Decreating scarcity so a fire can't grow if you're always smothering it And so what you want to think about his desire and his interest and his being in love with you is is kind of like a fire and so You want to let it grow you want to give it oxygen you want to give it air You don't want to completely leave it alone, which is what some women say a lot of times when when I say stuff like this They're like oh become scarce and they completely disappear. They're like abracadabra and they're gone, right? And all of a sudden they're gone and they're like, oh, I never contact him. I never reach out to him I never respond to him and you're like, oh, I couldn't imagine why he's not trying to talk to you anymore Right, so there there's a there's a middle ground here There's always a middle ground for all of these things that we talked about But what it is is most women come to us and they're in a state of being needy and clean and smothering and so They're smothering a guy trying to talk to him all the time I send him messages every single day, you know, 12 times a day and he doesn't respond and it's like, okay Chill out create some scarcity pull back a little bit.  What's she doing right now? Is she out with other guys? Why is she you know? I sent her this message yet at 8 p.m. On a Friday and she didn't respond until the next day what why was that right and it's because You have other things going on in your life, which is what you want to do, right? We we value and appreciate things because of the contrast between Experiencing it and not Experiencing it so it's we don't value and appreciate things because it's there all the time We value and appreciate it because of the contrast and so that is what causes us to miss it And so stopped sending him good morning texts every single day Stop right and stop doing things where you're just trying to constantly reach out to him and figure out What's going on with him and talking to him and smothering him all the time and finding out? You know what's going on with you? Are you mad at me?


The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Brookshow on this Monday, January 9th, the beginning of a new week. Everybody is having had a great weekend. And it's off to a good start. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to a global audience. All right, let's jump right in. Since we talked a lot about Speak up the House of Representatives in the United States, the election for it, it wrapped up. It actually wrapped up after midnight on Saturday night. Finally, Kevin McCarthy had given, I guess, enough. There was enough conflict. There was enough haranguing as to convince those who were still holding out against Kevin McCarthy to either vote for him or to abstain by abstaining. All he really needed is a majority, so enough abstain to give him a majority. And Kevin McCarthy, the Republican, is now Speaker of the House of Representatives. I think a lot of people just wanted to go home for the weekend and had enough and realized that this was inevitable in the end. It is interesting, though, to read the list of so-called concessions that McCarthy made in order to get some of these votes. These are concessions, I think, made. If you remember, 20 people voted against him in the earlier rounds. And at some point, that had dwindled down to the 5, 6, kind of what I would consider some of the wackier Republican legislatures. But it is interesting to get those and some of those voted present and never actually voted for McCarthy. They weren't there. The last four or five were not there for any concessions. They didn't care. I mean, they were there to disrupt. They were there to stop him from becoming Speaker. They didn't care about the details. But the other 15, it turns out, did. And actually got some concessions from McCarthy. And some of these, I have to say, are pretty good. Some of these commitments by McCarthy actually will make the House of Representatives, I think, better. Part of the reason they will make it better is they will force legislation to go slower. They will force legislation to be considered. They will maybe force more stalemate, which is good, and create more barriers to actually passing laws, which is good. So I think what turned out is that the people voting against McCarthy were split into two. Those who actually really care about what they call conservative ideas or limiting of its spending or shrinking government at least while they're in their opposition, they care about these things. And those who just did it for the sake of disrupting and for more nihilistic reasons. So here's some of the concessions that he got. Now, the first one is kind of ridiculous and more, I'd say, for the nihilistic wing of them. And that is that at any point, any member of the Republican caucus can object to McCarthy being Speaker and force another vote on the speakership. So I think it used to be that a majority of the caucus had to vote against the Speaker to force a new vote. McCarthy then compromised and said, OK, five people want to call a motion to vacate the speakership. He'll accept that. Now it's one. So at any point, anybody in the House can demand and Kevin McCarthy has agreed that he will put himself to a vote again. That is just absurd and ridiculous. But anyway, that's one of the elements. But some of these other ones are actually pretty good. Here's one. It includes a rule that says, and again, some of this is speculation because the rules haven't been formalized. We'll see what they are finally. But here's one. It includes a rule that says that any move to raise the debt ceiling must also be accompanied by spending cuts. Any time spending cuts on the table, I'm for it. Of course, this is exactly what I was hoping for. I was hoping for a Congress that would actually put a stalemate to Democratic Senate and a Democratic president who would actually force Biden to negotiate that if he wanted certain programs, he would have to cut. They would have to actually be spending cuts. Now we'll see if they live up to this. We'll see if Republicans live up to this. We'll see if they're willing to hold out. Like they did in 2011, I think it was. The new Tea Party group hauled up. We will see if they can hold out. Let's see. Let's see some of the other good rules. Appropriation bills, 12 appropriation bills will now be voted on individually rather than one omnibus spending bill. Good thing. The more you break down the federal budget, the more the corruption inherent in it becomes real and becomes evident to people. And the better it is. Let's break it down. Let's not make it 12 appropriations bills. Let's divvy it up into 100 different bills. I don't care. The more we break it down, the more we get into the nitty gritty, the more we're forced to confront the nitty gritty, the better it is. Having 12 appropriation bills instead of one omnibus bill, good thing. Again, let's see if they live up to it, but this is good. Let's see. It also gives lawmakers. This is a revolutionary one. This gives lawmakers 72 whole hours to review bills before they come to the House floor. 