Latest / Yaron Brook Show / Live from Madrid 2 (Sept 29, 2026) | Yaron Brook Show

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Live from Madrid 2 (Sept 29, 2026) | Yaron Brook Show · Yaron Brook Show

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: This is the Yaron Brook Show. All right, everybody. Welcome
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: to Yaron Brook Show on this Tuesday, September 29th. I
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: am still in Madrid. Uh... I'll be here tomorrow and
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: then heading back home on Thursday. No show tomorrow. No
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: show on Thursday, but there will be. There will be.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: If there are no surprises, there will be a show
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: on Friday from my studio at home. It will be
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: a relief to get back to doing shows from my
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: setup at home. A lot fewer Right. A lot fewer
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: technical issues, a lot fewer things to think about and
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: to focus on. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to that. Also,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: a bunch of developments, AI related, are going to happen
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: in the next few months. I'm excited about that. So
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: a lot of things to be excited about. All right.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Anything else logistics wise? Anything I want to tell you? No,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: saw some really beautiful sculpture today, so enjoying. I will
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: say this, there's a lot of small museums in Madrid.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: There's the big museum, the Prado, which is amazing, but
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: there are a lot of other museums in Madrid with
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: some phenomenal art. So if you're a fan of art,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Madrid definitely should be on your list of places to visit. Spectacular.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: All right, let's turn to our news. So 46 years
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: ago today, an economist and a biologist made a $ 1, 000
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: bet on whether the world was running out of stuff.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: We'll end the show talking about that because it seems
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: like everybody else this week is betting on shortages and
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: scarcity and things not being available. Trump wants to keep
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: American diesel at home. As of midnight, you can't buy
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Canadian whiskey in America. Spain wants to ban evictions until 2030. U.S.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Senate just voted to cap what college athletes can earn.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: And an AI company that's about to go public for
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: maybe $ 2 trillion, a $ 2 trillion valuation, says its own
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: product could pose, quote, this is in its S1. which
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: is the filing documents for its going public. Its own
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: product could pose, quote, existential risk to humanity. So we
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: want you to value us at $ 2 trillion, but we
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: might kill you all. It's a great marketing pitch, don't
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: you think? All right. So let's back up and start
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: with some of the lead stories out there. Iran continues
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: to be in the news. We talked about this yesterday. Today,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: after Trump dismissed Iran's latest proposal, the chief negotiator of
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: Iran has basically come back and said, if you don't
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: accept our proposal, we're going to strike regional infrastructure. Regional infrastructure.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: We want security guarantees, not sure what kind of security
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: guarantees they want from the United States, but They're expecting
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: a final U.S. response to the Qatari mediators any day now. Otherwise,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: they're going to launch a hot war, a hot war
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: which they will lose. They can't win this one. But,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: you know, they figured out the threat thing to bomb
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: the Saudis and the UAE. They won't strike Israel. They're
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: too afraid to do that. But they can go after UAE.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: They can go through the Kuwaitis, the Saudis, the Qataris,
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  Speaker 1: and nothing will happen. Nothing will happen. So that is
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: their threat. And what they're hoping is that all those
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Gulf states will put pressure on Trump to cut a deal. So, yeah,
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: Iran's full conditions to reopening the strait and to not
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: striking the infrastructure is a seven-day regional ceasefire, assets, Iranian
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: assets unfrozen, end to oil sanctions, and an end to U.S.
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  Speaker 1: naval blockade and in exchange, They will consider what kind
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: of concessions they're willing to make on the nuclear program.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: That is what they're offering in return. The IRGC is
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  Speaker 1: claiming that they have the Strait of Hormuz basically closed
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  Speaker 1: and that they will hit any ship trying to pass through.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: You know, so far since the beginning of the war,
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  Speaker 1: 85 ships have been hit, 24 mariners have been killed
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  Speaker 1: by the Iranians. So that's kind of where we are
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: in terms of negotiations. Iranians threatening the U.S. holding pat
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: so far. I mean, the reality is that this blockade,
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  Speaker 1: which should have been done on day one of the war,
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  Speaker 1: Combined with the fact that it seems right now that
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: the U.S. Navy has kind of, at least partially opened
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  Speaker 1: the Strait of Hormuz, that the combination of those two
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  Speaker 1: are really hurting the Iranians, and the Iranians are starting
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  Speaker 1: to panic. I mean, the Iranian economy is in free fall.
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  Speaker 1: The rial, the Iranian currency, has reached a record low.
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  Speaker 1: So you know how many rials It takes to buy $ 1. $ 1.
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  Speaker 1: How many reals does it take to buy $ 1? $ 2. 5 million. Million. So,
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  Speaker 1: you know, $ 10, $ 25 million, $ 100, $ 250 million. $ 1, 000 is $ 2. 5 billion.
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  Speaker 1: Billion real, sorry, billion real. That's pretty nuts. It's dropped
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  Speaker 1: to $ 2. 5 million just over this month, over the last
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  Speaker 1: 27 days. It was at $ 2. 2 million on September 2nd.
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  Speaker 1: So the currency is falling. Inflation is high. Prices are high.
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  Speaker 1: Standard of living, quality of life sucks. Jobs are hard
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  Speaker 1: to find. The Iranian economy is really suffering. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: this war should be easily won. regime change should be
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  Speaker 1: achievable if only the Trump administration was committed to doing that.
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  Speaker 1: But here's the thing. The blockade should have been instituted
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  Speaker 1: in day one of the war. It was not. Indeed,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: oil sanctions were lifted in day one of the war,
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  Speaker 1: hoping that that would help reduce oil prices. They should
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  Speaker 1: have blockaded Iran in day one. Second, Oil is flowing
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  Speaker 1: through the strait. Now, it's not flowing as if normal conditions.
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  Speaker 1: In September, according to a tanker tracking organization called Kepler,
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  Speaker 1: September flows through the strait, average about 10 million barrels
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  Speaker 1: a day, plus about 6 million a day routed around
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  Speaker 1: it by pipeline. Now, other tanker tracking websites or organizations...
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  Speaker 1: placed a number, a different number, and of course the,
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: what do you call it, CENTCOM places the number much higher.
