Trade & Tariffs: Everything You Need To Know; Song Reviews | Yaron Brook Show

0:00The ladder, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Rochelle. Oh right everybody welcome to your own book show on this Sunday February 22nd. Hope you're having a fantastic weekend and thank you for spending a part of it with me. Thanks for joining us. I was going to do a member's only show today and I decided in the end that all this talk about trade and the tariffs and the tariff decision. I should probably do a show just summarizing the whole issue of trade. I looked I was going to create a playlist of all my stuff of trade and I noticed that the last show I kind of the shows that I dedicated completely to the issue of trade a pretty old that is most of a back during the first Trump administration

1:08and I had really I've updated it in segments so there are a lot of short videos of me on trade but there's no one that kind of takes the whole issue and covers the whole thing trade and tariffs and everything is involved and all the arguments for and against and so on so and it seems like now's the time given what's going on and given the level of it just now I'm really really hoping I think this is a false hope I think this will not happen but I'm really really hoping that some of you listening live live are confused about trade or think I'm wrong about trade or think Trump's right or don't think Trump's right but think think you have to do something there might be something good about tariffs there might be certain good things I'm really hoping there are some of you out there and that you're willing to ask super chat questions because I'm really I really want to make this show kind of a comprehensive of all the issues that people raise regarding trade and that would include all of the objections

2:16as you guys might have if if if there's nobody out there that believes that maybe there's somebody out there that might want to play act believing it and and ask ask the questions that you think people are asking out there or people are challenged with or people are confused about with regard to trade so put those in the super chat and ask them but it would be really good to kind of get a one video this one comprehensive analysis of everything to do with trade so yes ask devil's advocate questions and maybe there's somebody out there maybe there are people out there who are listening to the show who think tariffs are good thing or the trade deficit's a bad or that we need to bring manufacturing back or whatever whatever it happens to be a big

3:17back now I've made a list of all this stuff I'm going to cover but I I want to embellish that with all this stuff you want me to cover so please consider doing that asking questions and if they're not questions you have directly maybe questions you're not sure how to answer maybe questions that you hear a lot out there maybe just issues around trade that you know keep coming up and that need to be addressed so today is oh so I was going to do that and then I said I don't want to do that as a members only show because then it's behind kind of firewall I want to make it as bad as possible so I'll do the members only show now the time and in today's will be a big comprehensive one as we discussed on Friday as we've called has ruled the tariffs under the i.e. EPA illegal that is they they violate the separation of powers that basically Trump has

4:20no authority to impose tariffs under that legislation as a consequence Trump and Friday impose 10% a broad tariffs on everything basically imported into the country at 10% under Section 122 of a different act which allows him to do that for up to 150 days and after we broad they can't be based on any different for different countries and they and even there it's not clear that what he's doing is legal because there has to be a balance of payment or some kind of emergency and it's not clear that what we have today qualifies under the act as an emergency the deficit doesn't qualify as an emergency so anyway that that happened on Friday then a Saturday he said

5:22screw this I'm not raising it by 10% I'm raising it 15% so we now have 50% basically we have chaos nobody knows exactly how that plays out and how that interact with the tavs he's already placed based on national security and what are the refunds going to do the whole thing is a mess right now but we today I'm not going to talk about that today we are going to talk about you know talk about trade more bodily international trade more bodily tavs more bodily not about the specifics of this particular case but as I said please ask questions and you know if you both stuff in the chat I just am not going to be able to answer it partially because I can't keep truck of it the super chat it puts me it puts in a separate section it it saves all the questions I have them all together I'm not going to be able to remember all the chat questions you ask so please do that I know some of you disappointed because I don't have a members only show today reading an Iron Man essay I was going to

6:28do that I apologize for not doing that I will do that I in a soon I'm traveling in the next couple of weeks but after that we will do a members only show where we read an essay and we will continue to do that as well so it will happen all right let's see so let's let's basically start we'll start with it with basically the idea the idea of trade the idea of trade which is the idea in its simplest form a butter of you know the idea that I purchase from you a stuff that you make with stuff that I make you know this is the form in which trade existed before there was money and it it's because without money trade like this is very limited but it it can still exist within the context of simple societies where the number of goods were minimal and where indeed there

7:34wasn't a lot of trade in in the further back you go in terms of in terms of man primitive man the less trade exists because the reality is that most people provide for their own subsistence if you think about hunter gatherers some people do the hunting and some people build the weapons and some people do the kind of foraging and but there's no formal really system of trade there's everybody brings it in a sense to to the tribe and it gets distributed within the tribe based on on some right some principles that the tribe has set on how the goodies are distributed once they are produced but in order to get to a a society in which there's actually trade going on what you need is what you need is some level of division of labor now even in the most primitive

8:35tribes you have some division of labor again the people of farage are not typically the people who hunt the people who build the weapons and unnecessarily the people who who who use the weapons but you need some sense of I guess individual property versus the collective versus everything belongs to the tribe and the tribe distributes everything and I don't know when that exactly happened where there was a sense of I'll trade you the weapon for the meat you bring for the hunt I'll trade you the nuts and berries that are forage for the meat you bring for the hunt or for a knife or whatever I don't know when that happens in human history but think about in a very simplest sense that division of labor and as a consequence specialization is a massive benefit to everybody involved the ability to specialize as a hunter will make

9:37you a better hunter you you'll get good at it you'll practice it you probably chose to be a hunter because you have whether it's the physical capabilities or the or the strategic thinking that makes it possible but then you get better at it over time you you learn how how animals behave you you learn how to trap them you learn how to hunt them you learn how to use the weapons and if you're building weapons you become you become a specialist at that and and you can you can produce them it's you know much you can keep improving the weapon you can keep making it better you can improve your production capacity and of course forage is again it's a specialized you know the locations of the best berries the best nuts so all of that is is a very primitive specialization the division of labor even in a pre-trade society in which everything is put together but as soon as

10:39you get any kind of sense of private mine mine my stuff in order to get your stuff there are only two ways I can do it I can steal it I can take it by force or I can trade and I'm sure there was a lot of effort to take it by force and violence and war have been a part of human society from the beginning of time and indeed they dominate human history if you read history the thing they're really one of the things that stuns me as I read history in terms of detailed history a particular errors in particular places is how violent they were how much how many wars they were how much people took from one another how much they stole how much they conquered how much pillaged and slaughtered and raped and tortured I mean that was just standard practice in in all of human history they're very very very very very few periods of extended peace where there's

11:43just a long period of time with this very little violence and you know this is why when you get an extended period of peace it's so unusual and it's memorable so the peace from the Napoleonic war into World War One even though there were some minor wars in between relatively speaking to anything that came before that in all of human history wow that's that's a pretty peaceful or even the peace in much of the empire not at the borderlands but much of the empire during the Roman Empire the great advantage of the empire is that much of the center of the empire was very peaceful while the borderlands were very violent or since World War Two to today well yeah you've got wars here and there but overall in the scale of what history has shown us incredibly peaceful incredibly peaceful so once humanity it kind of settles down into farming and agriculture where

12:54people start cultivating their plots of land and and there is a sense of ownership whether it's protected by law formally or not there is a sense of ownership although if you look at the laws of Hammurabi the first legal code we have is already a legal code that that recognizes private property it recognizes debts it recognizes the fact that there is this finance there's the loans being made there's money or loans of grain so once you start settling down once there's any similar sort of property then trade becomes essential and so trade is a feature of human life from that very beginning and and even at the tribal level when maybe within the tribe everything is communal I doubt that's really true but but it maybe at some at some point that was true in tribes tribes traded among each other and if you go back even to the earliest earliest known

13:58human settlements a human I don't know activity in East Africa you see already tribes trading with one another trading beads trading trading skins you know some tribes specialized or tribes near the shore could create beads tried inland had more hunting opportunities and they were trade beads for hunting or jury for hunting and that's how beads often became a form of money so trade of goods for goods is really at the beginning of mankind you we can't survive as a species without it because to be totally self-sufficient is almost impossible for human beings I mean we are not well designed for our environment we are not a species that can survive at the perceptual level that can survive without trade in that sense without other people to trade with

15:02it's very difficult now you can do it you know you can you can watch movies about Robinson Caruso type phenomenal you can read the story of Robinson Caruso and in a system of a desert island yeah you can survive barely and it's no fun and as soon as one additional person comes in the Robinson Caruso story as soon as Friday shows up existence improves significantly partially because now you have two people two people can specialize and they can trade so I think it's really really important to know trade is at the core at the at the heart at the base of all human activity and all of human history it's it's the way in which we can start specializing it is at the core of division of labor we can eat specializing the thing that we want we can labor divides itself into its area of

16:03what's called comparative advantage that is I could be better than you guys in everything that you do I could be the best at everything and it's still if you if you run the math and I'm not going to do it today view on the math it's still better for me to specialize and let's you specialize in the things that you're the best at so I should specialize from purely economic perspective I should specialize in the thing that I have the biggest advantage over you in terms of productive skill even if I even have superior production in everything I should I should specialize in that which I have the biggest gap where we have the biggest gap so comparative advantage is is a huge ultimate value creator and of course trade is win win I give up the beads and accept the skins because I value the skins more than the beads you give up the skins and take the beads because you value the beads more than you value the skins in other words both party are better

17:07off at the end of a trade that is the essence of trade it is a it is a positive sum it is a positive sum not a zero sum certainly not a negative sum a positive sum if you think about war war typically is negative sum if you add up you know it's it's all negative it's it's it's lose win or win lose or lose lose usually trade is one of the human activities that is win win it's why we enter into it it's why we engage in trade because we are better off afterwards otherwise why give up something if we're not better off now we can make a mistake you can enter trade and and buy a lemon you can be defrauded but then it's not a trade it's an

