Speaker 1: Thull radical fundamental principles of freedom, rational self interest, and
Speaker 1: individual rights. This is the ran Brook Show. All right, everybody,
Speaker 1: welcome to you one book show on this Wednesday, January
Speaker 1: twenty ninth. I will be heading to the airport immediately
Speaker 1: after the show to catch a play to Atlanta, Georgia,
Speaker 1: and then drive to Clemson. I'll be giving a talk
Speaker 1: at Clemson University tomorrow on Israel's Mael War to the
Speaker 1: students in the Like Seeing Program at Clemson, which is
Speaker 1: the program run by Brad Thompson. And then I'll be
Speaker 1: going off to Florida to the Objectives Conference of Florida.
Speaker 1: We'll be giving a talk about the future of objectivism.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that that's the plan. I'll be back home
Speaker 1: next Wednesday, so a week from now, after visiting also
Speaker 1: the Dalhi Museum and visiting other places in Florida. Uh,
Speaker 1: and yes, I'll be back Wednesday. Shows between now and
Speaker 1: then Spotty, we'll see. I don't know. I'll try to
Speaker 1: do as many as I can, but but we will see. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that is that is a plan. Today we'll do a
Speaker 1: relatively short show because I have to go to the eirport,
Speaker 1: so we won't longer than two hours, maybe just an
Speaker 1: hour and a half. We'll see, Uh, the super chat
Speaker 1: fundraising goal set appropriately. Let's just jump in, jump in.
Speaker 1: As I said, you know, Trump is just sucking all
Speaker 1: the air out of news. There's basically nothing going on
Speaker 1: in the world except what Trump is doing. That's what
Speaker 1: it seems like, because he's doing so many big things,
Speaker 1: controversial things off the cuff, things that that that that
Speaker 1: that is dominating all the news. So we will we
Speaker 1: will talk about a bunch of a bunch of that.
Speaker 1: But let's start with what's going on, live right now,
Speaker 1: live right now. RFK is in front of a Senate committee, uh,
Speaker 1: discussing his qualifications for being Health and Humans Service Secretary. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it is I don't know, it's just it's just
Speaker 1: it's just a a ridiculous, ridiculous, I don't know, expression
Speaker 1: of political god. I mean, it's just I mean, this
Speaker 1: guy who is a conspiracy theorist, who is an anti VAXXA,
Speaker 1: who is an anti pharma, who you know, it probably
Speaker 1: lies about a lot of things that he believes in
Speaker 1: or doesn't believe in for his own financial gain. This
Speaker 1: is a it's a clown show. I like that ammaed Mars.
Speaker 1: It's a clown show. It's a clown show. Now, it's
Speaker 1: a clown show. It's pathetic, it's ridiculous. It's infuriating that
Speaker 1: rf case even nominated to a position like this. He's
Speaker 1: not qualified. He's the opposite of qualified. He could be
Speaker 1: incredibly destructive in a position like this, and it sends
Speaker 1: basically the wrong message, you know, to Americans. It sends
Speaker 1: the wrong message to healthcare providers, It sends the wrong
Speaker 1: message the farmer and people at the front lines kind
Speaker 1: of trying to solve the health issues of Americans. The
Speaker 1: one virtue he has where he talks about eating better
Speaker 1: and exercising and doing stuff like that. You could get
Speaker 1: somebody saying saying the same stuff. You don't have to
Speaker 1: have somebody who is a complete nutcase to advocate for
Speaker 1: eating well and exercising. It's part of the clown show.
Speaker 1: Here is here Republicans who I remember not that long ago,
Speaker 1: were really upset and may have Bloomberg for threatening or
Speaker 1: actually executing I think on a tax, like a special
Speaker 1: tax on what is a big soda on big tubs
Speaker 1: of soda because it was unhealthy. Now they want to
Speaker 1: nominate somebody who'd like to tax most of our food
Speaker 1: because it's unhealthy. They're once the federal government to basically
Speaker 1: regulate our food from the top down in terms of
Speaker 1: its health. So now we have Republicans wanting can micromanage,
Speaker 1: micro manage our die and it used to be Democrats
Speaker 1: who wanted to do that. The whole layout of this
Speaker 1: hearing is interesting because Republicans don't like our FK because
Speaker 1: of it stands on abortion, but they love it is
Speaker 1: anti pharma, anti science, anti vacs, stupidity over COVID, and
Speaker 1: a bunch of other things, you know, anything conspiratorial, all
Speaker 1: this whatever, conspiratorial things. They love that, and you know
Speaker 1: they'll jump on that. And the Democrats are now suddenly
Speaker 1: they're the pro science, you know, pro vaccines, pro whatever,
Speaker 1: and anti conspiracy theories, and they're attacking uh, you know
Speaker 1: RFK because he's part of an administration's gonna be anti ebocean.
Speaker 1: And it's just the whole line of questioning is absurd
Speaker 1: and ridiculous. I mean, this is this theater. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's comedy. So Tom tillis a Republican from North Carolina,
Speaker 1: literally asks RFK if he's a conspiracy theorist talk about
Speaker 1: a softball question. Uh, you know that that can only
Speaker 1: be hit for a home run. I mean, really, me
Speaker 1: a conspiracy theorist. That is not true. It's just a
Speaker 1: way to malign me because I ask questions. I just
Speaker 1: I've just asked difficult questions. That's all I'm doing. I
Speaker 1: don't have a position, it's just I just literally ask
Speaker 1: difficult questions. And they labeled me a conspiracy you because
Speaker 1: they want to silence me, because they don't like that
Speaker 1: I ask difficult questions. This is this is a in
Speaker 1: a hearing, you're supposed to tell us where the off
Speaker 1: case qualified to be. I mean, we're learning nothing in
Speaker 1: the hearing except that OURFK is very good at lying.
Speaker 1: He keeps saying. He keeps saying, I'm not anti vax
Speaker 1: I support facts, my kids are vaccinated. I love vaccines.
Speaker 1: I think vaccines are great. What about all your statements
Speaker 1: in the past that are clearly and equivocally anti where
Speaker 1: you're anti vax only democrats are asking these kind of
Speaker 1: line of questions and he goes, oh, taken out of context.
Speaker 1: They didn't understand the point I was trying to make.
Speaker 1: They don't get it. In other words, our f case
Speaker 1: lying through his teeth. He you know, he's asked about
Speaker 1: his position FARMA is anti farmer position, he's generally uh,
Speaker 1: he's he's against all these drugs that are now being
Speaker 1: used for weight loss, which you know SPOS showing unbelievable
Speaker 1: promise in terms of all kinds of other diseases. He's
Speaker 1: against a lot of what FARMA does. And I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm not against farmer, me me RFK against FARMA. That is,
Speaker 1: you know, equivalent of defamation. I just asked difficult questions.
Speaker 1: I just want to know the science. I mean, this
Speaker 1: guy is, I mean, he's a horrible human being by
Speaker 1: every account of his personal life. He is, uh, he
Speaker 1: is a anti science. You know, he's even he came
Speaker 1: out during the hewing as pro measles vaccine when he
Speaker 1: went to Samoa to try to convince him not to
Speaker 1: use the misos vakiin the number of kids died as
Speaker 1: a consequence of kind of an anti VAXX movement over there.
Speaker 1: And he just he sits there and lies and somebody, Senators,
Speaker 1: we are supposed to learn something new about him, about
Speaker 1: his stance, about what he represents. I mean, the whole
Speaker 1: proceedings were of confirmation to become public. Republic proceedings are
Speaker 1: just a joke, right, They're just a joke. I mean,
Speaker 1: Republicans should admit that they will basically vote yes for
Speaker 1: anybody the Trump nominates, and Democrats should admit that for
Speaker 1: the most part, they'll vote no, although that's not always
Speaker 1: the case that some Democrats have voted for some of
Speaker 1: Trump's nominees. And and stop playing this game. You know,
Speaker 1: Trump wants him, will appoint him. That's all the matters
Speaker 1: to these Republicans. And and this process, so called process is
Speaker 1: is just an expression of you know, a farce, uh,
Speaker 1: dishonest and a way too in a way to just
Speaker 1: bamboos of the American people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, uh, Joshua, you know you don't know what you're
Speaker 2: talking about.
Speaker 1: You really shouldn't talk about things you don't know anything about.
Speaker 1: It's it's pretty sad to watch people on my chat
Speaker 1: about complete and utter nonsense. He says. The reality is,
Speaker 1: we have more vaccinations, but somehow we get more people
Speaker 1: stuff of an disease. No, we don't. Actually, the vaccinations
Speaker 1: are targeting particular diseases and those diseases. That way, we
Speaker 1: have vaccinations, the disease rate has gone close to zero.
Speaker 1: People who get vaccinations don't get those diseases. There's no
Speaker 1: measles really in America today. There's certainly no polio. You know,
Speaker 1: if you go iva the what do you call that?
