The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brook Show. Hope everybody's doing well and ready for a fantastic weekend. I hope you had a great week. Oh, look. Catherine is here. Oh, my God. Haven't seen Catherine in, like, weeks. Catherine, welcome. It's nice to see you. Catherine will be in charge of motivating you guys to ask questions. Participate in the super chat. Contribute to the show. There goes Louis Philip Knoll, starting us off with a few bucks. So thank you, Louis. Yeah, so Catherine is here. That's good. It's always good to have Catherine. Thanks to all of you for joining. I'm a little exhausted, after a minute. Not only did I fly in from Brazil yesterday and I'm still kind of recovering a little bit of jet lag, but I spent all day today in a courtroom and it just exhausted me. I probably spent, what was it, two and a half hours or more on the witness stand answering a lot of, you know, and anyway, a lot of questions. But I'm not going to comment on the case and I'm not going to comment on the questions. I will say this, though. There's something about the way our legal system works in a courtroom that just seems off to me. It seems like half the time you're there, it's a playing a game of gotcha, of trying to catch you with some contradiction or catch you in some slight misrepresentation or just catch you on whatever just to make you look bad. And what's really missing in the court, I felt this today, but I think this is more broad and I think Leonard Peacock talked about this during the O.J. Simpson case, what's really missing from the court is seeking truth, trying to figure out what's actually happened, what is actually going on, what the facts are. That seems like nobody, like maybe the judge, this was in front of a judge and not a jury, maybe the judge cares, but he is a participant in this game and the game is a gotcha game, not a let's discover what really happened and let's discover the truth. So this is a consequence of the adversarial legal system that we have and the kind of commitment that the lawyers, the defense lawyers have in basically doing anything they can to defend their client, even if their client is guilty, it doesn't really matter. So I just, this was my first time ever really participating, I have not been on a jury and I've not been on a jury and this is the first time I was a witness in a trial and so it was just an interesting experience. I think I would have enjoyed it if not for the stakes, but I did find it interesting and yeah, truth, truth, there really is a lack of desire to figure out the truth. Anyway, it is what it is, we will see what happens. All right, let's see. Actually, Jackson said he emailed me a super chat relevant quick. Yeah, I saw the question. It's actually going to be a topic on my next news briefing show I expect, so I might not answer the question just because it came in an email. I might not answer the question, but I will cover the topic in one of my news briefings.   Let's see, any other housekeeping stuff? I don't think so. We do have a super chat goal of 650 today, so hopefully we can make that. If you'd like to let people know that we're on live right now, you can go to Twitter and kind of say, hey, you're on Bookshelves live right now. You can catch it over here. That'll be cool. That'll be nice so we can get our live numbers up. We had a lot of people yesterday listening live. It was nice being back and getting a good number of people watching live. Let's see. Yeah, so we're going to talk today about kind of the question of is the United States capitalist and that would be question number one. I think you all know the answer to that, but I think the context is interesting. And I think it's important for us to clarify that answer and it's important to kind of articulate why the answer is what it is. And then the second question we're going to address is a question related to how bad is the U.S. economy? How bad are we doing?  So for example, when Trump came into office or ran for president in 2016, the economy was a disaster. The U.S. was crumbling. The economy was crumbling. And then during his four years of presidency, he told you that this was the best economy ever, the greatest economy in all of human history. Now that Biden's in office, you're getting the story from Republicans that the economy is just a disaster. It's crumbling. It's terrible. And the Biden administration is claiming it's the best it's ever been in human history. And, you know, none of them are right, not a single one of them is right. Of course, the economy is better today by every measure, as we'll see, than it was ever at any given point in time. But that's what you expect from a growing economy. Even if it only grows one percent a year, every year it's better than it ever was before. So in a sense, Trump was right that his economy was the best and Biden is right that his economy is the best. As long as the U.S. economy grows, as long as GDP growth, if you will, you know, it's a flawed measure of growth. But it's somewhat correlated with the truth. Then that's all right. But I think the most interesting question is because both left and right seem to agree these days. They both, they all seem to have this nostalgia. We've talked about this a little bit for the 50s and maybe 60, but certainly for the 50s and how wonderful life was back then. And you'll hear from Republicans in those days, you only needed a man to go out and work. And women could stay home and do what God intended them to do, which is take care of the man and take care of the family. Now they're forced to work because otherwise they can't keep up. The economy is so bad you have to have two paychecks.  And one, you know, if families could have only one person working and live a good life and now they need two people working to live a good life. And isn't that awful without having the spin about the wonderful families that we had in the 1950s versus today. So everybody, everybody's pessimistic. Everybody's pessimistic is the wrong term because that pertains to the future. But everybody's negative about the state of the U.S. economy today versus the past. And one economic analyst called this economic nostalgia. There's this economic nostalgia for the past. So we'll talk about that. And if that's true or not, and what's true about it and what is not. And yeah, so action Jackson keeps talking about this question. He's asked me keeps, you know, when you do that, you can attempt me to answer it now. And that's that's not what I wanted to talk about today. So I'm going to wait on that one. And anyway, all right, let's start off with a discussion. Yeah, let's start off with is America capitalist and let me let me tell you for a second. Why this came up and what context this this came up or this came to my mind. So I'm, as you know, I'm traveling around the world, traveling around the world talking about capitalism and the morality of capitalism and the virtues of capitalism and all this stuff. And and inevitably, it pretty much every talk that I give every talk that is not given to people who already committed to these ideas already agree with me but every every talk that's, you know, given to. People who are either somewhat in agreement or, you know, who disagree with my position. And you saw this in at least one of the videos that I that I sent over that I streamed from from South America. So they come up with this litany of problems and issues that they perceive America to have. And they blame it on capitalism. So, you know, it'll go something like, you know, you say capitalism so great, but look at all the homeless people in America. Or you say capitalism is so great, but look at the financial crisis that just or the banking crisis just hit America. Or you think capitalism is so great, but but you know, look at look at the rates of poverty or look at the health, uninsured in health care or look at the declining life expectancy in the United States. And by the way, one of the next few shows I will talk about life expectancy in the U.S. Because it's an important topic, an interesting topic. And it is a while today I'll be a little positive and maybe optimistic that the life expectancy numbers around the United States are very negative and very worrisome and something one should really be concerned about, right, be concerned about. So wherever you go, it's like, look at what's happening in the United States. Look at all these awful things happening in the United States. And how can you defend capitalism? And of course, they implicitly assume and pretty much everybody implicitly assumes and it goes almost unchallenged in the culture and in the world, really. And this is particularly true in the United States, questions I get in the U.S., but it's doubly true in other countries that want to look up to the United States. They want to believe that the United States is better. They want to have a shiny city on the hill. They want to have a model that they can emulate. So they have a positive view of the U.S. But it happens in the U.S. as well, where you get the same kind of questions, particularly, why am I waving these headphones? I was wondering why it was so hot. Particularly, you get it from college students or from people on the left or just generally. And the implicit assumption is America's capitalist. That's obvious. That's everybody knows that. And the challenge, of course, is then that you've got to do two things at the same time. One, you have to tell everybody that America is not capitalist and we'll get to that in a minute. And second, a lot of the time, then you have to