18:12act of violence but mostly and the reason you enter the trade is in order to achieve a win win outcome and both parties both parties enter it you buy an iPhone for $1,000 you're better off because you got the iPhone $1,000 the iPhone is of greater value to you than $1,000 Apple made a profit pretty easy straightforward so trade is a win win value creation and it's a win win value creation at every level in which you engage in the trade that is true whether you do it in butter that is true when you do it with money it's true if you do it with gold it's true if you do it with paper money it's true if you do it with people on the other side of the globe it's true if you do it locally it's do it if you do it exchange if you trade for services it's true if you trade

19:15for goods it's true if you I don't know what are the other options every act of trade every act of trade is a act that you enter in in order to better your life you're giving up something of lesser value and you're getting an exchange I think I'm greater value that's the essence note also and this is important for the whole idea of international trade it's individuals who trade countries for the most part governments for the most part don't trade now it's true governments do buy services governments do buy some goods but the vast over you know for example military hardware and equipment but the vast majority of transactions that occur in the world in in economy happen between individuals or between

20:22the representatives of individuals the representative of individuals could be businesses corporations which is just extensions of individuals individuals own businesses individuals own corporations I want to I want to make this clear when when we say this is really an important point when we say we're running you know we we buy a lot of stuff we import a lot of stuff from China yes because the people who are selling us stuff are located in China but it is not the Chinese government selling us stuff now it's true some of those businesses might be owned by the Chinese government some of those businesses might be partially owned or controlled or regulated subsidized or something but literally we are buying from somebody making the stuff in China and there's a lot of intermediaries along the way there's the company in China there's the import there's the exporter there's the import there's the company in the United States there's the retailer that we buy from

21:24there a lot of intermediaries but at the end of the day the trade with China is each one of us buying stuff from people over there the US government does not buy stuff with some maybe minor exceptions from the Chinese government and the Chinese government is not buying stuff from the US government so trade is fundamentally between individuals between individuals there's no such thing as really as trade between countries now international trade has again a very very very very long history much longer than I even thought the more history I read the more I discover then even if you go back to I don't know 1000 BC or you know even more than 1000

22:33BC if you go back as far as 10,000 years ago when human beings settle down into communities of farmers they were trading trading across vast geographic distances there was significant trading between Egypt and Mesopotamia the two big civilizations ancient civilizations there was trading going on between Egypt and Mesopotamia and the the nomads of the what do you call it the the Asian plains the euro Asian plains this is the area that goes from kind of Ukraine and Europe all the way to Mongolia in Asia which is basically this flat territory that just expands and where all the nomadic tribes that we know originate from and have had a huge impact on the history of the world there was trade you know among them there was trade between people in Scandinavia and you know pre classic Greek cities

23:47going back 1000 BC you know there was trade back then there was clearly trade between Egypt and Greece and other parts of the connected in the Mediterranean by ship there's always been trade across you know call it country lines state lines geography always and the reason is that there's massive benefits to it again the people for example as my understanding is the people in in North Europe specialized in a production of certain products I think weapons in particular sorts and they were really really good at and they had access to natural resources that didn't exist in southern Europe and the southern Europeans had stuff that no no the Europeans wanted and they traded for it again individuals traded and there

24:47were lots of intermediaries and there was trade with Persia and with the Persians traded with other peoples of Central Asia and those people traded with China and and all of those people are so traded with India and and that's the Silk Road which has a history going back thousands of years so trade is something international trade in the sense of over vast geographic areas as always existed because because of different geographic endowments because in different geographies you know different it's easier to grow different products it's easier to produce different things it's easier to mine different things and then of course the different areas individuals individual geniuses innovated and developed certain created certain innovations that didn't exist in

25:48other places and then they traded those innovations with the others and of course there's arts and there's jewelry and beads and and and and all this other stuff and the fact is that you're trade within a community of let's say 100 people in your tribe there's only so much division of labor and so much specialization and so much value creation that can be created in the context of a small tribe of a hundred people but if you take that and now you extrapolate it over a thousand people ten thousand people a hundred thousand people hundreds of thousands of people who live in a dispersed land now you can create so many different things now specialization multiplies with every more with more people you get more specialization more division of labor more value creation more opportunities for trade so the beauty of globalization or whatever scale

26:53you have from ten thousand BC to today is that you get to expand specialization in division of labor and therefore you get to expand value creation and again specialization means increased value creation because you get to be an expert at something and you can be more productive at it it gets to expanded beyond the small group of people that you know expanded to hundreds of thousands millions and today eight billion people and that means there's more value in the world the more trade opportunities in the world there's more win win win and therefore more wins in the world there's more wealth in the world everybody everybody participates is better off as a consequence so there is no downside to trade

27:53because it's win win now we'll get we'll get to national security issues in a little bit you know which might be one constraint of trade so now let's look at what happens once you get nations once you get nations you know with the the the the with felian nation states that is created in in in the west and today the world is dominated by the nation state all over everywhere what you get is national economies governments the control particular geographic areas because we don't have economic freedom really anywhere in the world you need government intervention in economies you once in let me just see if you want to ask questions of some reason you cannot do it on the

29:02super chat you can ask the question on PayPal I'll open the PayPal page and have it open and available as I mentioned earlier I'm either get you get to get questions from people who disagree about my free trade stance and who have questions about it and so let me know if you have asked a question right now William claims says he asked a question on on PayPal I don't see I don't see a contribution or question on PayPal from Williams so I'm not sure what is not working for you William but I don't see it maybe Miss live can help you set that up but if you again if you can't ask here then ask ask ask elsewhere all right so now we have nation states and you know originally pre 19th century or pre Adam Smith really the dominant idea around the

30:04nation state was you know we don't we don't want to we want to be able in within the nation state to create everything that we need we we don't want to have free and open trade with other countries and and think about it in in those days the the the primary money was gold and the sense was we don't want to send our gold overseas and what do we get in return we get stuff but we've lost gold but of course this again Miss completely misrepresent what's going on because if you've given up the gold to get the stuff it's because the stuff is worth more to you at that point in time or worth more to the individuals doing the trading then the stuff that you're getting so you're getting stuff that is more valuable than the gold you're giving up

31:09and that's why the trade is happening but there was this idea that the marketer is told that it's the accumulation of gold that makes you rich that makes you wealthy not the accumulation of stuff but of course a wealth is actually not measured in gold or money a wealth is actually measured in the stuff that we have it's what we can use that money for it's in the productive assets that we purchase it's in the homes that we build it's in the stuff we put inside the homes that is our wealth so you know value is not money value is in the usability of something for human life you know what's the point of the money if you don't use it to live

32:09so but there was this notion you know and it's why you know for example people thought I mean here's an extreme example of this people thought that by bringing in gold from South America the Spanish empire would become so rich and so powerful that it would dominate the world now it's true that bringing in gold from South America made the kings of Spain very wealthy because they took a certain percentage of all the gold that came in and they used it for their own consumption but the reality is that all that extra gold coming into Europe didn't actually make you a richer what did it do what do we know happens when you flood a market with new money it caused all prices to rise it didn't increase the number of goods it increased the

33:10the quality of the goods it didn't increase it didn't increase the value of anything the value of stuff is they it's usefulness to human life gold doesn't increase the value of it's usefulness so what happened when you got a ton of gold coming in from from Spain is ultimately in the in the medium to long term prices in Europe went up to reflect the new supply money and wealth in Europe didn't change much in Spain never became rich indeed you know it's it's one of the one of the consequences of all that gold coming in through Spain is the Spain never developed industry it never really developed the ability to create values to create values that actually produce wealth over the long run so milk and elism was the dominant of you of the time

34:12it was this idea that accumulating gold is what makes you rich but Adam Smith in 1776 and indeed economists even a hundred years before Adam Smith already understood that this was a complete error that didn't make any sense the trade was win-win and one should engage with as much trade as possible and Adam Smith in the wealth of nation basically lays out the economic case for why countries should have open borders when it comes to the transport of goods they should welcome imports and be willing to trade with anybody anywhere in the world and then indeed over time what happens is that people in particular countries tend to specialize in those areas where they have a comparative advantage and other countries specialize in people in other countries individuals and other countries specialize in the things that they have

35:16comparative advantage and then you trade and that again expands dramatically the division of labor and the benefits of the division of labor and the value creation that's being created so basically Adam Smith shows that the free flow of goods the free flow goods with no barriers to trade is economically the optimal strategy it is good for everybody and at yes particular industries might lose out so for example when Adam Smith was writing it's probably true that the textile industry in the UK would have probably lost out it's probably true that it would have been cheaper the import textiles from India which was part of the British Empire then it was to produce textiles

36:18in but now you know it's hard exactly say because textiles were the first thing that was kind of the industrial evolution helped to mechanize but that could have happened in India that is the English expertise could have been exported to India so yes one industry would not maybe have existed in England if there were completely open borders in Otavis but what would have happened the capital that was being deployed in the textile industry in England would have then been reallocated to other industries where England had a comparative advantage so there would have been more value created because England would have specialized in the thing that England does did best and then traded for the textiles with countries that did best for textiles

37:19so Adam Smith shows this in great detail it takes about you know it was probably 1776 it takes basically 70 years until 1846 until the UK over that period of 70 years the UK slowly eliminates tariffs slowly systematically eliminates all trade restrictions and then with the corner the passage of the the repeal of the corn laws the last remaining trade barriers fall in England from basically 1846 until until the break out of world war one 1914 becomes a complete free trade island it is there no trade barriers in England between 1846 and 1914 and during this period you get some of the most some of the fastest economic growth in history you get a massive expansion

38:21you get industrialization you get the real surge of the industrial revolution and the great wealth creation of the industrial revolution and technology advances because you get a reallocation of resources one of the things that happens one of the things that happens during this period is pre 1846 the poor in England are suffering because food is expensive why because the corn laws are making importing grain this tariffs on importation of grain so importing grain is really expensive so they are restricted to buying domestic grain which is expensive England is not is not the cheapest produce of grain in the world America was very cheap produce of grain Canada there were parts of Europe they're producing grain very cheaply and the poor breads could not