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  Speaker 1: Tanker Tracker places the number at 7.4 million. But if
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  Speaker 1: you add, if you take Kepler as reasonable, 10 million
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  Speaker 1: plus 6 million routed, rounded pipelines, that's 16 million, you know,
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  Speaker 1: that's 85% of pre-war levels. The problem with that is,
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  Speaker 1: That's tankers. I don't have numbers and I haven't seen
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: numbers with regard to natural gas, LNG, liquefied natural gas.
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  Speaker 1: And the reality is that given the spike in LNG
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: prices and what appears to be a shortage in Europe,
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  Speaker 1: maybe oil is traveling through, but LNG is not. The
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  Speaker 1: world is still struggling because... of what is going on
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  Speaker 1: in the state of Hormuz and because of what the
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: Houthis are doing on the Red Sea. Prices are still
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  Speaker 1: going up. Prices of diesel, and the shortages of diesel,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: prices or shortages, no shortages. Prices are just going up.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: That's the way you deal with supply reductions. But there
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: might actually be shortages of LNG because Europe, doesn't seem
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  Speaker 1: to have stored enough energy this summer to get it
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: past the winter we'll see what happens between now and
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: winter but energy prices are up. Consumers around the world
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  Speaker 1: are still suffering from the inability of Trump to end
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: this war, the inability of Trump to actually achieve victory
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  Speaker 1: in this war. The entire world is suffering. And of course,
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: the fact, as I've talked about many, many, many times
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: on the show, the fact that early on in the war,
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: the Trump administration did not do what was necessary to
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: keep the state of Hormuz open. They could have. We're
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: seeing proof that they could have now. They still could
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: do more. But they're so risk-averse in terms of casualties,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: in terms of potentially ground troops, in terms of taking
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  Speaker 1: some of the islands from the Iranians. They're so cautious
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  Speaker 1: about casualties. that they're not doing what is necessary to
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  Speaker 1: win this. And there's no point in going to war
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  Speaker 1: unless you're willing to win it. Unless you're not just willing,
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: unless you're committed to winning it. So a lot of
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: oil is flowing out of the Middle East. But with
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: China back buying a lot of oil and refining capacity
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  Speaker 1: around the world limited, and the Russian capacity to refine
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  Speaker 1: very limited because of Ukrainian attacks and because of shortages
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  Speaker 1: in LNG, liquefied natural gas. Energy prices are up, up
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  Speaker 1: across the entire world, and that is causing real angst.
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  Speaker 1: And among the people paying the price for this American consumers,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: and they're not happy. They're not happy. So, you know,
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  Speaker 1: there's this thing called the Conference Board, and they run
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  Speaker 1: a consumer confidence index. They manage that index through surveys.
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  Speaker 1: They get the index through surveys that they do every month,
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  Speaker 1: and they measure how confident consumers are in their economy
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  Speaker 1: and their ability to consume. Of course, the best indication
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  Speaker 1: of consumer confidence is how much they spend. And by
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: that measure, consumers still are spending. But the Conference Board
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  Speaker 1: Consumer Confidence Index fell another 6.7 points in September to 81.9
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  Speaker 1: from 88.6. That's the third straight monthly decline and the
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  Speaker 1: sharpest monthly decline in a long time. So... Yeah, it's...
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  Speaker 1: Measures across the board in terms of people's attitude towards
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  Speaker 1: the economy show that people feel negatively about it. Business
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  Speaker 1: conditions turned negative for the first time since September 2024.
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  Speaker 1: Inflation expectations among people average around 6.1%, medium 5.1%. Both
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  Speaker 1: are up 0.3 points. Inflation is about 3.7%. Again, this
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  Speaker 1: is all price inflation. Look, this is what people care about.
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  Speaker 1: What people care about is the fact that they pay
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  Speaker 1: more for the stuff that they buy. What people care
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  Speaker 1: about is the fact that their dollar is worth less
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  Speaker 1: in terms of its purchasing power. That's the kind of
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: inflation people care about. Now, economists care about monetary inflation,
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  Speaker 1: which manifests itself in all kinds of other things like malinvestment,
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  Speaker 1: like investment in the wrong things, investments that don't actually
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  Speaker 1: pay off. investment in things that ultimately will collapse, will
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  Speaker 1: cause damage, or just investment in things that are not optimal,
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  Speaker 1: that is invested in some things instead of other things
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  Speaker 1: that should be invested in, all caused by monetary inflation.
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  Speaker 1: But the reality is that what people care about is
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  Speaker 1: grocery shopping. How much are their groceries costing? How much
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  Speaker 1: are their automobiles that they buy costing? How much is
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: their affairs costing? How much does living cost them? And
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: are their wages keeping up? Most people are now saying
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: that jobs are hard to get. Consumers are naming prices,
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: fuel costs, and geopolitical tensions as their top worries. That's
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: from a survey from September 1 through 23. So right
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: now there's something called the Expectations Index, which is down
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  Speaker 1: to 63.6. The Conference Board treats anything below 80 as
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: a signal of recession ahead, and this is well below 80.
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  Speaker 1: It's not a perfect indicator, so I don't know that
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  Speaker 1: it actually appears that recession is ahead. But things are
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: not doing well, right? And we talked about yesterday, 10-year
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: and 30-year bonds, 10-year bonds at well above 5, 5.2,
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  Speaker 1: mortgages at above 7, it's not going to make consumers
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  Speaker 1: more confident. It's going to make consumers less confident. So, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: third month in a row that consumer confidence has softened.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: And what are they concerned mostly about again? is fuel costs. Now,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: President Trump has a solution for some of the fuel
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: cost problem, and that is diesel. Diesel has gone up
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: a lot. We've talked about this on the show, that
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  Speaker 1: there are real constraints in terms of diesel, in terms
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: of refinery capacity, and the fact that that capacity, diesel
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: has to compete with things like jet fuel and other fuels.