explain why the particular phenomena that they're describing is either not true. What they're talking about is just not true of the United States. Or if it is true, it wouldn't happen under capitalism. Or there's no reason to believe it would happen under capitalism. Because in their mind, it is. That is capitalism. And it is, I think it's a real challenge. I think it's a real challenge that any of us face when trying to defend capitalism and trying to defend markets and being out there and trying to undo this package deal that people create between America and capitalism and that association and that strong association and the current world and capitalism. I mean, I felt this may be more than anything during the financial crisis. When everybody said, see, this is what happens when you have free markets in finance. This is what happens when you have capitalism in America. This is inevitable. This is the consequence. You see all this unemployed people. You see the stock market collapsing. You see all this horror around us. This is the consequence of freedom. This is the consequence of free markets. This is the consequence of capitalism. So we have to define what capitalism is. And we have to keep defining it. And we have to keep explaining what we at least mean by capitalism. Now what they usually do is they go look up the definition in a dictionary. And the definitions in dictionaries are very different than our definitions. But we have to insist that this is what we mean. And this is the system we're talking about. And the system that exists today, we are massive critics of. And that a lot of the problems that exist today would not exist. Under a system of freedom, under a system of capitalism. Now, this of course makes our job as articulating the case and trying to convince people of capitalism doubly hard. It makes it so much more difficult. It makes it so much harder, so much more complicated. Because you have to do two, three, four things to get to one point at the end. But it's inevitable, you have to do it. So what is capitalism? Well, you know, the term arose and this is, I think this is important to know. Because people always say, well, Marx used this term, so we shouldn't use it. No, we should use it because Marx used the term. And Marx identified something real. Marx looked around the world and he saw a new system had arisen. A system that was different than the feudal system of the past. Now, I think he mischaracterized the system in many respects. But in its essentials, I actually think he got it right. It was a system in which individuals were free to start businesses, to innovate, to deploy capital freely, to hire labor, to engage in negotiations with labor. It was a system based primarily on the recognition of property rights. And Marx understood this, he rejected it, he hated it, but he actually understood this. It arose in the context of a respect for property rights, in the context of people embracing property rights and building society around a government that protected and defended property rights. In a broader context of individual rights. And in that sense, absolutely, yes. And Marx saw all kinds of things that were wrong, exploitation. He didn't really understand. He had no concept of the role of the entrepreneur. He had really no concept of the role of capital. But many of those questions derive from his philosophical errors, derive from his complete lack of understanding of economics, derive, if you will, from his purposeful evasion of the world. But the thing that were happening around in the world out there were indeed the consequence of the respect for property rights. Capitalism really is this real principled recognition of property rights. And the recognition that the role of government was the protection of property rights and very little else, particularly in the realm of economics, in the realm of our economic activities. Really, the only role of government is the protection of property rights and capitalism is the system of property rights in which all property is privately owned and in which the government has no role in the economy other than to obitrate disputes and to help define those property rights, to help understand what violating rights, when it comes to property, really means and how to obitrate disputes about it and how to actually enforce the protection of property rights, which are not necessarily easy or simple issues. These are issues that require government. But that is it. That's the role of government in the economy. And in that sense, capitalism requires a complete separation of state from economics. Capitalism means that there is no government intervention in the economy. It means that there is no, that the government doesn't regulate businesses. It doesn't regulate employment. It doesn't incentivize us and subsidize us and it doesn't control the money. There is no government money. It doesn't control the supply money. It doesn't control the printing money. It doesn't create money. It's not involved in money. It's not involved in business. It's not involved in the economy. Again, it's there to protect us. So its involvement is limited to the protection from theft and fraud, which are dominantly in economic, of course, murder and other things as well, but in the economic realm, theft and fraud. That's capitalism. Capitalism is not something we have today. Anyway, even Hong Kong before the Chinese takeover was not capitalism. It means there's no redistribution of wealth. And it means Kyan Reza says fiat currency shouldn't exist, but here's some for you. Thank you. Kyan Reza really, really appreciate the support. So yeah, fiat money should not exist. Fiat money being paper money that the government prints, but it doesn't matter if it wasn't even fiat money, if the government printed gold coins. And it wasn't fiat money. It was gold, but the government issued it. The government printed it. The government distributed it. The government determined, I don't know, the interest rate on it, whatever. That's wrong. The government should have no involvement in money. It's not an issue of fiat or not fiat. It's an issue of government involvement in the economy. The government has no business in the voluntary exchange between individuals, whether that is production, sale, employment, or any other kind of voluntary, you know, relationship. That's legit. That's legitimate. That seeks win-win and that is not fundamentally fraudulent. That's capitalism. There's never been capitalism. We've never had it. Ayn Rand calls her nonfiction book on capitalism, capitalism the unknown ideal. It's an ideal that we've never really known. And we've never really known in two different dimensions. We've never really known in terms of it's never really being put in practice. We've never really had a system of pure capitalism. And second, it's an unknown ideal in the sense that, ideologically, it's unknown. It's not a system that people advocate for. It's not a system that people know of. It's not an ideal that people strive towards. It's an unknown ideal in both the dimension of its existence and its dimension of recognition by people of the ideal. If people recognized it as an ideal, maybe it would come to be a reality. Too few of us recognize capitalism as an ideal and something to strive towards and something to embrace and something to achieve. A market economy is too loose. I mean, every economy, almost every economy has markets. You can go to the Middle East right now and you can go to all kinds of markets. You can go haggle, you can participate in a market. But there's something unique about a market in which there is protection for property rights in which you don't need permission to start a business, to employ people, to innovate, to think new ideas, to start something radical, to do something radical in business, to form a new form of contracts, as long as it aligns with the principles of what a contract is. I mean, there are a million different ways, a million different ways in which once you protect property rights and you leave people alone and you create the permissionless society, a permissionless world, in which people don't ask for permission to go out and seek their happiness and pursue their dreams, the million ways in which unique things happen, innovative, productive things happen.  