39:26benefit from that and for example the famine in Ireland in the early part of the 19th century was partially caused by the inability to import cheap grain into the UK once the corn laws are abolished and it opens up the British economy it's true that many of the farming estates in England started losing money or the profits were reduced dramatically and they had to find different uses for the land but people who consumed food i.e. poor people, minnecrash people everybody really consumed food this is a massive bonanza for them because they suddenly got massive quantities of cheap food which made it possible for them to live better lives to be more productive to participate to great extent in the British economy to create more value

40:28all right so mucontalism this idea a placing barriers is a theory in economics that has been basically shown to be false from Adam Smith till today as i've said many times on my show there is no serious economist over the last 200 years since Adam Smith who has believed in mucontalism who thinks the tariffs or any other kind of trade barriers are good for the economy a good economic policy and that's just on the basis of economics the other issue of courses on the basis of individual rights what business is the government from whom i buy my stuff from

41:30why is the government trying to tell me what i can and cannot buy and where and where i cannot buy it from so individual rights freedom basically dictates the idea the government has no business trying to manipulate who i buy stuff from all right now in the united states the history is a little different than the UK in the united states when it was founded in the constitution convention there is a lot of discussion about how to raise revenue to run the federal government states had their own sources of revenue but how to run this federal government and no one of the one of the biggest principles of the constitution is that even though we have multiple states under federation

42:35there shall be no tariffs between those states the founders understood that tariffs were destructive tariffs did not promote economic success and were antagonistic to the rights of individuals and therefore they were clear that states could not place tariffs on other states that this was economically disastrous and a violation of the rights of americans but then they had the problem about how to raise revenue for the federal government and they they they considered lots of different ways to do it but all the different ways created problems there was no simple way in order to raise revenue a sales tax throughout the economy would be very difficult to implement

43:38before a a a a a regular system of accounting existed before there were enough government agents to go and make sure that everybody was charging the sales tax and they could collect the sales tax the ability of monitor what was going on it didn't really exist you would have to have government agent at every every every store in order to collect the sales tax and it was no way to to supervise the stores themselves the stores didn't report how much income they produced to the government it was very difficult and they believed wrong to tax income and again very difficult to implement now tariffs were relatively easy to collect because all goods imported into the country came through the ports there were only so many ports

44:40in the US all you had to do was put a government office at every port called it the customs office at every port of entry a custom office and then those custom offices could collect a duty attacks on every item that was shipped into the country it was easy to collect and the government needs were very very small government did not government did not spend you know more than three and a half percent of GTP often much less than that during the 19 during the 19th century except during the Civil War three and a half percent it did not need a lot of money so it could tax things like alcohol it could tax a few products which it did again you know exactly the producers are you know exactly where the point of taxation is and then it could tax tariffs which were very easy very easy to do

45:48and indeed 80 to 90% of all revenue for the federal government in the 19th century came from tariffs now we'll get to why we can't do that today we'll get to that in a minute but what else the tariffs do what would they if you will unintended consequences or the completely predictable consequences they actually talked about it so they knew these were the consequences of tariffs in the United States during the 19th century well tariffs were the first opportunity really in America for communism really the from the first bill the past the first bill that included tariffs the past businesses started lobbying for exemptions businesses started

46:50lobbying for exclusions just like today and this is the first area in which the country started dividing into pressure groups into different pressure groups with different interests agricultural interests southern interests northern interests manufacturing interests each one had a different interest depending on whether they were an importer an exporter whether they want a protection for competition or didn't want protection of competition and you know tariffs actually became during the 19th century the second most contentious issue in politics more contentious even than under Donald Trump today the number one most contentious issue in the 19th century was slavery please until the civil war the second most contentious issue in American politics were tariffs so tabs immediately created a situation in America of communism and by the early 19th century

48:00truth of the early 20th century sorry by the early 20th century and really by the late 19th century two things were happening one one the the government was going particularly in the 20th century and it needed more revenue but two the the the communism was getting out of hand people were really really really unhappy with the communism so and attempts were made to introduce an income tax and the idea was to introduce the income tax to replace tariffs because tariffs were so destructive because of the and because everybody understood for matters Smith that they actually made America poor and they did

49:00by every economic every economic study of the late 19th century shows that the high tariff rates during the McKinley era if you will actually reduced economic growth in the United States actually hooked the economy and the economy grew as fast as it did during that era in spite of tariffs not because of tariffs so there was an attempt to introduce income taxes in order to replace tariffs and that failed in the late 19th century because the income tax were were deemed by the supreme court unconstitutional and then in the early part of the 20th century there was a constitutional amendment to introduce the income tax and indeed once the income tax was brought into play tariffs were for the most part eliminated they were only really introduced again they were introduced first in the 1920s by Coolidge it's one of the reasons I don't think Coolidge is that great

50:03of a president and then introduced again by Hoover or introduced at very high rates by Hoover with Smooth Hawley. All right so again let me remind everybody you want to ask questions you want to make comments you want to you want to disagree with me happy to do it put it in the super chat you don't have money go somewhere else here if you want your comments to be addressed by me at least the super chat is where you can do it if you don't have two bucks to spend on a super chat then you might want to think about what's going on in life maybe maybe skip the maybe maybe you know

51:07maybe if you if you're this dedicated this dedicated to to asking questions but you can't afford it maybe maybe you know maybe you should think about spending less time on the chat and more time working all right let's see so tabs there's no point in in the history where tabs have actually produced a benefit for the United States they produced income for the government but on net from the economy of the US they were a net drag on the economy all right let's see God it's already almost an hour whatever I want to say all right let's talk a little bit about what happens if

52:14if other countries have tariffs I get this all the time so people say other countries have tariffs therefore we should have tariffs now this doesn't make any sense other countries we you know other countries have socialized healthcare does that mean the United States should have socialized healthcare other countries have huge robust welfare states does that mean the United States should have a huge robust welfare state other countries have dictators in some cases does that mean the United States should have so the idea that other countries have it therefore we should is is like makes no sense we should do what makes sense maybe other countries are stupid for having tariffs indeed Adam Smith will tell you they are the economic leader I would tell you that most economists will tell you that tariffs harm the economy the places the tariffs

53:23so it doesn't matter how many countries in the world have tariffs it's doing them their own country harm now it's doing some harm to other countries as well that for example if you're a US exporter if you sell stuff and other countries have tariffs your goods in that country are more expensive so you're gonna export less to that country that's true you're exporting less but the bulk of the harm is the fact that the people in that country have to pay much higher prices for your stuff with the one tariffs they couldn't put as much as they needed at the price they needed it at so tariffs are lose lose nobody wins other than special interest groups special interest groups in the country placing their tariffs for example who wins from the US steel tariffs maybe some US steel companies win but most people in the United States lose because we pay higher prices

54:31for steel 99% of Americans lose and some of the steel manufacturers outside of the United States lose as well because they can export less to the United States so you lose there's lose lose lose lose that is what steel does God I see I see the chat is getting rowdy rowdy cpq who claimed he has no money but does have a job has no money to ask a super chat but has a job is pissing people off good

55:44fight back that's good put him in his place he's talking nonsense on the chat as usual he doesn't know what he's talking about why do these leftists show up on my chat I get why the Trump fans show up on my chat why do the leftists show up on the chat so tariffs are lose lose lose everybody loses except for the pressure group that wins so other countries have tariffs it's a lose lose there's absolutely no reason why we should increase tariffs to make sure that we add on to the losses that we should participate in the losing now you might say oh we can use the threat of towering another country in other words raising taxes on own people because we are the biggest bigger loses in in when we raise tariffs in the

56:50United States we Americans lose the most because we Americans pay higher prices for the things we tariff but we can use that to put pressure on other countries to lower their tariffs if they happen to export that particular good to the United States that's being tariffed but that actually never happens tariffs have never been used for that purpose and tariffs have never been successfully used for that purpose and Donald Trump certainly has no intention of using it for that purpose all the trade deals that Donald Trump for example assigned involves continuing tariffs you know Americans are paying much higher prices on goods by about 10% on tariff goods because of the tariffs and other countries have not significantly lower tariffs on American goods it doesn't work that way

57:56typically what happens is when you raise tariffs on other countries they raise tariffs on you and that's exactly what's happening right now tariffs for American goods overseas higher than they were before Trump started this trade war he creates an artificial level that's high when he first announces the tariffs and then he gets countries to lower it but they don't lower it to below what it was before he started the stupid tariff war so there is zero benefit to raising tariffs tariffs cannot be used and are not used and haven't been used as far as I know in history to get other countries to lower tariffs to zero there's no example of that I mean the way we've lower tariffs to zero is by negotiating which is not ideal because my view the idea is just to unilaterally lower tariffs to zero

58:58but for example we got together with Mexico and Canada and we basically lower tariffs to zero for 95 percent of all the trade between those three countries and then Trump came around and undid most of that we were in negotiations with lowering tariffs to close to zero with lots of other countries now again I don't believe you need those negotiations because the ideal trade policy is unilateral zero tariffs but tariffs are not negotiating tools they're taxes I'll shoot myself in the foot in order to get you to stop shooting yourself in the foot usually what happens is I shoot myself in the foot you in retaliation shoot yourself in the knee I shoot myself in the knee in retaliation for that and on it goes until we both done real harm

59:58to each other's economy to our own economies and to each other's economies so the fact that other countries tariff is gives you zero reason to tariff yourself tariffs are taxes on your own people taxes when they buy something from overseas I buy something from Mexico I pay a tariff that is unique to the stuff I buy from Mexico the tariff might be different when I buy stuff from Europe so it makes no sense it just makes no sense to respond to other people's tariffs with tariffs now you might say wait a minute but our industries are disadvantaged in the United States for example

1:00:59because other countries subsidize their industries and we don't believe in subsidizing although in the United States we subsidize a lot of our industries we just look at farming for example we huge subsidies for farming we but generally we don't subsidize they subsidize we need tariffs in order to level the playing field we need to tax our own people we need to force our own people to pay higher prices for the imported goods so that our domestic industry has a chance because the reason those imported goods are cheap is because their country is subsidizing it but again why not just take the cheaper goods if another country is once the subsidize their own industries