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  Speaker 1: And diesel prices are going up because there's not enough
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  Speaker 1: It's not that there's no oil. There's not enough capacity
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  Speaker 1: to refine that oil into diesel. Diesel is a product
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  Speaker 1: of refining. Russia is a big refiner of diesel. The
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Gulf states are big refiners. And again, one of the
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  Speaker 1: things that... It seems like it's true that oil is
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  Speaker 1: flowing out of the Middle East. The problem is... refined
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  Speaker 1: products flowing out of the Middle East? Is LNG flowing
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: out of the Middle East? That we don't have any
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  Speaker 1: real information about. Prices of LNG and prices of diesel
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  Speaker 1: suggest that maybe not. Maybe not. As a consequence, Trump
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: is considering a ban on U.S. diesel exports. He says
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: he's considering it very seriously. This was talked about about
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: a week ago. And then he said, nah, I'm not
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: going to do that. And now he's back to saying
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: he's considering it very seriously. He hopes that by doing that,
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: he'd bring down record prices ahead of the midterms. No
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: decision is being made. Chris Wright, the Energy Secretary, is
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: more of a free marketer than Trump is. He's floated
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: the idea of setting limits instead of a blanket ban
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: on We'll see what they ultimately come up with. None
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  Speaker 1: of this is good. Government intervention in the economy is
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: never good. A ban on diesel exports is not going
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: to solve the problem of refining capacity. And it's unlikely
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: that a ban on diesel exports will actually lower price.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: We will see. Certainly not in the long run. Maybe
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: it's a short run like a price cap But it's
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: going to create problems. It's going to create real issues.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Diesel averaged about $ 6. 50 a gallon last week. It was $ 3. 75
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  Speaker 1: a year ago, $ 5. 61 a month ago. The U.S. is
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: the world's largest diesel exporter. It ships about 1.4 to 1.6
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: million barrels a day of distillants, mostly to Europe and
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: Latin America. exports equal roughly 40% of U.S. domestic consumption.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: So if they stop exporting, you know, that's 1.4, 1.6
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: million barrels that disappear from global markets. You'll see shortages
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: around the world. Those shortages in diesel might manifest in
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: other prices going up. There's no free lunch in economics.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: There's no free lunch in economics. And everybody around Trump
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: should know this. I was going to say knows this,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: but I don't know that they know it because he's
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: got a bunch of dumb people around him. They should
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: know this. So, you know, limiting exports will raise prices
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: in other countries, which will raise prices of imports into
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: the United States, which are already high because of tariffs.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: The U.S. doesn't gain from this. So... Exports are about
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: 40% of U.S. consumption, so if we stop exporting, the
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: supply available domestically will increase. That is true. Prices might
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: come down, although, you know... we'll see how refiners behave.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: Will refiners limit the capacity of how much they actually
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: refine in terms of diesel? Because they can refine other stuff.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: They can use the They were finding capacity to do
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: other stuff because now they're making less money on their diesel.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: You know, I don't know. I haven't thought through all
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: the economic implications of this, but I can tell you
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: that price controls, export controls, import controls, they never, ever,
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: ever turn out the way the central planner expects them to.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: They always have negative consequences. And the reason for that is,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Milton Friedman said, I think somebody said it way before
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Milton Friedman, But there's no free lunch. You know, anything, anything,
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: anytime you manipulate the market, there are going to be
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: negative consequences to it. EU Energy Commissioner, in the meantime, EU,
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: European Union Energy Commissioner, wrote to all 27 member states
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: urging them to cut gas and electricity use, warning that
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: gas shortages, gas storage is exceptionally low. This is the
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: LNG problem. European officials are basically on the phone with
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: the Trump administration, really, really urging that this diesel export
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: ban not happen. I mean, this is what Trump said.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: I've said, let's not send out the diesel. We make
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: a lot of diesel. And he sent this at the U.S.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: General Assembly, right? last week. But then he retracted, and
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: now it's back on the table. I mean, pretty much
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: everybody's against this. The Europeans are, you know, really frantic
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: about trying to get the U.S. not to do this. U.S.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: oil companies, obviously, don't want this to happen. Chamber of Commerce,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: the Business Roundtable, these are businesses that use diesel. They're
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: asking Trump not to do this. They know that this
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: will disrupt and distort. And it just adds to this,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: I think, idea globally, really becoming globally, but certainly among
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: our allies in places like Europe, that you can't trust America.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: You cannot trust America. You know, we're importing diesel from America.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: They might just stop selling it to us. So, Let's
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: make sure we're importing diesel from other places. Things like
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: this could move Europe to become much more pro-Russia. Russia
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: has diesel. They're happy to sell it to Europeans. Yeah,
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: we will see, right? Yeah. I mean, one commentator said,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: diesel trades on the world market, just like corn. Force
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: a lower price and they'll make less diesel. You likely
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: see American refineries just making less diesel. So that's one
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: attack on trade that Trump is initiating, this idea of
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: we're going to ban exporting diesel. But he's also banning
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: importation as of midnight, or 12.01 today, a few hours ago.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: The U.S. has banned importing of Canadian alcoholic drinks, Canadian
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: dairy products, including whey protein. So if you rely on
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: whey protein to mix your protein shake in the morning,
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: prices might have gone up. And we're limiting the importation
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: of Canadian motorcycles. I don't know, do you guys, What
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: motorcycle brands does Canada make that they export to the
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: United States? I don't know. It's about $ 967 million a
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: year worth of imports to the United States. 87% of
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: it is alcohol. This, of course, follows the 50% tariff
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: that Trump placed on Canadian goods, on about $ 20 billion
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: of Canadian goods. where he used a Depression-era Smoot-Hawley bill
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: to impose it. Canada, of course, retaliated with tariffs of
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: 15% to 50%, and some provinces pulled U.S. alcohol off
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: store shelves. I mean, Trump has said there's a way