Speaker 1: Civical cancer is caused by a virus. We have a
Speaker 1: vaccine against that. The number of civical cancer cases have plummeted,
Speaker 1: have just unbelievably plummeted. Research project after research project, have
Speaker 1: you research project trying to find a connection between vaccines
Speaker 1: and autism finds no connection between vaccines and autism on
Speaker 1: every one of the points that he makes, On every
Speaker 1: single one of the points that he makes, there's no
Speaker 1: correlation with vaccines. Down syndromes up because of vaccines. I
Speaker 1: don't know why down syndrome is up. I don't even
Speaker 1: know if that's true. But all right, but has anybody
Speaker 1: shown that as related to vaccines. No, nobody has shown that. Indeed,
Speaker 1: the studies that have been done show that they're unrelated,
Speaker 1: that there's no correlation between Down syndrome. So, you know,
Speaker 1: a correlation is not causation. So a lot of things
Speaker 1: have happened over the last twenty years and things have increased.
Speaker 1: You can't because they've all gone up doesn't mean they're
Speaker 1: related to one another. They caused one another. So if
Speaker 1: it's true at all, there is no studies out there
Speaker 1: the show a cause of relationship between the two. You know,
Speaker 1: since the Iran book show started in January twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: the number of people down syndrome and autism has gone
Speaker 1: up significantly. I mean, I think it's quite clear that
Speaker 1: the Youuron Big Show is causing that. I mean, God
Speaker 1: help us, all right. Another issue that came up, well,
Speaker 1: if Kate were speaking, was you know, there's been a
Speaker 1: lot of controversy. It's gone to the courts about MIF MIF, pristone, pristona,
Speaker 1: well whatever, something like that. It's the basically the abortion pill.
Speaker 1: The abortion pillay was the FDA approved since it has
Speaker 1: been approved since two thousand for use up to ten
Speaker 1: weeks of gestuation. Uh, it has been studied thoroughly because
Speaker 1: it's been used for a long time, and it has
Speaker 1: been shown that this is one of the safest pills
Speaker 1: anybody can take, the safest Tyler No. And yet Republicans,
Speaker 1: in order to try to ban abortion pills, have argued
Speaker 1: it's not safe, it's wrong, and they've taken it to
Speaker 1: courts and they've lost in courts, but it's still in
Speaker 1: the courts in Texas, and there's a real effort among
Speaker 1: the Republicans have banned this abortion pill. And even though
Speaker 1: it's completely safe and everything, RFK has said, the President
Speaker 1: Trump has asked him to look into it, to assess,
Speaker 1: assess objectively, completely scientifically, because that's RFK. He's completely objective
Speaker 1: and completely scientific the safety of this drug. Even though
Speaker 1: it's been assessed, it's been reassessed, it's been studied, it's
Speaker 1: been used by tens hundreds of thousands of women. And
Speaker 1: RFK said, well, of course Donald Trump has asked me.
Speaker 1: He's the president, I will do it. Tailanol is pretty safe,
Speaker 1: come on, safe as talentol is not as strong an
Speaker 1: augumented it used to be. If you take talentol once,
Speaker 1: almost nothing is going to happen to you. You don't
Speaker 1: make take Miffa pristone more than once. It's the safest.
Speaker 1: Talentol is really really, really strong argument THAILANDO. If you
Speaker 1: take huge quantities of it, we'll do all kinds of
Speaker 1: bad stuff to you. That's true. Anything I'm sure, also
Speaker 1: true of Miffit Pistons. So now it's a safest talent
Speaker 1: all and that's a real thumbs up for it. Mirrabins,
Speaker 1: who is a biologist, a scientist who where she usually
Speaker 1: knows what she's talking about, except for some of her
Speaker 1: you know, super chats, some of them, I have no
Speaker 1: idea what she's talking about. But here she says, people
Speaker 1: are having kids at old ages when chromosoonal aberrations are
Speaker 1: more common. Nothing to do with vaccines or pathogens or
Speaker 1: anything like that. That's absolutely right, Thank you, Mirrabins. You're
Speaker 1: going to see as women have babies and older and
Speaker 1: old ages, you're going to see more challenges as people
Speaker 1: generally have. You know, you've got a lot more genetic
Speaker 1: problems with a couple that have babies at lady ages,
Speaker 1: so that is probably most likely the cause of this,
Speaker 1: So thank you, mayor ben So being from sanity into
Speaker 1: you know, Joshua and I says he can halfway agree
Speaker 1: with us on this because the other half, it's like
Speaker 1: the half way he's using his mind. He agrees with us,
Speaker 1: the half that's dedicated the reason he agrees, the half
Speaker 1: that is still ingrained with I don't know, mystical tribalism.
Speaker 1: He can't bring that around. So anyway, we're going to
Speaker 1: have a health and Human services you know, lead who
Speaker 1: is probably the most anti science that we have ever had,
Speaker 1: anti science in the science that we're talking about, in
Speaker 1: the science that is health that we're talking about. And
Speaker 1: the fact that he has a few positive good things
Speaker 1: to say does not justify the nonsense and craziness of
Speaker 1: so much of so much else that he that he's doing.
Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about the food resignations. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is all this is really fun. I'm telling you.
Speaker 1: Trump is the funnest president we've had so fun. I
Speaker 1: know some of you find that that I'm belittling the
Speaker 1: danger he represents, but believe me, I'm not. It's still
Speaker 1: fun to watch personally, because I despise them all. I
Speaker 1: despise them left, I despise the right. I despise the
Speaker 1: bureaucrats that are kind of panicky right now. So watching
Speaker 1: it all, everybody, smoke come out of there.
Speaker 2: He is.
Speaker 1: It's just a lot of fun to watch. And the
Speaker 1: smoke's coming out of Donald Trump's is and he's having
Speaker 1: the backtrack on everything, and I mean, it's all, it's
Speaker 1: all just good to see anyway. Donald Trump is basic
Speaker 1: made an offer to all government employees I guess by
Speaker 1: email where they if they let him say at the
Speaker 1: government no, by what is it next week, by next Friday,
Speaker 1: that they want to resign. They can resign in a
Speaker 1: sense effective September thirtieth, but they don't have to walk
Speaker 1: between now and September thirtieth. They can leave their job.
Speaker 1: They will be paid until September September thirtieth. This is
Speaker 1: very much in line with what Elon Musk did at
Speaker 1: Twitter when he came into Twitter and offer everybody sevenths
Speaker 1: you know if they voluntarily left, particularly Twitter. This is
Speaker 1: important because almost impossible to fire people in California, so
Speaker 1: you want to incentivize them to lead by themselves so
Speaker 1: you don't have to fire them. Same thing to some
Speaker 1: extent the federal government. Very difficult to fire people who
Speaker 1: work in the federal government because of all kinds of
Speaker 1: laws and regulation. So the best way to get a
Speaker 1: mass firing is there is to actually have them, actually
Speaker 1: have them resigned. So here's what it's about. Federal workers
Speaker 1: who accepted the further resignation offer will remain employed. Retain
Speaker 1: all pay and benefits, and be exempt from in person
Speaker 1: work requirements until their final resignation. They have September thirtieth,
Speaker 1: so they might still be working, but they won't have
Speaker 1: to come in person because one of the executive orders
Speaker 1: that Trump signed was everybody has to start coming into
Speaker 1: the job and be in person. Those who take the
Speaker 1: offer could see their duties changed or be reassigned or
Speaker 1: placed on leave before their resignation, but other than that
Speaker 1: they would be expected to work. They could continue working
Speaker 1: from home to the extent that they do that, but
Speaker 1: they would be out of end of September. Those who
Speaker 1: accepted are not expected to work, according to one of
Speaker 1: the publications. Again, there's a lot of contradicty stuff that's
Speaker 1: coming out that the Trump administation is putting out. There's
Speaker 1: not one consistent message. And the most common question by
Speaker 1: employees is, you know, will I have to work? Can
Speaker 1: I take the vacation I always wanted to, you know,
Speaker 1: for eight months? Can I just watch movies chill for
Speaker 1: eight months? So you know, it's unclear, but I think
Speaker 1: I think at the end of the day, it's going
Speaker 1: to be up to the particular agency whether your job
Speaker 1: is going to be moved, eliminated, consolidated, reassigned, exactly what's
Speaker 1: going to happen to what you're going to do over
Speaker 1: the next eight months. Under the offer, employees can accelerate
Speaker 1: their resignation date, but not extended. If a federal OCA
Speaker 1: becomes eligible for early or normal retirement at any point
Speaker 1: before the resignation day, they can also elect to retire
Speaker 1: according to the office. Those don't accept it, they off
Speaker 1: expires on February sixth. There's no penalty if they do
Speaker 1: not respond to the email. Uh and but the announcement
Speaker 1: does state that the majority of federal agencies are going
Speaker 1: to be downsized as part of the Trumpet demonstrations overhaul.