1:01:59why why shouldn't we just take advantage of that now again it is true some people will lose their jobs some into some companies will go out of business but everybody else benefits because everybody else is buying cheaper goods and every time the government steps in trying to protect one group and not protect another group and so on it only distorts the economy so the fact that in China there's subsidizing goods is destructive to the Chinese economy we know that that's why we don't subsidize in America do less subsidies in America we're subsidizing more and more with every year why would we again respond to a bad policy from another country with a bad policy of our own all of that is lose lose lose lose lose so if somebody else is producing stuff cheaply because it's subsidized well who are the Chinese the Chinese government is really subsidizing American consumers

1:03:05American consumers benefit which means they have they save money which means they have more money to invest in other things which means the United States can focus on its comparative advantage individuals here can invest in where they have comparative advantage and create wealth and buy cheap stuff from China because the Chinese government stupidly is subsidizing us why would we turn down a gift so you don't do bad things to your own economy in response to other countries governments doing bad things to their own economy it just it doesn't make any economic sense and it doesn't make any sense politically because you're violating your own citizens individual rights I want to benefit from the fact that China subsidizing this company

1:04:08by buying cheap stuff from them why is it anybody why is it the government's business why is it my neighbor's business why is it anybody's business and aim 1000 Japan and South Korea did not have 25% tariffs before Donald Trump took office in you know last year check your premise check the numbers what was the average tariff in Japan and South Korea on American goods in 2024 that's chat GPT all right we can do that what was average tariff in Japan on US goods in 2024 all right it was 2.4% for non-agricultural goods and it was 11.9% for agricultural goods so what has

1:05:18happened since Trump's tariffs is that the tariff has gone up to 15% it was significantly 2.4% on average it says here let's see according to World Trade Organization to the Japan's simple average most favored nation applied tariff rate across all products was about 3.7% so now it's 15 so Trump's tariffs have caused Japan to increase tariffs on America from 3.7% to 15% sorry but that's how tariffs work it's not a surprise tariffs don't lower tariffs EU tariffs were something like 3% on American goods and now they're higher because Trump raised tariffs on you you goods coming in this is the thing about that you have to realize Trump is a liar

1:06:24I know this is a shock to many of you but in this is not TDS it's just a fact Trump is a liar he lies all the time and he's light to you about tariffs his tariffs have not lowered tariffs on US goods they've increased tariffs in US goods this is why the trade deficit last year was the same in 2025 as it was in 2024 it didn't change because tariffs don't reduce the trade deficit they just distort prices and they create missellocations of capital and they make the economy less productive less efficient overall it's reality and by the way anytime you think about these things anytime Trump says anything just go to chat GPT and check and chat GPT could be lie

1:07:26but you can check it with Claude and you can you can cross references and you can find the data aim 1000 said thanks for the info when you write you write the thing is aim 1000 is I'm almost always right almost I mean I'm wrong sometimes I admit it but on the big stuff I'm right and it's it's about time you guys realize that it's like how many times can I be right before you grant me the benefit of the doubt I don't know all right two more issues I want three more issues I want to cover quickly God we're running out of thinking huge amounts I guess nobody's asking questions on PayPal so I can close the PayPal here so William is not asking a question on PayPal so let me add you know three three more issues that we need to cover one people argue still that tariffs are going to replace the income tax so if we raise tariffs we can get rid of

1:08:29the income tax and isn't that better he has the thing about that today the government spends about 22% of GDP it used to be 3.5 to raise tariffs to the level where they can cover 22% of GDP or not 22% of GDP just a portion of income tax that's assume it's not replacing all of the taxes only the income tax I can't remember what percentage of that is income tax but it's high you'd have to raise tariffs to well over 100% I think it's 130% so for tariffs to replace the income tax you'd have to raise tariffs to about 130% now if you raise tariffs to 130% people won't buy the goods because they'll be more than double the price

1:09:33and if people don't buy the goods then there's no revenue for the government so it is literally mathematically impossible and I'm not exaggerating this is the reality to replace the income tax with tariffs that higher the tariffs go the less we import the less we import the less revenue there is and if we have to raise the tariffs even further to catch up with income tax but then the less importation there is so it is mathematically impossible to replace income taxes with tariffs it's reality sorry now you could replace the income tax with the sales tax because there's so many goods that sell in the United States I mean trade is small I have some stats so our economy is 30 trillion 30.6 trillion in 2025 that's the size of the economy GDP

1:10:42gross domestic product 30.6 trillion trade of goods and services is about 4.3 trillion so it's what 12% 11% of GDP it's not big enough to tax to generate enough income to replace the income tax but if you if you tax all sales in America or if you had a vat of how you had a tax you could replace the income tax but then you wouldn't be discriminating imported goods from domestically produced goods but nobody is proposing that nobody's proposing a sales tax I wish they were it makes a lot more sense than what we have what happened here whoops what did I do what did I do

1:11:43all right what happened there okay so that's what about ensuring manufacturing now one of the ideas you raised tariffs it becomes very expensive to import stuff so people stop importing but they still want the stuff that they that they were importing so now people will invest in domestic manufacturing to produce the same stuff and they can produce it at a cheaper cost than the foreign stuff plus the tariff that's the idea of ensuring now first tariffs have to be pretty high for that to happen because it's expensive to produce stuff domestically because of our labor costs because of our regulations because of how expensive it is to do anything in the United States so tariffs have to be high for that to do to justify it second there has to be a certain

1:12:47predictability instability and confidence that the tariffs will be there forever for capitalists to invest capital to build stuff that replace imports because if the tariffs go away after four years then suddenly they will be the new factories that they build will go out of business because the stuff the foreigners will start importing again exporting it again at much cheaper rates so the reality is that and given that certainty about tariffs given the volatility in tariffs given Trump changes his mind every few days nobody's investing in building factories in the United States to replace the goods that have been tariffed all that's happening is people are buying less of those goods and they're taking the hits and they're paying more money for them that's why the government has received tariff revenue increased tariff revenue because people actually buying the imported stuff at a higher price that higher price reflects the taxes

1:13:55so it will not ensure manufacturing because of the uncertainty and because tariffs are just not high enough they would have to be much higher to ensure it now it's much more likely that what will happen is you'll get a what's called a tariff arbitrage what will happen is manufacturing will move from high tariff locations to low tariff countries and will import them from the lower tariff countries instead of what we used to import from the high tariff countries but the likelihood that they actually come back to the United States is close to zero and indeed what we saw last year was a net loss to manufacturing not in an increase we did not see any increases to manufacturing in the United States because of tariffs tariffs hurt manufacturing because they heard exports they hurt manufacturing because they heard the standard of living of Americans and therefore demand by Americans and therefore it drops okay finally the only legitimate argument you can make about tariffs but it's not legitimate

1:15:05is national security the sudden industries we need to protect in the United States because in a national security in a war we need to be able to produce at home tariffs are not a way to do that tariffs are not a way to do that if you tariffs semiconductors coming from Taiwan you will not create an American chip industry microchip micro process industry and if you do it'll be very expensive and very inefficient and very unproductive that is not the way to secure national security manufacture for that you need to come up with it with a with a plan a strategy and how to encourage friend-shoring how to encourage production in friendly territories or if it has to be in the United States how does the defense department guarantee

1:16:09that stuff is made in America by having forward contracts by paying above market prices by paying companies to build manufacturing facilities and mothballing them there are a lot of ways in order to do it we have Intel already building out their phone read to produce advanced chips have you seen Intel's financial statements have you seen how badly Intel is performing have you seen the fact that nobody wants to buy Intel chips because they're expensive and they're not very good have you seen the fact that even the advanced chips at Intel's building can't compete with two nanometer chips coming up from TSMC Intel is incompetent has been incompetent for a long time it should go bust it should go bankrupt it should stop making chips in the United States because it's not good at it

1:17:13maybe somebody an entrepreneur can figure out how to make chips in the United States and be good at it but nobody's gonna allocate capital to them because right now the government is subsidizing Intel it's picked the winners and losers and it's picked a bad company as the winner just check out Intel stock price recently and check out its latest financial statements and check out the history of Intel and its cognism really since the 1980s the only reason for tariffs the only thing tariffs you know facilitate is cognism you can see that with the Trump administration the Trump administration is hypercogni they sell goodies they give exclusions to the companies they

1:18:15manipulate the tariff policies to favor some industries the expensive other industries a complete cognism that is the one outcome that we've gotten from tariffs nothing good nothing good comes from tariffs it's just the tax and those of us who believed in freedom generally generally believe that taxes are bad their violations of rights they they distort the economy and the fewer taxes the better the lower taxes the better and tariffs were really really really low in America before 2016 before Trump was elected and they had been declining globally for decades we were really approaching a period we were approaching a period of free trade really free trade where barriers were dropping China was a reduced tariffs dramatically

1:19:18over the last 20 years and had reduced non-tariff barriers to trade not our barriers to trade or tariffs but that was true everywhere around the world it wasn't perfect it was far from perfect but the direction was the right direction we were moving towards freer and freer and freer trade Trump has caused the United States at least to reverse that direction trade with the United States today is the least free it is being since World War II the rest of the world might still embrace free trade as they trade with one another but the United States has now creed in an island of inefficiency lack of productivity caused by trade barriers

1:20:29all right aim 1000 you can ask a question in the in the super chat if you want me to answer that but you're basically wrong and you're basically wrong about intel and you're wrong about the strategy and you're wrong about the optimal strategy of how to make sure we have chips for an emergency the last thing you want is to rely on intel which has not proved its capabilities and there are strategies that the US government could engage in in securing chips in the United States and indeed the two foundries two companies that produce chips in the United States for the defense department that are not intel and maybe they should be producing more chips but subsidizing intel and is by far the wrong strategy and taking our equity stake in intel as a disaster all right I know I keep answering aim I shouldn't I shouldn't I should ignore him

