Forget the jobs for a moment. I just said how do you do it the Bible says he who has the two coats Give them to the poor. You're talking about the world tomorrow. If you have a feast Give them meat also.  Well, I guess the governor. I guess the conservators rather poor billions into the Pentagon into the military Exactly and poor billions or trillions into welfare for the rich in bailouts Exactly. So that's why you know that they are not serious about cutting government They are only serious about cutting and guess what the next article is about Why food stamps? Let me ask you a quick question The money wasted on the Iraq war by the Bush administration trillions Would that have solved a lot of problems with the poor in the middle class in America? You do not see the figure I gave in the new newsletter At this particular time in history would take one hundred and thirty five billion dollars To take every American out of poverty So you spent trillions in Iraq end of story Hear that people Hear that if you're gonna remember Any part of this show this week this this week this segment that you just heard Burn it in your brain, but guess who did who the Iraq war did make rich. Oh The old geezers in Washington private contractors private contractors Dick Cheney made made bucks Halliburton Yeah War profiteering. Okay. This is the last and most likely a very Aplicable reading for this week's a temporary increase in food stamp benefits Expires October 31st Meaning that for millions of Americans the benefits that help put food on the table won't stretch As far as they have for the past four years. They're not they're not elastic. They're not that elastic to begin with food stamps formally the supplemental nutrition assistance program or snap Not snap that saying I got the power back in a day Go to 47 million Americans in a month Almost half of them are children and teeny. Yeah, the same children that Newt Gingrich wanted to put to work Yeah, well, hey, they're gonna be janitors, baby Yeah, it's child labor janitors to pay for the chicken feed food stamps that their mothers get Yeah Every week is a struggle as it is said Heidi Leno 43 Who lives in Concord with her husband Concord, Massachusetts? nine-year-old daughter and five-year-old twins I've been to I've been there. We hate living paycheck to pay And you have to decide what gets paid Starting in 2009 the federal stimulus pumped 45.2 billion dollars into snap Increasing what would have been a monthly benefit of 588 a Month to 6 6 8 For an average household of four In November that same family will start getting 632 dollars about a 5% cut the benefits which go to one in seven Americans Luxury based on factors including food prices Inflation and income that's a bunch of bullshit because the prices of food are way up And they're getting a cut no sense being made but but Paul Ryan got his 5% cut In food stamps didn't he? four billion dollars 40 billion over 10 years that's why the cut came into effect including for veterans Like we were talking before Billy Morrow the poor veterans everybody close the board. Yeah but of course These congressmen and senators and their families will be living high on the hog continuously continually Eating the best organic food Imaginable those people on the dough in Washington. Yeah Who by the way, oh shameful shameful There were no towels in the in the Athletic rooms in Washington With the shutdown. Oh really?  Why B?  They got a minute dollar store for God's sakes You know like towel Lee says on South Park always bring a towel He also says you want to get high He's an animated towel that smokes marijuana non-stop a Animated towel Yeah, he says it's a cartoon towel that talks it's an adult cartoon like family guy Oh, I just want to give another one because I think he's he's just a great guy Moonbeam Brown Moonbeam Jerry Brown by making industrial hemp Industrial hemp in the state of California legal and of course Jesse Ventura's brand new Official Facebook page. All right, that is it Thank you for joining us for this week's progressive discussions and What can I say the seasons Time flies the seasons are flying by Fasts the weeks fly by fast and it's just incredible How just how short the seasons really are for us people living in the north, I mean, you know in terms of spring and summer Really they go fast. So you enjoy it while it's here live in the present make the best of what you have Don't get me wrong Spring and summer are nice, but autumn is my favorite time of year and I think the holidays of autumn are fun. I think the foliage, you know, the peaking Autumn leaves are very beautiful It's an old song and they have the There's the leaves are falling. That's the sound of leaves fall, but I make it sound like a turkey Okay, that's it Say so. Oh the paintings are not done yet. No, I can't get to work on paintings I'm too involved with political stuff. Otherwise, I would show them to the to the pubic I mean the public. Well, the one is done Which one the top one this one top one really why don't you say something? You're brony because I didn't sign it yet, but it's done. It's done. All right, David says Call it done No, don't listen to what Davey says You call it done when it's done when you say it's done. It gave isn't a professional Is it done? Dave is a professional. I mean the water is the water. I Wouldn't be working much on the water even if it weren't good The only thing I would work on is the left-hand side You got it. You got to get some tips from Ian on how to do water. You know what I mean water waves, you know There's no waves in there. Well, it's a it's a creek But it's a it's a it's a rapidly moving creek. It's a creek the creek by William J. Eisenman, I think it's called It's a watercolor painting rocky creek rocky creek Uh rolling rock beer from Pennsylvania. Remember is that it's Pennsylvania company right rolling rock beer? I don't know green bottle. That's all right. Yeah, it's a green ball. Are you see it? Green little bottle. Is it visible? Yeah You see it. All right the new painting For from this week that will be added to the to the collection William J. Eisenman collection of fine watercolor art Say so long to these people Goodbye people


The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this, what is it? It's Wednesday, Wednesday night. And happy you guys could all make it. We've got a, I think, an interesting show today. We're going to be talking about what drives history, what moves the world inspired by, I guess, me watching a bunch of Harari videos and reading Peter Zihan's book. So I think that'll be cool. And then after that, we'll talk about Westerns, movies, Westerns. And in particular, I'll do a review of true grit in the context of talking about Westerns, which was Shahzabah. I know it's out of order. He asked me to review stuff before this, but I convinced my wife to watch it, so it was easy. So, yeah, so we'll get to talk about true grit. Hopefully Shahzabah will be here if he's not here yet. Hopefully he'll arrive in time to hear the review. Let's see, I had seen the movie before, so it wasn't my first time. Whatever, that's it. There we go. All right, so we're going to talk about that. Of course, as always, you will help determine the content of the show today by using the super chat to ask questions and steer the show in the direction that you would like it to head based on the questions that you like. You can ask questions about the topics we are discussing. And, or anything else, anything else. On the Iran Book Show, we have Ask Me Anything, every single show, because I know everything and you guys can ask me. Anyway, so that is kind of the outline of the show. I think we're gonna start two pieces of good news, two. I mean, the world is, something's happening because we've got two pieces of good news today rather than me squeezing together one piece of good news sometimes. And anyway, chat is always distracting. So two pieces of good news. First is the Kemi Badenok, who is a member parliament in the UK, a member of the Conservative Party, somebody who I did, I was on the same side debating against a socialist and she was on my side. And we kind of really, I thought we did a good job together and we talked a little bit afterwards, so I've got a bit of a relationship with her. Anyway, she has been assigned the post in the new British cabinet. She is responsible for trade, for international trade. I think that's fantastic.  She expressed strong commitment to capitalism. You're always expecting to be disappointed by politicians. So I hope, I really, really, really do hope, pray to the gods of politicians or the gods or whatever that she sticks to that position and that she opens up the UK to international trade that she makes, that she goes out there and makes great deals or not. I mean, she's not gonna lower tariffs unilaterally to zero, which would be my trade strategy, even though she probably knows that's the right thing to do because it's politically suicide, right? But hopefully she goes out there and increases the scope of free trade for the UK. If the UK does that, if the UK actually liberalizes, opens up on the free trade front, then, wow. I mean, I think the UK has quite a future for a variety of reasons. Variety of reasons. Valdron, why do you need to know how many shows I'm gonna do in the next four days? Four days, five, yeah. Why? I'm curious why you're trying to allocate your money and make sure you don't spend it all today since you have a little bit of money for the next few. So today we're gonna have a show, we'll have a show on, I think we're gonna have a show on Friday. I'm trying to figure out the time of day. It might be an unusual time of day because in the evening on Friday, 8.30, which is usually the time I do the show, I am doing a talk in Tokyo, but by Zoom. So this will be a talk in Tokyo to encourage people to come to my live talk in Tokyo a week later. So we'll do that at 8.30 on Friday night. So we'll do a Iran book show earlier in the day. Then there'll be a show on Saturday, there'll be a show on Sunday, and then I'm trying to do a show on Monday and I leave Tuesday early morning. So we'll see. The Monday show is very iffy because it'll be just before I leave and there'll probably be stuff I need to do and anyway, we'll see. I don't know. So Kemi Benak has a position, an important position with which can have a real impact. It's great news and I hope she is incredibly successful. I did send her a direct message on Twitter because she does follow me on Twitter. I follow her and she follows me on Twitter. Just congratulating her and she wrote back and said, thank you, Iran. So cool. Hopefully she remembers who I am and maybe next time in the UK, maybe in October, I can see if she wants to hang out. I don't know, we'll see. That'll be cool. Maybe she'll do an event with me. I don't know, we'll see. But that could be nice that she responded. Ryan, thank you for the support. Really, really appreciate it. And that's CA, which means that's California dollars. No, that's Canadian dollars. All right, that's the first piece of good news, way over on the other side of the ocean. The second piece of good news is close at home, much closer to home. And that is, it's in Arizona. And Arizona is a difficult state right now, but Arizona has one of the best, I think, one of the best state-run think tanks in the country called the Goldwater Institute. And the Goldwater Institute years ago started promoting an idea of education-saving accounts. Education-saving accounts is where