72 whole hours to actually read the bill. I mean, that's pretty cool. Maybe we won't get a situation where Nancy Pelosi, a member, said about Obamacare. They'll read it after it's passed. We'll figure out what's in it after it's passed. Just vote though he is supposed to vote. That's good. Interesting that none of these, by the way, none of these were passed. None of these issues were passed. And none of these were done in the House when Republicans had a majority in the House when Trump was president. So no spending cuts in order to raise the debt ceiling didn't happen when Trump was president and Republicans held the House. None of this, as far as I remember, 12 appropriation bills, none of the 72 hours, all of this didn't exist. So this is the Republican Party being its better self. And the Republican Party is always its better self when they are in the opposition. Never when they are in power. Now, it also gives lawmakers all kinds of extra ability to pass stuff regarding abortion and regarding border security and other, what I consider, bad areas. So we'll see how it all shakes out. But to the extent that this will actually have an impact on reducing the effectiveness of the House to pass grand legislation, in particular omnibus bills and in particular appropriation bills, a good thing, good thing. Government spending when Trump was in power went up no less than it did in the, actually more, faster, significantly faster than it did in the final six years of the Obama administration. Trump and Bush spent more money than Obama did in the last six years. The first two years, he both had a Democratic House and Senate. And Obama also was coming out of the financial crisis. So there was a lot of stimulus packages involved, including the Bush stimulus. But in terms of normal times, non-stimulus times, Trump was just as spendy. And Republicans spent just as much as Obama did and as Biden is, again, if you take out the stimulus package. Well, if you include Trump's stimulus package, I'm not sure. So OK, I'd rather have a Republican party that's decent as an opposition party than not having anything and having the Democrats just steamroll. If only Republicans had held the Senate two years ago, a lot of, and I blame Donald Trump for that, for not holding the Senate. If only they'd held the Senate two years ago, then much of the Biden agenda would have never gone through. And we would have been saved from, I think, some of the economic devastation, damage, real damage that the Biden agenda is causing. But so be it. All right, big news out of Brazil. So over the weekend, large numbers of Brazilians basically rioted and then went into basically all three. As far as I can tell, again, hard to tell from all the news stories. But it went in and ransacked all three branches of government. They attacked the presidential palace. They attacked the parliament and the courts, and the Supreme Court, all in the city of Basilea. In Brazil, Basilea is the capital of Brazil. This was in response to claims by the right in Brazil, the pro Bolsonaro, the former president, that the election was rigged, that the election was stolen, that Lula, the leftist president, is a corrupt gangster, which I actually agree he is, and the election was stolen. I'm skeptical about the case of stolen, but I'm no expert on Brazilian electoral politics. Anyway, there have been demonstrations ever since the election was held, large demonstrations in many of Brazil's cities. Over the last week or so, there has been a coordinated effort to rally people around and to get them to Basilea. A part of the demonstrations, interestingly enough, and this is a big difference between Brazil and the United States, a big part of the demonstrations in Brazil have been centered around military bases, so military headquarters. So a lot of the demonstrations have been focused on trying to urge the Brazilian military to depose Lula and install Bolsonaro, or even a military regime, but anything, including a military coup, to get rid of Lula. Again, these are very large demonstrations. This is not a small portion of the Brazilian population. They are motivated and inspired, and it seems like well-funded. I find it interesting, and I don't think accidental, that all of this happened while Bolsonaro is out of the country. Bolsonaro himself is in Florida. He left on supposed vacation a few days before the inauguration of Lula, which happened, I think, on the 1st of January, and has been in Florida since, and as far as I can tell, staying in Florida. There are rumors, and again, I don't have any inside information, there are rumors that are indicating that he is afraid that if he returns to Brazil, he will be prosecuted and sent to jail, just like Lula was. We'll get to that in a minute, and that he might try to stay outside of Brazil while Lula is president. We'll see how successful he is. So the demonstrators are urging the military to get rid of Lula, and this is why they're demonstrating in front of military bases, in front of military headquarters. They were cleared out of all government offices yesterday, but they are still. I was just watching video. I assume it's real. It really is hard to tell about these things, but I assume it's real. They are still large demonstrations in Brasilia and potentially elsewhere in Brazil, all with the idea of, and I think this riot and breaking into government offices, all of this is intended, I think. This is my evaluation. All of this is intended to trigger the military to act, to trigger the military to actually engage and participate. Sao Amaral says on the chat, he says, we love America so much here in Brazil. We copy everything you do a few months, years later. I think there's some truth to that. But this is not a much larger scale than January 6 was. This is, I think, much better coordinated and much better organized. And this is explicitly geared towards the military, explicitly geared towards getting the military involved and trying to induce the military to escalate this.  