1:21:32all right uh that is trade now what I'm going to do now is I'm going to look at the super chats and see take all the questions about trade then I'm going to do some some reviews and then I'll finish up the questions whatever questions exist beyond that all right uh let's start with Jennifer pro-tariff arguments trade deficit bad dependence on hostile nations for necessary goods destroying manufacturing jobs retaliation for tariffs put on us that's all the stupid arguments I can think of okay let's see trade deficit bad trade deficits uh I didn't talk about trade deficits I should so thank you for asking that Jennifer trade deficits how can trade deficits be bad I mean I have a massive trade deficit with the grocery store I uh I go to grocery store and I spend my money there and the grocery store never does a super chat never does a super chat so I never get my money back from the grocery store now does that mean I'm worse off a better off

1:22:38if I have a trade deficit with the grocery store I traded with the grocery store I gave them money and I got stuff I'm better off they're better off that's the whole point of win win now when you're talking about international trade it is true that when I buy something from Mexico they now have dollars and when they want to go buy stuff in Mexico they can't use those dollars so what do they do well they have to either buy stuff from from an American using those dollars or they have to invest in America by a bond by a stock store by stuff by real estate in America so the reality is that trade deficits are offset by investment subpluses

1:23:39there's an a massive surplus of investment in America because every dollar that some foreigner has because he sold something to an American and got a dollar in exchange every one of those dollars comes back to America typically as an investment some of the dollars are spent on importing on our exports but there's an imbalance right there's trade deficit the gap about a trillion dollars is following investment in the United States so trade deficits don't matter because the dollars flow back to the US and let's say the Mexicans doesn't want to buy anything from the US but he needs to buy I don't know he needs to buy I was going to say gasoline but they have plenty of oil in Mexico so he needs to buy copper from

1:24:45Chile so he uses the dollars to buy Chilean copper because the dollar is used for international trade now the Chilean has the dollar the Chilean needs oil so he gives the dollar to the Saudi and he gets the oil now the Saudi has a dollar he buys American stocks with their dollar and the dollar is back in the US that's how trade on a global scale happens and it's wine by the way that dollars used as the as the kind of currency it's because everybody has them because they're all selling stuff to the US they all have dollars and yet they have to in a sense get rid of those dollars stay might as well use it for trade among each other and the dollars relatively stable and they trust the political system in the US at least they used to and therefore the dollars used for most global trade but the dollars all flow back to the US

1:25:45so trade deficits don't matter dependence on hostile nations for necessary goods that's a necessary security issue and yes we should think about are they goods that we have to produce in the United States and if they are then we need to find strategies by which to make those goods in the United States but national security is way way way overused as an excuse just notice that tariffs on furniture are justified by national security tariffs on cars automobiles justified by national security but if we find a good let's say rare earth materials then what we need to do is deregulate the mining business deregulate land ownership deregulate the ability to build manufacturing plants that can produce the mining and then the the the defense department can then

1:26:47companies that own the mines and owner of finding capabilities and say we'll buy X amount of this rare earth material for the next 10 years at 20% over market prices and that is a subsidy in a sense but that is a way in which you're now creating an incentive for capital to flow in for people to produce the people to create for competition to arise and yes the government will be overpaying for the next 10 years but now you'll have a domestic industry that's producing that rare earth material that you actually need for national security reasons it's just like when we buy f-15s the government is overpaying for f-15s they have to otherwise nobody's going to invest in f-16s f-35s f-16s or whatever it is there's no we're not going to rely on international competition to build our weapons systems

1:27:48so we overpay for the weapons systems knowing we're overpaying but knowing that we have to buy them domestically anything that we have to buy literally have to proven through national security strategy overpay make long-term commitments and you'll see capital flowing into that industry to produce the thing that you need destroying manufacturing it's true that foreign competition can destroy a particular industry in the United States but it does so by lowering prices by making it more efficient and thus by improving the quality of life and standard of living of Americans it's just like what would happen if in another state let's say you know you're earning an auto factory in Michigan and in somebody opens up a auto factory that's much more productive much more efficient and doesn't use what do you call it union labor in South Carolina

1:28:50well some auto companies in Michigan will have to close some factories because they can't compete should we ban that should we ban competition well now we're just expanding competition across the oceans which is great more division of labor more specialization yes more what Schumpeter called creative destruction but creative destruction is a net net positive win win ultimately and that creates more jobs not less jobs higher paying jobs not lower paying jobs wages have gone up with globalization not down and the number of jobs has gone up not down the number of jobs in manufacturing has gone down but that's mostly because of automation we still many factor a lot in the United States in spite of globalization and we make more money because

1:29:53we have focused on the things we're particularly good at comparative advantage all right the rest I think I have covered thank you Jennifer Adam by USA why not just by only from your state your city your neighborhood of course we wouldn't be better off time to revisit objectivist island yeah yes I mean absolutely it is no logic in buy USA you should buy the best cheapest highest quality for the price product you can buy because it's in yourself interest to do so and you shouldn't care where it's made indeed as Harry Benzwanger writes in his essay on buy America is un-American if you buy because something's made in America and not because something's the best quality per dollar spent you are being un-American because you're being

1:30:54sacrificial for the sake of the states for the sake of I don't know some some buy USA mythology by the best at the best price and that's true of buy USA it's the whole we now have buy local why why I want to buy the best you know there's so many things are if you bought local you would never buy a computer never buy chip microprocessor you wouldn't buy anything with microprocessors because almost none of you live in a locality when microprocessor built and that's good because building microprocessors needs economies of scale West thank you for the 50 bucks really appreciated I never understood how other countries are supposed to pay the tariffs I mean how does the US government collect the tariff from a Chinese company it's obviously obvious someone in the US has to pay the tariff yes that's another myth

1:31:59about tariffs that somehow foreign countries pay the tariff now here's how theoretically it would work but they wouldn't pay anything they would just eat it so the idea is they so want to sell their stuff in the US that what they do is they reduce the price by the amount of the tariff so that American consumers don't pay any higher price they paid the same price they did before the tariff but now a certain percentage of that price goes to the US government as the tax and while the and the US consumers know worse off it's just the Chinese company is getting less money and the US government is getting more money that's the theory and it's works right it works

1:32:59if foreign companies eat the tariff prices for US goods don't increase it's just the recipient of what you pay changes from the Chinese company to now the Chinese company plus the government but the reality is they can't profit margins on most of these goods are very small and suddenly you're increasing the cost by 15% and you expect them to eat that and you're increasing the 15% on all the competitors as well so they're not going to eat it they're going to make the consumer eat it which is exactly what happens and we saw last year that the effective tariff that US consumers are paying in a sense of higher prices it was 7.6% last year it'll be over 10% this year because it's rolling in now with the change in tariffs as of yesterday or as a Friday we'll see how it actually

1:34:05works and what it actually works out to be but there's literally I mean so that's how West that's how Trump can credibly argue the foreigners pay it because prices don't go up and then the foreigner but they get less money for the product because the taxes has to be paid out of that price so they're eating it but the reality is that that's not happening and it never does happen when tariffs go up it's the consumer that eats it because profit margins are not high enough for businesses to eat the tariff foreign businesses to eat the tariff Chinese companies barely make any money on the stuff they sell Americans if we leave it more capitalism the belief that man cannot decide it is the idea that collective or king is above the individual it is collectivism the denial that man needs to think to negate man as man bad economics is just the

1:35:09consequences yes I mean every time the government is intervening in the economy it is a reflection of a belief that you as an individual shouldn't in a sense cannot make decisions for yourself that there is some central planner there's somebody up in government who is better qualified better equipped to make decisions for you and therefore any time any government intervention in the economy whether it's mercantilist or otherwise is there a fraction of a a philosophical system that denies you agency denies you the ability to make decisions for yourself and it's it's a implicit acceptance of a philosophy that says you are not capable of not competent to or don't have the right to make decisions for yourself and that's true of tariffs as well the government is going to decide whether you should import stuff and buy stuff from China or not

1:36:10let's see Gail says well you mean to say the tariffs don't add billions and billions to the make an economy no they do add billions to government because there are tax that's been raised and we pay that tax and therefore the government has higher revenues and that is not good that is raising taxes never mean good if you want to close the deficit which we all should want not the trade deficit which is irrelevant but the government deficit which is very relevant that is that the government spends much more than it takes in the way to do that is by cutting spending not by raising taxes Republicans always used to understand that but now with tariffs they advocate for raising taxes actually it's not true Republicans always used to understand it but Republicans have always been the political party of tariffs going back the 19th century Republicans were the ones

1:37:14who were pro tariffs Democrats were the ones who are anti tariffs that's true through most of American history with exception of the late 20th century where Democrats were pro tariffs and Republicans were anti tariffs until Trump um let's see um uh Simon says why does the US President or government have any say in economics or trade between individuals or companies, or because we haven't restricted them from having that say. We don't recognize economic rights the same as we do other kinds of rights. We have granted the government the power to intervene in our lives when it comes to economics

1:38:20in a big way. And our economic rights have not been protected at all. That's just that's true of trade, but that's true of all the regulations and taxes and so on. Plus we have a huge government that has to fund itself in some way. And therefore we have approved them to tax us, which is a clear violation of our rights. It's the amendment to constitution that allows the income taxes, an example of that. But as you can see, as devil's advocate, the problem isn't trade. It's Trifan's dilemma, which the US is required to run persistent deficits to keep international trade running. That's just not true, right? International trade can still run even if the United States has a balanced trade. It just means that the dollars flow back to the United

1:39:32States in the form of purchasing American goods. So there's just no, now there's nothing wrong with deficits. So running a deficit in order to facilitate lots of dollars out there in the world is fine. Although the reality is, again, the dollars all come home in the form of either buying from the United States perspective exports or in the form of investments. One way or the other, the dollars come home. Let's see if there's any other that's how to understand the argument. All right, Philippa says it's hard to understand the argument of national security for tariffs.