the state puts, will put in your bank account, in a special account, the equivalent of what they spend on a child's public education in your account for you to spend on private education, homeschooling, any kind of education you want. But really pretty broad, right? This has been my preferred method of school choice. I think this is a fantastic way to promote school choice and to introduce school choice. Arizona adopted this originally only for children with some form of learning disability. So it was, it was, we're not used much. But not today, I only read about it today, but it turns out that two weeks ago, two and a half weeks ago, Arizona expanded this to every child in the state. So 1.2 million kids in Arizona now have the ability to choose their school and to actually have the state fund, at least a portion of private education and fund homeschooling. I think the average that the state spends on a child in public education is something like $6,500. So parents will get a check for $6,500, not a check. It will be going to the special bank account. And they will be able to use that $6,500. They'll be able to use it for anybody, for any kind of educating the child. This is amazing. It is the way in which we can privatize education. I think it's the best way on the most important topic we have. It's a way in which you solve the problem of, what about the poor? The poor get the check for $6,500 as well. You get competition among private schools to try to attract that money, to try to get parents to spend the money on them. Hopefully tons of private schools will enter the state of Arizona and start competing for the money. And as a consequence of that, parents will start realizing that they could provide their kids with a much better education. And that will encourage them to pull them out of government schools and put them into the private schools that are competing to get their attention. I think this is fantastic. It's not a voucher system where the government has to choose what education it promotes and which it doesn't. This is much better than that. This is the best way to do this. So I'm super excited about it and hope that it takes off. Now the only problem, and this is why private schools are hesitating to enter the state of Arizona and really compete, is that it teaches unions on the left are threatening to take this to a, what do you call it? A referendum. In the past, Arizona residents have voted against such a scheme in a referendum. But you see, why invest in Arizona if I'm a private school owner? Why would I invest in Arizona if this could be yanked in a year or two?  The referendums are direct democracy. I'm a big opponent of direct, direct apop. I'm a big opponent of direct democracy. There we go. I can speak now. And this is why they can pass anything, anytime. So this would be a, anyway, this would be phenomenal if it sticks. If it sticks. So very excited. Congratulations to the Goldwater Institute that managed to get this passed through the legislature and the governor signed it. And yeah, that'll be good. Let's see. All right. All right. Let's jump into the topic. All right. So I wanna talk a little bit about what drives history. And why almost everybody I think gets it ultimately wrong or most people get it wrong. At least most commentators get it wrong when you read about it, you know, the germs, guns, whatever kind of books and other books of that genre. And I'm reading right now the end of the world is just beginning, the beginning. And of course, Harari has his version. And you read them. And first of all, the fascinating books, guns, germs, and steel. Fascinating books, really interesting. I mean, I love history and they have these amazing stories and amazing theories and a lot of the theories. There's a lot of truth to them and the stuff comes together. And you just learn a lot by reading these kind of books. You learn a lot about the concretes that are going on in the world and have happened in the world and it enriches one's knowledge. And this came to mind because I'm reading the end of the world is just the beginning. And granted, I've only read the first few chapters that deal primarily with the past. And let me first say before I criticize the book, you know, my criticism of the approach and my criticism of the book, let me first say that I'm really enjoying the book and I really like it. It's wrong in some fundamental sense and we'll get to that. But it's fascinating, it's really, really interesting and a lot of what he says is true. And a lot of what he says is right and a lot of what he says I hadn't thought of and it's new to me and that's exciting and that's fun when you read a book like that. And it's big in scope, it covers so much, it covers so much of human history and what he's doing in this book is he's setting it up for an analysis of the future, a predictive model, which is great because in 10 years we'll be able to tell him you were right or you were wrong, although he might be right for the wrong reasons, that's also possible. But, and I agree with, to a large extent, with his predictions, at least I think I do, and I agree with much of his analysis. And the thing that I find most interesting is, and I give him a lot of credit for this, he is absolutely right on how great the world is and has been since World War II and in many respects, since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. He gets that and he gets it in a way that most people don't get, he gets it in a way that the left doesn't get, the left has no clue about, the left is completely clueless about and he gets it in a way that, because they're so anti-capitalist, anti-markets and don't have any kind of conception of the state of the world, how poor people were, how horrible life was and what the Industrial Revolution actually achieved and did. But he also gets it better than the right, particularly the right, the kind of conservative right because he says, as of 2019, now he believes 2019 is the peak, life is amazing and to a large extent it attributes why our material life is so good and has been so good over the last, since World War II at least, he attributed it to free trade, he attributed it to globalization. So he is one of the few writers today that I see who are all in on globalization, all in not that he thinks it's gonna survive, he thinks it's gonna collapse completely and gonna go away and gonna drive the world economy into a real rut, but he believes it's a good thing. He believes it's a source of much of our prosperity, much of our success, much of our wealth and quality of life and standard of living, ours and the rest of the world. So he's a huge proponent of globalization and I give him a huge amount of credit for that because it's not easy to be pro-globalization right now. Globalization, as he explains in the book, is found upon, is viewed negatively by almost everybody and left and right and so good for him, he gets it, he gets it and that is real power. So if you look at now for my more critical part, again, I'm enjoying the book, he reads the book, he's quite a character, he's got a great reading voice, he fills it with emotion. So I actually recommend it, the end of the world is just the beginning, is actually quite enjoyable and interesting, you'll learn something, you'll get a different perspective, the kind of perspective you'll get for most historians or for me, for that matter and you will, yeah, and I think his predictions for the future are interesting and quite possibly true, scary, very scary, although if you're in America, less scary, but potentially true. So what is the issue?  And that is that almost all books that try to come up with a large scale history of the world, story of the world, ignore the one thing that I think ultimately shapes the world. The one thing that in the long run, in a sense, is the determining factor. And that is ideas. For Peter Zeon, the world is shaped by geography and demographics. And everything else just happens. He, at least in this book, he doesn't really explain it, it just happens, the Industrial Revolution, just happens, it's an outcome of a sequence of events that just roll together because of location and because of certain actions that happened before. And it's kind of this causal sequence of events, but there's no individuals in the sequence, there's no ideas in the sequence, there's no culture in the sequence, there's no philosophy in the sequence, there's no political theory in the sequence. They're just, things happen. And look, they happen, I can explain what they happen through geography and through demographics. And when I read this, yeah, geography matters. And yes, demographics matter, but both are clearly dwarfed, in my view, by the role of ideas, by the role of ideas. So it's fascinating to read somebody who expounds, who's really smart, knows a lot, and expounds on history, knows a lot of history, is clearly pro-success, pro-prosperity, and yet doesn't see how ideas shaped us all. And of course, ideas are not in a vacuum, ideas are concretely shaped partially by the people who embrace them, partially by the accidents of geography and the accidents of population that partially determine, I don't know why Aristotle is not picked up, but Plato is, why Aristotle is lost to the West and then we discovered why, you know, is it an accident? For example, Peter Zian talks a lot about Portugal and Spain and the importance and why they are the ones who first go out exploring and why they are the first in the West to kind of go out there and establish navies.  And I'm thinking, no, I mean, that's all true, it's true. They have a coast of the Atlantic, they have a coast on the Mediterranean, they're surrounded by water, they also have only one border to protect, all of that is true, and all of that probably played a role. But what's also true and maybe much more fundamental is that the Iberian Peninsula is where the works of the Greeks were preserved by the Muslims. It's where in the 14th, 15th, 16th centuries, the best libraries in the world existed. It was where Aristotle's works survived. It was where great Arab and Jewish philosophers lived and it was this fertile soil in which philosophy, primarily Aristotelian philosophy, it was there in the soil, in the libraries. So that when the Christians conquered the peninsula, to their credit, which is very rare for Christians to get credit for me, to their credit they didn't burn the libraries, they studied them, they took a lot of the books, copied them and sent them to Rome where Thomas Aquinas read them, so that's even the 14th century. It's this period of the 14th and 15th century which are the period where the Iberian Peninsula establishes itself. Actually Aquinas is 13th century, is that right? Are periods in which the Christians are just coming in, they're discovering these libraries, they're discovering these ideas, they're discovering this thought and it is what makes that culture, the dynamic, exciting culture that it becomes and it is what makes them curious about the world and it is what makes it possible for them to sail across the oceans. Now, if those libraries had been in Tbilisi in Georgia, yeah the world, the history of the world would be very different. The fact that the Arabs went in that direction, established the libraries to the west, established them on a peninsula with a coast of the Atlantic which was easily defensible, all of that it probably is good, all of that probably made it possible. Who knows how history evolves, if they'd gone east then