I don't think there's any question about this. He was a Marxist. He was president of Brazil before. He was ultimately prosecuted for fraud. I was in Brazil, and I can't remember the year, but I was in Brazil and watched on Brazilian on a big screen at an event that I was at. I was speaking at a student event. And right after my speech finished, they put on a large screen. They projected the television onto a large screen just behind me. And on that screen, you could see Lula being arrested, literally being put in handcuffs and put in the back of a police car. The audience and the thing erupted in tears. Champagne was brought out. I mean, it was a massive celebration that Lula was going to jail. A few months later, Lula was released from jail by the Supreme Court. There's a lot of accusations about that this was corruption. This is an example of corruption. These are people who philosophically and politically aligned with Lula and released them from prison. And to everybody's, I guess nobody was really surprised. He ran again. And I think more than anything, because of Bolsonaro's unpopularity, because Bolsonaro is so unpopular, I don't think the vote for Lula was primarily because people love Lula. I think what Bolsonaro lost was the middle class, the educated. But much of the middle class, I think, was lost to Bolsonaro because Bolsonaro is such a mindless thug, maybe on a lot of issues, he leaves people alone. At least he's not a leftist. And at least he's not, you know, he's a thug like I think Lula. But in the end, I think the middle class didn't vote for Bolsonaro. They voted for Lula. And I think that's what really significantly shifted the tide towards Lula. Not because people in Brazil love Lula, but people in Brazil rejected Bolsonaro. I think to a large extent, that parallel is the US. I don't think Biden won an election because anybody liked Biden, anybody respected Biden, anybody thought Biden's ideas were good ideas. I think people voted for Biden in a record turnout because they hated Trump and they despised Trump. And I think it's exactly the same in Brazil. I think people turned out to vote for Lula because they hated Bolsonaro. I think many other candidates could have beaten Lula. And indeed, what's interesting about Brazil, and this is different than what happened in the US, is that while Lula lost his political party and many political parties who you would call classical liberal or conservative political parties that are on the right one parliament for the first time, when Bolsonaro initially got elected. He had a fight with parliament. He had a parliament that was opposed to much of what he represented. When Bolsonaro lost, parliament was swayed in his direction. And Lula is president now, and Lula is not going to be able to get anything done, because indeed the parliament that Lula has working for him is dominated by people who oppose Lula. See, in Brazil, you've got divided government in both directions. When Bolsonaro won, it was against him. And now when Lula won, parliament is against him. So it's going to be interesting what happens in Brazil. It's a little scary. I'm going to be in Brazil soon. So hopefully all these demonstrations and everything are gone by then. And there's some resolution, some peaceful resolution. But there is a real possibility of a military coup. There is a real possibility of reprisals by the Lula regime against the Bolsonaro supporters, although I think that's relatively unlikely given the fact that Lula has to be very careful, because the military doesn't like him. And his own parliament doesn't support him. So you've got a really, really sensitive and dangerous, I think, situation in Brazil right now. We'll keep watching it. I'll keep updating. And if I hear anything from my Brazilian friends, if I get any inside information that I think is worthwhile, I will pass it on to you. We have a lot of, it's interesting that we have a lot of listeners to the Iran Book Show in Brazil. And as I said, I'm going to Brazil in March, at the end of March. So we might be able to get you some first-time information as well. All right, some quick stories. One out of China, just quickly out of China, because we talk a lot about China here, and we will continue to talk a lot about China. China's opening up completely, basically, from COVID. China's allowing flights out, flights in. China opened up its border with Hong Kong for the first time in three years. The border is completely open, although they are requiring, I think, negative COVID tests to enter Hong Kong. The world responded to China's opening up over COVID by placing a lot of testing requirements on people flying into these countries from China. I think this is all wasted.  You just have to accept that. You might be able to slow it down by requiring testing, but you're not going to stop it. And once, of course, supposedly this latest COVID virus is super contagious, that is not going to be stopped by testing at the border, given that people often take connecting flights. And there's no way to control this kind of virus once it's set out. So it's out there. Everywhere, people are getting it everywhere. It's a cold. It's a flu to a large extent at this point. It's going to be seasonal. It's going to be endemic. It's just part of life. You've got to loosen up. If you don't want to get it, if you want to lower your chances of getting it, do the things that lower the chances of getting a virus. Stay away from crowded places indoors. Wear a mask indoors in crowded places. Wear a good mask indoors in crowded places. If you really want to avoid getting it, which is fine, but don't impose that on other people. All right, so China is opening up significantly at the same time. Just a small economic point that I think is interesting. As China opens up, its economy will start revving up again. Again, I don't expect China to go back to high economic growth. I think China going back to some growth we'll see, but at least economic activity. I mean, with zero COVID and the closures and lately just COVID spending around