But in the end, that's what capitalism means. Capitalism means no coercion, no force, no government involvement. But the government is there to protect us from other people using coercion against us. But other than that, the government does not force itself on us through regulations, redistribution, and so on. That is what capitalism is and we need to keep saying it, keep emphasizing it. We do not have capitalism today. There is no such thing as American capitalism. There's no such thing as Chinese capitalism. There's no such thing as state capitalism. That's just bizarre, right? A state that manipulates capitalism. You see people get hung over on the term capital, which is not even what I think Karl Marx emphasized. There's no such thing as conscious capitalism. There's no such thing as enlightened capitalism. There's no such thing as fill-in-the-blank capitalism. Capitalism is a particular specific thing. It's the thing that means free as in no force, no coercion, markets. Free voluntary exchange. Respect for private property. And a government that protects that private property. As soon as you say that, you then have to recognize that the United States is not capitalist. We have massive regulations, massive controls, subsidies, taxes. A whole array of taxes and super complicated, super complex that incentivize us and motivate us to do all kinds of things that we wouldn't do except for the government's attempt to manipulate us. The government, we are controlled in almost every dimension when it comes to our private property. What we can do with it, with trees we can cut down on it, what we can build on it outside of any contractual obligations. No, by dictate, by force of government. There's no permission less world in which we live. I mean, everything we do, we have to ask permission. We have to start a business. We have to fill out forms. We have to send in through the regulators. They have to sign off on it. We have to get approval for the kind of businesses we have. We can't develop a new drug without an FDA, a government agency approving it and on and on and on and on. We can't distribute an abortion pill without the government saying, yes, an abortion pill is okay. No, I mean, where does the government get off getting in the middle of this? And of course, you know, maybe there's a role for some kind of entity to say it's safe. Well, the FDA has already declared it's safe. Well, then why does the government have any role? If you want to take an abortion pill, whose business is it? That's why America is not a capitalist country. And therefore, all the problems, homelessness, you know, we can discuss the causes of homelessness and I know some of you disagree with me about the causes of homelessness, but it's not capitalism. It's maybe it's cultural drug abuse and mental illness, maybe, or maybe it's economic in a sense of, you know, statist housing policy, which is basically made housing too expensive for people to afford and thus causing homelessness, which is my view and is the dominant reason why we have homelessness is housing policy. But notice housing policy, housing policy by whom? By government. Well, why is government involved in housing? Because it is. And if government is involved in housing, well, just by definition, it's not capitalism anymore. So can be, can't be, capitalism that causes homelessness.  Yeah, people are dying because of capitalism. What's the connection? And again, we don't have capitalism. So it can be because of capitalism. Now you can say because of market phenomena. Well, which ones? Explain this to me. But nobody can. Or the great financial crisis was perfect. You mean before the great financial crisis, banks were not regulated.  Housing was not regulated before the financial crisis. Mortgages not regulated before the financial crisis. And then we had a crisis because of the lack of regulation, really. Have you ever seen the amount of regulation that banks have? Seven different regulatory agencies. How many, you know, the people who buy the mortgages are primarily two government-run entities, Freddie and Fenny Mack. There's a tax deductibility of your mortgage. Is that the government being neutral about housing? What about zoning laws that restrict the amount of housing that can be built, drive home prices up? What about the fact that we have, as somebody said, fiat money? And the fact is that the Federal Reserve manipulates interest rates and manipulates the amount of money in the economy. Does that have any impact? Maybe on housing and stock markets and just the way people deploy money? Is that capitalism? No. What if it isn't? Then stop blaming capitalism for all this stuff. So we need to insist on that. If we defend the American economy, and it will in a minute, defend it on a relative basis. While we're doing that, we're not defending capitalism. We're defending America. America is a mixed economy. It is a mixture of some freedom, very limited. Primarily in those areas of the economy that have been the most innovative, where we've seen the most growth, where we've seen the most excitement, and that is in technology. That was the least regulated area, and that's where we had the most success. Not accidentally, I would argue. So it's a mixture of some freedom. You walk into a mall and you can pretty much buy what you want. The government doesn't try to tell you what to buy, although it does limit what's available in the stores for you to buy. Through tariffs and taxes and subsidies and restrictions and minimum wages and all kinds of stuff. The stuff that you have to buy in the mall is constrained and limited, but you are still free to buy whatever you want in the mall. By the way, so are Chinese people. When the Chinese walk into mall, they can buy whatever they want, and people say, oh, well, that means China's capitalist. No, it's not. Just because you can buy the stuff that you want, this is like a market economy. We go to the market and buy stuff. Everybody does. Just because you have malls doesn't make you capitalist. No, it probably does, by the way, make you not communist. In communism, you can't buy what you want, and that's why I don't consider China communist. There may be run by a political party that calls itself the Chinese Communist Party. They're not communists. There's nothing communist about China. They are much more likely to be fascist. They're much more likely to be some form of statism other than communism, because the fact isn't communism, you don't get to buy what you want, and there's nothing to buy. So let's insist on how we use the term. And I know I sometimes falter because part of the challenge I have when I go out there and talk about capitalism is I say, look, everywhere capitalism is tried, it's successful, but capitalism hasn't been tried anyway. If the audience was smart, that would be the question that they really pushed me on. But I usually say, well, even though it's not being tried perfectly, the closer we've gotten to it, the richer we are. Whereas with socialism, the closer you get to it, the poorer you become. So, you know, Frederick mentions redlining absolutely. Government redlining, you know, is not capitalism. Government mandates on who you can give loans to and who you can't.  So, I mean, it's no end. There's no end to the amount of regulations and controls and limitations. There's no end to the amount of statism in the economy. There's just a lot of it. And it is indeed horrific and we need to be very clear about what we're talking about. And yes, a mixed economy can be relatively successful. It's relatively successful to the extent that it is relatively free. The more free a mixed economy is, the more successful it will be. However, mixed economies are not stable equilibriums. Iron man taught us this. Ultimately, a mixed economy will either gravitate towards greater freedom or towards greater statism. And it's in the world in which we live, given the lack of ideas around capitalism, don't really, you know, are not really there. We're much more likely to move towards statism than we are likely to move towards freedom. And tragically, that's indeed what is happening and the real consequence of that. That is, the primary consequence of that is that we're just not growing. We're just not reaching anywhere near our potential. And there's a danger in that, in the sense that when an economy grows slowly, people don't really sense it.  But, you know, there are other manifestations of a mixed economy, social, cultural. I think we're seeing that all around us. I think that the decline in life expectancy in the United States is, for example, a consequence of a mixed economy. It's a consequence of, you know, bad policies. It's a consequence of status policies. So while it doesn't necessarily manifest itself in economic numbers, it manifests itself in what is it? The opposite of pursuit of freedom, the kind of depressed nature and lack of motivation and lack of ambition that hurts so many Americans. All right, let's do this quickly. Louis, thank you. Catherine, thank you. Roosevelt, thank you. Who am I missing? Applejack, thank you. Jonathan, thank you. And Jupiter, menace, thank you. So that's just some people who did stickers rather than asking a question. So we don't live under capitalism.  Don't let people blame the problems that we have today on capitalism. We don't have capitalism. I wish we did. And none of those problems would exist under capitalism. And I think you can show that. You can show that indeed many of these problems are problems that have only grown as our economy has become more regulated, more mixed and less free. The flip side of this, or not the flip side of this, there's no flip side of this. This is what it is. So that was kind of topic number one I wanted to talk about. But I also want to talk about this other, this other thing that some have called economic nostalgia. But just that I see everywhere and I see on left and on right, and it's just a general idea that life was so much better in the past. Life was so much better for Americans in the 50s or the 40s or the 20s or the 60s and a longing and nostalgia for the past. And it's completely understandable because everybody senses, everybody senses that something is wrong in America today. I think Americans sense it and foreigners sense it. We all know something is just not right. And my diagnosis and a lot of that is the homelessness. A lot of that is the declining life expectancy. A lot of that is just the sense so many Americans feel like they missed opportunities or lack of opportunities. The economy is not growing as much. If you're ambitious, there's less room for you. We discriminate against ability, which is bizarre. We discriminate against ability in all kinds of realms in our lives. You know, generally there's just a sense of doom that I think many Americans feel. And I think that's justified because I think