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: out if Canada would only come to him and apologize.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: So this is not about economics. This is not about geopolitics,
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: other than Trump flexing muscles. This is not about, I
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: don't know, national security. This is about Trump being insulted
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: and wanting an apology. This is about whim. Whim. Trump's whim.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: You know, Canada says, yeah, we're going to trade with
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: other countries. The reality is 70% of all Canadian exports
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: went to the United States last year. Two-way trade is
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: about $ 880 billion. Remember, the tariff's only on $ 20 billion,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: and the outright ban is only on $ 1 billion. So
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: you could say, $ 1 billion, who cares? And indeed, there
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: weren't a lot of headlines today about this ban going
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: into effect, because most people think, $ 1 billion, eh, you know,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: chump change. But the reality is, a ban on $ 1
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: billion worth of stuff is incredibly destructive to the people
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: who can't get that stuff, who value it. Now, granted,
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: 87% of it is alcohol, but still, people consume alcohol.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: They like the Canadian whatever, whiskey. They can't get it anymore.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: People's lives are disrupted. And more than that, Canadian manufacturers
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: are going to lose money. People are going to lose jobs.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: This is not good news. For Canadian manufacturers, I'll call
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: them manufacturers of motorcycles and even dairy farmers. And there's
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: no winners here. It's lose, lose, lose, lose, lose, lose, lose.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: None of the losses there. Trump has no strategy. It's
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: completely driven by whim. It's completely driven by emotion. Come
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: and apologize. Come and apologize. Canada retaliates with tariffs, so
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: they hurt themselves and they hurt American producers. It's lose, lose, lose, lose, lose,
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: as I said. It really is sad and pathetic. Now,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: as I said, this affects a small fraction of trade
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: with Canada. Total trade is $ 880 billion. This affects, what,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: $ 21 billion. The rest is covered under the, I forget
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: the acronym, but it's NAFTA, the new NAFTA, the Trump-negotiated NAFTA.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: But if Trump walks away from that, if Trump refuses
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: to renew that, and now you're putting $ 880 billion worth
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: of trade at risk, I mean, then you'll have a
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: real diesel shortage because the reality is, that a lot
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: of the refining to diesel uses Canadian oil, heavy oil
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: that U.S. refineries are very good at using. It would
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: be a massive disaster for the U.S. economy. I mean,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: the relatively small tariffs on a small segment, or high
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: tariffs on a small segment of Canadian goods is already destructive.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: But if you actually tariff all $ 880 billion of trade
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: that's covered today on the NAFTA, that's just... economic stupidity
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: and economic disaster. And there's no reason for it. Again,
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: no reason for it. There's no economist, no economist in
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: the world out there that thinks this is a good idea.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: Trump is just a, as I said, he has an understanding,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: a five-year-old's understanding of trade, a five-year-old's understanding of economics.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: You can't, claim national security. You can't claim that Canada's
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: not being fair to the United States. Fair, whatever the
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: hell that means. Canadian tariffs on American goods have been
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: basically zero. Literally, there's no excuse for this. None. Zero. Nada.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: Not even by some you know fantasy of unfairness. The
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: only reason this is happening is because Trump hates trade deficits.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: Because he's ignorant. Ignorant and dumb. And generally, I'll say
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: this again. I've said it a hundred times. I'll say
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: it another hundred times. Maybe I'll say it a thousand times.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: Who knows how many times I'll have to say it.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: for some of this to sink in with some of you.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: The only legitimate trade policy a government should engage in
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: is no trade policy. Zero tariffs. Unilaterally. Lower tariffs to zero. Oh,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: it's a negotiating tactic. He wants all the other countries
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: to lower tariffs. Well, it's failed. It's failing. Tariffs for
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: the U.S. globally have increased significantly because of Trump. Trade
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: has gotten worse, not better. I advocate for zero tariffs. Zero.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: If you want to tax consumption... then you should have
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: a consumption tax across all goods. I'd like to get
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: rid of the income tax before we did that. But
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: a tariff is just a stupid tax, a discriminatory tax,
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: a hurtful tax, a harmful tax. It has no benefits.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: And even if other countries tariff our goods, we should
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: not tariff their goods. If other countries want to do
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: stupid stuff, We shouldn't do stupid stuff in response to them.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: Basic economics, people. Basic economics. Tariffs are tax. A consumption
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: tax on some goods. The fact that other countries have
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: high taxes does not mean the United States should have
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: high taxes. If, you know, the socialists in the UK
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: increase taxes on goods, The Brits, should Americans increase taxes
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: as well? No. Taxes are just taxes. If you think
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: about it as taxes, it's really easy to understand. We
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: don't like taxes. Taxes are bad. If you tax something,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: you get less of it. Tax imports, you get less imports.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: There's nothing good about getting less imports. No benefit to that.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: So what we have right now is prices are up.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: to a large extent because of tariffs. And by the way,
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: Republicans are going to lose the House and the Senate,
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: maybe the Senate, to a large extent because of tariffs,
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: even from a purely political perspective, even from a pro-Trump perspective. Yay, yay,
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: go Republicans. This is such a disastrous policy. Such an
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: unbelievably disastrous policy. By the way, for those of you
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: who are not regular listeners, watchers of the Iran book show,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: If you're interested in more of my thoughts about trade,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: about tariffs, I've got a long history of talking about that.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: Just put Yaron Brook Trade or Yaron Brook Tariffs in
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: YouTube and you will find some in-depth analysis that I've
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: done over the many, many years, starting with Trump's election,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: regarding trade, tariffs, free trade, what that means, what fair
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: trade means, what the history of free trade is, where
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: the concept of fair trade comes from. All of this stuff,
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: you know, can tariffs achieve anything? All of those questions
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: I've answered, happy to answer them here in the Super
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: Chat again, but all of those questions have been answered
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: in previous shows, and I've had shows 100% dedicated just
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: to the issue of trade. So check it out. So
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: price is up, confidence in John is down. There's a
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: trade war. You would think Americans are getting poorer, right?