China like crazy with hundreds, potentially hundreds of millions of people getting it. Production has just dropped dramatically. As production now starts accelerating back in China to previous levels, just a heads up that you will see the price of gas go up, which means the price of the pump for you is going to go up. Already today, I think this morning, gas prices, crude prices up quite a bit this morning because of anticipation of increased economic growth. There's also some expectation in the markets right now, and this is why the stock market went up on Friday and maybe today, some expectation that payrolls eased a little bit, although not by much. I have to say this is the markets kind of trying to find good news, even when there's none for them. Payrolls eased a little bit. So they're expecting now that the Fed will not have to raise interest rates quite as much. So maybe the recession coming won't be quite as bad. I mean, there's a lot of hoping and praying and faith and sticking your thumb into your finger into the wind and trying to guess what the outcome is going to be in the numbers. But over the last couple of days, there's been optimism in the market, and the market is up, and that optimism is that we'll avoid a recession. And part of that means there'll be more demand for fuel, and that means all prices are going up. So that's kind of if you want to understand what's going on right now in the markets. You know, I don't buy it. I don't think we have any more, much more information today than we did three, four days ago. Markets are like this, and it's impossible and unhealthy to try to guess short-term movements in the market and to try and guess kind of the implication of news to a particular market, any particular news item to particular market trends. Although that's what you've got a whole class of people, financial pundits, who are paid to do exactly that. Oh, the markets went down today because interest rates did this or interest rates did that, or sentiment went that way or sentiment went that way. All of it is nonsense. Short-term, it's almost impossible to explain stock market movements at the time they happen. All right, finally, Biden is in Mexico meeting with the president of Mexico and the prime minister of Canada. It is interesting that all three countries right now are run by leftists and sent to left, significantly sent to left from the economics. Trudeau and Lopez Obrado, the Mexican president, are significantly left. Biden here is a real moderate as compared to his counterparts from Canada and from Mexico. So a lot of the discussion then, a lot of the news you're gonna hear is about immigration and migration policy and the Mexican border and all of that. I mean, that's a bigger story and a bigger issue that we'll cover another time. What interests me are kind of the underlying economic issues, which I think are much more important, are much more important to all three. Basically, the Mexicans and Canadians have come to meet with Americans in order to try to encourage more transfers of wealth towards each direction or to defend existing transfers of wealth that they are getting. So for example, Mexico, in the past, in the previous administration, the administration before the current leftist president in Mexico, the previous administration actually changed the constitution in Mexico and actually opened up Mexican markets dramatically to American investment in the energy industry. The ideas from a few years ago of the Mexican administration was to weaken the wall of the Mexico state or company to take control away from government-owned entities and to encourage the private sector not only in energy, but in electricity. Utility provisions and all of that. There was a huge push towards privatization, including foreign ownership and the investment of foreign capital into Mexico. Come Lopez Obrado, the leftist Mexican president, and he reversed all of that. He did away with all of that. He strengthened the Mexico state or company and made it very, very difficult and very, very risky for foreigners to be investing in the sector and generally in utility and energy sector. The problem is that a bunch of American companies that already made significant investments and now afraid those investments are gonna go poof because Mexico basically nationalizing them. This summit is meant primarily by the Canadians and the Americans, both have an interest here, to put pressure on the Mexican president to go, in a sense, not to nationalize these investments and to return to a path of liberalizing these industries. They're naive, I think. The Mexican president clearly has no intention of giving in on this. He is a statist. He is a socialist. He is committed to these positions. He has no intention of returning to a more liberalized energy market, although he could lose the next election and have no say in it, but at least as long as he is president. By the way, he is also trying to change the electoral policies in Mexico to make sure that his people will never lose another election. That's part of his agenda. So there is, as part of NAFTA, the United States and Canada have filed protests against the Mexicans in terms of their restrictions on these investments, the potential investment loss, and so there's a lot of negotiating around that and a lot of the summit is going to be dealing with that. Now, one of the things the Mexican leader is trying to get, what he wants is he wants to increase, he wants Mexico basically to replace China in the supply chain. He wants to increase manufacturing in Mexico. He wants to make Mexico, in a sense, the supplier of finished goods to the United States. He wants to increase manufacturing in Mexico. There's the increased jobs in Mexico. Of course, all this done with a heavy hand of central planning as a leftist status would do. So what he wants, of course, is he wants the United States to invest heavily in manufacturing in Mexico, manufacturing of goods to be imported into the United States. And the United States has that incentive primarily because of NAFTA, so tariffs are very low and it would be very easy. Transportation costs are very low. The challenge is that Mexico doesn't have what China has and it doesn't have what India has and that is a large base of engineers, a large primarily for the tech industry, a huge base of engineers. It's already true that the United States