the libraries had gone east. The libraries had bagged that by the way which were even better than the libraries in Cordoba and the great cities of southern Spain, the libraries had bagged that even better but they were all burnt. Where were they all burnt? Before the Mongols even got there, they were burnt and then the Mongols came and basically flattened all the bagged that to where there was left, whatever was left was gone. So the western civilization was reborn in a sense in the Iberian Peninsula and in Italy where these works were read by Aquinas and then influenced the church and would spread through the Italian Peninsula and where focus on this worldliness, happiness in this world and worldly interests was introduced by Aristotle, Aquinas but was to tell you thinking into pre-Renaissance Italy. So really it's those are the places, Italy, Spain and Portugal, where you get these ideas. See but that, you have to think, you have to see the world of ideas and this is where, and I don't know what Peter Sihon's views of free will and individual agency are. My guess is he's probably got pretty good views but certainly how are we who's a determinist and who doesn't believe in free will who views us very much as a mechanistic beings and many of the other writers on history who kind of don't view free will as that as existing or important or determining of the future. They ignore this and again when I recommended The Cave in the Light this is why I love that book because that is a book that delves into not so much history but the wall of ideas in history through a particular path and a particular lens played over as Aristotle into great book but conventional writers on history don't, many of them don't do that and it's something to be wary of because it's very seductive to hear their stories and to buy into their stories as the cause of factors in history. Guns, germs, and steel is a great example. Well written, interesting, fascinating sequences. They all make sense kind of but as Lenny Peacock illustrates in the ominous parallels and in a magnificent talk he gave at Fort Hope Forum years and years ago called The Wall of Philosophy and Psychology in History. Sorry, The Wall of Philosophy and Psychology in History. What shapes history in the end is ideas. When Peter Zion talks about the decline in population, in the demographic decline, the shrinkage of the size of families, the fact that we're having fewer and fewer kids. All of that is true and he can show you mathematically and he can show you from all these countries in the world how it's happening and the speed of which it's happening and so on but and you could argue, well it's just, you get rich and you have fewer kids and you have a lot fewer kids and you have less than replacement. And some of that is absolutely true. Wealth matters a huge amount to demographics, to the number of kids we have. But is that the only factor? Does culture make a difference? Does people optimism or pessimism about the future make a difference? If you change the culture, will you change people behavior vis-a-vis children? Well, we know that's true because even wealthy religious people have kids. Lots of kids. So religion seems to matter. Ideas seem to matter. Israel is a good example. I haven't seen Peter talk about Israel as an example, account example of the demographics because Israel is a country that I remember not that long ago, a few years ago, really, really, really being worried about the demographics and a lot of people around and because Jewish demographics were collapsing and Arab demographics were holding up in terms of them having a lot of children. And then suddenly over just the last few years that shifted and Jewish demographics, Jews are having more kids and Arabs are having a lot less kids. Now the Arab having a lot less kids is foreseeable because as they get wealthy and westernized, particularly Arabs in Israel and among the Palestinians, they have less kids, which is exactly the pattern. Peter documents and there is consistent with everything we see around the world. But the idea that secular Jews are having more kids is strange. It doesn't make any sense. It goes against what you'd expect. Israel's become richer, more successful. It's also become more optimistic. It's also become more energized. It's also become more positive about the future, more confident in its own future. Does that have anything to do with it? I mean, I think so. So culture matters. Freedom matters. One of the interesting things is, again, Peter talks about the rise of America and its advantages, the natural resources, both on the Atlantic and the Pacific coast and, you know, a desert in its south, a difficult border in its north, but a friendly neighbor in the north, all of that. And everything he says about America is absolutely true. But America would have evolved completely differently and had a completely different destiny, a completely different future if America had had a different political system. And maybe political systems somewhat have something to do with declining birth rates, particularly in places like Russia and China. Russia, by the way, is one of the fastest shrinking populations. All those Putin fans are gonna have to live with a Russia that is weaker and weaker and weaker as we move into the future, for all kinds of reasons, among others, population.  And the smartest, the best people leaving. So you can't ignore ideas. Political ideas, but more importantly, political ideas ultimately are determined by what? They're ultimately determined by metaphysical and epistemological ideas, moral ideas, philosophical ideas. You cannot ignore philosophy. Now, it would be fascinating to take what Peter knows Peter Zein knows about geography and demographics and integrate it with a philosophical, cultural, ideological perspective. That would be amazing. And that would be, I think that would be the right approach, the primacy of ideas within the context of geography and demographics. Within the context of germs and guns and other stuff going on. Something wrong with the audio. Francis says, describe America's successful geography demographic as a bit silly. It is, but it isn't. I mean, America, it was unique. It was unique in that it was a brand new land. It was unique in that it had this ability to expand westward. It was unique in that expansion westward also happened to include some of the most fertile land in all of human history. It is unique in the sense that it's only country other than Canada and Mexico.  I mean, there's a lot of things unique about America that positions it phenomenally waft to be successful, but of course, none of that would have happened. If the audio is weird, it's because of the internet uplink. So there's nothing I can do from here. It's hopefully we'll get better as the internet strengthens. Audio's back even says so. But imagine an America that doesn't have a woven dependence. Imagine America that remains a British colony for another 50 years, maybe 100 years. Does it develop as one country? Does the, what do you call it, the Louisiana protests ever happen? Does America go to water Mexico? There is no America, is there a war with Mexico to take over the Southwest? Is California part of America? Are there five different countries? Are there 10, are there 20? Does it become a reflection of Europe? Is much of America taken over by Mexico? Is Texas an independent state country? Who knows? Without a set of ideas that shape the union, that shape what Americans want to do with America. Is America, does America have the geography that is so beneficial? Does it have the demographics that are so helpful? Do millions and millions of people emigrate to America if it's a authoritarian dictatorship? Probably not. They emigrate because of the freedom. So the demographics, the huge growth in the American population, and the move west is driven by the fact that America is free. The Industrial Revolution in Britain becoming this amazing, you know, bastion of trade. Yes, something to do with the fact that it's an island. Yes, something to do with the fact that it sent boats out and traveled around the world and they discovered they could outsource and the trade was a good thing. But there are lots of islands. And the Industrial Revolution happens in England, not because of that primarily, but because something in Britain makes possible the existence of a John Locke and an Isaac Newton. Something in England makes it possible for people to start businesses and to profit from them and the attitude changes and the culture changes because of these thinkers and ideas. You cannot take the British and Scottish enlightenment out of England and pretend that everything is the same. It just isn't. These are actually the determining factors. And here again, I encourage you to read the ominous parallels by Leonard Peacock where he shows step by step by step in a fascinating, interesting, beautifully written way the way ideas shape culture, the way ideas shape politics, the way ideas shape ultimately, even technological advance. The enlightenment follows the Renaissance, which then in the Industrial Revolution follows the enlightenment and that sequence is a sequence of ideas. The manifest in action and reality. And America is a product of the enlightenment. If the Americans had rebelled 100 years earlier, everything would be different. If the Americans would have rebelled 100 years later, everything would be different. Americans rebelled at the exact right time from an ideological, political, philosophical perspective because it was the era where the ideas of liberty, the ideas of freedom, the ideas of rights were at their pinnacle. Pinnacle's not exactly the right word. They were most spent, most around. So when you look at the future, demographics are important. As Peter Zayn says, and we agree on China, but it's funny, he never mentions with regard to China the fact that authoritarian regimes like China don't produce technological advancements. Authoritarian regimes like China don't create wealth. For him, it's more China's in decline because of demographics and they are. They were shrinking population and it's very difficult for China to generate the kind of economic growth with the shrinking population and, much, much more importantly, with authoritarian government, authoritarian government. So if you combine our knowledge, our knowledge of political, of philosophical ideas, of political ideas, the politics of liberty versus the politics of oppression, but more importantly, if you combine them with, as Leonard Peacock shows, the role of epistemology and how epistemology is so crucial to develop in a proper moral ideas that are crucial to develop with the right political ideas and you combine that with an understanding of the geopolitics and of resources, as Peter does in demographics and geography and all that. Yes, that is an incredibly powerful tool in predicting the future. And I'm gonna say, I think that if you add the demographics, Peter Zayn claims, and I haven't run the math, I guess I believe him, I'm not sure I believe him, but maybe he claims China's population is gonna half in the next couple of decades, I think. China's gonna go down to 600 million people. If that is true, that is truly unbelievable, but not only that, the population's gonna age, they're gonna have fewer and fewer and fewer productive people in their productive prime, which is true, but if it's that fast, then China's finished. China's finished, because if you add to that, the fact that innovation