They are hard,
the reboot that they that they take you out of
a funk, that they allow you to start over in

(01:31:28):
some sense, I don't know. They seem to have some
positive psychedet psych psychological impact. So does so there's riddle
in so there's a lot of drugs that people take.
So chemicals matter, but it's not that it helps you
discover truths, because that's begging the question.

Speaker 2 (01:31:50):
What is true? And true is that which I one
identifies with one's sensors, And this is again the rejection
of one's senses. You can't do it all, right, I,
David says, I fail to understand what Hananya's fans see
in him other than some contrarian position.

Speaker 3 (01:32:08):
He's not that interesting, knowledgeable, or charismatic. Michael labor Rich
is much more well read and smarter.

Speaker 2 (01:32:17):
Well. I mean, I don't.

Speaker 3 (01:32:18):
I'm not going to comment to Michael. I don't know,
but no, I don't think that's true. I think Hananya
at his best is really smart and quite and really deep.
He does really deep research. He is much better read
than almost anybody I know, particularly when he comes to

(01:32:41):
politics and social phenomena. He does deep research. His essay
on the original essay. He wrote a number of essays
two three years ago coming out of COVID that I
thought were brilliant, were really you know, uh, really really

(01:33:03):
original and and and and provided evidence and uh and
and uh provided a provided a real correct sequence of
events of how ideas spread through the culture, ideas impacted
the culture. I think what he did on affirmative action
it was really really, really good and valuable. It was

(01:33:25):
not that there was any original philosophical insight. The original
philosophical insight was in Man's.

Speaker 2 (01:33:31):
Really, but.

Speaker 3 (01:33:33):
He laid it out, he spelled it out, and he
did the research and showed the connections of the way
that nobody had done before.

Speaker 2 (01:33:41):
Uh. He had a piece and I can't I can't
remember it anymore, but he had a piece in the
publican party that I thought was excellent that identified the
essence of it. I mean, I still read his stuff.
I think he writes too much right now.

Speaker 3 (01:33:54):
I think he's writing too much, and as a consequence,
he's getting sloppy in his thinking. But he's still original
and comes up with stuff that I think is quite good.
So I would I would definitely, I would definitely.

Speaker 2 (01:34:17):
Read his longer essays.

Speaker 3 (01:34:19):
I mean, he's good on how stupid the Republican Republicans are,
and how stupid mag is and how awful Trump is.
He's good, he's become good on economics. He's not an objectivist,
but and he's a good writer. And he writes and
writes and writes and writes and right, and let me
just say that, if you really want to have an

(01:34:39):
impact on the culture, you got to write. I mean,
my biggest, my biggest flaw is I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:34:46):
Write enough, right right, right, right right.

Speaker 3 (01:34:51):
Writing and and and the speaking and all of that
is important, but the real way in which you have
a long term impact is by writing.

Speaker 2 (01:34:59):
So again, I think that's I think that's that is great.
That's why he's he's good.

Speaker 3 (01:35:12):
Eric, I've never heard an objective is talk about honor.
What is your understanding of the concept m. I mean,
I think there's a lot of overlap between honor and integrity.
You know, the Lennapeacock talks about honor, I think he

(01:35:33):
talks about honor when he talks about the play El
sid In in his eight Great Plays, nine Great Plays,
in his course about Great Plays, I think he talks
about honor there. I think there are a number of
other mentions in the objective's literature of honor. Cant if

(01:35:57):
if Tara talks about it. But honor, I think overlaps
a lot with the virtue of integrity. But of course
can be and so the virtue of integrity demands that
you have rational values. Integrity to irrational values is not
a virtue.

Speaker 2 (01:36:16):
And you know, a lot of times.

Speaker 3 (01:36:22):
It's honest broader than integrity, because honor is also honors
is also about I don't know how would you define it.
I don't have a definition off the cuff. I don't
have a definition of honor. And honor can be bad
as well. Honor can be terrible, and people do awful

(01:36:43):
things in the name of honor. Right honor demands a duel, No,
it doesn't, you know, honor doesn't demand killing people over it.

Speaker 2 (01:36:54):
Somebody says integrity plus actions. I don't know if that's how.

Speaker 3 (01:36:58):
You reputation, but I think the reputation has smacks of secondhandedness,
of caring too much about what other people think of you.

Speaker 2 (01:37:07):
So and I think this is why we don't talk
about honor. It's it's not it's it's it's it's not
quite you know. It's integrity captures the good parts. And
I don't know that you need much more than what
integrity captures. So, I mean, that's the best I have

(01:37:33):
right now. I haven't really thought about it, so I
don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:37:36):
I'd have to think about it some more and have
a definition of honor in front of me and really
think about it. Yeah, Phanapa says, I'm honorable for my
actions are in accordance with my integrity. But then it's
just integrity in action. Okay, integrity in action. But it's

(01:38:00):
seems like the concept as used as more.