Speaker 1: They're going to follow employees, they will reclassify employees. They're
Speaker 1: going to reclassify employees to act will status, which will
Speaker 1: then make it easier for them to be fired. So
Speaker 1: they're going to change the way employees are treated in
Speaker 1: the government, which is all, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: really good. This is all good. I don't think that
Speaker 1: this this letting people design is good, but we'll get
Speaker 1: to that in a minute. For those who do not
Speaker 1: take the offer, they write, we cannot give you full
Speaker 1: assurance regarding the certainty of your position or agency or agency.
Speaker 1: But should your position be eliminated, you will be treated
Speaker 1: with dignity and will be afforded the protections in place
Speaker 1: for such positions. So you're not going to get this
Speaker 1: halfway again, right. It turns out not all federal employees
Speaker 1: are eligible. Agency heads may determine a corve outs within
Speaker 1: their agencies. Military personnel employees are the Post Office save
Speaker 1: the Post Office, and those in positions related to immigration
Speaker 1: enforcement that is the priority, and national security exempt. So
Speaker 1: the idea here is to shrink government big time. You know,
Speaker 1: as far as I know, you know, this has never
Speaker 1: been done before. And you know Office of seven cy,
Speaker 1: I mean I've been given out to government employees, beenever
Speaker 1: on a scale like this, And so you know, we're
Speaker 1: going to see what the response is now in Congress,
Speaker 1: of course, the Democrats are saying that the president has
Speaker 1: no authorit even make an offer like this. There's no
Speaker 1: but no budget line item to pay people who are
Speaker 1: not showing up for work. So and again you know,
Speaker 1: again this will be sued. They'll sue around this, and
Speaker 1: the quotes will Ultimately it's whether this is the right way,
Speaker 1: or this is a legitimate way to shrink government. Now
Speaker 1: I don't particularly like this. Why don't I like this? Well,
Speaker 1: it's simple, it's it's so not strategic, right, I get
Speaker 1: it that you could tell all the agencies to shrink
Speaker 1: the workforce by ten percent and then tell the agency
Speaker 1: head that they're responsible to getting rid of of the
Speaker 1: at least productive employees. You know, you can even say
Speaker 1: something like some companies do. I think Amazon does this regularly,
Speaker 1: the ten percent lowest performing employees, you know, fire them,
Speaker 1: or twenty percent or whatever, whatever the number you want
Speaker 1: to have. Or you know, I think ultimately it'll be
Speaker 1: great if the if whole agencies are shut down and
Speaker 1: closed and everybody's fired from there. But this is like
Speaker 1: a heartchpology that's going to depend on people who are
Speaker 1: willing to resign and are willing to leave, and of
Speaker 1: course gonna who's gonna leave. Well, it's just based on incentives.
Speaker 1: If we just look at incentives, the most competent people
Speaker 1: with the most options in the private sector are likely
Speaker 1: to leave. People who don't think they'll ever find a
Speaker 1: job in the private sector are the ones in the stay.
Speaker 1: So you're basically, you know, you're basically providing a you know,
Speaker 1: a bad incentive structure. Now, why didn't this work at Twitter?
Speaker 1: The reason at Twitter talented people stayed is because there
Speaker 1: was an upside. Right, if you stayed, you got stock
Speaker 1: and if Twitter was a huge success, you would benefit enormously. Here,
Speaker 1: there's no upside to staying, right, no upside to state.
Speaker 1: So the only incentive driving leaving a staying is whether
Speaker 1: you think you get a job outside, how talented you are,
Speaker 1: how good you out your job, assuming the better you
Speaker 1: out your job, the more likely it is to get
Speaker 1: a job outside. So you know, it's the incentive structure
Speaker 1: is weird. There's no upside to staying. The only upside
Speaker 1: I can see the staying. And some people have commented
Speaker 1: on this is government employees the one to stick around
Speaker 1: to school with Trump to fight him as government employees.
Speaker 1: How many people are like that? Just vindictive democrats, leftists.
Speaker 1: I don't think there are many of them that are
Speaker 1: willing to do that. Also, it's not clear how politically
Speaker 1: smart this is. Right, what happens if I don't know
Speaker 1: half the people or three quarters of the people in
Speaker 1: the passport department? You know, the people who approve your passports,
Speaker 1: who renew passports all resign and suddenly that department shrinks
Speaker 1: by seventy five percent. Well, people are going to be
Speaker 1: pissed off because their passports are not being approved. Or
Speaker 1: iOS you know, iOS, people who answer questions on the
Speaker 1: phone lines. And now you're not going to get through that.
Speaker 1: You're not going to be able to get through the
Speaker 1: dirs now as it is, it's really, really, really hard
Speaker 1: to get through the IRS. Imagine what happened now, and
Speaker 1: you could go on and on. In other words, it's
Speaker 1: not strategic. It's not let's shrink the responsibilities of these
Speaker 1: departments and as a consequence, we can fire a bunch
Speaker 1: of people. It's not these apartments are useless anyway, they
Speaker 1: don't do anything. Let's fire a bunch of people. Let's
Speaker 1: just fire at or let's let go of a bunch
Speaker 1: of people based on their own willingness to leave, independent
Speaker 1: of how good they are, independent of how valuable they are,
Speaker 1: independent of that we need them or don't need them,
Speaker 1: or anything like that. So it's it. You can't extrapolate
Speaker 1: from Twitter to the government. In Twitter, the incentives are different.
Speaker 1: But again, you know, we will see, we will see
Speaker 1: how it all plays out in the meantime, everybody's kind
Speaker 1: of fantaic. Again, this will go to the courts. You know,
Speaker 1: does Trump have the legal authority to make this offer?
Speaker 1: And we will see what happens. Now, yesterday we talked about, uh,
Speaker 1: the the freeze on a lot of government spending, a
Speaker 1: freeze on you know, all this government spending, those happening
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, pausing federal grants and loans, and
Speaker 1: and nobody knew how broad it was. Did it apply
Speaker 1: to them, didn't apply to them? The freezing of all
Speaker 1: foreign aid, humanitarian aid, other kinds of aid except except
Speaker 1: for Israel Innegia, you know, but everything else. And and
Speaker 1: and then there was a question of is this constitutional?
Speaker 1: Can Congress has approved all this money? Uh? And and
Speaker 1: if so, can the president unilaterally just say no, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna spend it, or I'm gonna free said for
Speaker 1: three months or something like that. And immediately there were calls.
Speaker 1: But there's this age program that saves lives, and there's
Speaker 1: this program where people are suffering. And somebody, some woman
Speaker 1: who gets welfare from the government and was you know,
Speaker 1: thought she was not gonna get a welfare check anymore.
Speaker 1: She freaked out on Twitter, and that went viral and
Speaker 1: all this stuff happened. And then so a different departments
Speaker 1: start putting out different departments start putting out exemptions, right
Speaker 1: so you know, uh, Marco Rubio put out a waiver
Speaker 1: if you humanitarian aid, if you if you're doing humanitarian aid,
Speaker 1: it's okay. And then other departments issued waivers. Oh no, no,
Speaker 1: this doesn't affect medical research for cancer research at nah all,
Speaker 1: this doesn't affect this, It doesn't affect that. And everybody
Speaker 1: had to make a million exemptions to this freezing rule,
Speaker 1: and it just created chaos and uncertainty and confusion. And
Speaker 1: then and then a federal judge step in and basically said,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, freeze the freeze. I'm putting the freeze
Speaker 1: on hold. I'm putting I'm freezing the freeze, you know,
Speaker 1: until I I evaluate this and rule about it's its
Speaker 1: actual constitutionality again, the power of the posts. It's with
Speaker 1: the Congress, not with the with the with with with
Speaker 1: the president. So I'm going to freeze the freeze. And then,
Speaker 1: according to Ian and and some others on the chat,
Speaker 1: NBC is now reporting that the administration has rescinded the order. Yes,
Speaker 1: makes complete sense. It created so much chaos, so much confusion.
Speaker 1: It was so unspecified, it was so vague and weird
Speaker 1: that they had to make all these exemptions. And then
Speaker 1: a court says, you can't do this. You might not
Speaker 1: be able to do this anyway, and I'm freezing it
Speaker 1: from now and then we'll evaluate and it's it'll be
Speaker 1: in front of the courts. Now the court hasn't ruled
Speaker 1: one way or the other, but they were sitting it.
Speaker 1: That will see what they do next. But this is
Speaker 1: an administration of chaos. And I think that alone. Musk
Speaker 1: vibs in a in this kind of environment. He is
Speaker 1: an entrepreneur, startup guy. You try, this doesn't work, you
Speaker 1: go something else. You you know, people have a huge
Speaker 1: and certainly it doesn't matter they're getting paid a lot
Speaker 1: of money. You go do something, you change your mind,
Speaker 1: You move around, you move really really fast. That's what
Speaker 1: you do in a startup and and in business. And
Speaker 1: and clearly that is being brought at least to some
Speaker 1: extent to to how the government is being run right now.