is something young people do, working hard is something young people do, entrepreneurship, starting businesses, in other words, wealth creation. If you add to that the authoritarian nature of China and the bad economic policies they're putting together, and the ideology of China, which is in metaphysically and epistemologically very mystical, the fact that China doesn't have a role model to look at, i.e. no United States that is free, capitalist, and prospering, then I agree with Peter completely, China is in deep trouble, and I also think that if China's in deep trouble, to a large extent, we need to really think about the extent to which we are, because trade is win-win. We benefit from trade for China, and if we're also gonna shut down trade with China, I mean, we're in deep trouble. So I like integrating the ideas. For example, I give you an example, I was thinking about this, one of the examples that he doesn't really deal with, because he looks at a number of children in terms of demographics, but one of the things he doesn't deal with, which I will deal with on a separate show more thoroughly, but is the issue of immigration. So for example, the United States is on the verge of having negative population growth, but the United States can solve the problem in a way that I'm not sure China can, although China might do this, we'll see, and that is through immigration. For example, if I was running China right now, I would open Chinese borders, maybe not on the West or more Muslims, but certainly in the South, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Cambodians, those are relatively, I think, young populations. Let them come, and if you start seeing a shrinkage in Chinese population, I mean, you will, it's not an if, it's happening, then what you will get is people coming in to come and work in China, so that the China doesn't collapse completely. So one way in which you can replenish your demographics is by importing people. Yeah, one of the few months says North Korea, there's a good idea. What about opening up your border to North Korea and telling the North Koreans, hey, come to China.  I mean, imagine how wonderful that would be. Both, it would be good for China and it'd be amazing for the North Koreans. And of course, people want to go where there are jobs. They also want to go where there's freedom. So some people wouldn't want to go to China. Some people would be hesitant to go to China. But it's one way South Korea and Japan can solve their demographic problem. I mean, Japan is collapsing demographically. I think South Korea is collapsing even faster. Well, again, open up your borders. Maybe some Chinese would like to leave China, certainly Hong Kong. What about the United States? If we're really demographically going to start shrinking, well, we can solve that through immigration. Open up the borders. Bring people in. And you solve the particular problem that Peter is worried about. Now, the problem doesn't go away because the countries from which they're leaving are going to be in trouble, but that's reality. But again, this is determined by ideas. There's a reason why people want to leave Central America and want to come to America. One is free and one is not. The reason why people want to leave Africa and go to Europe, one is free and one is not. One is rich and one is not. But Europe, again, faces horrific demographics which immigration could solve. And here, by the way, again, one of the great benefits of the United Kingdom, one of the great benefits of England, Britain, is that in spite of the fact of being on an island, and in spite of the fact that demographically, again, it's a rich island for people having fewer and fewer kids so they're shrinking population, what keeps England going, what keeps the UK going is immigration. In spite of Brexit, to the Brit's credit, immigration has not declined. What's happened is something they did not expect, and that is that the ethnic background of the immigrants has shifted so before Brexit, almost all of the immigrants to the UK in the years before Brexit were Eastern European, or many of them were Eastern European. Not all, many of them. Post-Brexit Eastern European immigration has collapsed, but you get increased immigration from India to Pakistan and they are getting quite a bit of immigrants to the Arab world. And this is revitalizing the UK, and you might say, yeah, but they're bringing in their third world culture. Well, look at the Conservative government. You guys should list, get a list of the people in the Conservative government. Now, the woman at the top is a, you know, white woman, Liz Truss. But almost everybody else in the cabinet is brown, black, in terms of skin color. Female, if it's male, the brown, and these are really good people. I mentioned Kemi Badanak, who was raised in Nigeria. Born in the UK to Nigerian parents, went back to Nigeria, raised in Nigeria, then came back to UK, and then went to high school, I think, in the UK. And today is a prominent politician. Look how many Conservatives, and again, the Conservatives in the UK are much better than the Conservatives in the US, primarily because they're secular. So demographics are non-destiny. Policy, driven by philosophy, is destiny. And unfortunately, we have rotten philosophy driving today and therefore rotten policy. So destiny is consistent with the demographics. We'll go into hell. But it's not primarily going to be because of demographics. It's primarily going to be because of the statism and the fascism and the nationalism and the weight and left-wing statism that is the consequence of the mysticism of subjectivism and ultimately the moral altruism that is driving this culture and that is driving the political agenda of the culture. So in this case, the outcome is consistent, but the causal factors are different, and this is why I can be more hopeful than Peter can. Because if it's demographics and geography, then it's demographics and geography, and it is what it is, and it will be what it will be, and there's nothing we can do about it. But if it's ideas, if it's philosophy, then we can change our destiny. If it's ideas, if it's philosophy, then we can have an impact. We can, for example, advocate for immigration, which would solve at least locally the problem. We can advocate for, for example, freedom, which will increase immigration and increase the productivity and increase the optimism and the efficaciousness of the people around. And I believe that as they become more efficacious, as they're more optimistic, as they're more positive, as they're freer, they will have more kids. We can convince people to think, to use reason, to live, to live the best life that they can live. Again, I think the more people are convinced of that, the more people embrace life, life with the capital L, the more they embrace living, taking their life seriously. And the more they're convinced, the more they're certain that their mind is efficacious and they can achieve happiness and they can live a good life, the more optimistic they become, the more productive they become, the more they will demand freedom, the more I think they will even have kids. So if you don't take ideas seriously, then you get caught up in determinism, even if you yourself are not a determinist, even if you believe people have free will, historical determinism captures all. Oh, wow, Jacob Rees-Mogg, another real kind of ancient Brit, that's quite a name, Jacob Rees-Mogg, is head of the energy department. Now, Jacob Rees-Mogg, last I know of him, was a real free marketer. He was one of the best conservative members vis-a-vis free markets. So look, there's hope for the UK. Now, I was hopeful when Johnson was elected and was gravely disappointed, but this looks like an interesting cabinet. So let's give Liz Truss a... let's give it a benefit of the doubt. Let's hope that this is a government that will live up to the better members within it and actually do something, do something to move the UK towards more freedom. I mean, Jacob Rees-Mogg is better on climate change, is better on liberty in the energy sector. He's quite good. So you've got a number of good people now in the UK government. All right, let's see, where were we? Yeah, I was wrapping up. So you become a determinist even when you don't or not a determinist individual, you become a cultural, historical determinist because what can change? Ideas can change. Ideas can change. And if ideas change, then culture changes. And if culture changes, then the future changes. Then the path is not set. All right, now as I go through Peter Zehan's book, I'm sure I'll have more to say about it. Again, I'm finding it interesting, so I'm looking for the reading through it and sharing parts of it with you.  All right, Harari, I can't stand, because Harari is a determinist at the individual level. And he's not that interesting. See, Zehan is interesting and I'm learning something new from him. I don't really learn anything when I listen to Harari. It's the same old stuff that you hear from so many deterministic academics. Hey, let's see. I want to quickly see if we have... Okay, so I don't see off-topic, off-topic. Colt says, the idea of immigration seems pretty cool. It will solve our demographic problem. I can't wait to propose this to my conservative friends. Hopefully I don't get run out of town. No seriously wish me luck. You need luck.  They're not interested in listening to anything about free speech, about immigration. So let me know what they say. But yeah, it solves the demographic problem. It solves the economic problem of shrinking demographics. It solves the entrepreneurial problem. Immigrants are entrepreneurs. So many of the CEOs of top corporations today are immigrants. Many of them from India, for example. You know, it's unbelievable the benefits the United States would get from immigration from vastly increasing immigration are so huge. They're so large that I don't really, I don't accept any... I don't think... I don't buy any of the counter-arguments even if some of the facts around the counter-arguments are true. It's just the benefits way outweigh the costs. Way outweigh them. A massive increase in immigration, of legal immigration is what this country needs. And it's hard to... I mean, in terms of the one thing you could do that does not require a decades-long ideological struggle that would launch this country economically and economically, at least, immigration is the number one policy change that you could have that without changing anything else would have immediate massive impact. Of course, if you combined it with deregulation and reduction in the welfare state, it's hard to believe how big of an impact it would have on our standard of living and quality of life. All right, thanks Colt. Okay, so let's... let's talk about Westerns. And what I believe is the... really the... Wow, Troy, thank you. I really appreciate that. Thank you, Troy, beaten from Australia. 