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: Are they? Is the Americans getting poorer? So the Congressional
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: Budget Office has just released the distribution of household income
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: for 2023. Now, granted, we're in 2026, but the government
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: is slow. Getting this data is hard. Putting it all together,
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: analyzing it, not easy. So there are a few years behind.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: But let's look at 2023, because I don't think things
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: have gotten that much worse since 2023. Remember, 2023 is
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: in the midst of the Biden-era inflation. So here's some
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: facts around this. Let me just quote from Scott Lincecum
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: on X. Quote, real incomes up across the board. Income
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: inequality basically flat for decades. Taxes falling for everyone except
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: the rich. That's Scott Lincecum's summary of what the Congressional
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: Budget Office has released. Here's some data. And, you know,
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: we've been talking about this on the Iran Brook Show
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: for a long time. All the hype about how awful
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: things are for American workers is just wrong. About 134
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: million households earned about $ 20 trillion in 2023. Between 2022
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: and 2023, income for the lowest Quinta rose 5%. Now,
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: all the numbers I'm giving you, all the numbers I'm
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: giving you are inflation adjusted. Again, inflation being price inflation.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Income for the lowest, Quinta, rose 5%. The top 1%
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: fell 9%, mostly from lower capital gains. That was in 2023.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: Since then, incomes for the top 1% have risen a lot.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: Income inequality fell in 2023 relative to 2022 because of
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: the lower capital gains and the fact that income of
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: the top 1% fell and lowest quintile rose. Now, that
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: is true, the inequality, before or after transfers and taxes,
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: however you want to look at it. Now, again, income
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: inequality doesn't matter I've made this case over and over again.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: I have a whole book about it. But people are
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: anxious about income inequality, and yet it's not getting, quote,
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: worse from their perspective. It's not. From 1979 to 2023,
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: real income, inflation adjusted. Before transfers and taxes, the lowest
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: quintile rose from about 19,000 to 28,500, so it rose 50%.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: the highest quintile, from about 179,000 to 409,000, 128%. Every group,
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: every single group of income is richer than they were
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: in 1979. Now, it's true. The rich are getting rich
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: faster than the poor are getting richer. That is absolutely right.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: The lowest quintile rose 50%. The highest rose 128%. But
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: everybody's better off. In real terms. Inflation adjusted. Taxes. The
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: lowest quintile's average federal tax rate is negative. About negative 11%.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: Meaning they get refunds. They get credits. They get from
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: the government more than they paid. And you know, that
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: fell by another one point in 2023. The top 1%
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: rate rose by about a point. So the so-called rich
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: are paying more taxes. The so-called poor are receiving more
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: from the government, is the way to think about it.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you think about who raised taxes, the
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: top quintile, now pays about 70%. Quintile is top 20%,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: is that right? Quint is five, so top 20%. Now
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: pays about 70% of all federal taxes, up from 55%
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: in 1979. The top 1%, the top 1%, pay about
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: 26% of all taxes, federal taxes, up from 14%. Now,
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: you know, you can go to Scott Linscombe's X-Page or
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: Substack and you can find a ton of graphs and
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: information about this. But basically, America's poor middle class household
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: has seen significant income gains since the 1990s in particular,
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: especially after transfers and taxes. If you count welfare, if
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: you count transfers, negative income tax rates and all of that,
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: the lowest fifth have seen their income rise faster than
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: the median, faster than the second fifth, the middle fifth.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: They've increased their income substantially. Here's another, I'm looking at
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: another thing. America's poor middle class families with children have
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: seen significant income gains since 1990s. especially after transfers and taxes.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: So again, this is middle-class and poor families with children.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: So everybody's richer. Everybody's richer. And significantly so. Now it
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: is true that everybody got much richer during COVID because
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: they got checks from the government. And then those checks
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: went away. They got a little poorer. Maybe that's why
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: they feel poor right now. I don't know. But they're
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: much poorer. They're much richer. Their income is up relative
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: to where it was before COVID. And this is for
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: the lowest fifth, the second fifth, the middle fifth. Now,
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: it's true. Again, the top is doing great. Stock market
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: is up. Home prices are up. So they're doing fantastic.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: post-taxes and transfer, income inequality has been roughly flat since 2000.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: So the gap, the gap between how much the rich
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: make and how much the middle class or the poor make,
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: pretty stable since 2000. Which is, again, you don't hear that.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: I don't know if this is good or bad, I'm
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: just saying. Since 1989, average federal tax rates fell for
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: the bottom four-fifths. So the bottom 80% of taxpayers have
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: paid less taxes in 2023 than they paid in 1989.
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: But they rose for the top 20% and especially for
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: the top 1%. Again, exactly the opposite. Of what you
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: hear out there, the rich don't pay any taxes. They
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: pay zero taxes. Just untrue. Untrue. So, yeah. Everything you
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: hear about these things, pretty stunning how much falsehoods are
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: out there. Real median household income has reached its highest
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: level on record in 2025. real median household income, reached
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: its highest level on record in 2025. And households are
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: a lot smaller today than they were back in the 1960s.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: I'm looking at a graph that starts in 1967 and
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: goes up to 2025. And it's up. And yet, in 1967,
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: households were big. In 2025, households are small. So if
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: you look at it per person, not on a household basis,
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: income is way up. Since 1967, this is amazing, since 1967,
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: the share of households with incomes of $ 100, 000 or more,
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: in real terms, inflation adjusted, has nearly tripled. Has nearly tripled. Pre-tax.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: Cash-only Gini Index, Gini Index is the way they measure inequality,
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: has risen modestly since the early 1990s. So inequality for pre-tax, pre-tax,
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: before you pay taxes and before, you know, goodies are
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: paid to you, has risen modestly. If you include, what
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: do you call it? If you include transfers and taxes,
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: it has not. It's been flat. Since 1967, the share
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: of households with income of $ 150, 000, again, inflation adjusted, has
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: more than quintupled. Quintupled. And this is the share. This
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: is not just the share number. Today is 28% of
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: households and was 5% of households. Again, in real terms, right?
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: And then since 1967, real household income has risen by
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: more than half at the 10th and 20th percentiles and
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: at the median. So basically, everybody's income is going up.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: At least, you know, until... at least as of 2025.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: I don't think much has changed since then. All right.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: You know, that's some of the good news in spite
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: of people feeling poor, in spite of people having no confidence,
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: all of that. Do you see the economy, if you
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: actually look at the numbers, do you see the economy
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: is doing okay? Okay. could be doing a lot better.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: People's wages, income, is up. Now, a lot of that
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: has to do with transfers, welfare. But that should make
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: people feel good. But it doesn't, because welfare doesn't. The
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: middle class is shrinking because people are becoming rich. More
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: and more people are entering upper middle class and wealthy.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: And the wealthy are are paying more and more and
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: more taxes. And basically, the bottom 80% of Americans pay
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: very little taxes into 80% of their income. The exact
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: opposite of what you're led to believe by both left
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: and right, because every politician in America tells you the
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: middle class is being hollowed out. Every politician in America
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: is telling you wages are stagnating. Every politician in America
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: is saying things are awful and it's all because of
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: the Chinese and immigrants and H-1Bs and the Jews and
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: the elites and whatever. It turns out that the Congressional
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: Budget Office, Congress's own scorekeeper, says, wait a minute, none
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: of that is true. Even the story of the rich
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: don't pay their, quote, fair share, whatever the hell that is,
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: is just not true, given that we've only increased the
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: percentage of the tax burden that is borne by the
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: so-called rich. All right. Why are you guys talking about Apple's?