everybody senses that the country is heading somehow in the wrong direction. That something is wrong. And of course, I would argue that something is the growing part of the socialism in the mixed economy. The growing statism and the consequence of that, the consequence in economic terms is primarily the lack of economic growth or minimal economic growth. The consequence of it is also the fact that a lot of Americans, a significant number of Americans, particularly working class Americans, poor Americans, now live off of the government rather than living through their own effort. So poor people have done pretty well in America over the last 50 years. Poverty in America has gone down in terms of real consumption, in terms of quality of life, standard of living. There are a lot less, fewer poor people today than there were in the past. But most of that, or a lot of that, is a consequence of the redistribution state, the consequence of the welfare state, the consequence of redistributing income, the consequence not of them earning greater wealth, but them receiving greater wealth because somehow some kind of goodie, some kind of goodie from the government. Len just did 440 Canadian dollars. Wow, thank you Len. I'll get to your question very soon. But thank you. That's very, very generous. That gets us a big chunk of the way to our 650 gold. But we still have a way to go. We still have about $200 to go, so don't let up on asking $20 questions, or $50 questions, or like Leonard, 440 Canadian dollar questions. That's fantastic. Canadian dollars are pretty weak. That translates into $325 American dollars. I remember the Canadian dollar being a lot stronger than that. Maybe that's true though. Oh, here comes Schausbach. Here comes Schausbach with $250 to get us over the limit. Thank you Schausbach with another review. Episode 3, I have to go back. I've seen all of the last of us, including the final episode, which it turned out I had missed. And I finally saw it. But now I have to remind myself what happened in Episode 3. But Schausbach, while we're on this topic, this weekend I will be talking about MASH, which I watched, the one episode that you asked for, and the movie Princess's name I can't pronounce, Japanese animation. I'll try to pronounce it when we get to it. But both of those will be done this weekend. And then I know I have Puss in Boots and Whiplash still to do. I know, I know, I'm way behind. I will get to those. I'll watch Whiplash with my wife maybe this weekend. That'll be fun. And that reminds me of something I wanted to tell you guys, but I'll tell you later something about, yeah. Let me get back to the topic. Anyway, so everybody gets a sense that there's the real problems in America, that the real challenges. But what's happened is that because these problems have been misdiagnosed, because nobody wants to see where the source of the real problems really is, they focus on the wrong things and therefore the remedies are going to be all wrong. Indeed, the remedies, almost universally, both from left and from right, are actually going to make the situation in America much worse than it is. Much worse than it is. So what do they argue? Well, they argue, again, that it used to be much better, but was it? You know, in 1960, there were roughly 400 vehicles for every thousand Americans. Today, there were over 800 vehicles per thousand Americans. Now, I'm not even going to get into the fact that vehicles today are dramatically not even close, safer, faster, more comfortable, more technologically savvy. I can run my Apple Maps.  All right. Today's turning out to be a phenomenal day. Thank you, Troy. 500 Australian dollars. Really, really appreciate it. Thank you. So we have more cars, better cars today than we did in 1960, 1950s. You know, biode is a magnitude as a measure. We live in much bigger houses. On average, about 25% bigger. So, but that's doesn't really capture it because people forget that today everybody, including I think many people who you would consider poor, take for granted things like washing machines and dryers and dishwashers and fireplaces. They take for granted that that is part of a house or condo or an apartment, a conditioning. But it wasn't. It wasn't. You know, let's say, I don't know, a dryer. In 1960s and earlier, about, you know, 70% of Americans had dryers today. It's close to 90%. Dishwasher was 45% today. It's 93%. Washing machine, 73 to 89. Garbage disposal was 32%. It's double to 74. You can see how as you get richer, you know, the, the, the, the pokes that you get are kind of more, what would you call it, specialized. Trash compactors went from 2% to 6.6%. Many people in the 1960s lived in older buildings. Many people in the 1960s didn't have the amenities that we take for granted. A lot of flats in New York, for example, had no hot water. Imagine living with no hot water. The best shower you can have is a cold shower in New York. I'm not talking about Las Vegas in New York. Winters in New York cold showers. No, thank you. And that's not even counting how people lived in rural communities. And this is, I was born in 61. This is when I was born. The first apartment my parents moved into when I was born was a place that had no doors. It was, it was tiny. You know, they had no amenities. There was no dishwasher. There was no washing machine and dryer. You know, the first apartment I owned, not owned, the first apartment I rented with my wife, we for a year washed our clothes by hand. I don't know if anybody, if you guys even know what that is to wash clothes by hand. Soap, clothes, wash, running water. I mean, nobody does that today. Nobody in America does that today. Running water in 1950 was about as common in homes as air conditioning is today. Again, dishwashers and washing machines were real luxuries. And in terms of, in terms of, you know, surviving, it's much easier today for one adult in a household to manage an entire household financially than it was for two people in 1950s to manage a household. And that means that one person in a household means, because a lot of single parents, that means they're hiring nannies and they're hiring help and they're hiring this, and they survive. They manage and they work. Because for example, doing laundry is incredibly time consuming. Having a washing machine reduces the time you have to do for laundry. And you have more time to take care of the kids or to go to work. And you could go on and on with that example. People are far more better educated today was today 60% of Americans are college graduates. It used to be significantly lower than that. And you can go on and on and on and on in spite of the mixed economy. In spite of America's mixed economy, American economy has done phenomenally well over the last 60 years. We are much richer than we were. The one thing we're not is we're not growing as fast as we did back then the 50s and 60s the economy grew very fast. It's how we got to where we are today. Today the economy is growing, but very slowly. So 60 years from now, the difference between us and 60 years from now is going to be smaller than the difference of us and 60 years in the past. And that's tragic. And that does not have to be the case. Indeed, we should be growing faster as we have more technology. What's holding back our growth is lack of freedom. It's the movement away from the permissionless to a more permission based society. It's regulations, it's controls, it's taxation, it's the state, statism, it's socialism. The part of the mixed economy that is socialist is holding us back. So, you know, one of the comparisons of the US economy is with the past, but the other comparison is US economy versus the rest of the world. How are we doing relative, how is the US economy doing, how are we doing as individuals within the American economy as compared to the rest of the world? Well, it's actually pretty stunning how well America is doing as compared to the rest of the world. And again, there's a good reason for this. Americans are significantly richer on a per capita GDP than people in the rest of the world. I saw this stunning statistic that if you adjust the purchasing power of the currency, right, in Mississippi, which is America's poorest state, the, what does it mean, median, GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power. In Mississippi, the poorest state is $50,000 a year. Now, $50,000 a year is higher than in France. So, the poorest Americans in Mississippi are still earning more than, you know, the average in the poorest American state, Mississippi, GDP per capita in the poorest state in America, Mississippi is higher than the GDP per capita in the country of France. When it doesn't think of France as equivalent to Mississippi, but it is, it's poorer. When people, you know, claim how wonderful Denmark is, or Sweden are, they forget how much poorer Denmark and Sweden are than America is. They are. Again, on a purchasing power basis, they're kind of median within America. They're certainly not as wealthy as people in Massachusetts on a GDP per capita basis. You know, the fact is that, you know, in 1990, 30 years ago, America accounted for a quarter of the world's output at market exchange rates. 30 years on, we're still a quarter of the world's output in spite of the rise of China. By the way, a lot of this data is coming from an economist article published today on the lesson from America's astonishing economic record. Now, they don't draw the right lessons, but it is interesting. Today, America accounts for 58% of the G7's GDP of the big seven economies in the world. 