1:40:32You have says, US has plenty of dollars and it can buy and stock ready-made stuff for future use. Absolute. And the US produces a lot of stuff. And in time of walking shift production, very quickly. And the United States has more manufacturing capacity, capabilities today than ever in its history with less labor, but that's because of automation. But it has the manufacturing capabilities. So yes, the national security argument is a bogus argument. National nature observer says, I don't think there's any national leader who thinks the tariffs are wrong in principle. They do trade deals only to make trade stable of, quote, fair example. Connie does this. Yes, I agree. There is no national leader. Maybe with the exception of Millay, who at least understands this, whether he's willing to implement it or not, we'll see. But there's not who understands the tariffs are wrong in principle, but they are wrong in principle.

1:41:36Because there are no national leaders out there willing to give up the power that tariffs give them. That's the reality. Steven says, would you command, command Roberts, command Roberts for his clear and logical writing? Did you understand EPA versus West Virginia? Can you explain that case? And how would the first from learning? Well, we're not going to do that now because it's not related to tariffs. Yeah, I mean, Roberts did a good job. Again, I think Corsuch did a better job. I think Corsuch is an argument. But I haven't read Roberts in detail yet. Roberts came to the right decision. So good for Roberts. And his decision is clear and short, 21 pages. That's an achievement. It's a good frame. All right, let's do some song reviews.

1:42:41And then I'll go back to your questions and finish up the superchats. So you can keep asking superchats questions. By the way, we've only raised half of what we should be raising because we're in the second hour. We're probably going to go into a third hour. We're way behind on the fundraising. So not good. Not good. Last few days we've been last few days have been short on contributions on the superchats. So it would be great if some of you picked it up a little bit. All right, let's see. I'm looking for. Okay, so let's start with first song is called the Let the Bad Times Roll. This is from John. John Glude, Let the Bad Times Roll. It's the Offsprings 2021 hit Let the Bad Times Roll. This is kind of a what would you call a

1:43:50satirical song. It's kind of upbeat music and it's playing off Let the Good Times Roll. And this is like the Bad Times Roll. But it's got that same upbeat music as if it's about the Good Times. But it's really criticizing kind of what's going on in the world. And it's primarily criticizing kind of the world and the Trump and kind of what happened under the Trump presidency. There's direct references to Trump in the song. It's kind of a fun beat and a fun melody. It's again upbeat and crazy. Oh, baby, let the Bad Times Roll, Machiavelli flow. Hey, Lincoln, how does your grave roll? I'd give Lincoln rolling in his grave given what's happening here. There's some direct references to kind of Trump. So Mexicans and Blacks and Jews

1:44:52got it all figured out for you. Gonna build a wall. Let's decide apathy or suicide. I think the you know, this apathy and suicide keeps coming back. It's the idea that you have a choice. You can either commit suicide, which is basically vote for Trump or the status quo. Nothing changes, which is what the alternative is. And the passion is on the side of suicide. And the apathy is on the side of the status quo. And you know, that the bad times roll, the bad times of rolling is a consequence. So well, don't think we're crazy, crazy. When you see all the hell we're raising, it's it is. It's a fun song. You know, I like that. I wouldn't listen to it again. I don't think but it's got a nice beat. It's it's it's got a nice uplifting. And again, it's it's cynical and

1:45:54critical of of what is what is happening. Let me see if there's something else I wanted to say. It became a major rock hit. It's up billboard mainstream rock charts. It's all about political disillusionment. It's a reflection on kind of world leaders giving up, unsolving crisis. That's the apathy. So the people who are doing stuff are suicidal. The people who are apathy have given up. And that's the best we can hope for is they're given up because the others are suicidal. It's Machiavellian, right? Machiavellian flow is in the lyrics. Again, direct references to 2016 election. Do it. Oh, there's a reference to locker up. Where's the locker up? There's a direct reference to locker up here. So direct references to Trump. Yeah. Now it was all a lie, but that bitch won't get in my way. Keep shouting. What I like, locker up, locker up. Now that's a good

1:47:00one. I got to say. So clearly a song that is reflection of reflecting on Trump and his way. I enjoyed the music. I guess it's in its own way a protest song. I don't know how effective it is at a protest song. You know, the upbeat positivity of the melody and the beat crash with the with the with the cynical downbeat, let the bad times roll, lyrics of the song. But that's kind of what I guess makes it makes it fun and somewhat interesting. All right. Second song is no doubt. No doubt. It's my life. It's my life. So it's my life is an older song, which was it was a song by Talk Talk in 1984. And it was re, you know, it was done by

1:48:05no doubt with what's the name? Agli Loa singing the lead in it. This one is again, it's a beat, fast, melodic, very, it has an 80 sound to it, even though this particular version was done in in the early 2000s, I think, or maybe the 90s. But it's got that 80, 80 feel to it. Gwen Stefani, sorry, not Agli Loa, Gwen Stefani. So it's sung by Gwen Stefani. She has a good voice. And you know, it's got it's got that beat melodic and very, you know, a live kind of a beat to it. Again, it's got this in spite of the kind of positivity of the sound, the melody, the beat. It's a pretty downer of a song. It's my life. But it's my life, which is being, you know,

1:49:13people are screwing over. And you know, so it's a, I'm standing up for myself. This is a woman standing up for herself. But one that is, it's in defiance of other people trying to screw me over. So it's a very defiant song. Certainly the music video has a femme fatale character killing three different men in it. It's not clear what the men have done to her. But she murders all three. And then she's in the music video she has executed for it. But it's a, it's got a feel good. And again, the music video contradicts the feel good. Like she's killing people and she gets killed herself by the authorities. She's on trial. But it's like I stand up in your face. I'm going to do it again. It's fun. It's, it's, it's, it's got a candy quality to it in terms of the,

1:50:16the, the music, but it's, you know, it's not a, it's not a song that, it's not a song you're going to, I think, when dislikes, it's just not particularly interesting. I don't find it that particularly interesting. You know, oh, it's my life. Don't you forget. It's my life. It never ends. It never ends. It never ends. But then she's being executed. I guess it doesn't. Funny how I blind myself. I never knew I was sometimes played upon afraid to lose. Oh, I'd let myself, I'd tell myself, what good do you do? Convince myself. It's, it's about putting yourself down and it's standing up for yourself. It's my life. Don't you forget. It's my life. It never ends. It never ends. So it's got this conflicted character who's, who's been used and abused and let herself be used and abused and then decides to stand up for herself in, in spite of that. So kind of,

1:51:18again, a mixture between, and a, a bit of a contradiction between, I think, the music and the actual theme. But very 80s upbeat, cute. Again, I would never listen to it more than once. It's like candy. You know, you taste it and it's fine and it's good, but it leaves no, no lasting impression. It's not, it's not going to stay with me. All right. Here's a song that is not candy. This is called Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Song by Youngblood. So this is Hello, Hello, Song by Youngblood. It's a nine minute song. Very atmospheric. It's got a very melodic, very pretty, beautiful beginning. It then gets very angry and, and, and, and, you know, the singer's yelling and anti melodic and it ends again on a very kind of soft, soft note.

1:52:22It's hard to tell what it's really about, just from the lyrics. You know, it's, it's, it's not clear. Is he talking to, is he talking to God? Is he talking to his past? Is he talking about the future? What does he actually want? Then it goes into this anger. You know, since I was a little boy, I devised a windmill gateway. They kicked me in the mud and they told me that's the price you pay. So it's very, again, somebody's got beaten up and kicked around and he's angry and he's going to, he's going to move into the future in spite of that and he's going to succeed in spite of that. I mean, I think it's interesting musically. I like songs that change in mood and don't have one just, just simple story to tell, but it has actually a change and a, and a fluctuation, which this definitely does. You know, it, it, you know, supposedly the, the hello, there's a lot of

1:53:27hello, hello, hello, hello, repeated in the song. Supposedly that as a double meaning, it's agreeing to his future and it fell well to his past self. So a lot of this is a dialogue with this past self. There's a line one step into heaven, but first you'll go to hell and back. That's repeated a number of times. This symbolizes the painful processes of supposed self reclamation, self moving forward and and and and give, you know, stepping out of the past and moving forward and achieving. So it's got a certain positivity instead of moving forward. I'm not going to be dragged down by Mac past. I'm not going to be dragged down by the bad things people have done to me. There's a hello, are you out there? Do you know me? Do you love me? Do you hate me? Uh, this is this is kind of the opening lines. This is again, vulnerability. Is he talking to who's

1:54:29he talking to exactly? It's not clear. Maybe he's talking to himself, which is probably the, the, the most likely thing. And again, trying to move forward, maybe he's talking to the audience. There's a chance I won't see you tomorrow. So I will spend today saying hello. Um, and this is in the, uh, in an acoustic kind of midsection. Um, I don't know if I can make it, but I know it's how I feel. So again, emotional driven, driven forward, but acknowledging kind of a painful past. And it's an interesting song. Again, I don't particularly like it. And you guys, you know, you, you know, you choose music. I don't particularly like. You know, you really have to dig to figure out the meaning of the lyrics. And it's, it's hard to completely sympathize. Again, I like the chain of tone. I like the change of music, the change of

1:55:31pace in between. If you're going to do a nine minute song, you'd better have variation in it. As a voice, I like it more when it's, uh, when it's soft and, and melodic with an acoustic less when he's yelling or, or, or, or angry, uh, but rock is angry. I mean, rock, been havently is, is, is, is angry. All right. Um, for one more song, let's see, this is, um, nefax. Nef, this is winning by nefax. I don't know what nefax win. Nefax. Now, supposedly nefax has been influenced by objectivism. Somebody said, and you can see in a song, the lyrics, uh, there's some lyrics here that, that, that, that, um, uh, sound like they've been influenced, uh, the second line. So here's the, the first part of the song. I, I, I can feel the blood creeping up from the heathens. Got will, got fight, got pride, got reason, got reason, got reason.