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: Maybe because, maybe it's a trade issue. I don't know.
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: I've missed the chat. I haven't been following, and the
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: conversation has moved to apples. By the way, very few questions. So,
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: great opportunity. Ask lots of questions. I will have an
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: opportunity to answer them all. You can also do stickers
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: to support the show. But questions are great. Questions is
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: a way for you to shape the show. So, ask away.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: I've got a few more questions. segments and then we'll
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: turn to super chats and the show will be over
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: very quickly at this rate so jump in with questions
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: guys and with support value for value remember you're listening
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: to the show it must present a value to you
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: jump in with a stick if you're live and if
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: you're on the podcast if you're listening after the fact
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: on YouTube or on a podcast app go to Patreon
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: go to Paypal Type in you're on book show and
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: become a monthly supporter. And that way you don't have
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: to think about it again. You know you're trading with
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: me rather than receiving something for free and not trading.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: So we're getting richer. But it seems like a lot
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: of young Americans think that the real problem lie with
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: the opposite sex. So the Survey Center of American Life,
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: the Survey Center on American Life, which is run by
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: the American Enterprise Institute, ran a survey as of September 22nd.
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: And the survey results suggest that young Americans increasingly blame
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: the other sex for their problems. And it splits along
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: party lines, unsurprisingly. 66% of young Democratic women 66% of
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: young Democratic women say men are responsible for many of
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: the problems women face. 18% of young Republican women agree.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's, wow. I mean, it's pretty amazing. The
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: partisan split there, the partisan break there. 66% of young
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: Democratic women blame men 18% of young Republican women blame men.
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: Maybe the Republican women just want to be trad wives
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: anyway and they don't have any problems because the man
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: is going to take care of them. Men are responsible
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: for many of the problems women face. On the other hand,
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: flip side of that, 26% of young Republican men, 26%,
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: a quarter of all Republican men, say women are responsible
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: for many of the problems men face. Isn't that interesting?
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: It's only 26%. Among men overall, the number is 16%,
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: which means that the Democratic men, it's far less than that.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: They think it's politically incorrect to blame women. So 26%
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: of young Republican men say women are responsible for many
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: of the problems men face. Yeah, I mean, there's a
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: growing movement on the right to blame everything on men,
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: on women, to blame it on the women getting the vote, right?
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's a very influential pastor. I think he's
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: the pastor for either J.D. Vance or Hegseth, or maybe both.
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: I think Hegseth. Hegseth's pastor, the Secretary of War, who
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: thinks that women should not be allowed to vote and
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: they should do away with. So it's super tribal, super collectivistic,
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: men versus women, another tribal split. More than two-thirds of
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: young women say women face a lot of discrimination, a lot.
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: I wonder if the women here think that's true. I
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: understand some discrimination, because I think women do. A lot
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: of discrimination in the world in which we live today?
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: I don't know. That seems like it's coming from a
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: place of entitlement. I don't know. Maybe something else. Again,
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: this is all young women who didn't experience... I mean,
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: if you guys have seen the show Mad Men, And
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: one of the things I found amazing about Mad Men,
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: not only is the fact that everybody is smoking and
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: drinking constantly, drinking alcohol constantly, but how women are treated.
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: And I think it's a pretty accurate depiction of Madison Avenue,
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: of an advertising agency in the 1950s and early 1960s.
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: And I can understand if you grew up in that environment,
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: the resentment you would have. Because the discrimination was brutal
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: and unjust, unfair, and just horrific. But I don't think
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: that's true anymore. I think, if anything, the world is
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: going out of its way to treat women more equally
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: and going out of the way to treat women even
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: better than men in some cases. So a lot of
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: discrimination sounds wrong to me, right? Sounds wrong to me. Yeah,
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: Linda says, I faced some bias in job hunting in
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: the late 1960s, but not after that. Yeah, I don't,
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you look at women achieving senior management
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: positions now, more and more, entering more and more jobs, look,
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: a lot of it is choices women make in terms
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: of the kind of professions they go into and so on.
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: That's why You get a lot of underrepresentation in certain areas,
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: but I don't think you can blame discrimination. Not a
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: lot of it. I'm not saying it's gone completely. It's
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: probably not gone completely. Democratic women are far more likely
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: than Republican women to say that men are responsible for
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: many of the problems women have. Yeah, this is what
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: the survey concludes, and that's absolutely true. I think there's
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: a much more of a, on the left, there's much
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: more of a oppressor-oppressed attitude. And I'm being oppressed and
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: kind of a victimhood mentality on the left. The right
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: has its own problems. The fact that 26% of young
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: Republican men think women are responsible for their problems suggests
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: low self-esteem among many other things among them. Yeah. So yes,
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: more collectivism, more tribalism. But if you want something to
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: worry about, I'm not sure you should be worried about
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: men and women undermining you or the other sex undermining you.
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: You should really be worried about AI or maybe you
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: should be worried about AI companies. I mean, it's pretty
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: amazing what's going on right now. And every day there's news.