auto companies make a lot of automobiles in Mexico. It's already true that a lot of simple manufacturing, manufacturing just doesn't need large numbers of engineers, it's already done in Mexico. What Mexico lacks, what Asia has are an abundance of engineers. Also less crime and Mexico needs to really work on that if they expect to see large investments. Now Trudeau in Mexico also wants the United States to invest, he wants the United States to invest in electric vehicle supply chain. He's trying to bolster the Canadian manufacturing, particularly mining electric vehicles and battery manufacturing and he's trying to twist America's hand into getting that investment in the U.S. And what's gonna happen in this conference, although I'm sure everything's already happened in the background, I don't think these leaders actually haggle, but what they represented as a haggling over is who gives whom what and who compromises where and generally money flowing out of the United States to these things. Just to give you a sense of how this all works, there are provisions in the inflation reduction act that Biden signed last year, you remember that act which includes $7,500 of tax credits to buy electric vehicles, but it's interesting, it's to buy electric vehicles made in North America. So both the Mexicans and the Canadians have a vested interest in it, right? So if you buy an electric vehicle and make it made in Mexico or Canada, you still get the discount. And therefore, both Mexico and Canada are vying for a piece of this action. They're vying for electric vehicles to be made in their countries. I mean, a big chunk of Canadian exports is automobiles and automobile parts, which is huge, which they send primarily into the United States, but across the border. So this credit was a result, I mean, this was the idea by America, right? This false, mook and list idea, but the Canadians and the Mexicans lobbied heavily to make it included Canada and Mexico, which is better than nothing. I'm all for that. I'm against the whole bill, but I'm for if you're gonna make it more inclusive. Yeah, 9% of all Canadian exports are in the auto sector. The problem is though, that in spite of the fact that the 7,500 tax credit to buy electric vehicles, the law, this is the reduction, Inflation Reduction Act, which could become, could be called the Inflation Increase Act. The law also has a provision that only benefits US manufacturers that doesn't benefit Canadian manufacturers. That is there is an advanced manufacturing production credit in the Inflation Reduction Act. And that offers tax credit to battery makers located in the US, but not if they're located in Canada. And Canada actually has invested a lot, a lot of money in battery manufacturing for electric cars in Canada. It wants to be the supplier that replaces China. Canada also has vast resources of minerals that could supplant the minerals used for batteries supplying China in the sense of providing those minerals. So Canada wants to become the hub of batteries, but the law that the US passed and we consume all these batteries doesn't give them an tax credit, doesn't give them the subsidy, if you will. So they want to try to get America to expand the subsidy to include them. Anyway, you can see they're kind of haggling. Once you start divvying up money, it's not only the states that are constantly fighting over who gets how much money and which manufacturing plant or where's the manufacturing plant located and who gets, which congressman gets to say, I brought jobs to my district or whatever, but you get countries now haggling over American tax credits and benefits and policies. And I mean, central planning gone haywire, gone crazy. And what's the purpose of all this? If it's to reduce our dependence on China, why not give the tax credit to China? Sorry, to Canada, but there's no logic to these things. There's no rationale for these things. This is all about pressure politics. This is all about pressure group politics. This is all about twisting arms. This is all about, I'll give something, you get something. Maybe the Mexicans will secure American investment in the oil industry and in exchange, the United States will give Mexico something. I'm not sure what Canada has. Canada seems to be the weak player in this whole episode. Anyway, that's what is really the bulk of the negotiating going on in Mexico City with these three leaders. It's all about how to allocate wealth, our wealth, how to allocate our money and how to allocate power in terms of central planning across the three countries and across NAFTA, which is supposed to be a free trade zone and just have a free trade zone. But then how do you have a free trade zone when one country, and this is the argument we always made about China, when one country is subsidizing its industry and other countries are not, that's not fair, that's all we claim against China, and now we're getting accused of doing the same thing we accused China of doing. All you need for free trade is the unilaterally lower tariffs and all other restrictions on trade to zero. And let the trade flow and then other countries can either mimic you and benefit from that or they can keep their tariffs and suffer the consequences of that. That is, it's not just tariffs, it's trade restrictions, broadly. And that is it, that's trade policy. That's trade policy. From your perspective, it's free trade. Their perspective, it's not. That's their problem, not yours. They want to tax their people for buying American stuff? That's their problem, not yours. That's what free trade means. That's what Adam Smith is talking about. That's what economists have been talking about for 250 years, one of the few issues in economics that is not really debated. Even Paul Krugman won his Nobel Prize for an article about this. Lower tariffs to zero, eliminate all trade restrictions and you benefit massively. And if other countries don't mimic you, they lose, they lose. All right, thank you guys. We've already got some superchatters, some people, friend Harper, thank you. Marilyn, thank you. Ryan, thank you. Wes, thank you. Adam, thank you. Those are people who contributed to stickers. We are $68 short to like, if everybody listening live right now did 50 cents, 50 cents, then we would make the goal. So 50 cents, 120 people watching live, I think we crossed 130, it's good. Viewship is actually going up on these new shows. That is a good thing. All right, Len asked for 60 Canadian dollars. Enjoyed the music reviews, found it fun, okay. Mine, 80s, college, radio, favorite, two songs, Monument and Kinetic by the sound, Adrian Boorland, is it $20 per song? No, unfortunately it's $100 per song. And I'm actually thinking of ending my song review career. I'm not sure, you know, this is real value, given that I'm granting in advance that there's nothing objective about this.  