500 Australian dollars. That is amazing. That's so cool. That gets us almost to our target of 650 for the Super Chat. So really, really appreciate that. Thank you, Troy. So I want to talk about Westerns. Now, in my view, Westerns are the most American of all movie genres. It is fundamentally American. It's about America. It's about American, America's past. Yeah, there are movies that have used the Western theme and done it exceptionally well and placed it in other places other than America. You know, the Seven Samurais in Japan is probably the best example of that. Which is basically a Western set in Samurai, Japan. But they are American. Everything about the Western is American. What are Westerns about? What makes a Western a Western other than being set in the West? And why in the West? What is unique about the West? Well, what's unique about the West in the 19th century when the Westerns are affirmed is that the West is wild. It is wild across at least two dimensions. It is wild from a geographic perspective. It's a desert. It's harsh. It's difficult. Survival requires effort. Survival cannot be taken for granted. And in Westerns, the idea of the ruggedness of the place often plays a huge factor. The ruggedness of the place. The second aspect of it is that the West is portrayed in the movies is at a state of borderline anarchy. It is a place of lawlessness.  So it's a place with bad guys everywhere. There is no Western without bad guys. We are bad guys. Outlaws. Who are difficult to catch because the law is not quite reached the West. So it's this borderland. Borderline of civilization. The borderland of the law. Which is civilizing. The borderland of the lawman. The lawman is not quite established there yet. And it's a borderland of roads, towns, railroads. It's just barely there. Barely there. David mentions Hombrae. I actually did a review of the movie Hombrae with Paul Newman a while back. So if you go back to my shows, hopefully you can find it, I did a review of the movie Hombrae with Paul Newman. So the essence of a Western is the civilizing power of the civilizing power of the individual willing to stand up to evil within a background of great difficulty, great harshness both naturally and from the perspective of the people. The good guys are usually outnumbered and just the circumstances make it challenging and hard. It is essentially a genre about heroes. Essentially about genre of heroes using force to civilize. Using force to defeat evil, to defeat the bad guys, to defeat those who would turn the West into a complete uncivilized bloodthirsty, bloodthirsty wilderness. They're on the side of the town folk. They're on the side of their producers. They're on the side of the farmers, the ranchers, the people who want to produce creed wealth, build families, bring civilization to the wild. Yeah, I like that, Jennifer, team the wild. It's a story about the heroes. The Western is fundamentally about the heroism of individuals. It's about heroes teaming the wild. And teaming the wild, both teaming this really, really nasty desert geography place and teaming the people. But it's about civilizing the wild, but it's about heroes civilizing the wild. It essentially requires a hero. Now the heyday of the Western, sadly for you guys, has long passed. The great Westerns were all done in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. By the time of the 60s, the Western is in decline. In two ways the Western declines starting in the 60s. And this is all leading up to my review of true grit. The Western is in decline because starting in the 1960s, what you get is anti-heroes. What you get is people who might be doing good things, but they're not good people. If you think about the, a classic Western, I don't know, one of my favorites all time Westerns, the book is actually better than the movie, one of my all time favorite Westerns is Shane, S-A-H-S, sorry, S-H-A-N-E, Shane. Which is fantastic. It's about the gunfighter, the individual, the hero, who encounters a family of farmers who are trying to build a life and create something and make something. But they are threatened by the bad guys. And he must go up against the bad guys and defeat them in order to save the family and to allow civilization to continue. Now it's a beautiful movie in many respects, characters and the conflicts and what he has to give up in order to achieve his goal of helping this family. It's a very powerful, beautiful, wonderful movie. Shane, I encourage you to watch it. I know a lot of people have not seen it. And there are a lot of good Westerns. We can go over some of my favorites if you're interested. They have a hero. And the hero is the strong, silent type. He's not a man of a lot of words. He is a man, first of all. And he is oriented towards doing the job and getting on. And that kind of hero disappeared in the 1960s. 1960s heroes are loud and gross and drunk and, yeah, they might do the right thing but not for the right reason. They fall into it. Spaghetti Westerns make caricatures of true heroism, caricatures of Westerns. I know people love the spaghetti Westerns with Clint Eastwood. But they're undermining of everything the Western is about. He's not civilizing. He's not fighting evil because he's trying to defend good.  But not because there's anything good he's trying to attain by him. I mean, in many respects, spaghetti Westerns are kind of a nihilistic attempt to make fun of American Westerns and make fun of the great heroes and make fun of the idealism, the idealism of the West, of the Western. And the other aspect of this is that there's a rejection of the hero, a systematic rejection of the hero and what it takes to be a hero, what it means to be a hero. Tom, thank you for your support. And you see that in the 60s and 70s. You see it to this day. There's also a purposeful naturalism in modern Westerns where everybody is dirty and filthy.  Absolutely. But that became essential, whereas in the old Westerns, the dirt and stuff was non-essential. So it was cleaned up so you could focus on the action and the heroism instead of on the shit. St. Pachimpa made the Westerns almost a celebration of violence with anti-heroes, which Cassidy and the Sundance Kid made the Westerns mad guys were the good guys. Were you sympathized with the criminals? And they were funny. And this brings us to true grit. The original version at least, 1968 I think it was, maybe 69, with John Wayne. Now John Wayne to that point had done many of the great Westerns. Many of, you know, John Ford, maybe the greatest director of Westerns ever, had John Wayne in, stage coach, and she wore yellow ribbon in the searchers. And we can talk about the searchers because the searchers is not exactly a prototypical Western. It's a little out of genre. I think it deals with something completely different. I think the two great Westerns, really great Westerns, the searchers and the unforgiven, the 1960 version of unforgiven, both set in the West, have car boys in Indians, if you will, but have completely different themes, have themes that have to do with racism and very, very deep things, very meaningful themes, and they're really both great movies. But John Wayne had always been a hero who shot Liberty Valance as another John Wayne movie with Jimmy Stewart, great movie. I'm trying to look, there was Rio Bravo and Rio Grande and Red River, and it's just a bunch of John Wayne, good John Wayne Westerns, where he plays a hero, a sober hero. Drinking is never an issue. Usually, in these movies, the drunkard was Dean Martin, who was the sidekick, not the main character, but true grit, John Wayne plays a drunken marshal, hired by a young woman, girl, really, to go catch the murderer of her father.  It's an enjoyable movie, it's a fun movie, but it undermines the whole conception of Westerns. And certainly the 1968 version. Now I get it that the goal is the hero. We'll get to that in the 2010 version, which I think is better of it. The goal is the hero, but the goal is not using force in order to bring about civilization. The goal is not a hero in the physical realm. And in that sense, neither true grit movies are Westerns, not Westerns in the classical sense, not Westerns in that sense. High Noon. Yeah, a great movie with some problems in it. We can talk about High Noon. High Noon is an interesting movie to talk about. I don't know if we have time today to cover High Noon.  So here's the thing about true grit. I like the movie. Let's take the 2010 movie. The 2010 with Halle Steinfeld and Bridges and Matt Damon is a very enjoyable movie. And the character of the girl is fantastic. I mean, she is amazing. Although I find the ending of the movie disappointing, but she's just stunning. I mean, the way she negotiates and the way she's strong-headed and the way she's committed. I mean, who has true grit? She's the one who has true grit. It's directed by the Coen Brothers, whose movies generally I like. And it's beautifully shot. It's beautifully made. It's got that Coen Brothers quirkiness to it. And she is a fantastic character. She's smart. She's a woman of reason. She stands. She does not bend to anybody. And she forces these male characters to be better, to become better, to strive for better, at least while she's around them. We don't know what happens afterwards. So her character is what the movie's about and her character is what makes the movie fantastic. The two male characters, I mean, again, it's fun and it's enjoyable, but they're not heroes. They're these anti-heroes. They're these loser heroes.  A drunk. So the movie is about her, which is not a typical Western theme. It's not a consistent Western theme. It's a different kind of movie. And it's, again, very enjoyable on its own because of her. I mean, she's the character that makes this movie. It's sad to see Texas Ranger portrayed the way Matt Damon portrays him.  Jeff Bridges' character is efficacious, but he's drunk and he's obnoxious He's lovable at times. Most of the time she feels sorry for him. He's good at what he does, but there's also some moral greatness there. Is he shooting some people that shouldn't be shot? Yeah, the Ranger comes through and he has to. Everybody comes through and they have to. But not because they are driving the plot, not because they are driving the story, not because they are making the right choices, not because it's because of her. It's because of the girl. So, yeah, I mean, I like the movie. I don't think it's a great Western in spite of the fact that I like the movie. It's a part of a genre of movies set in the West that I think ultimately undermine the great heroism of the great Westerns. It undermines the genre, in a sense. For 2010, certainly it's not a bad movie because there are very few good Westerns in modern times. I'll have to check out the Westerns from the 21st century and the end of the 20th century. Frank says, how did you like the scene in the new True Good when the girl was made to get a trade about the horse with the lawyer? That was one of the best. Yeah, I mean, that was brilliant. I loved that scene. I loved the scene with her doing the trading. That was part of the best scene in the movie. I liked her character. I liked everything about her character, except what I didn't like was the ending of the movie. I would have liked to know more about what this fantastic character had done in life. It seems like she would have been incredibly successful. Like she would have done something amazing in the world. And it's disappointing that she's not. She's kind of bland and there's something interesting about her in the end and you could have just not had the ending.  And then you just let her in adulthood and she's just there. It's not clear that anything about her. I would have liked to know that, I don't know, she built an empire. She took whatever her father left her and built a massive ranch and was super successful. And I don't know. Why didn't she become a lawyer? She certainly had the mind for it. Anyway, I loved the female character. I loved the scene of her negotiating stuff. She was terrific. I just didn't like the male characters. Any of them. Jennifer had a question about Westerns. I don't actually like Spaghetti Westerns, although Clint Eastwood looked cool in them. I like to do the Harry character committed to fighting evil.   