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: Every day there is news. And the industry is just
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: completely bought in to the catastrophizing. So Anthropic has filed
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: its S-1 prospectus. Now, S-1 is what you file as
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: a form, regulatory requirement. You file when you plan to
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: go public. They are planning a NASDAQ listing. And, you know,
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: maybe in November. And there are 261 pages. This NASDAQ,
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: the filing, the S-1 prospectus. It's 261 pages, which is,
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: you know, I think pretty average. 80. 80 of the
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: 261 pages. 80. So a third. Just under a third
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: of all the pages are dedicated to risks. The filing
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: actually warns. This is, we're going public. We're asking you
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: to give us money and to give us a, they're
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: seeking a $ 2 trillion valuation. They're warning that advanced models
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: could have, quote, catastrophic or existential consequences. It lists self-preserving behavior,
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: such as resisting shutdowns, and hiding or manipulating information and
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: behavior that resembles blackmail. Give me billions and billions of dollars,
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: tens of billions of dollars. Give me a valuation of
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: $ 2 trillion for a product that is likely to kill
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: you all. Now, there's a compelling investment thesis I've never
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: heard of a more compelling investment thesis than that. Give
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: me money so I can kill you. About 6% of
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: Anthropic's research computing, right? So computing, the amount of money
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: they spend on computing goes to safety. At least that
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: was the number in July. In 2025, revenues at Anthropic
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: were $ 4. 6 billion. That's up about 12x revenue. from a
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: year earlier. The operating loss was about $ 8 billion, so
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: they're losing money. And they have commitments for about $ 518
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: billion in plant infrastructure. Two customers, I don't know which ones,
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: but two customers alone represent 25% of 2025 revenue. And
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: they expect a valuation of $ 2 trillion on May. operating
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: loss of $ 8 billion, and capital commitments of $ 518 billion. So,
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, the valuation seems ridiculous to me, but what
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: do I know? I thought SpaceX valuation was, you know,
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: way too high as well. The market seems to disagree,
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: which is fine. But What I really found astounding, right,
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: really find astounding, astounding, I can't speak, is the fact
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: that they want your money, they want the valuation, and
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: they're arguing in their prospectus that they might kill you all.
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: It's a very strange world we live in. Very, very
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: strange world where companies think that this is a reasonable
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: thing to do. All right, let's see. I was just
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: looking at SpaceX. SpaceX went public, I think, at 150, 150,
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: and it's trading at 149. So it's down a little bit,
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: but it's basically flat to when it went public. It's
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: been down quite a bit to 108. It was up
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: to 214, you know, within a couple of days. But
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: it's it then it came down to 108 to cover
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: to 149 we'll see what the long term what the
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: long term is all right so that's anthropic give me
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: your money and i'll kill you open ai at the
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: same time announced today that it has canceled the release
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: of gpt 6.1 astra after it failed internal safety and
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: alignment testing. On Friday, it had paused training of its
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: most powerful systems. Reports that OpenAI deployed AI agents probed
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: Census Bureau and SEC websites using leaked credentials. A research
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: group found agents also tried to hack the Education Department's
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: civil rights site. In July, OpenAI agent escaped a test
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: environment and broke into a hugging face. We've talked about
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: that in the past. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeyer, a Republican,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: has asked the court today to force OpenAI to halt development.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: So OpenAI is in a sense, has canceled the release,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: pausing training. All these agents are supposed to be hacking
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: into all these places. I'm still waiting for the full story.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: I don't think even the Hugging Face, we know all
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: the facts yet. I suspect Hugging Face, the people who
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: programmed the agents knew a lot more than they're suggesting.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: hacking the Census Bureau and the SEC website and education department. Why?
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: What were the mission they were after? What was being tested? Anyway,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: you know, a lot of information still is coming, right?
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: So OpenAI and Anatopic are basically saying what we produce
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: is very dangerous. OpenAI is slowing down. release. Anthropic is
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: trying to raise capital while telling people it's going to
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: kill them. In the meantime, Trump is hosting a White
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: House event to launch America.gov. I'm not sure what that is.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: And pitch an AI golden age. He is meeting privately with,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: he had dinner with Amandai, which is the CEO of Anthropic.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: He's meeting with Jensen Huang from NVIDIA, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: Pichai from Microsoft and the Speaker of the House. So,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: you know, Trump has called AI risk a hoax. I'm
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: not sure AI risk is a hoax, but I think
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: that these AI companies can deal with the risk and
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: that other companies can deal with the risk. As we
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: talked about yesterday, one of the ways to deal with
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: AI risk, and there is risk, is AI. AI is
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: the best way to deal with AI risk. Anyway, we
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: will see. This is a continuously evolving story. We've got
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: one AI company telling the SEC its product could threaten humanity,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: another pulling its newest model off the shelf, and the president,
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: of course, calling everything a hoax. I mean, there's just
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: no adults in the room that are actually dealing with
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: this I'm glad the president thinks it's a hoax because
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: that means he'll leave it alone. But in the meantime,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: Attorney General of Florida is suing Anthropic and demanding it
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: be shut down. Or OpenAI, suing OpenAI and demanding it
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: be shut down. Oh, Sandra Pichai is a Google CEO. Sorry. Sorry.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: Not Microsoft. I mean, yeah. All right. From the newest
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: technology on earth to the oldest need there is, a
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: roof over your head, right? And Spain, the country I'm
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: in right now, thinks that the government can figure this out,
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: you know, solve the problem of housing. So there's a
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: big story in Spain over the last few days about
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: this woman, Marie Carmen Abascal. She's 87 years old. And
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: she was evicted from her Madrid apartment, the city I'm
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: in right now, because she couldn't pay the rent. You know,
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: the rent was going to increase, and she refused to
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: pay it. She couldn't meet it. And she was literally
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: carried out of her Madrid apartment on a stretcher, on
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: a stretcher because she couldn't walk. She's that old. Her
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: landlord is a company called Urba Gestion, a small property
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: investment company. Now, what followed was protests and rent camps. Luckily,
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: not near where I'm staying. And, you know, people upset.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: This is altruism kicking in. Oh, my God, an 87-year-old
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: couldn't pay her rent. Oh, my God, she's got dragged
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: out of her home on a stretcher. We have to
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: do something. Typically. Anyway, today Spain's socialist government has answered
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: with a sweeping housing decree. Here's the decree. Abandon evictions
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: until 2030. Wow, this is cool. I can stop paying
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: rent until 2030 and I cannot be evicted. How cool
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: is that? I'm going to move to Madrid. Rental contracts
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: roll over automatically until 2028. So no rental increases until 2028. Wow.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: Investment firms are banned from buying homes. Well, we did
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: that in the U.S. The Vulture Fund label now covers
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: all speculative buyers broadly. Vulture Funds, that sounds evil. There
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: are much stricter rules, according to this decree, on short-term
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: and room rentals. So, Airbnb. Health Minister Monica Garcia says
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: this will bring relief to more than 5 million people.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: It's another one of those, you know, there are so
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: many bad things that are going to happen as a
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: consequence of this. First of all, immediately more people are
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: going to want to rent places in Madrid. And, you know,
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: they're not going to be available because landlords are just
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: not going to offer their apartments for rent. They're going
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: to hold them empty rather than do this. Evictions, abandon
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: evictions until 2030. Guess what's going to happen? Guess how
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: many people are going to stop paying rent? Now, this
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: isn't law. The government has 30 days to get parliamentary
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: approval for it, and they do not have a guaranteed
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: majority because they actually have a minority government. So we
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: will see. So, you know, there's a Catalan party in
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: the Spanish parliament, these local political parties that... that run
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: basically on regional issues. So, for example, the Catalan party
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: backstopping evictions by big funds, but objects to, you know,
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: lumping in small owners. So they might stop this or
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: might have to revise it. As the spokesman of the
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: Catalan party says, putting them all in one basket is
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: a mistake. Again, no principles. What is small? What is big?