You know, and I worry about insulting some of you, putting up $100 to have music reviews. So I'm thinking of ending it and not doing it anymore, but I'm open to persuasion, but that is my inclination right now. Sorry, Len, but it was $100 a song, which is what, but it is interesting that people keep wanting more for me to review more songs in spite of, in spite of, I don't know, my negative review of almost everything they ask for. So you guys are collecting for punishment, I guess. But it is, you know, maybe it's just fun. Maybe you don't mind and you just enjoy the fun of it. Ryan says, hi, Iran. If antitrust is a gross violation of property rights, it is, why has the law persisted for so long without this being court overturning? Can this be discussed on your next show with a guest lawyer, Happy New Year? I'll have to see if there's any of our lawyers wants to discuss antitrust. I don't know if they do or don't. I'll check it out, but let's see. The reason it's persisted for so long is that there is no explicit protection for property rights in the Constitution. It's implied in the Declaration of Independence, but there's no explicit protection of property rights in the Constitution. And what protection of property rights actually mean? And what the protection of rights means is a for-grab. Again, somebody like Anthony Scalia, the conservative judge thought individual rights were nonsense and stilt, and he thought that ultimately, whatever you consider individual rights had to be weighed against the public interest, had to be weighed against the will of the people, the democratic will of the people. And I think that these laws were passed in the late 19th century. They were ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court then. Follow-up laws I think were challenged and have never been ruled unconstitutional. The courts have always supported it.  And the courts have never rejected the laws as violation of property rights. I mean, once in a while, in a narrow scope, in a narrow definition of property rights, yes, they might force the government to compensate you for violating your property rights, but it's a very narrow scope. It's what constitutes property becomes narrow. But yes, I think it's definitely worth talking to one of our lawyers in terms of what it would take to get to the point where property rights have viewed in the proper way to the point of of doing away with antitrust. I think we're a long, long, long way from that. All right, Michael says, we are also worried about authoritarianism, but isn't living in a mixed economy already living in an authoritarian state at this stage? It might be better to persuade than fight violently, but it's still authoritarian. Well, it's not authoritarian. And Ayn Rand was very clear. Thank you, Len. I think Ayn Rand makes it clear that what, when it's time to have a revolution. And the revolution is when, there are three, I think three criteria is if I remember right.  Two, when you only have one political party, there are no options politically. And three, when we have political prisoners, when you actually are sent to jail for your political activism or for your political ideas, that's when it's time for revolution. I think there's an argument that we're being censored to some extent right now. The government certainly is trying, I don't know how successful it is, but it's trying at the margins to the experimenting with censorship. There's not that big of a difference between our political parties. I don't think we're political prisoners yet. But you could also argue that things are bad enough that we could have a revolution, but my added argument to all of that is that you have to have some small possibility of winning and you have to have enough people engaged in the process to, to be engaged, to be involved, and to think there's some hope for changing people's minds and actually gaining something from the revolution. We're such a tiny minority today. And the people who might be our allies are actually our enemies. So the people that Scott would like to align with are actually our enemies. And so having a revolution with them would actually be a disaster, I think. It would be the end of much worse would come about because of that. So I think when and what kind of revolution and who should be your allies, very, very tricky, very difficult to think about, very difficult to finalize way too soon, way too weak, way too small. We have to be much more dominant to that to happen. All right, so now I've got two people, Linda and Vladimir who say, no more music reviews please, right? And they're putting where their mouth, the money where their mouth is, I respect that. And then, but then we have Len who's jumping in with 200 Canadian dollars to have me review two songs from the 80s. You know, this is why, this is why I don't believe in voting as an effective decision-making process. Now, I asked to vote with dollars assigned to them. That's a much better decision-making process when you actually put your money where your mouth is. So that's actually an improved method over Elon Musk's Twitter methodology we just asked the people. So I'm not gonna ask you whether to do this or not. I will decide. But thank you Len for putting your money where your mouth is and thank you Linda and Vladimir for putting it. I will let you know what I decide. I might declare Len's is the last two music that I will review and go on from there. Let's see, Len also asks, I'm getting my six COVID shot in February 6th, God. No harm and agree with Belgium scientists who speculated early. This is like in 1890s Russian flu, H-Cove OC 43, which took a while and repeat infections, likely variants, model virus behavior artificially, model virus artificially. I'm curious Len, how old are you? I'm curious how old you are. Because I've taken three, I don't intend to take anymore. I'm healthy. If I get a cold, the last time I had