Speaker 1: Doesn't quite work. The same government employees, people in departments
Speaker 1: are not quite as ready to jump in and uh
Speaker 1: and uh, and and and do that. Yep, all right,
Speaker 1: let's see. All right, so yeah, Funding Freeze will keep
Speaker 1: following up on this. We'll see if what happens. We'll
Speaker 1: see what actually the government actually ultimately does. We'll see
Speaker 1: how Trump recovers from this. Wilson watch the Deferid resignations.
Speaker 1: We'll be watching RFK. I mean, this is a funny
Speaker 1: one again. I'm looking at a feed of rfk's latest
Speaker 1: questions and answers. And he was asked. He was asked
Speaker 1: about what he considers the gold standing in science. He
Speaker 1: keeps saying, I'm interested in the gold stand in science.
Speaker 1: That's what I care about, you know. And he said
Speaker 1: something about real scientific research with replication of studies, which
Speaker 1: very rarely happens at NIH. I doubt that that is
Speaker 1: absolutely that that is actually true. I mean, there are
Speaker 1: problems with replication, but the idea that nobody's interested in
Speaker 1: replication is just not true. He said, we should be
Speaker 1: giving at least twenty percent of NH budget to replication.
Speaker 1: We should make sure that all science is published through
Speaker 1: all data. We should make sure that peer reviews are
Speaker 1: also published. The reality is, for example, that the safety
Speaker 1: or the non causal relationship between vaccines and autism has
Speaker 1: been replicated and peer reviewed and all of that, and
Speaker 1: it didn't change the fact that he still was anti
Speaker 1: vacs anyway. Again, Republicans are giving him soft balls and
Speaker 1: Democrats are laying into him, and I haven't seen yet
Speaker 1: a Republican asking him engaged in asking him tough questions.
Speaker 1: So if all Republicans vote for him, he will be
Speaker 1: the next Health and Human Services, which is I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just I think unbelievably scary. All right,
Speaker 1: This one's kind of funny, just to show you that
Speaker 1: the US goverment is not the funniest and not the
Speaker 1: only dysfunctional government out there. So we've talked about this before,
Speaker 1: and there's been a bunch of stories about it and
Speaker 1: a bunch of interest in this. You know, the German
Speaker 1: economy is heading into probably its third year in a recession.
Speaker 1: The European economy continues to stagnate across Europe. Europe has
Speaker 1: I know Americans don't believe this, but the reality is
Speaker 1: that the American economy has drowned nautically outpaced the European
Speaker 1: economy over the last twenty years. I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: even close how much wealthier we have become in the
Speaker 1: United States as compared to the Europeans. There's almost no
Speaker 1: innovation in Europe. The no unicorns, successful successful companies, and
Speaker 1: you know that the fundamental reasons are basically well known,
Speaker 1: and they're being reports about this. There was Mario Drogi,
Speaker 1: the former head of the European Bank, put out a
Speaker 1: report a few months ago. We talked about this on
Speaker 1: the show where he basically blamed the massive amount of
Speaker 1: regulation which makes it impossible to innovate and for startups
Speaker 1: and a bad startup environment and a bad VC environment,
Speaker 1: and he blamed primarily blamed regulation. We also know the
Speaker 1: cost of energy, particularly in Germany, less so in France.
Speaker 1: So what's Fancy's excuse. Fancise relatively cheap energy because they
Speaker 1: have nuclear. Germany has very very very expensive energy because
Speaker 1: they will like so much on solar and wind. And
Speaker 1: it varies from country to country across Europe, but generally
Speaker 1: energy costs a high because of environmental regulations and because
Speaker 1: of really bad decision making on the part of leaders.
Speaker 1: But you go, you know, so Europe is really hooting,
Speaker 1: really stagnating, really difficult times economically, in Europe. So the
Speaker 1: European Commission has now introduced a Competitiveness compass, what they
Speaker 1: call a comprehensive strategy to boost Europe's economic competitiveness over
Speaker 1: the next five year plans. So yeay, Europe has just
Speaker 1: come up with a five year plan to be more competitive,
Speaker 1: to increase productivity. And the reason, by the way, for
Speaker 1: the lack of economic growth, the reason for the the
Speaker 1: fact that wages and wealth is stagnated in Europe is
Speaker 1: because productivity is stagnated. So then if she is supposed
Speaker 1: to increase productivity in Europe. So the central planners in
Speaker 1: Europe have now figured out a way to improve the
Speaker 1: European economy and it has three main pillars. First, they
Speaker 1: are going to enhance productivity through innovation. Yay, the government
Speaker 1: has not decided it's time to innovate. Please innovate, you
Speaker 1: guys out there, innovate. It's the only way we're going
Speaker 1: to increase productivities. To please innov we'll talk about how
Speaker 1: they plan to do this, right, So, enhanced productivity through innovation,
Speaker 1: that's good if they if they know what that means.
Speaker 1: Integrating decombonization with industrial policies. Ooh, what does that mean, well,
Speaker 1: decombonization is one of the reasons they have such high
Speaker 1: energy costs. One of the reasons industry is failing because
Speaker 1: it can't compete because of high costs. So what is
Speaker 1: that about. It sounds like more of the same to me.
Speaker 1: And maybe the problem is maybe I'm just speculating here.
Speaker 1: Maybe the problem is industrial policy. Maybe the problem is
Speaker 1: for planning. Maybe the problem is that Europe has an
Speaker 1: industrial policy, Germany has an industrial policy. That's the problem.
Speaker 1: And then finally insurance, security and stategic autonomy, which is
Speaker 1: great to ensure security and stateg aotonomy. Not clear how
Speaker 1: that increases competitiveness. Indeed, to the extent that it sucks
Speaker 1: a bunch of money out of the rest of the economy,
Speaker 1: that probably reduces competitiveness. But it's a good thing to do.
Speaker 1: It's important. It's part of the job of government. Protection
Speaker 1: of individual rights include security, and security requires some level
Speaker 1: of independence of autonomy autonomy I think here meaning autonomy
Speaker 1: from the US. So how theyre going to achieve these things,
Speaker 1: particularly innovation. Key actions include simplifying regulations. I like that.
Speaker 1: Simplify the regulations. You still have the same regulation, but
Speaker 1: just make it simple. Easier to persecute people, easier for
Speaker 1: people to understand how you want to limit their freedom,
Speaker 1: not reduce regulation, not eliminate regulation, not completely restructure regulation,
Speaker 1: simplify regulation. Why to reduce bureaucratic budens is that the
Speaker 1: problem bureaucratic buddens, or is the problem that the private
Speaker 1: sector is being hampered, its hands, tides, cosion and force
Speaker 1: being placed on it, and that is why it's not innovating.
Speaker 1: So they have no clue. What Europe needs is a massive, thorough,
Speaker 1: systematic review of all regulations and the elimination of most
Speaker 1: of them, I mean ultimately all of them, but most
Speaker 1: of them at this level, not simplifying them and reducing
Speaker 1: bureaucratic burden. The problem is not bureaucratic burden. The problem
Speaker 1: is too many regulations, regulations that are too restrictive, regulations
Speaker 1: that suppress innovation and suppress economic activity. What else supporting startups?
Speaker 1: How are they going to do that? A government's now
Speaker 1: get again into the bench capital business and start literally
Speaker 1: supporting supporting startups. Not not a good idea more central planning,
Speaker 1: more industrial policy, more of the same, more of the same,
Speaker 1: same same. But they have a compass It's a really
Speaker 1: pretty compass that measures decombonization, competitiveness, reducing excess regulation, no,
Speaker 1: reducing excessive dependencies, and increasing securities. That's the US, all
Speaker 1: of that on a compass. I don't know what the
Speaker 1: compass means, but it looks cool. Improving access to finance, Huh.
Speaker 1: I wonder if that has anything to do with deregulating finance,
Speaker 1: enhancing skills and job quality, Right, how do you do that?
Speaker 1: That would be great and fostering a robust single market.
Speaker 1: Don't you already have a single market now? Through deregulations,
Speaker 1: you could create a much better single market, but that
Speaker 1: would require some revolutionary deregulations. Plan It says also aims
Speaker 1: to align European national and local efforts for sustainable growth
Speaker 1: with specific goals like saving companies over thirty seven billion
Speaker 1: dollars annually through regulatory simplification. There we go regulative simplication
Speaker 1: in but sustainable growth, sustainable growth. You know what sustainable
Speaker 1: growth capitalism. If you implement capitalism, the result is sustainable growth.
Speaker 1: Growth will not be only high, it will sustain itself
Speaker 1: over the long run. That is in the nature of capitalism.
Speaker 1: Regulatory simplification does not get you sustainable growth doesn't even
Speaker 1: get your growth. So some this is kind of a comment. Well,
Speaker 1: the initiative has gone to support from the news story
Speaker 1: for its focus on innovation, environmentals, sustainability. They are concerns
Speaker 1: about addressing high energy costs and investment in clean energy technologies.