58% of that is just the United States. So all of the six account for less than half. I mean, that's stunning. It used to be only 40%. So in comparison to other rich countries, we've grown much richer while they have stagnated. I mean, with the exception of, look, Petro States, little financial hubs like, I don't know, Monte Carlo or Liechtenstein or places like that. The United States has grown much faster and is much richer than Western Europe, Japan, South Korea. We have 33% more workers than we did in 1990. Western Europe has only grown by 10%. Japan has only grown by 10%. We have more graduate and postgraduate degrees in America than these other countries. America's work more hours, but we're also dramatically more productive than Europeans and most Asians. We have a fifth of all patents registered are American. That's more than China and Germany put together. All five of the biggest corporate sources of R&D are American. The past year, they spent $200 billion on R&D. If you put $100 in the S&P 500 in 1990, that would be worth more than $2,000 today. That's four times more than if you put it into the major European exchanges or in the Japanese exchange. Yeah, we have a less generous safety net, a welfare state, but it's pretty generous and it's grown, unfortunately. So America has been unbelievably successful. And the economists ask why. An answer should be, because a little bit at the margin freer than these other economies. That's one, two, that we allow, and I know some of you are going to hate this, we allow more immigrants into the country than many of these other countries. But what has the economists come up with? Size matters. This sounds like Tucker Carlson. Size matters. The U.S. is big. That's good. So we have a big market. No, size does matter. It is, but European Union is pretty big. It wouldn't take much for them to be as big as the United States and to have a common market and to reduce regulations and compete directly with the United States. China is massive. Brazil is huge. It's not as big as the U.S., but very, very big. So yeah, size is good, but that's not the advantage we have. Quality of the workforce, they tell us. We have a younger population with a higher fertility rate than other rich countries. Yeah, that helps. But why are they so much more productive than other countries? How come productivity per employee is so much higher? Also, and this is true, America's high share of immigrants. Today, at least in 2021, 17% of the American workforce were immigrants. 17%, 3% in Japan. 17% is dynamism. It's energy. It's new ideas. It's the entrepreneurial people who come here. Yeah, immigrants, good immigrants. They tell us size, population, and then they say, another lesson, another lesson. This is like the last one. Another lesson is the value of dynamism. Dynamism, not freedom, not free markets. Dynamism. Now, what is dynamism? They say, starting a business is easy in America. As is restructuring it through bankruptcy. Now, that's called more freedom. The flexibility of the labor markets helps employment adapt to shifting patterns of demands. Yeah, that's more freedom. Again, they haven't yet explained the increased productivity. That's more freedom. I mean, the U.S. economy is in many ways a stunning success. Even from my perspective, I look at it today and I've been telling you there's going to be a recession for over a year now and it hasn't been one. Maybe we're heading into one, but there hasn't been. The flexibility of the U.S. economy, all these unemployed people, all these people who've been laid off at tech companies, they've all pretty much found jobs and it's happened so quickly and so seamlessly and relatively painlessly. It's pretty amazing. It's pretty stunning. There is a lot of flexibility in the U.S. economy that we, the advocates of free markets, miss because we're seeking the ideal and we should seek the ideal and it could be so much better. But let's not ignore the fact that it's pretty good. It's pretty good and it could be better. And the problem with all this pessimism and the problem of the lack of diagnosing it right, the lack of seeing that the real competitive advantage that the United States has is freedom and the sectors that have grown the most are the sectors that are most free and the sectors that have grown the least and that have caused the most problems, like finance, are the most regulated. Seeing that relationship, seeing that connection should indicate for you where to go next, what the solution is, where you go now. More of the good stuff, less of the bad stuff, good stuff is freedom, more freedom, less of the bad stuff, regulations, controls, lack of immigration, controls and immigration, all of that, that's the bad stuff, less of that, more of the good stuff. Instead, because of this pessimism, because oh no, the United States is sinking, the United States is declining, the United States is the worst, the United States, everybody else in the world is better, look at China, look at Europe, look at whatever. So what we're doing is we're trying to copy them instead of them copying us. So both left and right, well, more industrial policy, more regulations, more controls, more tariffs, less immigration, what they want is to mimic the failing models of other countries instead of leveraging the success within America. Instead of learning the right lessons from what has been successful in America. What's been successful in America is those parts that you could call a little bit, you could call elements of capitalism, elements of freedom, elements of markets that are constrained by all the statism. And what we want is to expand those, and that's how you get more economic growth and more economic success, more production, more innovation. It's so sad to see the economists on the one hand identify what's right and then miss the causes, by missing the causes or afraid to name the causes, calling it dynamism, as if dynamism is a cause. Where does the dynamism come from? Genetic, or you know, young population, but that doesn't explain their productivity. There are lots of countries in the world that are younger than America and yet let a lot less productive. What causes their productivity? Well, a more efficient deployment of capital. Yes. Where does that come from? Freedom, venture capital, you know, those parts of the financial markets that are relatively free, private equity, venture capital. All right. So yes, America is still the freest best economy in the world in terms of large economies. America is still the place to be if you want, economic opportunities. America is still the place to be if you want to innovate and you want to build something new and exciting and dynamic. America is, Americans are still richer than almost anybody in the world, particularly if you look at significant large countries. And yes, America could be so much better. And America has deep problems, really big problems, social, cultural and economic. And I would argue that all of those are caused by a lack of freedom, a lack of capitalism. And fundamental to all that is a lack of values, a lack of the proper correct values. People might have values, but they have the wrong ones. All right. That's my spiel. I did an hour spiel today. Thank you.  So I, what can I say? I really, really appreciate it. Thank you to Len and Chosbot and Troy for coming in with a big bucks and getting us well over the goal. All right. So let's jump to the questions, the super chat. You know, I will be, I just want to let you know, what we're doing, doing a show tomorrow. I'll also be doing a show Sunday. I'm going to work extra hard over the next week or so with you guys. Just to compensate you for the fact that I didn't do so many shows. And also to compensate for the fact that I'm going to be traveling most of May, the end of April and most of May. So we're going to try to cram into the next 10 days as many shows as we can. I will be trying to do while I travel as many shows as I can from the road. As you know, technical problems, time constraints and all of that. And it might be in time zones that are not particularly good for you guys. So, you know, we'll try to compensate for that. So there will be a number of shows of the weekend. As I said, I will be doing some news review items to kind of catch up on some topics that I haven't talked about yet. You know, so I do want to, there's more to talk about the Bolshenpil vis-a-vis the Supreme Court today. I want to talk more about the leak. We're getting more information about the leak. We'll talk about this murder in San Francisco because I said something that turned out to be wrong about San Francisco. So I want to correct what I said. We'll talk about a case of an attempt to bring private health care to Canada, the failed attempt to do it. We're going to talk about El Salvador, eliminating taxes on technology. I also want to talk about Matt Walsh saying that all of us today would be in a worse spot if slavery never existed. One of the dumbest, stupidest short videos I've ever seen. We'll talk about that one. And I will do a show on life expectancy in the U.S. All of that to come in the next few days. And more, right? And more. And of course, if you see more videos that you want me to comment on, I haven't done commentary videos in a while. So I'd like to do more. Somebody sent me a video today that I'm going to look at that looked interesting that I will comment on. But please send me any videos with commentary that you would like my commentary on. Make them short. Ideally, it's less than 15 minutes. Ideally, it's less than five. But make sure they're in the