COVID, it was bad, but it was bad because I had a cold already and I was traveling and I just made it really bad. Len is 59. I don't know, it seems like diminishing returns at some point. I've already had COVID, I've had three shots. I think I'm done. I'm done even thinking about COVID. The next COVID I get will be another flu, another thing. Now I'm open to being argument other way around. Scott says, what is the status of the rule of law in Brazil? It's very iffy. I mean, I think that there's a lot of corruption. There's a lot of corruption within the legal establishment going all the way up, I think, to Supreme Court. There's a really good show on Netflix. If you guys are interested, it's in Portuguese, so subtitled. But it's very good and it actually describes a big corruption case during Lula's previous administration. In Brazil, in Portuguese it's called the Mecanismo. In English it's called the Mechanism. I think that two or three seasons and it's really interesting and it shows how the system works in Brazil. Now, in this case, it's a semi-happy ending. They actually overcome all the corruption. But there is a lot of corruption. So while there is some aspects of the rule of law which hold, there are also significant corruptions all over the place. Friend Alper says, thoughts on, I can't pronounce his name, but I know who he is, Safi Dan Amos. I know your Bitcoin views, but would you trust him presenting a history of money or fiat inflows? I think so. I haven't read the book yet. It's on my reading list to read his book. But he seems to have a good grasp of the history of money. It basically seems consistent with the Mises view, the Vambavic view, the view of the original Austrians. I need to read him on a fractional reserve banking. Hopefully he's not an anti-fractional reserve person. But from what I've heard him talk about money, he seems online, even though we disagree about Bitcoin. He's a Bitcoin maximalist, I think. Gale says, 7,000 nurses go on strike in New York City. Yes, I saw that story this morning. I don't know anything about it. That's why I didn't mention it. I will research it because that is a big story. I'll do some research and try to cover it maybe tomorrow. One of the limitations of trying to actually know what I'm talking about. Thank you, thank you, Gale. But yes, it's an important story and why obviously, because they have a union and how much of this is driven by the socialization of American healthcare? Probably a lot. Ryan, the true barrier to free trade is education of the populace. Of course, always. That sort of perpetuates, perpetuates mercantilist myths. But of course, when you have politicians like Trump who are, I mean, third grade level understanding of trade, it makes it much worse because he perpetuates those methodologies and perpetuates them among his followers but even beyond that because the left agrees with him. So it kind of legitimizes crazy views about trade. Frederick says, I vote for more reaction commentary and economic videos. I will try and again, I'm gonna start this econ 101 at some point. I need to figure out exactly what that's gonna constitute. Okay, Casey says, I wanna write my premier and prime minister but also send an open letter to the media sites about ending carbon taxes as a true cost saver. What are your thoughts about how I should go about this? Wow. I mean, it's a really difficult issue because carbon taxes are considered, quote, the market solution to global warming. And in a letter, an open letter, it is so difficult A to question something that has become religion and orthodoxy. That is that we are living through a climate change emergency with catastrophic consequences. And then argue the case that the government shouldn't get involved. That is that the government, it's not the government's job to get involved because if it is the government's job to get involved, then maybe, maybe carbon taxes, if you live in an environment of taxes, is the best way to go. So you have to cover all those three. You have to cover, it's not an emergency really. Taxes inappropriate. The government shouldn't be dealing with this. It should leave the private sector alone. The private sector will find solutions to whatever issues, problems might exist. And taxes should not try to manipulate our behavior and our consumption and the way we have. But again, every one of those points is super controversial. The other thing I would recommend is look up, look up Alex Epstein. Alex has argument points about each issue regarding climate change. He might have like a argument points about how to argue against carbon taxes. And that'll just write your letter for you, just articulating those points. So I will refer you to the world expert on how to argue against things like carbon taxes and that is Alex Epstein. Okay, quickly, Jason says, appoint a music reviewer successor. Have a contest to see who gets the title. That would be very difficult because I'm sanctioning the reviews. Do I agree with them? Don't I agree with them? And my problem with the music issue is that I think, I don't think we have the objective knowledge to be able to really be informed about it, at least not to that extent. I mean, I think a music expert can make the argument that you will benefit more from classical music than you will from pop. I'm committed to that. I believe that's absolutely true on a question of me. In order to... J.J. Jigme says, I second the no music review, I hate to see you put through that. And he says, he's a tool fan. So in order to cleanse myself, I'm listening to music I did not enjoy. I actually, yesterday sat down with my wife and we listened to the first movement of Tchaikovsky's violin concerto and the first movement of Tchaikovsky's trio for piano, cello, and violin. I mean, I have no words to express the kind of spiritual experience you get from that. And I don't care Pink Floyd, I don't care anybody, nobody comes close. It is, there is no music written in the last 100 years, I think, I mean, maybe there is some, but no music written by popular musicians in the last 100 years that comes close to the spiritual, emotional experience of actually staying quiet, closing your eyes and listening to that music. It beats everything. And more than anything, my concern about all the popular music out there is not that it's bad. It's that it's taking away time from, and taking away energy and focus from actually experiencing greatness. Not greatness, greatness. It's like focusing on Mickey Mouse cartoons, which are cool and nice. And all you do is Mickey Mouse cartoons at the expense of Michelangelo and Leonardo and Raphael and great 19th century painting and sculpture and all of that. But if you wanna try it, turn off the lights, crank up the volume on Tchaikovsky's violin concerto and Tchaikovsky's trio, that is what is possible to convey through music. And nobody's doing it today, oh, if they are, it's obscure and I don't know about it. All right, everybody, thank you. We beat our goal again. Really, really appreciate you all. And thank you particularly Len for getting us over that goal and contributing a significant amount. And I'll see you all tomorrow morning, every morning. We'll see. Tomorrow is a little tricky for me, time-wise, so I might be moving at times around it a little bit to get it all lined up, but.