Speaker 1: I mean, they have no clue. They just don't know
Speaker 1: what to do. They are so captured by a central
Speaker 1: planning mentality, a mentality of top down running of an economy,
Speaker 1: a socialist mentality at the end of the day, that
Speaker 1: they cannot get away from that, and as a consequence,
Speaker 1: they can't even imagine what they would need to do,
Speaker 1: or Europe would need to do, in order to actually
Speaker 1: reform itself and actually get it to a place where
Speaker 1: they can really compete with economies that are far more nimble,
Speaker 1: and as bad as the US economy is, it is
Speaker 1: far more nimble, far more bottom up, far more entrepreneurial base,
Speaker 1: far less industrial policy oriented than the European model. They
Speaker 1: have no clue that what they need is more freedom.
Speaker 1: Economic freedom is unthinkable to the central planners in Europe.
Speaker 1: So you know, everybody's excited because they have a compass,
Speaker 1: they have a compass, it's going to fail, and so
Speaker 1: you know the people are writing it's time to restart
Speaker 1: Europe's innovation engine. We have the compass, we have the
Speaker 1: political will. Now what matters to speed and unity because
Speaker 1: the world is not waiting for us. I mean, people
Speaker 1: are delusionalble What they need is a massive restructure of
Speaker 1: the whole regulatory regime at the EU level. They should
Speaker 1: drive regulations to zero. That will drive competitiveness, that will
Speaker 1: increase productivity. All right, oh, good news, we have some
Speaker 1: legitimately good news. It's rare. Once in a while we
Speaker 1: get it. According to Our World in Data, which is
Speaker 1: a website that just looks at data and analyzes it
Speaker 1: and gives you graphs and stuff like that, the world
Speaker 1: has probably passed what they are calling peak air pollution.
Speaker 1: Like we all value clean air, right, Well, the air
Speaker 1: is cleaner now then it was a few years ago,
Speaker 1: and it's getting cleaner on a global scale. So I'm
Speaker 1: just going to read from this post by Our World
Speaker 1: in Data, global emissions of local air pollutants have probably
Speaker 1: passed their peak. And they show charts that show a
Speaker 1: sulfur dioxide so two peaked probably in the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: and has been going down steadily since then. Carbon monoxide
Speaker 1: COO peaked. It's how to tell from this grass the
Speaker 1: exact years between the nineteen eighties been going down since then.
Speaker 1: Organic carbon OC probably peaked recently, but it's starting to
Speaker 1: go down, starting to go down. Nitrogen oxide again peaked
Speaker 1: relatively recently, but it is definitely on a downward trend.
Speaker 1: Black carbon peaked, you know, in the twenty teens, on
Speaker 1: what looks like a downward trend. The only one that's
Speaker 1: up is ammonia. Ammonia's up, So the Audico says, it
Speaker 1: looks like emissions a peak for almost all of these pollutants.
Speaker 1: Global air pollution is not falling, and we can save
Speaker 1: many lives by accelerating this decline. Except in as ammonia,
Speaker 1: which is mainly produced by agriculture, its emissions are still rising. Uh.
Speaker 1: This These systems come from the Community Emissions Data Center system.
Speaker 1: So yeah, life and planet Earth is getting cleaner. H
Speaker 1: And at the same time people are getting richer and
Speaker 1: standard in quality of life is going up, is going up. Uh,
Speaker 1: pretty funny. One of the things that Yeah, anyway, so
Speaker 1: good news, I mean good stuff is happening out there.
Speaker 1: I think what is getting cleaner is getting cleaner. Clean
Speaker 1: is good. We're getting cleaner and richer. And in spite
Speaker 1: of all the craziness good things happening around the world,
Speaker 1: technology is improving. Uh and and because technology is improving,
Speaker 1: we can we can cut down on these kind of emissions.
Speaker 1: So one of the funny things, I mean, it's not funny,
Speaker 1: it's kind of sad and pathetic, But that happening in
Speaker 1: the Trump administration is is they're cleansing the past people
Speaker 1: Trump doesn't like, people that Trump feels betrayed him. So
Speaker 1: like General Miley's portrait in the Pentagon is gone. Miley's
Speaker 1: not a good guy. Trump doesn't like him. Trump accuses
Speaker 1: him of treason. So not only as a security Clearan's gone,
Speaker 1: not only as any kind of protection. He's one of
Speaker 1: these guys that has their threats to his life gone.
Speaker 1: But his portrait in the Pentagon, which has the portraits
Speaker 1: of all the chiefs of staff, is gone. I mean
Speaker 1: it's almost Stalinist, right. And then Mike Guesper's who was
Speaker 1: Secretary of the Army in the past. Uh. In the
Speaker 1: Pentagon's Army Secretary hallway Mark Espers, he was he was
Speaker 1: Defense secretary and secretary of the album. His portrait is gone.
Speaker 1: They've taken it down because I don't remember what Esper's
Speaker 1: did to Trump. I mean, was he was Defense secretary.
Speaker 1: He must have said no to Trump about something. So
Speaker 1: Esper's is now purged. He's gone, He's disappeared, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we know. I think I already talked about the fact
Speaker 1: that there's no they've taken this secret service detail away
Speaker 1: from Bolton, away from a number of others, from Pompeo,
Speaker 1: even though Pompere has remained loyal to Trump throughout, doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: Something he said Trump didn't like, so he's out. I mean,
Speaker 1: it really is like a Soviet style. Well not quite.
Speaker 1: They're not going to gulags. But it is funny that
Speaker 1: it is a kind of rewriting of history, rewriting of history.
Speaker 1: It's really about as despicable and ridiculous, uh, as as
Speaker 1: as possible. Right, all right, let's see, Yeah, I wanted
Speaker 1: to one more. Well, we've got a few more stories.
Speaker 1: Let's let's just do some of these other stories. I
Speaker 1: just want to say one more thing about Boom. Remember
Speaker 1: the story for me yesterday Boom reached Uh uh, supersonic speed.
Speaker 1: Yesterday the test plane reached that speed. A huge milestone,
Speaker 1: the first time a private company, designed, operated, you know,
Speaker 1: built plane has reached supersonic speed a civilian. Uh. This
Speaker 1: is a crucial step towards now building a a commercial
Speaker 1: plane and then testing it, flying it, and then going
Speaker 1: into commercial production. They've already got orders from a number
Speaker 1: of them. So fantastic for Boom. One of the things
Speaker 1: I saw today I think Blake Shoals the seeo Boom
Speaker 1: posted this. There was no sonic boom hood on the ground.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that Boom has done, and
Speaker 1: one of the things that technology and new materials and
Speaker 1: new design innovation have made possible as compared to the Concorde,
Speaker 1: is that they have reduced the sonic boom dramatically so
Speaker 1: that you know, under certain conditions and at certain altitudes
Speaker 1: you can't hear the jet from the ground. That'll make
Speaker 1: a huge difference if you want to fly, for example,
Speaker 1: the LA New York route, which could be incredibly lucrative
Speaker 1: if you could use it, so instead of I don't
Speaker 1: know what is it taking out five hours, five and
Speaker 1: a half, six hours, you could do it in three
Speaker 1: or even four. That would be huge. And so of
Speaker 1: cutting down uh you know, cutting down travel time, if
Speaker 1: you could do that, the conclude could never do it
Speaker 1: because it was it was too noisy, it was there
Speaker 1: was real Uh you know, the sonic booms across the
Speaker 1: entire country here if if, if you can have no
Speaker 1: sonic boom or a minimum sonic boom, again, the potential
Speaker 1: is huge. I also saw there was a lot of
Speaker 1: posting about boom today, uh, and Blake posted a lot
Speaker 1: and it was good to see you. Remember I told
Speaker 1: you the story of I was very skeptical and I
Speaker 1: when I heard about this, and yeah, you know, one
Speaker 1: of these one of these amazing dreams. And it turns
Speaker 1: out everybody was skeptical. That is, everybody Blake talked to
Speaker 1: basically said are you crazy, including his wife at the time,
Speaker 1: who basically said, Okay, you can try this out for
Speaker 1: a year, but that's it, you know, unless it takes
Speaker 1: off in a year, is that I'm married anymore? But
Speaker 1: but but but you know, others in his uh friends
Speaker 1: and associates, we're all pretty skeptical about this. And he
Speaker 1: talked about that and he said even he he wanted
Speaker 1: to take a shot at it. He wanted to try it.
Speaker 1: He was I don't know what probability you would have
Speaker 1: given himself at the beginning that he would be successful.
Speaker 1: But it's you know, it's pretty it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: pretty amazing that he actually did it. One of Femann says,
Speaker 1: sonic booms are not a problem. Just take off sub
Speaker 1: sonic and transition to sonic over the ocean. But that's
Speaker 1: the point, right, The point I was making is that
Speaker 1: they are problem if you want to fly from Los
Speaker 1: Angeles to New York City, because there's no ocean, it's
Speaker 1: all land. So can you fly from New York City
Speaker 1: to LA at supersonic speeds? You can if there's no
Speaker 1: sonic boom, or if the sonic boom is minimal, and
Speaker 1: that expands the usability of a supersonic jet dramatically and
Speaker 1: it makes it much much more profitable. It then means
Speaker 1: a lot of other companies will we'll take it on.