But I also know how great Westerns are. And there's so much better. Here are some of my favorite Westerns, right? Just so you have them. Nobody asked, but if you're interested, J.J. Jingby says, kind of a modern Western. Did you like No Country for Old Man? Another Coen Brothers movie. I'm tempted to pay you to review A Serious Man, one of my all-time favorites by them as well. God. I sold Country for No Man. I mean, it was, it was very violent if I remember right. It's kind of a Western.  It's so crazy. There's a certain element of, and the heroes are so not really heroes on, on, you know, think about the cop in Fargo. She's heroic, but she's kind of so underplayed as a hero. And I can't remember enough about No Country for Old Man. Happy to review A Serious Man. I'm pretty sure I saw it. I generally like Coen Brothers movies, but they're all problematic. None of them are, can I say, have great themes or anything like that. So it's, it's what was A Serious Man about? It was about, yeah, I mean, the Coen Brothers have this naturalism mixed in with absurdism. So it's a combination of absurdism and naturalism which the Coen Brothers have that I don't like. So, you know, again, I'm mixed and you can't compare to one of these old Westerns. And the violence is I mean, they do it on purpose. They've got a stick with, they're being violent to shock and they succeed. They're very good at it. Here's some of my favorites. The big country, one of the all-time greats Destry Wides again in the 1930s Western with Jimmy Stewart. Fantastic, before the war. High Noon, you know, somebody can ask me about High Noon, I'd love to do a review of High Noon. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, a complex, amazing, and again this civilizing the frontier so much of the theme there. Through violence, civilizing the frontier through violence and self-defense, civilizing the frontier through violence in the hands of a good guy, of a hero. My darling Clementine, which is almost the same, well no. Yeah, my darling Clementine. The Plainsman, which is a, I never see on lists of great Westerns, but it is a Cecibi de Mil with Gary Cooper. Rancho Notorious Red River Rio Grande The Searchers Shane Chihuahua Yellow Ribbon Tin Star, nobody ever talks about the Tin Star, I love the Tin Star with Henry Fonda The Unforgiven Union Pacific also Cecibi de Mil, 1939 Western Union also Cecibi de Mil, 1941 The Westerner and Winchester 73 with Jimmy Stewart. So those are some of my favorite Westerns. Hopefully somebody made a list if you're interested. And you can see the really great ones were made in 39, 41, maybe High Noon is 59, but High Noon is the end of the great Westerns, and there's a reason, you can see it already in the theme. The theme is already suggesting the end, although Tin Star and I think Rio Bravo were made to combat the theme of High Noon. To combat what was viewed as the very negative elements in High Noon. J. Lord says, there was a revival of real hero in the 70s, 80s and 90s, it began with Luke Skywalker. Now really, I mean, first of all it would have to be the late 70s, and of course the Plainsmen the Plainsmen No, the Plainsmen would be not 1966, would be far earlier than that. So it would be Cecil B. DeMille, so it would be 30s or 40s. High Noon is late 50s, or early 50s, sorry, 52, yes. I don't think there was a real revival, not of these kind of heroes. Luke Skywalker is a shallow heroes compared to these heroes. I'm sorry, I'm not a huge fan of Star Wars, because I think the heroism of Star Wars is shallow, the heroes are shallow. The values are, they're not personal, they don't quite make it I mean, watch these Westerns, and I don't know what movies in the 80s and 90s you would say have real heroes in them. There was an attempt, but they all always, almost always undermine the hero. So I'm curious what movies you're referring to, but JJ GB says, Serious Man, a very Jewish movie about a physics professor whose life goes bad quickly seeks out help from rabbis, funny and dark. Yes, I vaguely remember this, it's funny and dark without a very positive theme, without anything really interesting at the end to say about the world if I remember it right. But it's a you know, darkness is easy having good good themes. I mean, Westerns had great themes again, this civilizing through force in the hands of heroes, that combination and the image of a hero, that's special and you don't get that a lot you don't get that in modern movies. I mean I want to do a show we'll do this in a few weeks, months we'll do a show on a lot of the rings versus what's the other series, the fantasy series that's on the big HBO series Game of Thrones, so a lot of the rings versus Game of Thrones, not a lot of the rings of Game of Thrones, but the two series that are going on right now on Prime and on HBO, Game of Thrones a lot of the ring prequels. I want to do a show comparing those, because I think Game of Thrones is very revealing House of Dragon, I think it's called is very revealing of the kind of heroism the kind of characters the kind of story, the kind of plot the kind of themes that people find interesting today and it's not good it's not good. Now I enjoyed Game of Thrones but I knew and I the fun just like I enjoyed Breaking Bad but the underlying theme of Great of Thrones is bad. Now some of the episodes, some of the seasons even had great themes embedded in them, but the overarching theme is negative it's negative my Star Wars review is somewhat overdue, absolutely anyway I think it's interesting and on the other hand the Atokin's series is also interesting in terms of the themes and how you can draw themes even in fantasy, how you can get the themes and the kind of heroism and the difference in the type of heroism between Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings is I think really really interesting but we'll do a show about that that'll be fun for me to do all right Kori says nowadays it seems to be the heyday of medieval settings and fantasy mixed with medieval yeah that's Game of Thrones and yes, there's something very I don't know, there's something very grounding I think in a medieval setting because it's very you're confronted with nature and you're confronted with physical violence and physical force in an immediate setting even in the theme of the Game of Thrones that is an ideal kind of context and it seems that people attracted, it's shocking how many people attracted to the authoritarianism you know, remember the middle ages were all kings and queens and knights and the violence of those cultures and how appealing they are when set in a fantasy world and how freedom a proper conception of freedom is completely really absent from all of these series I mean Game of Thrones twice plays around with a little bit of freedom but ultimately comes to the conclusion that freedom is corrupting and that all blows up right so freedom is not sustainable goodness is not sustainable so it's only evil that is efficacious and it's part of the appeal of the medieval settings is the yuckiness of life maybe it makes our own life look better but the fact that it's so dominant right now is interesting but that's a whole other topic that we have to get to alright let's see so we are doing super chats we're like 40 bucks short and really the only reason we're only 40 bucks short is because Troy came in with 500 Australian dollars so you guys are way behind way behind so you want to play this game you have to chip in they call it chip in in Gale thank you, really appreciate the support chip in, we need at least 40 dollars of chipping in over the next few minutes but a lot more than that because actually the 500 Australian dollars is going to be less because of the way YouTube actually does the conversion so we need like 100 bucks to come in over the next few minutes there we go, Cory's on top of it Cory's on top of it with Australian dollars okay Cory says, I'm doing this because it's relative to the topic Cory says exactly that is what worries me how attractive they are to my generation along with the cause for better leadership rather than taking control of their own life absolutely, I think that's absolutely right part of the appeal of the medieval times is the appeal of not a hero who acts for the good but the appeal of of a hero fights for a king fights for a queen and the battle between kings and queens and Game of Thrones has one hero who lands up in misery at the end who lands up really not successful I mean there's a kind of an attempt at the end to kind of wrap it all up in a bogus everybody lives happily ever after kind of way but it's not right the ultimate conclusion of it is that it's about leadership and it's about power and it's about strength and it's about orders and following orders alright, where were we what was the dark Jewish Western again, it's not a western it's it's not a western at all it's a movie set in modern times, it's called The Serious Man it's a Coen Brothers movie it has nothing to do with westerns not even close alright here's another one related is there a very violent movie that you think portrays good values or is that a contradiction what people liked about Game of Thrones was the politics yeah, what people liked was the cutthroat politics what people liked was the a way of characters I think people loved the different characters involved some of the suspense some of the pretense of being good guys and bad guys but were there really any good guys very few you know so are they very violent movies that portray good values sure, I can't think of any right now because it's very hard to think about these things on your feet movies and everything but sure, I don't think the violence in and of itself precludes it and there are episodes of Game of Thrones which I think are excellent that portray things like the evil of mixing religion with political power that are very violent and have good themes and present good values you know I'd have to think what is a good movie that has a lot of violence and is you know is part of the challenge is most modern movies are the ones who are violent movies before the 70's were not very violent at least not that you saw it on screen but there were also better movies generally and there were also much more much better ideologically much better ideologically alright, let's see okay alright, a lot of super chats a lot of questions to answer and we're ready in an hour and a half okay, let's go on through these friend Harpa, do you know any objectivist in Japan? yes I do are there any objectivist philosophers historians who study the East and its philosophy I don't know none that I am familiar with but there's a very active fairly large group of objectivist in Japan I peak to them and I'm in touch with them on a regular basis I will be doing some events for them when I'm in Japan next week and they're really good guys and they have like one guy who's there is kind of their intellectual leader I get a sense of and he's a really smart guy and he usually serves as my translator but I get the sense that he knows a lot about objectivism and is a really cool guy and yeah so yes they are and I'm sure he knows a lot about objectives about philosophy and history in the East I'm not he's not a historian or philosopher but I'm sure he knows a lot about it all right Michael Mike