In this presentation we're going to look at how programs have been implemented in order to address the growing burden of visual impairment. By the end of the presentation you should be able to know the brief history behind Vision 2020 through out-to-site, understand the concept and priorities of Vision 2020, and assess the actions taken to date and their impact. In the mid-1990s it was projected that the magnitude of global blindness would increase from 38 million in 1990 to 76 million by 2020. This projection was based on existing service levels and on anticipated population growth and aging across the world. It highlighted that immediate action was required. Data in 2002 estimated that global blindness had increased to 45 million with 269 million with low vision. In 1995 the main causes of blindness were found to be cataract and refractive error which occur across all populations and for which there are clear methods of treatment. The other important causes of blindness were Tacoma, Onchococciosis and Vitamin A deficiency in children. These conditions are focal occurring only in certain groups within populations and they require a targeted approach. There is no treatment for end-stage blindness from these conditions and so interventions are focused on prevention. Ivermectin distribution in endemic zones for Onchococciosis, azithromycin distribution for Tacoma and Vitamin A supplementation and immunization for measles for childhood blindness. Glaucoma, Diabetic Retinopathy and other causes such as age-related macular degeneration were felt to be difficult diseases to identify and manage. It was therefore decided that the focus should be on the main causes of blindness where strengthening prevention efforts would address over 75% of avoidable blindness. The aim of implementing a program for preventing avoidable blindness was to change the trend and bring about a decline in global blindness. Efforts would be focused on strengthening services for cataract and refractive error and on prevention activities for Tacoma, Onchocciosis, Vitamin A deficiency and childhood blindness. This would mean over a 20-year period 100 million people would be treated or prevented from going blind. This idea led to the launch in 1999 of a global initiative to eliminate avoidable blindness, known as Vision 2020, the right to sight. To coordinate the initiative, a unique partnership was set up between the World Health Organization and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness, IAPB. The IAPB is a global consortium of non-governmental organizations working in eye care. This partnership has worked towards setting goals and targets which countries can use to address blindness at a local level. The three essential elements for Vision 2020 were to develop appropriate control strategies and targets for service delivery for cataract, Tacoma, Onchocciosis and childhood blindness, to develop human resources and to develop infrastructure and appropriate technology. The suggested model for development was based on a population of 1 million people. It was expected that if these three essential elements, the eye team, working with good infrastructure and equipment and a disease-focused action, were put together and managed well, the result would be the elimination of avoidable blindness. National prevention of blindness programs were developed and acted upon locally. What has happened to global blindness since Vision 2020 began? Recent data from 2010 does show a downward trend. The most important observation here is that despite the growth in the global population, the number of blind people is decreasing. Evidence indicates that surgical rates are going up and that prevention is being strengthened. When we compare data from 2002-2004 with data from 2010, we can see that there has been a global decrease in the number of blind people from 45 to 39 million and a reduction in the prevalence of visual impairment from 5% to 4.2%. Encouragingly, this has been achieved despite a world population increase of half a billion to 6.7 billion and a rise of 18% in the number of people aged over 50. The impact of sight restoration on poverty is felt both by individuals and their communities. A study of patient groups showed that one year after cataract surgery, people whose sight had been restored had become economically active and were able to bring in contributions almost at the same level as other similar members within their community. The impact of restoring sight to the blind can be measured using a quality of life score. The patient group study found that the quality of life score of blind people was a quarter of that of the same persons in the same community. One year after cataract surgery, their quality of life score was equal to others in the community. In summary, a great deal has been achieved in the first decade of the Vision 2020 initiative. Importantly, we know what needs to be done and we have effective models for service delivery in some locations. We have also learnt that thinking globally but implementing locally has an impact and resources can be directed in a strategic manner. This decade, the big challenge is to scale up at national level and integrate Vision 2020 into the health system. This will make models of eye care sustainable. We also need to assess where we are likely to be by the year 2020 and begin to make plans for the harder countries and chronic diseases like glaucoma and diabetes.