Speaker 1: So Jetifer says it's called boom, but there's no boom. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they think of changing the name to no boom, no boom.
Speaker 1: So I mean it just shows how, you know, the vision, determination, passion,
Speaker 1: you know how important those characteristics are and how the
Speaker 1: kind of obstacles you've can overcome. I mean again, the
Speaker 1: idea that you could do is Swasonic jet after Concorde,
Speaker 1: that you could do privately without Boeing and Airbus with
Speaker 1: that government money. Remember Boeing and Airbus get huge subsidies
Speaker 1: right from the government. Is pretty is pretty amazing. And
Speaker 1: as I said, nobody thought was possible given the regulatory
Speaker 1: regime that we had. And yet it doesn't matter of
Speaker 1: Republican's Democrats. He got it done. He got it done
Speaker 1: the whole with politics. I'm just gonna drive to get
Speaker 1: it done and I'm going to overcome the obstacles. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: So again, congratulations. All right, one quick one. We've talked
Speaker 1: a lot about deep Seek, so that most stories coming
Speaker 1: out so now it that ai open Ai Open Ai,
Speaker 1: sam Oltmann's company is accusing deep Seek of using its
Speaker 1: proprietary models to train their own AI system. So suppose
Speaker 1: this is illegal along so there's down investigation by both
Speaker 1: open ai and Microsoft into potential unauthorized data acquisition, and
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of trying to figure this out
Speaker 1: and what did they do and how did it happen,
Speaker 1: and are they cheating in any way. In other words,
Speaker 1: are they cheating in anyway? The other aspect of this
Speaker 1: city is interesting is some people are claiming, well, maybe
Speaker 1: they did use Nvidia's most advanced chips. Maybe they got
Speaker 1: them smuggled into China, and they won't admit it because
Speaker 1: they're not supposed to have those chips. But maybe this
Speaker 1: is a sign another indication that even though the US
Speaker 1: banned the Nvidia chips and being exported to China, them
Speaker 1: making their way there anyway. And in this context I
Speaker 1: read some way that a big chunk of in Vidia's
Speaker 1: sales of its most advanced chips is going to Singapore. Singapore.
Speaker 1: Now there are some computer assembly electronic assembly plants companies
Speaker 1: in Singapore, but it doesn't seem to match the quantity
Speaker 1: that's being sold to Singapore. And the suspicion is it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be a crazy suspicion. I don't think that what
Speaker 1: happens is that in Singapore they're repackaged and sold on
Speaker 1: to the Chinese, and in video chips are making it
Speaker 1: into Singapore in spite of everything. And maybe Deep Seek
Speaker 1: did indeed use it video chips in developing its software.
Speaker 1: So again a lot of uncertainty, a lot of speculation
Speaker 1: about what actually is going on here, what actually happened,
Speaker 1: how bad is it, what is it imply for in video?
Speaker 1: What does it imply for open ai? And so there's
Speaker 1: a you know, and this will continue until people figure
Speaker 1: it out, and it might take years to truly figure
Speaker 1: it out. And sam Aldman had a great response though.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, he said, this is great.
Speaker 1: More competition is good. It keeps us on our toes.
Speaker 1: We will produce better products, cheaper products. We intend to
Speaker 1: beat these guys at whatever game they're playing. So yeah,
Speaker 1: being on the competition, that is the right attitude. Good
Speaker 1: for sam Altman. Okay, I think that is the news.
Speaker 1: An hour later, that is the news for this January
Speaker 1: twenty ninth, Wednesday. All right, we are way behind on
Speaker 1: the first hour goal, never mind the second hour goal,
Speaker 1: which we're entering into right now. So the first hour
Speaker 1: has one minute to go. We're about one hundred dollars
Speaker 1: short of the goal for the first hour. So please
Speaker 1: consider supporting the show if you value the news as
Speaker 1: produced by the One Book Show, if you get something
Speaker 1: out of it, you're here suggest that you value it
Speaker 1: to some extent. Please consider making expressing your support by
Speaker 1: making a contribution here live. You can do so by
Speaker 1: by doing a super chat or by doing a sticker
Speaker 1: and you know, supporting the show in that way. This
Speaker 1: show cannot exist without support from people like you. Thank
Speaker 1: you John, Thank you Mark, who just both did stickers
Speaker 1: right now again, can't exist without support from people like you,
Speaker 1: from listeners like you listeners or what make this show
Speaker 1: funding from listeners. And of course you can also do
Speaker 1: this on a monthly basis by going to Patreon Patreon
Speaker 1: dot com, putting in your on book show and becoming
Speaker 1: a monthly supporter. All kinds of folks associate with different levels,
Speaker 1: including at the ten dollars level and up you get
Speaker 1: a ads free podcast link so you can listen to
Speaker 1: it on any podcast app. But you you, you you go.
Speaker 1: If you go through the Patreon, you get it without ads.
Speaker 1: And I will say that the posting of those podcasts
Speaker 1: lags a little bit from the from the live one.
Speaker 1: We haven't figured out how to automatize automate it, so
Speaker 1: my assistant has to have the time after the show
Speaker 1: to upload it. Sometimes she only does it in the
Speaker 1: evening or the following morning. So there is a certain
Speaker 1: lag associated with it. So I'm one of you in advance.
Speaker 1: But overall you can get you can get it at free.
Speaker 1: All the shows go up ultimately, all right, Yeah, somebody's
Speaker 1: just posted just a few of rfk's crazy batchit crazy
Speaker 1: stuff that he said over the years. Lme disease is
Speaker 1: a bioweapon. Covid spares Ashkenazi Jews. Now I can tell
Speaker 1: you as an as Kanazi Jew genetically, it didn't spare me.
Speaker 1: I got COVID pesticide and is as filled with Askanazi Jews.
Speaker 1: It's all had a lot of COVID pesticize, make people transgender. God,
Speaker 1: I didn't even know he said that. Yeah, who knows?
Speaker 1: He said these all on the re code. You can
Speaker 1: find video, you can find the statements. I mean, the
Speaker 1: guys nuts. He just comes up with crazy stuff. COVID
Speaker 1: sped thin people. I know a lot of thin people
Speaker 1: who got COVID. I mean, if you if you're in
Speaker 1: good shape, if you're healthy, in good shape and healthy,
Speaker 1: then you know COVID wasn't a big deal, but you
Speaker 1: still got COVID. A lot of people got COVID that
Speaker 1: I know, and I know people who were in great
Speaker 1: shape who landed up in hospital because of COVID. So
Speaker 1: hard to generalize. So my hope for the day, we'll
Speaker 1: end this and go to super chat. My hope for
Speaker 1: today is that if Congress does one good thing, it's
Speaker 1: not going to do many. We've done one good thing.
Speaker 1: It's to reject RFK, to lead the HHS. So many
Speaker 1: people who would be better reject RFK. That would be
Speaker 1: one amazing good thing that Congress for Change could do.
Speaker 1: I don't expect them to do it, but we can hope.
Speaker 1: We can hope. All right, this is it. Let's see,
Speaker 1: this is a funny headline. You can judge it for
Speaker 1: what it is, although it does you know, open ai
Speaker 1: furious the deep seek might have stolen all the data
Speaker 1: open ai stole from us, and a sudden truth to
Speaker 1: that in a sense that open ai use so called
Speaker 1: public available information online, but it never sought anybody permission
Speaker 1: to use it or didn't provide competition anybody. Indeed, there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of lawsuits against open ai because they used
Speaker 1: certain newspapers stuff for without competition, and they use to
Speaker 1: train their models. So yeah, it's it's it's a good headline.
Speaker 1: I think, all right, let's see, let's go to the
Speaker 1: super chat and uh and go from there. Let's keep
Speaker 1: this open over here so we can see the exciting
Speaker 1: breaking news as it happens. All right, let me just
Speaker 1: thank Allen. Thank you for the sticker. That's his fifth
Speaker 1: super Chat. Thank you, Allan, Thank you Richard, thank you John,
Speaker 1: Thank you Mark. Let's see we've got more. Thank you
Speaker 1: Mark again. Thank you Jonathan, thank you Mike, Thank you Silvanas.
Speaker 1: And I think we're caught up on it. Thank you Jonathan.