Speaker 2 (01:38:02):
Than that is more than that. All right, let's see,
we've got a few questions left. We're eighty one dollars
short of our second hour goal. It would be good
to make the second hour goal. I'm not even pushing
for the third hour goal, but it would be good

(01:38:23):
to make this one. And I've got plenty of time tonight,
so you can ask me tons of questions. Come on,
ask questions.

Speaker 3 (01:38:36):
Andrew, a conservative pundit, noted that the speech that Trump
Trump's blaming of the insurance companies was good politics. Conservatives
are all too happy to throw out capitalism in exchange
for power. Yeah, well they don't believe in capitalism anymore.
Capitalism is gone. Blaming insurance companies, going after insurance companies,

(01:38:58):
going after drug companies, wanting price caps on drug prices,
attacking drug companies and insurance companies. It's like the old
days of attacking Wall Street.

Speaker 2 (01:39:10):
You can't lose.

Speaker 3 (01:39:12):
Nobody's against it except a few capitalists and and they
don't really count that much.

Speaker 2 (01:39:19):
And yeah, so it's it's it is, it is. That's
what populism means. You thought any principle you might have
had in the name of pleasing the populace, pleasing the
people out there.

Speaker 3 (01:39:40):
David said, I like it when YBS goes it's the
d philosophical discussions, then you should become a member. And
you should like have been there on Sunday when we
talked about what do we talk about on Sunday Iron
Rand's essay The Missing Link, which is deeply philosophical, and
we'll be talking about more of iron Rand's essays on
the Member's Only channel. So, uh, you can become a

(01:40:01):
member of Only works on YouTube. You have to have
a membership on YouTube. And yeah, all right, Uh, Roland says,

(01:40:21):
here's a warrior super chat for you.

Speaker 2 (01:40:23):
Keep up the good fight, soldier. Thank you. I appreciate that.
That's nice.

Speaker 3 (01:40:29):
Clark says, why is cost of living so insanely low
in places like Thailand and Vietnam? Is it because they
are newly adopting capitalist policies. Yes, I mean they're poor
and and uh and therefore, uh, you know, they they
they are so first they're not that productive. Secondly, nobody

(01:40:55):
can pay them. Nobody can pay them the kind of uh,
you know wage that they would get in the in
the uh in the West, because nobody can afford to
do that because it's a poor culture. As Thailand becomes richer,
it the cost of living will increase, the cost of
living will increase because the reality is that people will.

Speaker 2 (01:41:19):
Demand higher wages.

Speaker 3 (01:41:22):
And uh those higher and and you know, the people
will become more productive, they'll have more to spend. They'll
have more money to spend on a variety of different goods.

Speaker 2 (01:41:35):
Uh and uh uh. You know, companies will then.

Speaker 3 (01:41:39):
Raise people's wages, will then spend more, and it becomes
the circle, the circle of as people are wealthier, prices
go up, prices go.

Speaker 2 (01:41:51):
Up, people can afford to pay more, and people are
spending more. I forget the name of this phenomenon economics.

Speaker 3 (01:42:01):
It's not just productivity that drives up wages, but a
big part of it is productivity, and as that happens.

Speaker 2 (01:42:10):
Prices actually will go up with wages. Like a coffee
in Thailand is a lot cheaper than a coffee at
Starbucks in the United States because the labor costs in
Thailand a much lower, so Starbucks can still make money
at that lower price. Now, costs don't determine price, but

(01:42:31):
costs certainly sets is a factor in ultimately determining the price.

Speaker 3 (01:42:41):
And of course, if Starbucks raise the price, if in
Thai Land, people can't vote it because they don't make
money enough money elsewhere. But as people can make money elsewhere,
and they make more money elsewhere, and then that provides
competition to Starbucks employees. They then demand to raise because

(01:43:05):
otherwise they'll leave because people are paying them more elsewhere.
Starbucks has to It's the yeso god, I can't read it.
Booms boom Mole's principles something like that. You know, uh, stopbacks,
employees will demand to raise and people outside of Stopbucks
that are making more money they can afford higher prices.

(01:43:27):
Prices will rise and Starbucks will pay more to its employees.
The profit margins won't change, but they will pay more.
But that is that is organic to poor cultures, as
they adopt market economies, as they get richer, as they
get wealthier, as the employees generally become more productive, cost

(01:43:50):
of living goes up. I mean there's luso a sense
in which Thaieland is less regulated than America is in
many respects. There's probably it's easy to build there, you know,
so the stuff is cheaper, it's not as good.

Speaker 2 (01:44:08):
So they're probably other factors that play into it.

Speaker 3 (01:44:11):
Is the stock market doing so well because the technology
has reached the point where it can get around regulations
like it couldn't in the past. I mean, the stock
market's doing well because a certain segment of American companies
doing really well, primarily large ones, large companies can get
around tariffs. They can figure out how to deal with tariffs.

(01:44:33):
They can offset the cost of tariffs, or they can
find new suppliers, or they can bribe Trump to give
them exclusions. So tariffs and stuff like that hurd small
and medium sized businesses. They don't hurt the big businesses.
Some companies, the market is assuming they're going to do
phenomenally well because of AI, and therefore they are increasing.