1:56:39Um, if you want to go eat, then you know I'm going to feed them. If you're coming for me, hope you're ready for a demon. So this is some kind of like an anthem. This is like standing up for yourself. It's very much sung. I don't know what would you call the style, uh, wrap. Uh, I don't know. I, I don't know the, the, this is not my kind of music. And I don't particularly, I don't particularly like it. I, I don't like the, the singing, but it's, it's, it's resilience against hardship. It's self-reliance and discipline. It's like, I can do this. I'm, I have a competitive edge. I'm thinking long term. I've got reason. You know, I've got fight. Uh, I've got pride. Uh, it's very much a standing up for yourself. And I guess you guys like these kind of songs, because that's a theme. It seems like, um, I can feel the blood creeping up from the heathens. I can feel the blood creeping up from the, have it, heathens, got well, got fight, got will,

1:57:43got fight, got pride, got reason, got pride, got reason. If you want to go eat, if you want to go eat, then you know, I'm going to feed him. I don't know what that means. If you coming for me, if you're coming for me, hope you're ready for a demon, right? So this is, I'm going to, I'm going to beat you. I'm, I can be a demon. So I don't know. I, not my music. I don't like it. It's, it's no, uh, melody. It's all rhythm, right? No melody, no harmony. Just rhythm, rhythm, rhythm, uninteresting. Um, it's, it's like, maybe it, maybe it stands up as poetry. And I'm not an expert on poetry. Maybe there's poetry here, but there's no music here. It's not musical, in my view. So I can't really relate to it. But I get, you know, I, I do find it interesting that somebody would say, got reason in a song like this. It's, because nothing in the lyrics, other than got reason, suggest reason. Everything else is about emotion. So it's almost like a gratuitous thing there, because he's been influenced by objectives and say, no, he knows he has

1:58:48to be poor reason or something like that. All right. Finally, um, finally, uh, there is, uh, a philosophy at work asked me to review the academic festival overture by Brahms, which is a 10-minute piece by Brahms written in, I think, in 1880. I think it's in 1880. I, uh, and, uh, in particular, uh, there's, uh, there's a famous performance of this piece by, um, by, um, Leonardo Boonestein, who is one of the great conductors of the 20th century. Not one of my favorites, but a great, still a great conductor of the 20th century. Um, this is a beautiful piece. This is my music. This is the music I love. Um, it's supposed to be, this is, uh, uh, a piece of music written by Brahms for university in, um, in, in, in thanks for the fact that they gave him an

1:59:51honorary doctorate. But it's not the kind of piece the university probably expected, because it is a piece that basically takes drinking songs, kind of German university drinking, pub drinking songs. I think four of them, and weaves them together into an orchestral 10-minute piece. Um, it's, it's got this tension between being a little formal and, and a little, um, um, standoffish and revelatory and a drinking, right song. And you can see it in the way, there's a video of, of, um, Boonestein conducted this, which I encourage you to watch. It's a lot of fun. You can see it in the way he conducts the parts where he's, he's holding the orchestra back, you know, he was strained, and then they go all wild. And that's more of the drinking stuff. And it's, um, it really is a joyous and interesting piece. I mean, this is what great music is

2:00:59like. It has, it evokes a number of different emotions. It, it changes peace. It's got different melodies, you know, weaving one into the other. Um, it, it is just a, it's entertaining. It's only 10 minutes. It's entertaining, but it's, it's, it's, it's, it's driven. It evokes strong emotions. It's complex. The fact that you've got a whole orchestra means that you can elicit, a whole variety of different sounds out of them. There's the wind instruments and the violins and basses and the, it, it really is a fun piece. I encourage you to watch it 10 minutes. If you're not into classical music, this is a, a good piece to, you know, one of many to introduce yourself to it, particularly if you watch the video. Um, and it's, it's, it's, it's not a, not a bad way to, to get a little, a little piece of it. Um, yeah, I mean, people have identified the four

2:02:06songs. You can, there are elements from, in, in the melody of all four songs that, uh, that, uh, are included in there. It's called the academic festival overture, uh, which was a celebratory orchestra work by Johann Brahms. Um, it's, uh, it was, uh, described by the composer as, quote, boisterous potpourri of student drinking songs. Fun. All right. Those, uh, I think I'm, I think I've done all the song reviews. If you have asked me to do a song review and I've, it's, and I've not done it yet, then I'm missing it and you can have to remind me or send me something to remind me about it. It's not on my list for some reason, uh, and it needs to be. All right. It would be great if somehow we manage to bring in, um, about a hundred and fifty

2:03:06dollars still to get to our, uh, two hour goal, nevermind a three hour goal. We've already passed two hours. So we'd be good to get to the two hour goal. So, uh, please consider, you know, uh, uh, supporting stickers are great because you don't have to think of a question and, and stickers at any amount are really valuable. Jeffrey did a $20 sticker. Thank you, Jeffrey. Uh, exit did a sticker. Uh, let's see who else did stickers up here. Julia, that I didn't think. Paul, thank you for the sticker. Uh, Tony and, uh, the thumb, Catherine, free market capital. Thank you guys for the sticker. I really appreciate it. Um, we still got a hundred over a hundred people watching. Uh, just do a stick out, whatever, whatever you, you, you value the show or you could afford or what, or the combination of the above and, uh, support the show in some way. And that just chips away at the goal and it helps us fund the show because this show is only exists because of support from you.

2:04:09Can't exist other ways. My time is, is dedicated to show rather than other stuff because you are paying me. That's the way it is. All right, Michael, there's a two part question. Thank you, Michael. Are people able to hold a Kantian epistemology because they don't really hold it because you can't. It's just a game of moving words around, uh, for Gacha, whereas the people who gravitate towards objectives and have actually attempted to apply different philosophies to really see what's actually true. Well, I don't know, uh, what exactly you mean by the question. So the question is not that clear. People hold the Kantian epistemology by default. They haven't really learnt to think. They've been told that reality, um, maybe exists, maybe doesn't not to take it too seriously. They haven't been taught Kant. They haven't been taught to Kantian epistemology.

2:05:14They've been taught more likely skepticism. They've been taught not to trust their mind, not to trust reality, not to particularly put any weighting on facts versus emotions. But that's not because they've been taught a Kantian epistemology. Those are the consequences of Kantian epistemology, ultimately, as filtered through many, many thinkers on the way. Or they've been taught kind of postmodernism, which is, there is no absolute anything. There's no real reality. There's, there's just, or they've been taught the kind of linguistic analysis. Would play. So they've been taught all kinds of weird defective philosophies that are basically undermined, they capacity to think. So what that manifests itself in is primarily skepticism, emotionalism, and inability to use their mind and inability and lack of interest in using their mind.

2:06:20So again, it's not like people hold an epistemology. They don't, they hold a particular way of using their minds. That has been shaped by views of epistemology that they've been, and they've been taught this way of using their mind, or in this case, not using their mind. And that's what they've absorbed and integrated, and that's how they live. Thank you, Michael. Paul Ferris, uh, finally live on YouTube. Intel is a corny company making it, making its second hand, therefore inferior, because it does not have the pressure of competition, competition to make a superior product, and to do tariffs, have a similar, make a superior product, and do tariffs have a similar effect. Yes. To have to do exactly the same thing, they protect domestic industries, that they don't have an incentive to become more and more efficient.

2:07:22They sit on their laurels because they know they're protected. Nobody's going to buy imported goods because they're too expensive. They can raise prices almost at the level of the, the external products plus the tariff, and they can stay inefficient and unproductive, and over time, that becomes costified and becomes worse. Intel is being subsidized and protected by the American government since the 1980s. And while it's gone through bouts of innovation, like in the late 80s, early 90s, it is mostly atrophied, and the innovation has been at TCMC, and not, or even at AMD, Intel's competitor domestically, or at Nvidia. Think about the fact that Intel completely missed AI chips. AMD did not. AMD is a competitor to the Nvidia. Nvidia dominates that space, but all the innovative chip designs are made outside of Intel,

2:08:29and all the innovative fabrication of chips is made outside of Intel. Intel is one of the only companies in the world that does both design and fabrication, and that's not a good model. That's a model that's been shown time and time and time again, not to be productive. Not to be a good way of doing things. So, but that's what tariffs do. They protect industries. In Intel's case, going back to the 1980s, they had quotas and Japanese microprocessors coming in memory chips in those days, coming into the United States in order to protect Intel. And now the United States and the chip back gave them a huge subsidy, and now Trump has taken a government has taken a 10% interest in Intel, which basically guarantees it won't go bankrupt. So, you've got a massive misallocation of capital as a consequence.

2:09:35And tariffs are just another form of intervention in economy, another form in which you distort the economy, another form in which you create misallocations or capital in the economy. So, they're just as destructive. Thank you, Paul. All right, let's see. Linda asked yesterday, but I didn't answer. What do you think about requiring politicians to be educated? AOC comes to mind. I don't think it makes any difference. I mean, you've got very educated politicians who are just as bad as aOC. AOC is not particularly bad. The problem with politicians is not their miseducation. It's their philosophy, it's their

2:10:36corruption, it's their lack of ability to think, it's their pragmatism, it's their selling out to pressure groups. It's not that they don't know stuff. That can be fixed, but it's not like AOC is open to being educated. And think about some of the more educated people there, are just as bad as the less educated people. Like Elizabeth Warren is very educated. Scott, she's a law professor. Doesn't help. Catherine says, I hope you read with us, I meant essay in the members only show soon again. I enjoyed reading them a singling. Yeah, I will. And by the way, we also did selfishness without a self. If you missed that show, it's in the members section and you can catch up with it over there. Let me just see something. So Raphael says, I saw Benzo Guzoli's

2:11:50triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas at the Louvre. I thought the main battle was against Augustinian plateenism, but in the painting of Veronaise is defeated, representing another form of Aristotle. It's quite possible, but what it could represent is a shallow understanding of the whole thing, which means it really is Christianity defeating Islam, rather than two Aristotelians battling it out. And that wouldn't be surprising, right? Because the paints have probably didn't understand the sense in which what made Aristotel, which made Aquinas and of Veronaise so significant, was Aristotle. So I'm not surprised that they saw it in a most superficial way, which is Augustine as a Christian, of Veronaise as a Muslim, it represents the victory of Christianity