right context. I don't want to misrepresent somebody. But yes, please send me that information. Again, if you find videos you want me to comment on, please send them to me. You can send it to me on Twitter. You can send them to me via email at youronbookshow.com. Those are the two best ways to do it rather than by Facebook. Don't send them on Facebook. I can't stand Facebook. All right, Len says, capital formation and capital aggregation is different from total free exchange. Capitalism is an ideal. How do we peel off concepts? Mixed economies are inefficient and unstable. Could we cost benefit elements of freedom? I think I've seen that crudely done by think tanks like Fraser Institute in Canada. Capital formation and capital aggregation is very different than free exchange. It's very different than capitalism. Capitalism is not even free exchange. Capitalism is implied in it. Capital formation and capital aggregation are implied in it. But the essence of it, the essence of capitalism is, again, the government's job as the protector of individual rights, as the protector of property rights, and the government's separation from the economy. That is the essence of capitalism. And that leaves us free to form capital, to allocate capital, to distribute capital, to engage in free exchange of goods, of services, of capital, of all the rest of it. So I think what's important rather than peeling off concepts, I think what's important is to define the concept one uses and to be very careful in how one uses them and to always insist on how you are using them. You can't control other people using the concepts, but at least when you use these concepts, define them, clarify, not just a formal definition because people don't get necessarily formal definition. Explain, this is what I mean by capitalism. This is how I'm using the term capitalism. This is what capitalism means. When I talk about capitalism, it doesn't mean capital formation. What I mean is a system in which private property is what the government protects and all of the property is owned by private citizens, not by the government. It doesn't regulate, it doesn't control, it leaves people free. And you're right that mixed economy is inefficient and unstable. And we can show that. I mean, look at the financial crisis. The financial crisis is perfect. Now, as inefficient and unstable as a mixed economy is, a completely statist economy is much worse. That is, the principle is this. The more statist economy is, the more unstable and the more inefficient. It's not like Mao's China was stable and efficient. No, it was unbelievably inefficient and it was unbelievably unstable. Unstable to the extent of famines that ripped the country apart and killed gazillions of people. Tens of millions of people. So the more statist you are, the more instability you get. Even when you're poor, you're very, very unstable. The more free you are, the more efficiency and the more stability you get. But stability in a sense of you're limiting the downside. But what you get is dynamism on the upside. I'm using the economist term because it's actually appropriate here. Dynamism, excitement, growth. Yeah, risk-taking and some failure. But upward trajectory. Now, you can cost-benefit elements of freedom in the sense that you can look at economic freedom indexes. There were a couple of them. One of them by the Fraser Institute. One of them, I think by Heritage. Look at economic freedom by different parameters and they correlate economic freedom with wealth. You know, wealth. And you can see that economic freedom is directly associated with wealth creation. The freer economy has done what wealth has created. You can see that in the Fraser Index and you can see that in the Heritage Index. Thank you, Len. That's incredibly generous. Really, really appreciate the support. All right. Matt says, what is your top advice for those who wish to pursue an intellectual career focused on defending capitalism? Thanks for all you do, Iran. You're an American treasure. I appreciate that, Matt. I would say my top advice is to go study at the Ironman University. At the end of the day, that's what I did. I studied Objectivism. I studied it deeply with great professors and I think you should too. I would study Iran. I'd study Len and Peacock and then I would go and enroll in the Ironman University and become and declare you an intent to be an intellectual. Declare you intent to pursue that as a career. And, you know, engage with the one institution in the world that is dedicated to lesbian capitalism unapologetically and not just from an economic perspective, but also from a, you know, from a moral perspective, philosophical perspective. So that would be my advice. And then read, read, read. Read the Austrian economists, particularly if you want to defend capitalism, understand the economy, be up to speed about what's going on in the world today. Learn a lot about that. But get a solid grounding in the philosophical case for capitalism and you can do that at the Ironman University. Liam asked, I just discovered Robert Weisch has over 400,000 subscribers. The country's over that guy is such an obvious fraud to see thousands of people praise him in the comment section of the video makes me nauseous to knowing. Yeah, but, you know, that's right. And it's not just right. It's, it's, it's, you know, a million really, really, really bad guys from Tucker Carlson all the way to what's his name wolf have massive millions of people following them. That suggests that the country is in deep, deep, deep trouble, because the number of people following real advocates of capitalism, real advocates of free markets, a fraction of what of the number of people who follow the status of the left and the status of the right. All right, let's quickly do these five and $10 questions. Action Jackson says, don't answer. I prefer to wait for the topic show just a bit curious as to why there's not more buzz about him eliminating the taxes. I appreciate that you will include it in a show topic. All right, we'll do that soon. Wesley says, is a man ever acting in his rational self interest by giving money to a woman who does only fans? I mean, maybe I'd have to think of how I don't exactly.  I don't exactly know what that means. You know, is he giving him money because he enjoys the entertainment value of watching her? I don't know. What is she doing? Only fans on dress. So I don't know how sexually explicit only fans is.  So I can't rule it out that it could be in somebody's rational self interest. I don't think it's optimal. I don't think it's ideal. I hope it doesn't replace a real strategy, a real, what do you call it, pursuit of real relationships of containing real values that one should engage in. So one has to understand the motives and understand why exactly it's happening.  It really depends on motivation and what exactly is going on. Wesley asked regarding yesterday's show, the U.S. also imported many German scientists technicians after World War Two helped develop the space program, but not just the USSR, true. But the difference is that with the USSR it was kind of a dead end. That is, they got the scientists they developed up to a point and then nothing. And in the U.S., it kept going and going and going and they built on the German scientists and they built more. So yes, some of that technology came from these German scientists, but then it was allowed to grow and build and develop and where as in the USSR, you maxed out on what you could suck out of these German scientists and then there was nothing left. There was no building. Cyan Ray's cell says, as a flat earth of certain powers that be might be hiding the true amount of land and resources we have left and could be larger than our globe says. As a flat earth, I don't think anything you say has any validity about anything. I mean, that is such a ridiculous, silly, unscientific and unserious position to have the flat earth position that it's hard to take anything one says beyond that. Seriously, sorry, but I just can't grasp that level of disengagement from reality, from the facts. It's so bizarre to me. I mean, if all the conspiracy theories, that one is just the most absurd and ridiculous possible. Just yeah, as Jennifer says, just look at the horizon. The Greeks figured this out a long, long time ago. And as somebody who's actually flown around the world, I know that I'm being conned and I know all the pilots are in on it. But as somebody who's actually flown around the world, I can tell you that both is indeed round. All right. What do you think of Catherine Mendes? I think she's great. Look, she showed up and we raised a thousand bucks. I mean, how could I complain about Catherine? Never complain about Catherine. Catherine's fantastic. Michael says, what does a Donald Trump second term look like? Oh, God, do I really have to contemplate that? I don't know. And I'd really have to give it some thought, but I don't know. I think it involves a lot more central planning because I think he now has the supportive Republican senators for that. So I think it involves a lot more kind of what do you call it industrial policy, if you will. What else? It'll involve a lot of account settling against people who hurt him and damaged him. I think it will involve, I think actually a lot friendlier relationships with Russia and China. I think he's going to be soft on both Russia and China. I think he's been much softer on Russia and China. It's going to involve economic decline, higher tariffs. Yeah, I don't know. I'd have to really think it through. And I haven't gotten the