Speaker 1: We caught up on the stickers. All right, So let's
Speaker 1: go to the questions. We'll start with we're start like
Speaker 1: eighty dollars short of the first out goal. We really
Speaker 1: need to get to more than the first out goal
Speaker 1: to make our January goal. So please consider it, James says. First,
Speaker 1: Richard Hanania is quoting Rand left and right. Now Brett
Speaker 1: Cooper is leaving the Daily Wire and quoting Iron Rand
Speaker 1: left and right. Is objective as an exponential growth process
Speaker 1: coming sooner than you think. I don't know. It's very
Speaker 1: hard to tell because there were a lot of fake
Speaker 1: growth graphs. So during the tea party, it certainly looked
Speaker 1: like there was going to be exponential growth. I mean,
Speaker 1: Iran sold almost a million copies in one year of
Speaker 1: all of her books. It was just a start. Was
Speaker 1: the best year ever for Iran's books during the tea party,
Speaker 1: and then it all went away. So it's hard to
Speaker 1: tell how much is it sustainable. What is really really
Speaker 1: encouraging about Richard Hanania. Maybe Bett Cooper will see what
Speaker 1: the quality of at cooper stuff is. And there's also
Speaker 1: a podcast that came out of two literature people talking
Speaker 1: about at La Shrugged and how good of a book
Speaker 1: it is, just from a literature perspective, which I thought
Speaker 1: was huge academics that the are all intellectuals. They're not
Speaker 1: just politicians sucking up to somebody. They're not just you know,
Speaker 1: random commentators. But these are intellectuals whoever an impact on
Speaker 1: the culture. Now. I don't know again about Brett Cooper.
Speaker 1: I don't know how intellectual she is. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: great news. But I don't want to get you excited
Speaker 1: about exponential growth. I think it's too soon. I think
Speaker 1: you have to see many, many years of this increasing
Speaker 1: significantly to really have an evaluation in terms of the
Speaker 1: actual sustainability. And and uh, you know, and and and
Speaker 1: whether this is ongoing or whether this is just a BLib.
Speaker 1: You know, Jennifersis Cooper supports Trump, Vance, Tucker, ORFK. Anybody
Speaker 1: who supports Tucker and uses an i Ran quote, it's
Speaker 1: bad for It's bad for objectivism. If you support Tucker
Speaker 1: and you support RFK, and you support Vance, and you
Speaker 1: support you said about all of those people, and you're
Speaker 1: using irand, then it's bad. Then she's also anti abortion.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't help us that bad people quote Ironran.
Speaker 1: It hurts us. It hurts us because then people think
Speaker 1: Irand is of the new right. Richard Hannani is different
Speaker 1: because Richard Hanania, at least as of now, is secular,
Speaker 1: pro immigration, you know, pro capitalism. You know, he's wrong
Speaker 1: on a bunch of different things, pro abortion, wrong and
Speaker 1: a bunch of different things, but really really good on
Speaker 1: a lot of things, a lot of things. He's consistent
Speaker 1: with Iran anti racism now, even though he has a
Speaker 1: history of racism, he's anti racism now. He's changed, So
Speaker 1: that I think is matters. It's important, all right, that's James.
Speaker 1: So I wish we had exponential growth. Oh Rejesh, thank
Speaker 1: you for the Sticker really appreciate that. Keeping them coming. Guys,
Speaker 1: gotta keep them coming. Clock says, it seems like Rand's
Speaker 1: name comes up in waves. Oh okay, so it's the
Speaker 1: same question again, like in two thousand and nine after
Speaker 1: the Great Recession, and now a bit because of Vali
Speaker 1: Keepstein's influence. It just doesn't seem to last. People are
Speaker 1: like goldfish with fifteen second attention spans. I think that's true.
Speaker 1: But it does last, right, I mean, don't minimize this.
Speaker 1: Of the million people who read Iron Rand in twenty
Speaker 1: ten or twenty thirteen, whenever the peak was a bunch
Speaker 1: of them, it stuck with them. It wasn't a million,
Speaker 1: but a bunch of them that's stuck with them. A
Speaker 1: bunch of people who are introduced Iron Ran. Now it's
Speaker 1: gonna stick with him. So it won't be the full number.
Speaker 1: But generally the movement is growing. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: growing exponentially, but it's growing steadily consistently. The number of
Speaker 1: intellectuals out there who Noahvin Rand is growing, the number
Speaker 1: of objectivist intellectuals who are going to enter into the
Speaker 1: advocacy field. The field of talking about ideas is growing,
Speaker 1: and you know, given all that it's growing steadily slowly,
Speaker 1: but it's going it's not going fast, which is sad.
Speaker 1: But to grow exponentially, we're going to have a lot
Speaker 1: more intellectuals. When we have you know, one hundred alexes,
Speaker 1: one hundred yurons, that's when exponential growth will happen. Spite
Speaker 1: us something looks like I'm not sure what that name is.
Speaker 1: Any economists suggests a cap on printing dollars to the
Speaker 1: exact amount GDP grew by and using only that money
Speaker 1: to pay for government spending superficially seems like a good
Speaker 1: way to pay for government spending without taxes, and also
Speaker 1: you know, no inflation. Yeah, I think superficially, that's right.
Speaker 1: So you know, I think this is similar to nominal
Speaker 1: GDP growth. You want to go to the money supply
Speaker 1: with nominal GDP, which is for steady nominal GDP, which
Speaker 1: is Scott Sumner's theory or something similar to Scott Sumners anyway.
Speaker 1: But of course, what it is taking away is can
Speaker 1: we really measure Is GDP really a good measure of
Speaker 1: increased productivity and increase economic growth? I've said often the
Speaker 1: GDP is not a very good measure for example, you
Speaker 1: would increase the money's like quite a bit during wars
Speaker 1: and when go and spending went up them and spending
Speaker 1: would go up more because GDP goes up, so it's
Speaker 1: not a great measure. It would also because the money
Speaker 1: would all flow into the government, it would have distorting
Speaker 1: effects regarding relative prices where this money entered the economy first.
Speaker 1: So while it wouldn't have maybe overall inflationary changes, that is,
Speaker 1: prices wouldn't all go up, the price level wouldn't go up.
Speaker 1: Relative allocation of funds would be impacted by it because
Speaker 1: of you're still increasing the amount of money. That amount
Speaker 1: of money isn't chasing all goods all at the same time,
Speaker 1: it's chasing those goods as the government's buying. So it
Speaker 1: affects prices in a particular reachion in a particular space,
Speaker 1: which distorts relative prices. So there's just no there's just
Speaker 1: no way for the government to there's no free lunches.
Speaker 1: There's no way to print money, spend money without having
Speaker 1: negative impacts. Now it could be I'm a bit if
Speaker 1: you're going to have a FED, then having the FED
Speaker 1: only increase the money supply based on a rule, there's
Speaker 1: something called the tailor rule. Well, Friedman had a constant
Speaker 1: growth rule. This is a GDP goal rule. Is much
Speaker 1: much much better then having a federal reserve that can
Speaker 1: arbitrarily spend money at its own discretion without any rule
Speaker 1: that guides it. So in a sense that this would
Speaker 1: constitute a rule, yeah, it's better than what we have.
Speaker 1: It's it's definitely an improvement. Thank you Silvanos, Wow, one
Speaker 1: hundred dollars. Really really appreciate that you got us to
Speaker 1: you got us passed our one hour goal and into
Speaker 1: our second hour goal. Really appreciate the support. So when
Speaker 1: I says, hey on, I know you enjoy PoCA, but
Speaker 1: do you play anything else? It is Is it mall
Speaker 1: to play games that feature deception or deceitful aspects to win? Sure,
Speaker 1: as long as it's a game, right. You know, in baseball,
Speaker 1: the pitcher wants to hide from you what kind of
Speaker 1: pitch is coming next, and he does all kinds of
Speaker 1: things to try to deceive you. When you're shooting a
Speaker 1: penalty kick. In soccer football, you want to deceive the
Speaker 1: goalie in terms of which they're actually you're going to
Speaker 1: kick the ball. Quarterbacks want to deceive the defenses and
Speaker 1: how they're going to of course, it's so there's no
Speaker 1: problem in games as long as it's a game, as
Speaker 1: long as it's understood that the deception is for the
Speaker 1: purpose of the game and nothing else bluffing and poker
Speaker 1: bluffing and all kinds of other games. I mean, the
Speaker 1: other game I like and I played, but I haven't
Speaker 1: played in years and years, but I really enjoyed it
Speaker 1: when I when I played it is Bridge Bridge, which
Speaker 1: is a fantastic game. It's a it's a strategy game,
Speaker 1: it's a mind game. It has some elements of deception
Speaker 1: in the sense of you try to come up with
Speaker 1: ways to bid with your partner so that your opponents
Speaker 1: don't quite understand what it is that you're bidding. Uh.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, absolutely, Oh we got we got a
Speaker 1: question from We got a question from Croatia. So the
Speaker 1: previous one where I couldn't pronounce his name is from Crooisha.
Speaker 1: I'd love to come and visit Croasha. I really really
Speaker 1: liked uh Dubrovnik that I visited years and years and
Speaker 1: years ago. But I would love organize a talk for me.
Speaker 1: You don't get one of the universities in Quasha to
Speaker 1: invite me to go and give a talk, and I
Speaker 1: will come. I have often said, invite me and I
Speaker 1: will come. If you build it, they will come. If
Speaker 1: you invite me, I will come. Pretty straightforward, pretty cool.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I would love to come to cos your
Speaker 1: question is a beautiful, beautiful country. Uh let's see not
Speaker 1: you average algorithm? Part one? What do you mean people's images?