Day Dial how much to review a five page chapter of a book it's not necessary to read the whole book or context now I assume this is a non-fiction book I do not want to review fiction books so if it's a non-fiction book then I don't know five pages 150 bucks 30 bucks a page but it has to be it can be fiction it has to be non-fiction so if you're interested let me know friend Hopper can you share what you know about the current scope of higher ground education are they in every state their orientation feels like brightest light hope in the realm of education no I don't think they're in every state they're in a lot of states they have a lot of schools I don't know the numbers and everything like that but they're online you can find a lot of information about them so I encourage you to do that I don't have kind of the breakdown of the details but it is positive in the sense of growth absolutely Ryan 50 Canadian dollars thank you Ryan I heard a comment today chaos is good because it drives innovation thank you thanks to you and Rand I was immediately triggered and held my tongue I knew saying anything in a moment would be counterproductive what would you say to that remark I'd say chaos in and of itself is chaos chaos in and of itself leads to nothing now a situation that can appear chaotic but is guided by human reason and human rationality but it's not bounded by convention is not bounded by dogma is not bounded by authority is not bounded by something artificial but chaotic in the sense that you can you can go anywhere with your thoughts with your reason with your you know reason guided imagination in that sense chaos leads innovation thrives but what innovation really thrives under is freedom where individuals are using their minds to solve problems to come up with problems to discover problems and solve them so it's not the chaos it's not the chaos it's the freedom and it's the individual mind that within groups many individuals minds that trigger innovation drives innovation chaos God there's chaos in Ukraine right now no innovation in Ukraine right now there's chaos in Africa right now in many places in Africa non-innovation so chaos is, no chaos does not lead to innovation Applejack says great show but my question is off topic in Atlas, Rand doesn't refer to politicians as congressmen or senators or president it's Mr. Thompson will address the nation in your view foreshadowing it's, yeah I mean she's she's um they don't deserve the respect of the title it's also kind of where you believe you will get to with egalitarianism with the titles matter because they give them power but they pretend not to matter in the name of egalitarianism Jay Lutz says I will say this for Australia powerful protest led to an end of most of COVID restrictions they nearly all gone now the Australian people are at least advocating freedom again yeah I took them a long time and I remember the protest you know and they didn't seem to lead to anything ultimately Australia lagged most countries in eliminating COVID restrictions so I don't think that you can't draw or cause a link from the demonstrations to the actual elimination of COVID restrictions they seem to happen when the rest of the world happened there were a lot of courageous Australians who went out to demonstrate not enough of them and they didn't have anywhere near as much of an impact as I would have expected so I was disappointed Fred Harper the anime one piece is 10 30 episodes long 1030 how much to have you review it just kidding the way you describe westerns this show fits the description it's about pirates very driven by values that's great and no I'm not going to watch 1030 episodes well of course unless you pay me what would that be 250 an episode you calculate free trade says can't think of a question so I'll just remind everybody that the energy crisis is an amazing opportunity political and philosophical ideas I like your taken game of thrones thank you free trade Michael says what's the biggest criticism you have about yourself and the progress of objectives movement God it's too slow what's the biggest criticism I have biggest criticism yeah I mean I don't know I think we do we've done what I needed to do I don't know that it could be done better faster the progress is too slow but if anybody had come up with a better idea on how to do it faster would have done it so I'm not exactly sure where this is getting to Megan asks can't school choice be legislated in townships I don't know I don't know the legal status of a township you'd have to look into it who runs the education budget Corey off topic you're an early adopter right are you excited for the new iPhone 14 if you're going to get one that is I'm excited about the iPhone 14 I don't know if I'm going to get one I used to get every second model so I'm probably going to wait for the iPhone 15 my iPhone 13 is good I don't replace it every year I haven't seen anything about the iPhone 14 was like I have to get it I have to get it I'm curious about the watch I've got the previous generation that one maybe there's some new features that I want to get and there is the iPhone pro that I I watch pro or something like that so I will I will check that out I'll check that out but I'm not I'm not sure that Apple came in with 50 bucks thank you Hopper when intellectuals advocate of Galatimianism in a welfare state is this them projecting their own inferiority complex about themselves to the world because they don't think they can make it out there they want other people to be unable to make it I mean there's a sense in which it's not that they don't think they can make it it's much deeper than that fundamentally hate themselves. Again, the best psychologically illustration of this is Tui. Now I said at some show that I don't think Tui's exist and people freaked out and gave me a list of all these intellectuals who are like Tui. This is the difference. Tui knew what he was doing. He had a full understanding of his own evil. I don't think people have that. I think they rationalize it away. I think they make it go away. Tui fundamentally hates himself. He's got an inferiority complex. He knows he can't be successful under terms of reality and therefore he hates reality and he hates himself.  They project their own hatred of themselves onto others and they enjoy at some level the fact that other people are defeated by them. And it's they one little victory that they have. They can't deal with reality, i.e. the material world and the laws of physics and so they deal with people and they know how to manipulate people and know how to destroy people and they know how to pervert people and that's what they focus on. I hope that answers. Flotatious. Excuse my poverty tier donation. Gonna be in school full-time for two years soon. Cath lab tech big equals big dono donor. Have you heard people joking about installing US dictator Puerto Rico when the US collapses? I have not but you know we can talk when the US collapses. I hope it's people who have the power to install me as dictator because otherwise it's it's useless talk. I want serious people. Liam says could Bill Clinton win a Democratic nomination today? No. No. I don't think so. Well no let me I mean he could have beaten Biden. Yes I think he could win a Democratic nomination. Could Ronald Reagan win the Republican and this is the difference between the two parties is that Ronald Reagan could not win the Republican but Bill Clinton maybe could win the Democratic because the Democrats voted for Biden. Biden's not exactly some kind of progressive nut. He's an empty suit so with Bill Clinton to a large extent. Francis says do you have a favorite conductor and orchestra? Yeah I mean many but my favorite conductor is Tuscany but I also I like a lot of conductors. I really like you know for something's food vanguards although I have a problem with his model character. I liked Collis Kleiber. I liked Gugsel among the modern conductors. Oh God what's his name. Yeah I can't remember his Italian conductor. I forget his name. I'm not a huge fan of Leonard Bernstein. He wasn't one of my favorites. I like Honak but I like the old conductors the best. I prefer Gugsel to Leonard Bernstein for example. I'm trying to think of anyway you know me and names but I if you somebody asked me I'll try to get you a list next time of some modern conductors that I really like. Mr. Muffin asks how does your research differ with conservators when it comes to illegal immigration? Where are they getting their research from? Where they're getting their research versus yours? They're getting it from some of it they make up. Some of it they make up. What's her name? Who has a book on immigration? Some of the stuff she's just making up. Like the number of illegal immigrants in the United States between 30 million. I've run through that math. She makes it up.  Some of it is just bad economics. They just don't understand economics. Some of it is from think tanks, conservative think tanks that and Colt, yes. Some of it's conservative think tanks that have an agenda. But this is not a research question. There's no research issue here. What is the fact that the conservative research comes up with that to contradict what I say about immigration? That immigration is a net loss to the US economy? They don't know what they're talking about. Now, where do I get my research from? A, I know economics. It helps a lot. It helps a lot to know economics and to know the fundamental basis of economics. Things like the trader principle which conservatives don't understand. If they understood it, they wouldn't be again, they wouldn't be for tariffs. They have no concept of the trader principle. They have no fundamental real understanding of economics and the conservatives who do understand economics, support immigration, a big fans of immigration. But I get a lot of my, a lot of the numbers I use. I use a couple of guys, some people, Kato does really good work on immigration. But you can't just trust the work they do. You have to go and read the papers and you have to track the figures. I love Brian Kaplan's work on immigration because Brian Kaplan takes a philosophical slash economic slash cultural perspective on immigration and he does excellent stuff. Again, the issue around immigration is not the numbers. It's not economics. On economics, there's just no argument about immigration. Brian Kaplan is, on my show on immigration, I'll go through some Brian Kaplan's stuff. And then who else, who I had somebody else in mind. Oh yes, there's an economist out of Texas State University, Ben Powell, who's written on immigration and has a collection of essays on immigration, if I remember right. And his book on immigration is excellent. And he surveys the literature, the economic literature and immigration. And yeah, that all looks good to me. And the stuff I read out of the anti-immigration conservative stuff is just crap. It's just not good economics. And when I read Ann Colton, when I read Victor Davis Hansen, Victor Davis Hansen, who I respect a lot as a military historian, when it comes to immigration, it's, I mean, Victor Davis Hansen argument in the end are all cultural. They're all cultural. His sense that the Mexicans are being a bad culture into the country. That's it. And again, that's not economics. We can talk about culture. And the causes of it. So those are my sources. Francis asked, didn't I ran say Kant had to know what he was doing? Yes, I think she said that at some level he had to know. And it's some level they all know. But how conscious is is I just don't know. Because Rand also, when James Taggart discovers what he's doing comes face to face with who he really is. He goes crazy. And I think I think most evil people couldn't handle the actual idea that they are evil. All right, J Lord, Rand had no love for Reagan. No, she did not primarily over the issue of abortion. Also, I fear the woke left will lead the masses into the arms of the theocratic right. Exactly. I've been saying that all along. The woke left will lead this country into the hands of the the crazy rate, the theocratic nationalistic rate. That's what we're hitting. All right, on that wonderful pleasant positive note, I will bid you guys good night. Oh, one more question from Corey. Maybe that level is the knowledge that they're evading something, but just don't know what. Well, it's more than that, that they have a glimpse, they have a sense of what it is. Part of the evasion is that they could know what it was if they made an effort, but they choose not to have that effort. Yeah, and Kant is unique because Kant is a genius, not all these intellectuals are genius. The Krugman really know what he's doing. He constantly rationalizes their thought away, evades it through rationalization, rationalization, coming up with excuses, coming up with pseudo reasons for what you're doing is the way in which they suppress the truth. All right, thanks, everybody. Thanks, Troy, for the very generous contribution from Australia. Thanks, Harper Campbell and many of the other superchatters or all the superchatters at whatever level you contributed today. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please like it before you leave. Give it a thumbs up before you leave. Share it and encourage people to watch the Iran book show. That would be great. So help us with the algorithms by liking, sharing, commenting, doing stuff with it. All right, bye everybody. See you probably Friday. Not sure exactly what time now.


Here we go, welcome to natural selection. This is talking about how our behavior, how natural selection is prepared, our behavior so to speak. And like I said, I'm getting quite ahead of myself here because this is about, what do you call it? This is about the operant conditioning or the instrumental conditioning, but it's still a relevant discussion. So in the picture, basically, just so you guys are aware, we do have natural selection, right? And I'm not talking about the sheep on the side of the hill, which you can't see, but it is there, right? So think for a moment about where that is. There's all sorts of different spots in this photo where you'll be able to see natural selection. And so I'll kind of give you a moment to think about it there. You can pause and go, hmm, there's natural selection going on where, a couple of different places, right? Number one, the rocks. It's the most obvious place. The rocks are distributed in a particular fashion. Notice the larger rocks are on top, smaller rocks as you go down underneath, right? The idea is, is that those are, that order, that pattern is naturally selected. So there's not an active sort of, organizing the beach in this particular way. That's not how natural selection works. It's more of a passive sort of thing. It's not an active agent doing the selecting unless you consider the environment an active agent. So anyway, so let's look at the three levels of natural selection, right? Species level, right off the bat, okay? This is pretty straightforward. This is the Darwin stuff that you're all aware of. This is really, really slow though, right? So we don't see changes on species level selection within our lifetime.  And first off, that's about the craziest statement you can make in terms of a scientific statement, right? It just makes no sense. So species level selection is that grand sort of, that's the stuff we think of when we think of natural selection when we think of evolution, right? Well, what this really does is it prepares us phylogenically, right? So we talk about the phylogeny and the ontogeny of behavior. Now that's a bit beyond the scope of this course, but basically the phylogeny of behavior. That's the behavior that you were born with, right? Those are your fixed action patterns, your modal action patterns, whatever you want to call them. And those are the things that those, you know, instincts and stuff like that, right? Humans and instincts, eh, not so much, but this stuff applies not just to humans, right? So the instinctual behavior of animals, that's phylogenic, right? We're not talking, so that's something that's been selected for through history and through evolution. Cultural level selection, we, in a sense, this one has not been directly observed. Now, a species level selection, there's no question that that exists. That's your, again, that's the stuff that Darwin was talking about, it's changed a little bit since Darwin, but the basics are still the same, right? So that one, there's no question about tons of evidence for that. Cultural level selection, not much evidence, but it's a different level. So let's look at the third level here in a second, but because that one does have a lot of evidence for it as well. So with cultural level selection, we're talking about how cultures change over time. The culture in the United States is not the same as what it was 20 years ago. So think about some of those differences. Think about some of the things that have changed just within your lifetime. So what do you remember as a kid? You know, what were the prevalent attitudes? What has changed in our culture? In my time, I've seen things like work ethic change. I've seen things like expectations change, like people's expectations of how the world works. I've seen that change. And that seems to be more of a cultural level thing, okay? Individual level selection, this one has a ton of evidence for it as well. So again, the first one, species level and individual level, these are the ones that have extraordinary amounts of data to support them, for the most part unarguable. Individual level selection, we talk about ontogeny. This is the selection of your behavior through consequences. I'm giving you a peep as to what's coming up, because what's coming up is this discussion about operant conditioning and instrumental conditioning, in other words, same thing. And what that really is, is talking about how behavior in your lifetime is selected just like species are selected, but by the consequences of your actions. So you do something that produces a consequence. It can be a positive thing. It can be a negative thing. It can be something added. It can be something removed. And your behavior is going to fluctuate, depending on that particular consequence. Again, that's what we're talking about in terms of operant behavior. Now the term operant literally means that the behavior is going to operate on the environment. Your behavior is going to do something. It's going to cause a change in the environment and that behavior, that environment in turn is going to change the probability of you engaging in that behavior in the future. It's going to maintain it. It's going to increase it. It's going to decrease it. That's what you got, right? So operant is about the behavior being operated on by the environment and the behavior operating on the environment as well. So it works both directions. In order for this to happen, what you need is variation. So just like with species level selection, you need variation. You need differences. You need genes to be different. You need to mix genes. Sexual reproduction is about the mixing of genes. If you don't have that, if you have asexual reproduction, then you've got like one organism and it splits into two and that type of thing, and when that splits into two, they're genetically identical. You don't have variation. So as a result, that lack of variation makes the organism very successful in its current environment, but you change that environment and the entire species can be wiped out. With behavior, it's the same thing. Individual level selection is behavior that's happening in your lifetime on a daily basis. This is the stuff that we choose to do, right? The variation, the different ways in which we do stuff, something like if you're trying to solve a math problem, for example. You work at it one way and it's not working, it's failing, and then all of a sudden you try something a little different and it works and you get the right answer. There was the variation that trying something a little different, and then that got reinforced. The first method that you were trying on the math problem that you weren't getting the right answer, that got punished, right? So punishment is going to reduce the behavior, reinforcement is going to strengthen one. So those are the three levels of natural selection. Again, we've got a ton of evidence for the first species. We've got a ton of evidence for the last individual, very little evidence for the cultural primarily because no one's just done the research. So the two of these, the first one Darwin, the third one is Skinner, right? So Skinner really came up with that selection by consequences. There's other people that talked about selection by consequences, Tharndyke and others as well, but Skinner was the one that really nailed it, right? He's the one that really kind of hammered it home and made it to true science. The cultural level was proposed by Skinner, but it was more a guess. He was just kind of going out on his day-to-day, just like, well, you know, I think this might be going on and it seems to fit. If cultural level of selection is correct, then you've got this beautiful process. Species, okay, grand, nice and slow, cultural, a little faster than species level selection, but still quite slow. And then individual level selection, which happens quick, right? It's happening on a daily basis and it's within an organism. So this really does, it fits nice. And one of the things that we look for in science is how different theories and different philosophies, how do they fit with the existing data? And it may be that, this is where Skinner got really excited, is that when he started talking about phylogenia and ontogenia behavior, and it's an article he wrote called the phylogenia and ontogenia behavior. When he wrote that article, it was almost like he was excited. It was like he discovered some magical thing. And that thing he discovered was how does behavior fit into the natural world? Not everyone understands this point. When you hear me say it, yeah, it makes sense, right? But it's a big point. If Skinner was right, then we filled a major gap. It's one of those missing links, so to speak. So we've now connected species level stuff to individual level stuff, and it's the same mechanism. Anything we know about nature, it likes to conserve its mechanisms. So things that work will get repeated, eyes work, brains work, arms work, fingers work, tails work. Those types of things get repeated across multiple species because they function. So the same thing might be happening here in terms of selection. Selection is a process that works. So you're probably going to see it in a lot of different areas. From the Rocky Beach to our individual behavior, how I'm doing lectures is being selected for, right? To your behavior of studying the material all the way up to the culture in which you live in and even at a species level. I hope that answers some questions about the natural selection stuff. There you go. Have a good one. Cheers.