point where I've accepted the fact that Donald Trump might win a second term. It's possible. I still think it's unlikely. I think if Donald Trump is the Republican nominee, then unfortunately we're going to have to suffer through a second Biden term. Action Jackson said, did you see the Patrick Bendervid video on selflessness versus selflessness yet? No, I haven't. Why don't you send it to me again? Hopper Campbell, you said yesterday that altruism is the source of nihilism, but I know many nihilists who were never altruistic. Well, you don't know that, right? I don't think you know that. I'm sure you can be a nihilist without being an altruist, but you also don't know where the nihilism comes from. You don't know how they grew up necessarily. You don't know what values they internalized. And my point about nihilism is that nihilism is often a result of the rejection of altruism. And in that sense, altruism is the source. It's by realizing that altruism is unlivable, that altruism is undoable, that altruism is horrible and awful, and that there's no real alternative that they embrace nihilism. It's not that they have to be altruists and then they become nihilists. It's that they recognize altruism as the only moral alternative. They reject it and become nihilists. So altruism is what sets the framework, the context for the nihilism. I hope that's understood. Hopper Campbell, is Japan less regulated and controlled than the U.S. and Western Europe? No, Japan is more regulated and controlled than the U.S. and Western Europe. Primarily, it's its financial system, it's corporations, the way the corporations. There's no bankruptcy, really. There are no real bankruptcy laws in Japan or the bankruptcy laws are relatively recent. There's no restructuring in Japanese. There are no hostile takeovers in Japan. There's very little, there's no employment flexibility. It's very hard to fire workers. It's very hard to hire workers as a consequence. Many respects when you hire a worker, you're hiring them for life. No, Japan is much more regulated and as a consequence Japan is significantly poorer than both the United States and parts of Western Europe. Japan at its heyday in the 70s and 80s and since then has stagnated for the most part. It is kind of sad how productive and smart and innovative the Japanese people can be at how relatively meager their economic results are in their GDP per capita is. James asked, prejudice are what fools use for reason. I think that gives fools too much credit to associate with reason somehow. Clark says, I'm not shocked objectivists haven't taken over the world yet, but I am rather perplexed as to why it isn't significantly bigger given how good our intellectuals like yourself are. Me too. I'm perplexed as well. It should be much bigger. But I think what you what you gain an appreciation for with time is how really revolutionary what I'm saying is. It sounds kind of reasonable and logical. It makes sense to you guys, but it's truly revolutionary. It truly is, you know, rejection of altruism. That's a big deal. It's not a little thing. That's a big deal. And it's so hard rejection of religion, rejection of religion.  I did a talk on Thursday night before my flight, right? I did a talk and then I went to the airport and caught an 11 p.m. flight to Miami. And the talk was the young aspiring entrepreneurs, young aspiring business leaders. And, you know, they're trying to they're struggling with this idea of faith, they're struggling with religion. They can't give it up. And I explained to them how that inhibits their ability to defend capitalism, to believe in capitalism and to stick to their beliefs in capitalism. It's very difficult to output those beliefs, unfortunately. Not your average algorithm. Did you see the Center just signed the Universal School Vulture Bill? Every kid in Florida gets $8,000 voucher. That's great. It's amazing how little press that got, even among, even on the right, and how much press his six week abortion ban got on the right. Yeah, I mean, I think the best thing is the best thing Republicans are doing right now. The number one unequivocally best thing Republicans are doing right now, maybe the only good thing Republicans are doing right now, is the school voucher school education, saving account kind of programs that they're instituting in state after state after state. So it truly is, it truly is fantastic. And I'm excited to see it. And I will read up about the Florida plan and give you my opinion on how good it is relative to other plans around the country. But yes, the best thing Republicans are doing right now at the state level is a school choice. And that potentially is a real revolution long term, more so than I think even Republicans know. And I think I don't think this is 100% behind this. I've talked about this in the past. I don't think this is what excites him because I think too many Republicans of the National Conservative ilk, one control of education, and this takes control out of their hands, to some extent. Frank says, who was the young woman with the glasses and hot legs in the Colombian video in the pub? She seemed to be a leftist but also quite elitist towards you. She was the local reporter for Forbes magazine in Colombia. So she was, yeah, she was part of the elite. She was well educated. She was a reporter, somebody who writes for Forbes in Colombia. And she would consider herself, I think, kind of a center left person economically. She was the one who kind of said, well, what about, look at America, look at all these problems in America. Capitalism, you know, look at all these problems. She's typical and that's a typical kind of center left person. Not to have a algorithm in the future. Will it no longer require bravery to be the first handed intellectual honesty will just be the norm? It will always acquire some effort, but no, yes, I think it will require a lot less bravery when everybody's doing it. When it's just a norm and people are raised to be intellectually honest. I think it just will require a lot less of you to just, in a sense, just do it. There's no nobody's going to come after you for doing it, whereas today there's definitely a cost. Thank you, everybody. Thank you to all the superchatters. Thank you to all the people who are listening to the show. As I said, I'll be back tomorrow, not to exactly what time and on Sunday again, not to exactly what time.  Again, thanks to everybody. And if you want to become a monthly subscriber, which I greatly value and which would contribute to the show immensely and to the stability of the show and the long run prospects of the show, please do so on Patreon. Patreon is seems to be the lately the preferred medium that people are using. So Patreon Subscribestar, if you don't want Patreon, or PayPal through your onbrookshow.com slash support. You can make one-time contributions. You can make my preferred method is monthly contributions. So thank you, everybody. I look forward to the shows in the weekend. Thank you in particular to our superchatters, Les and Troy and Shazmat for the big bucks that they contributed today. Thank you for everybody else who contributed. I will see you all on the weekend.


I should speak about what is an armed conflict and this is a specificity of international humanitarian law that it applies only to armed conflicts and therefore it's decisive whether we have an armed conflict because otherwise humanitarian law does not apply. My first point is perhaps about, I see so many faces of experts that I don't dare to say it but perhaps for the few people who are not experts to clarify who decides because I most often ask this question and I have to tell you it is not the states concerned who decide finally whether there is an armed conflict or not so when there is an armed conflict in the ICC I don't speak about countries so Utopia there's an armed conflict in Utopia and Nirvana supports some rebels in Utopia and the question is first is there a non-international armed conflict in Utopia or is it even an international armed conflict because there is such a support of these rebels it's neither Utopia nor Nirvana who have the final say everyone every subject of international law or international organizations the ICC every scholar can have an opinion about this but obviously they cannot impose their opinion on Utopia and Nirvana because Utopia and Nirvana if they say there's no armed conflict what the others say is not decisive because we are in international law where most of the time we don't have a court or a body deciding the same thing is if in a hypothetical Gulbekistan 100,000 troops are fighting against terrorists and the government of Gulbekistan says these are simply terrorists and there's no armed conflict in our country it is since 1949 no longer the case that it is Gulbekistan deciding whether there is an armed conflict but no one else can impose on Gulbekistan the classification so let's look what is an armed conflict and in my view there is no unique definition of armed conflict but there are international armed conflicts these armed conflict between states and there are non-international armed conflicts which are armed conflicts between armed groups or between an armed group and one 15 or 100 states on the other side so decisive is not where it happens but who are the parties to determine whether it's an international or a non-international conflict and let's start with international armed conflict the first your question is the triggering act the nature of the triggering act in my view there it is necessary that there is a use of force but every