Speaker 1: Images shouldn't be used in AI without their consent. Much
Speaker 1: of satire users a photoshop, Yeah, and I don't think
Speaker 1: you should be able to just randomly satirize somebody using photoshop.
Speaker 1: I think you have to get somebody's permission if you're
Speaker 1: going to use their image. So now maybe there should
Speaker 1: be an exclusion for what do you call it? Uh
Speaker 1: uh public uh, public people. So there's it's very tough
Speaker 1: uh you know, to uh for for somebody who's in
Speaker 1: the public eye too to win a deformation case. So
Speaker 1: because of satire and things like that. So if you're
Speaker 1: a politician or something like that, So they have to
Speaker 1: be clear rules and when you cannot cannot, But you
Speaker 1: can't just take my picture and use it for something.
Speaker 1: It's like my picture is mine, my image is mine.
Speaker 1: You can't use it. By the way, often when like
Speaker 1: when an institute does video tapes a talk that somebody
Speaker 1: gives and it's gonna videotape the audience, Yeah, the audience
Speaker 1: signs a waiver to allow thee to use the image
Speaker 1: only for this talk, not to use the image for
Speaker 1: other things. So this is not unusual. This is understood today.
Speaker 1: Now they might be exceptions for satire or whatever, but
Speaker 1: it's understood that people cannot use your image for whatever
Speaker 1: they want. They have to compensate you for it, or
Speaker 1: they have to get your permission. Not to have a
Speaker 1: joao it says, I take video and edit it however
Speaker 1: I want of anyone in public without their concer That's
Speaker 1: just wrong. It's a fon freedom of the press, which
Speaker 1: is a First Amendment protected activity. No, it's not. It's
Speaker 1: not freedom of the press. You can't go out into
Speaker 1: the public and photograph me walking across the street and
Speaker 1: just use it. That is you know that that's a
Speaker 1: violation of my privacy. It's a violation of my you know,
Speaker 1: of me owning my own likeness. And again, in a
Speaker 1: lot of circumstances, you see people have to sign waivers
Speaker 1: so that they images can be used, and you do
Speaker 1: see a lot of videos on the news in other
Speaker 1: places where somebody's being interviewed and the people in the
Speaker 1: background and their faces are shaded out because they didn't
Speaker 1: get their permission to have them on TV. And it's
Speaker 1: really really important. You know, you don't have a right.
Speaker 1: You don't have a right to see. Hey, whatever the
Speaker 1: hell you want to say, wherever you want to say it,
Speaker 1: in whatever context you want to say it. For example,
Speaker 1: you don't have a right to defame me. You don't
Speaker 1: have to write to use my property, and my image
Speaker 1: is my property. So no, I don't think I don't
Speaker 1: think that you're right. There are laws about this. I
Speaker 1: don't know how clear they are. Given that you're in
Speaker 1: video and you take videos, you should get clarity around
Speaker 1: the laws because even today, I'm not sure what you're
Speaker 1: doing is legit and it's not protected by the First Amendment.
Speaker 1: First Amendment does not protect your right to publicize my image.
Speaker 1: Justin says me Lee spoke a divas Davas give it
Speaker 1: a listening commentary. I intend to haven't had a chance
Speaker 1: he had to catch his talk. Jason As mentioned yesterday,
Speaker 1: Brett Cooper's official trailer has now one point five million views.
Speaker 1: I watched it. It features nine men speaking her narration
Speaker 1: a total break with your past world. All of that
Speaker 1: is good, except that she does not break with the
Speaker 1: past world. She's probably religious, She's probably conservative, She's probably
Speaker 1: an altruist. She's probably just a conventional conservative, and Ainrand
Speaker 1: would be horrified by her voice being used to promote
Speaker 1: a conservative, A standard conservative. Larry Green says Trump justice
Speaker 1: seated the order to freeze federal aid spending. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: talked about that. I just, of course was asked a
Speaker 1: long time ago. I'm not surprised at all. I mean,
Speaker 1: given the chaos in the incompetence in this administration. Jason
Speaker 1: in cousin Caroline Kennedy's YouTube appeal not to nominate RFK,
Speaker 1: did you hear her mention that America's healthcare is the
Speaker 1: envy of the world. I did not. I did not
Speaker 1: hear her mention that. If she mentioned that, that's pretty cool. Oh,
Speaker 1: but I wish the world knew that it should envious.
Speaker 1: I don't think, unfortunately, the world actually knows it should envious.
Speaker 1: By the way, thank you to Kim, Thank you to
Speaker 1: nev fall into a geon for their stickers. Youtubo can
Speaker 1: support your own book show by using a sticker, no
Speaker 1: question needed. And they did it for like, you know,
Speaker 1: two dollars, so you can do a two dollars one
Speaker 1: as well, and that's great. Really appreciate it. Apollos of
Speaker 1: Scarface versus Miami Vice, who is more immol Tony Mantana
Speaker 1: for providing illicited substances to destroy lives, or Crockett and
Speaker 1: Tubs who are helping to take away your right to
Speaker 1: choose what you can't put in your body, thus violating
Speaker 1: your individual rights. I mean, look, you can't defense Scarface
Speaker 1: because he lives in a world of violence that is
Speaker 1: based on a world of violence. It's not like, oh,
Speaker 1: he really wants to provide you with something helpful to
Speaker 1: your life or even whatever that you have done and
Speaker 1: full So that's youma. But then you know the police.
Speaker 1: If you join the police, your job is to follow
Speaker 1: the law. It's not your job to decide which laws
Speaker 1: are right and which laws are wrong. So I don't
Speaker 1: blame police for arresting drug dealers. I blame the law.
Speaker 1: The police are just doing their job, So I wouldn't
Speaker 1: if you you know, so, I don't think it's fair
Speaker 1: to compare them. At the end of the day, Crocketted
Speaker 1: Tubs is not killing anybody. They are indeed enforcing the law,
Speaker 1: and they're putting in jail people who break the law
Speaker 1: who know that if they get caught this as well
Speaker 1: happened to them. All Right, last question for today's show,
Speaker 1: and then I guess I'll hit to the airport. Hey, Ron,
Speaker 1: if Superman was an objectivist instead of altruists, what do
Speaker 1: you think his stories could be about. Would objective as
Speaker 1: superheroes be cool? Yeah? First of all, they kill the
Speaker 1: bad guys. They wouldn't keep letting them free without killing them.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't have more qualms about killing murderers, killing bad guys.
Speaker 1: They'd announced to the world that you know that they
Speaker 1: are doing this as a trade, and that you know
Speaker 1: they're doing this to live in a better world, because
Speaker 1: they want to live in a better world. But hey,
Speaker 1: if the world wants to give them a super Chat
Speaker 1: or send them a sticker or do a Patreon, uh,
Speaker 1: you know that they are open to be compensated for
Speaker 1: the superhero deeds that they that they that they can meet,
Speaker 1: that they that they engage in. That you know the
Speaker 1: world shouldn't think that they can just free ride off
Speaker 1: of Superman, but they should be induced to to, you know,
Speaker 1: pony up something they would also I think Superman would
Speaker 1: also coordinate much more with the police and the military
Speaker 1: of the good guys to make sure that he's going
Speaker 1: after really evil and he has the Corporation when he
Speaker 1: does so. So yeah, you could find superheroes that are
Speaker 1: cool because they're self interested, and it would be cool
Speaker 1: to see somebody saving the world in the name of
Speaker 1: his own interests. I think that'd be super cool. All right, guys,
Speaker 1: we will call it a day again. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: when the next show will be. I might try to
Speaker 1: do a show tomorrow from Clemson. I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: that's possible, if we can pull that off, but you know,
Speaker 1: we'll see when I get to Clemson. Maybe maybe I
Speaker 1: can interview Brett Thompson or something like that, but that
Speaker 1: could be fun anyway. I will see you all whenever
Speaker 1: the next show is, which I cannot commit right now
Speaker 1: for when that will be suddenly Sunday. We'll do a
Speaker 1: show maybe Saturday, but suddenly Sunday, and we'll try to
Speaker 1: do some of the shows other times. But I am
Speaker 1: going off to travel some of you, some of you
Speaker 1: I'm going to see in Naples at the conference, at
Speaker 1: the Rand's Day conference that we're going to celebrate together
Speaker 1: one hundred and twentieth birthday of Iron Rand. So please
Speaker 1: do that. Don't forget to note the sponsors, the Ironman Institute,
Speaker 1: which is also doing something special February second. You can
Speaker 1: find information about that and sign up for the webinar
Speaker 1: at ir dot org, slish dot here and Alex Epstein,
Speaker 1: who of course provides incredible, incredible value to all of
Speaker 1: you at your ability to communicate about these ideas and
Speaker 1: you can discover more, and you can sign up to
Speaker 1: get the value from Alex by going to alex Epstein
Speaker 1: dot substack dot com. All right, guys, see you soon.
Speaker 1: Bye by body