Speaker 2 (01:44:58):
Remember, stock markets don't provide you with how an estimate
of how profitable a company is today. They provide you
with an estimate of how the market, how profitable the
market believes companies will be in the future.

Speaker 3 (01:45:13):
And right now, because I think primarily of AI, the
market and because the Interstates they believe interestrates are coming down,
the market believes that companies will be a lot more
profitable in the future than they are right now, and
the consequence of that is prices up. Do you have

(01:45:33):
any comments on I S gap based in New York?

Speaker 2 (01:45:37):
I don't know what that is.

Speaker 3 (01:45:40):
Maybe if you spell it out for me, I'll have
an opinion, but I don't know what it is. Sorry, Lincoln.

Speaker 2 (01:45:47):
Why does the tech Why does the why does the
tech right like, why does the tech right like Teal
and recent etcetera, tend to be so anti liberty?

Speaker 3 (01:45:59):
I would have assume they would be pro and pro
freedom well, because I think that they well, I mean,
Til is very religious, and that drives part of it.

Speaker 2 (01:46:09):
I think a lot of them.

Speaker 3 (01:46:11):
What drives them is a sense of superiority, a sense
that they know better, that they are the philosopher kings
that Plato talks about, that they can run society better
than anybody else, and better than the marketplace. They run
their companies, they do venture capital, they're good at identifying winners.

Speaker 2 (01:46:31):
Why can't they extrapolite that to society as a whole?
You know?

Speaker 3 (01:46:36):
So they are not believers in liberty because they believe
that they could. They could control your life better than
you can. They're smarter than you, So why not use
cosion if the result is the betterment of your life?

(01:46:57):
Sun And can you respect an isolated characteristic of a
person if he does not imply, if he does not
imply a positive valuation of their character?

Speaker 2 (01:47:10):
Does respect any meaning? In this context?

Speaker 3 (01:47:13):
I think you can respect a particular aspect of somebody
independent of their.

Speaker 2 (01:47:22):
Character. Overall, you have to be careful not to not to,
you know, give.

Speaker 3 (01:47:36):
Turn it into an injustice by let's say, complimenting somebody
with a bad character because they did one thing good
and now they think that you've just complimented the character. Overall,
you have to be careful.

Speaker 2 (01:47:47):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:47:48):
Imagine there's a soldier who was incredibly brave in battle,
saves the lives of his fellow soldiers, kills the enemy,
he does amazing things, but he's an asshole in real life.
Then you can say this is amazing, this guy's amazingly brave. Wow,
super brave.

Speaker 2 (01:48:08):
Without suggesting that his whole character is good.

Speaker 3 (01:48:12):
Now, if you said, no, this is a good guy,
he's brave, he's a good guy, then you're now sanctioning
the rest of his character, which is not so good.
So you just have to be careful. Oh, Gail says
the Institute. Okay, so that yeah, that's my answer, Gil
says the Institute for Study of Global Anti Semitism.

Speaker 2 (01:48:30):
I just don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:48:33):
Some of these groups are overly leftist and see anti
semitism anywhere, or see racism everywhere. So it really depends
on how influence they have been by the kind of
progressive left. I have not followed the Institute for the
Study of Global Anti Semitism and Policy. Finn Harpa jumps in.

(01:48:56):
This is the last question unless somebody jumps in again.
What watched last Sunday's membership only show? I also being
being live to those let you ask questions without super
chatting as much. Yeah, I mean it's it's much more informal,
you don't have to spend as much money, as much

(01:49:18):
more interactive because they're small. So you should definitely come
to the live shows on the membership and friend Happa
just gifted five new memberships, so you guys should you
guys should come in and participate in our members only show.
Now you can you can go watch all the past

(01:49:38):
members only shows, so you should definitely do that. But
you should also come to live ones because I think
the live ones are more fun and more engaging. Andrew,
why do you think the nihilists like Fuentas and Trump
are able to have quick wits?

Speaker 2 (01:49:56):
Oh? I don't know, I don't I don't know. Uh.
I think.

Speaker 3 (01:50:02):
The nihilists tend to be cynics. Cynicism is a ideology
that is very receptive to quick wittedness.

Speaker 2 (01:50:14):
If that's a word to you know, being.

Speaker 3 (01:50:19):
Making funny copsite funny statements about pretty much anything. They
have no boundaries and they just Flint is smart. So
Trump is smart in a certain way. But it's a cynicism.
The cynicism builds on on on the wits right, it

(01:50:41):
enhances that muscle. If you will, all right, guys, thank you,
thank you to all the super chato is really really
appreciate it. I will see you guys tomorrow, same time,
I think, same time. Saying length the show will do
tomorrow will definitely be into our show. I've got a

(01:51:02):
hard stop tomorrow and not show about the weekend. We'll
see if we have shows on the weekend or not.
I will talk to you soon, see you tomorrow. Bye, everybody,

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