use of force between states triggers an international armed conflict this is not uncontroversial in the pique des commentaries of the ICSC it is said that also the capture of a soldier is sufficient to trigger an international armed conflict sounds good but the theory behind it is that IHL applies as soon as a situation arises for which there are rules but there are also rules in IHL on the detention of civilians and the treatment of sick people you cannot say every time someone is sick there is an armed conflict nor every time someone a foreigner is arrested therefore I think at the basis there must be a use of force while I agree with the ICSC commentary and the ICSC that for international armed conflict just can be very low the first shot has written this is not uncontroversial the international law association has adopted a report which adopts a unique concept of armed conflict and says there is need of a certain level of violence and otherwise there's no international armed conflict and at least when we hear what states say they indeed don't call international armed conflict everything which means violence between two states but they may have used at Bellum arguments and as we say in Latin falza demonstrazio no notes it in the sense it's not a terminology used by the parties which is decisive then from whom must it come this violence this is everyone who is attributable to a state if that person is not declared by a higher authority as not representing the state the state is then nevertheless responsible but there's no international armed conflict I always give the example of my son who is a Swiss soldier as all Swiss men and if he is drunken and on the French border he kills a French soldier and immediately his commander says we are sorry then there was no international armed conflict between sorry I mentioned two countries but you understand okay and this is quite the majority opinion which is something where I have adopted a minority opinion after teaching for years the opposite and it was one of my doctoral students who convinced me is the target in my view when a state is specifically targeting an armed group in another country even if that country doesn't consent that's a violation of the UN start obviously except if it is in self-defense but it is a non-international armed conflict while the majority opinion is that as soon and this is what I taught to two generations of students so I feel sympathetic to this opinion the majority opinion is as soon as you use force on the territory of a non- consenting state there is an international armed conflict I think the rules are simply not appropriate say today sorry I mentioned countries the US attacks on the so-called Islamic State on the territory of Syria if we assume that Syria does not consent with them the rules of international armed conflicts are not really appropriate to that and therefore while the use that bellow applies obviously in use in Bello I would apply the law of non-international of non-international conflicts and with that we come to non-international conflict non-international conflicts need a higher level of violence because while fortunately it's not normal between states to use force it is normal that there is violence within a state unfortunately not every violence in a state is an armed conflict because in an armed conflict you can do many more things which would be prohibited in peacetime and in addition the armed group must have a minimum level of organization which is quite a level of organization there is a controversy whether there is a third criterion which is a political aim I have some sympathy in theory for the idea that if the aim is purely drug dealing this is not an armed conflict but it creates great problems of application and every state will then say our rebels this is not a political aim they are simply criminals and then you have to discuss is this criminal or not criminal and are the terrorists and so on and therefore I think political aim and it's nowhere in the texts that the political aim is decisive and how do you define political aims and so on so then protocol additional two has a higher level you must control territory and it must be a conflict between governmental forces and rebel forces then some conflicts to some non-international armed conflicts the whole of international human attain law applies which is if there's an agreement between the parties or if there's a recognition of belligerency which must be expressed by the government now how can a conflict be mixed obviously many conflicts are mixed there here we have two situations either if a state has overall control this was the case of nova nirvana and utopia has overall control over rebels in a neighboring country then in reality this is an international armed conflict one single international conflict another possible situation is if we have an intervention of a state in a non-international armed conflict without control over the armed group then we have two conflicts we have the conflict between the armed group and the government and an international conflict between the outside state intervening against the state and in favor of the armed group while when outside states intervene in favor of the government the conflict remains a non-international armed conflict finally I forgot something of certain actuality among the international armed conflict there are two specific situations belligerent occupation so if utopia occupies a peninsula of nirvana even if there is no armed resistance the law of international armed conflict applies and second national liberation wars in which a people is fighting against foreign occupation colonial domination or a racist regime is at least on the protocol one an international armed conflict and I conclude by saying that somehow these distinctions between what is an armed conflict what is an international a non-international sound embarrassing especially for human Italians because they can invoke the rules only once they have classified the conflict and the other the state has a first line of defense saying we are not in an armed conflict today Switzerland doesn't have to comply with the Sergei Neva convention because there's no armed conflict and so if Gulbekistan says there's no armed conflict it doesn't have to comply with IHL but the distinction is states like this distinction it is in my view inherent in the Westphalian system and it has also some advantages for the persons affected by armed conflict because precisely when there is no armed conflict things are prohibited which are at least not prohibited in armed conflicts like to kill deliberately people or to detain people without judicial control for an indefinite time which is the prisoner of war status and even between international and non international armed conflict I think but here I'm nearly a minor this is a minority opinion that is also in the interest of victims that the two are not governed by the same detailed rules because anyway armed groups could never respect those rules thank you very much because this allows me on the first issue to correct the wrong impression I have given my point about every use of force was about international armed conflict for non-international armed conflict you need a level of violence which in my view is quite high here I'm not in agreement with piquete simply at the time of piquete humanitarian law was all we had while today we all have human rights law so we have to take and this is not a policy I never make policy policy no it's not policy it's low because law is interpreted in the context of the rest of international law and the fact that we have other rules allows us to interpret the inter applicability of existing rules so this was for international conflict non international conflict we have a higher level of violence and I would say if and we all hope for that what you hope happens in Colombia there's no more armed conflict because the violence by the drug dealers is not of a sufficient level and the important point in my view is which should make you relax is that as far as I know all the drug dealers are not one party so if you are correct you have to take each group and analyze whether the hostilities between that group and it's not the drug dealers it's the armed group of the drug dealers it has a sufficient level of violence to be a non-international armed conflict and here's the big difference with Afghanistan the drug but they fight against each other while basically the Taliban there are dissensions and so on but they are one party to the conflict and so while out of this very justified concern you have to say let us introduce the criterion of a political aim and as I said I have some sympathy for it perhaps because I'm from the 1968 generation of political aims are for me somehow noble and people who want to deal with drugs are not noble but nevertheless I must say in international reality otherwise how every government has or nearly every government has a good case to say you know these people are only criminals and then you have perhaps because I was an ICSE delegate I imagine myself negotiating waiting with the government and saying no no these are not only criminals these are also people who have a political aim and then how do you define it is it sufficient that they declare a political aim or do we have to make a nice seminar at the Grader the Institute about because University of Geneva doesn't deal with such issues about whether this is genuinely political so you see the point the result is exactly the same you want to reach but I wouldn't add the political aim as a criteria