2:12:54over Islam. Now, remember that Aquinas read all of Veronaise, and he is much of his understanding of Aristotle, comes from Veronaise. So the issue of Islam versus Christianity is insignificant in the big picture. Lion, thank you. Does dissident and disjointed classical music reflect the composer's negative sense of life? That is Schoenberg's Pyro-Luniel, or Shostakovich Kotet, number eight? I mean, I think it's more than that. I think it reflects a rejection of reality, in some sense, a rejection, certainly of, because it's not just, you can have a bad sense of light, but it still produces beautiful music that's just dark and malevolent. This is worse than

2:13:56that. This is rejecting beauty, it's rejecting the essence of music, it's creating non music, in a sense. I think dissident and disjointed is non music, some of it borderlines a noise rather than music. So I think it's much more than just a negative sense of life. It's an explicit conscious rejection, a beauty, and yeah, I said this, of the essence of what music is and what makes music. It's a rejection of melody, it's a rejection of harmony, it's a rejection of beauty. Stephen says, in a voluntary tax system, can there be transaction fees or other kinds of fees involved in selling your property? Yes, absolutely, to the extent that you needed registered with the government, or you'd extend that the government needs to be a guarantor in some way or another, then various fees and contracts on various types of contracts is a good way for the government to be raising revenue. Yes, I think that's a major way in which the government raises revenue

2:15:00in a voluntary tax system. Michael, do you know if Jeopardy's us as Red Rand a fan? I don't, but I suspect he has. I suspect he's Red Rand, I don't know if he's a fan, but I'm pretty sure he's Red Rand. Kiki is Adelson a trader for getting Pollard pardoned. No, any more than anybody else is a trader for getting somebody pardoned. Pollard spied, but he spied for an ally that is a lot less bad than spying for an enemy. And you know, Trump ponds people every day who've done worse for this country than Pollard who've stolen your money, who've defrauded you on a massive scale, you know, or who tried to overturn an election, January 6th. So all pardons, all the pardons that I've seen have been, not all, almost all of them have been horrific and awful. Pollard is just one more

2:16:07that you can add to the list, but not any worse than most of the pardons I've seen. Stephen, how do you explain all the economists who sent a letter to Congress asking them to raise the minimum wage? There were a lot of really bad economists, a lot of really bad economists who, now some of them are willing to accept the trade off and the trade off is that some people make more money and some people will never have a job. And since we have a welfare state, they're willing to accept that some people remain on welfare and will never have a job. Those are the least skill people's in our economy. And they're willing to take that trade off. I remember Janet Yellen writing an op-ed basically acknowledging that trade off. And then coming out on the side of, yeah, it's better to have a minimum wage than not one. Given a complete understanding of the consequences, and I think these economists understand the consequences and are willing

2:17:12to live with them. I think they're evil and wrong, but it's not that they don't get the economics. They understand that raising the minimum wage reduces employment. Blue sole, I was going to buy a trip to Puerto Vallarta in Mexico today. Good thing I didn't with the violence today. What do you think Mexico does about the drug cartel problem? Similar to El Salvador, love to show you one. No, they're not going to do El Salvador. I mean, what they're doing is performative, what's called performative virtue signaling. They're trying to keep the Trump administration at bay. This administration in Mexico is no interest in taking on the drug cartels. It's too violent and too difficult for them. And you know, most of the drug problems really in the United States, not in Mexico. But the drug cartels do kill a lot of politicians and do are too powerful. The Trump administration is making noises about maybe sending troops into Mexico or

2:18:18drones or bombing Mexico or whatever. And let's Mexico does something about the cartels. So Mexico seems to be doing some stuff. So today killed the leader of the most violence of the cartels. And there's a consequences mass of violence erupted in parts of Mexico. But you know, nothing, they're not going to do what El Salvador did. And the cartels are not going anyway. The cartels will still exist tomorrow and in a year for now and in five years. And as long as drugs are illegal, there will be cartels. Stephen, would you comment, commend Roberts for his clear and logical writing? Yeah, I think he did a good job. Did you understand EPA versus West Virginia? Can you explain that case and how it differs from learning resources? I'll just say I'm not going to get into a whole analysis in it for now. That would require a whole show and it would quite be in the legal expert. But the basic

2:19:19idea is that the EPA doesn't get to make up the rules. That is that it can only do what Congress told it to do. It cannot rely on its own experts to interpret the law. The law has to be clear and set. That is, and judges have in a past because of Chevron, this is a 1980s case. The courts were basically told to defer to the agencies in terms of interpretation of the law. And what EPA versus West Virginia basically says is it brings the courts back in to interpret the law and to basically see where the agencies are going beyond what actual the law actually says and taking on more power than the law has actually

2:20:22granted them. Real, real spark. Can you return tariff dollars by giving IRS tax credits? No, because, well, maybe for some corporations, in corporate taxes, you could do something like that, I guess, but it's not going to be too individuals. The other attorney tariffs the individuals. The attorney tariffs that the companies who paid them and the individuals are never going to see those, even though ultimately the individuals paid, because the companies just rate prices on the individuals. So its exporters will basically build the government for it, and the government will maybe through the taxes that may the other way will refund them the tariffs. All right, Michael says, have you ever got a question during Q&A that has changed your mind on a subject? No, I've got a lot of questions that have got me to think more deeply about

2:21:22a question, but I can't remember any specific case where I actually changed my mind or something. Maybe it's happened, but I can't remember. Real spark, Ukraine hit Russia missiles today. Please comment. I can't because I don't know. I haven't seen it. Ukraine hits Russian missiles on a regular basis. Ukraine is becoming much better at hooding Russia and attacking Russia, so, but this particular one, I just don't know because I wasn't watching the news today, because I wasn't about to do a news show today. So I didn't pay too much attention to news this morning. It was busy doing other stuff. Whoops, what did I do? I tried to do something and it didn't work one second. Give me a minute. Let's see. Ukraine hits Russian ballistic missiles, producer, according to Kiev, Ukraine. Oh, this is the interesting thing. These are flamingo missiles.

2:22:31These are ground-to-ground missiles produced by the Ukrainians, built by the Ukrainians. They used the flamingo missiles to help a Russian plant manufacturing ballistic missiles in Russia's remote southern region, which means quite a distance, 1400 kilometers, 800 miles. So this is a proof of concept. They're proving their ability to use, they domestically produced flamingo missile to hit deep into Russian territory. These are the kind of missiles the United States has refused to sell the Ukrainians, and now they're producing them themselves, which is pretty amazing. And they hit a factory that actually also produces Russian nuclear missiles. So great, good for Ukrainians. It's a good step. It's a good move. And it shows how Ukraine has improved and advanced its fighting capacity, and with the right support could actually defeat the Russians.

2:23:39All right, let's, we're like $75 short of a goal, but just stickers now, because I don't have time to answer questions, because I have a hard stop in like 10 minutes. John says, there seem to be a growing movement against data centers. Have you been following this? Yes, there is. It drives up a electricity cost because it uses so much power. Supposedly, they use up a lot of water, so there's water constraints. And of course, there's just an opposition to AI more broadly in this opposition to industrialization. And the opposition of data centers comes both from the green left, from environmentalists and from MAGA, who is very skeptical of AI. But it's not surprising. Anytime there's a big advance, anytime you actually want to build manufacturing or any kind of other capacity in the United States, people push back

2:24:39against you. This is part of the myth of the reindustrialization of America. Part of the reason why we don't have a lot of manufacturing is because of the environmental regulations that were passed because people objected to industrialization. Part of the reason we don't manufacture rare earth materials in the United States, the entire reason we don't is because of regulations, the restrict mining and restrict building factories to refine the rare earth materials. So it's all self-inflicted. And that's what people kind of ignore. Michael, instead of making home affordable, Mombani propose of stealing more from homeowners through property taxes. Socialism at its finest. Yes, the property taxes go up. Rents will go up, not down. Housing will become less affordable, not more. Of course, then owners of big apartment buildings will go bankrupt. The city will take them over and it's a way for Mombani to nationalize

2:25:42the stock of housing in New York City with all the disasters that will lead to. Roman, should there be trade restrictions against countries with slave labor? Not necessarily. You as an individual should not buy goods where you know the goods were made by slave labor. It's something governments job to protect you and to prevent you from doing something immoral. It's immoral to buy goods from slave labor. But that's your responsibility as an individual not to do it, not the government's responsibility to protect you from yourself. Michael, I noticed Indians are getting some of the same haters Jews. Yes, successful minorities. Yet no other group have a larger net positive contribution to society. I don't know what a net positive contribution to society is. That's kind of a collectivistic terminology that we don't use in the Iran book show. They make a lot of money. Their net massive contributors to themselves.

2:26:45And they're not a drain in the government. So yeah, they hate it just like the Jews, like any successor minority has hated. They're different and they're successful, which breeds resentment and envy. Stephen, thank you for the sticker. Paul, thank you for the sticker. Stephen has a last question. Are there any sane and modern Islamic countries today? For that matter, any relatively sane and right suspecting countries at all? No, I mean, they're better Islamic countries like Albania, which is a dominantly Muslim, but very secular and a very secular government. Bosnia is probably the same thing. Kosovo, Azerbaijan is secular, but a dictatorship. Those are the ones at least three countries. But no, there's no right suspecting country. Singapore may be to some extent, but not other respects. There's no right suspecting in any kind of big way in the world today, sadly.

2:27:48All right, everybody. Thank you. I appreciate it. After one, I will see you all tomorrow. We've got two shows tomorrow, a new show early. It'll be at 12 p.m. Eastern time, 12 p.m. Eastern time. And then I mean, if you're doing terrace Smith at 7 p.m. Eastern time, so terrace Smith, tomorrow at 7 p.m. Eastern time, and a new show at 12 p.m. Eastern time. And thank you to all the superchanners. Don't forget if you want to become a monthly supporter to check out Patreon. And I guess I'll see you all tomorrow. Bye, everybody. Have a great rest of your weekend.