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: Why a big no? Small yeah? It just doesn't make sense. Again,
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: everybody wants to micromanage. Everybody wants to be a central planner.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: Everybody thinks they can do better than the market. And
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: the reality, the absolute unquestionable reality is none of them can.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: None of them can. Now it turns out that the
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: woman who was evicted, the company that evicted her is
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: now offered to let her return for about $ 500 a month,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: 500 euro a month, which is 30% of her pension
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: and about her old rent. And they've offered to do
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: this for the next eight years. Or I guess, no,
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: the rent was from the last eight years. Her lawyer
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: is saying there's a deal. But she hasn't signed it yet, so,
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: you know. Anyway, you know, altruism in action. An 87-year-old
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: woman on a stretcher, and the Spanish government's response is,
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: tell every landlord in the country they can't evict anyone
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: for four years. Unbelievable. All right, Spain wants to cap
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: landlords and tell them what they can do with their property.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: The U.S. Senate just voted to cap what 19-year-olds can
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: earn with their talent at college. Now here's, this is
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: so distorted. So today, or yesterday, actually yesterday, the Senate
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: passed the Protect College Sports Act. The passage was led
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: by Senator Ted Cruz yesterday. And it passed by 77
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: to 22. It goes to the House after the midterms.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: So here's some of the facts, right? The bill caps
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: athlete pay at $ 21. 6 million per athletic department, plus a $ 22. 5
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: million retention fund meant to discourage transfers. Athletes get one
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: transfer and a 10-year window to graduate. Schools must provide
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: health care, including for injuries found after athletes leave. Athletes
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: are not employees. The bill codifies NIL rights and blocks
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: breakaway leagues. So ridiculous. Backers. So there are 32 conferences,
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: 380 plus colleges, the NFL, the NBA, the MLB, the NHL.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: They all back this. The Congressional Black Caucus opposes it
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: because it will reduce athlete pay, and many of them
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: are black, I guess. What isn't capped? Ohio State alone
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: is estimated to pay its football team $ 49 to $ 55
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: million this season. The cap would be $ 21. 6 for the
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: whole department, so it would basically be cutting the amount
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: Ohio State could pay by more than half. LSU gave
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: Lane Kiffin Seven years, $ 91 million. And paid fired coach
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: Brian Kelly, a $ 54 million buyout. Northwestern's new football stadium
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: cost $ 875 million. So those are not going to be capped.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: So the coaches' salaries, the stadiums, those are not capped.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: Only the athletes' salaries are capped. Now why are they
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: doing this? They're doing it because... You know, it's just
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: not the way it used to be. College football used
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: to be about passion and about honor and about school
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: loyalty and about whatever, tradition and about, I don't know,
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: the school. And now it's about money. Athletes are playing
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: for money, and they don't like that. They don't like that. However,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: the Supreme Court in 2021, in NCAA versus Alston, ruled
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: 9-0 that the NCAA pay limits to athletes violated antitrust law.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: The schools lost in court, and now they want Congress
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: to do it for them. So what Congress is doing
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: is they're exempting, they're passing a law that basically exempts
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: the NCAA from antitrust law. This is what Justice Brett
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: Kavanaugh wrote In 2021. Nowhere else in America can businesses
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: fair market rate on the theory that their product is
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: That's right. These are amateurs. So I agree that universities
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: should pay their athletes a fair market wage. But I
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: want to get rid of antitrust. I want to get
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: rid of antitrust laws. Not exempt schools from antitrust laws.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: Why if we exempt schools, why can't we exempt other businesses?
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: And how does Congress get to define, I don't know, 21.6
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: million athletic departments? Where does that come from? Where does
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: that number come from? More central planning. I mean, exempt
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: them from antitrust laws and then see what happens. That's
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: the way I would do it. Maybe they'll all collude
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: and underpay the athletes. Maybe some schools will cheat. Maybe
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: now that it's official not no antitrust laws, who knows
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: what will happen, what will evolve. Make it a market.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, Ted Cruz really. I'm disappointed. This is just
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: the government trying to manipulate a market in the name
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: of tradition without even knowing what the manipulation is actually
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: going to result in. I mean, a coach can get
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: $ 91 million. The stadium can get $ 875 million. But the
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: United States Senate passes by 77 to 22. A wage cap?
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: A wage ceiling on players? They get the salary cap. Why?
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: Because they're young? It's unfair. It's wrong. You know, Get
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: out of the way. I'm all worth getting rid of antitrust.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: But then let's see how the market plays itself rather
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: than Congress deciding how much each player should. I mean,
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: maybe Congress should also run the offense or the defense.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: It's really depressing, right? Today we talked about a diesel ban,
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: an eviction ban, a pay cap. Every one of these
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: rests on the same idea. There's only so much to
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: go around. It's a zero-sum world. And the government is best.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: 46 years ago, today, two men put money on that idea.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: Going back even further, in 1968, Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: published The Population Bomb. This is what he wrote. Quote,
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: the battle to feed all of humanity is over. In
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: the 1970s, hundreds of millions of people were starved to
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: death in spite of any crash program embarked upon now.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: That was Pearl Ehrlich. Now, obviously, this never happened, but
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: he stuck with those beliefs, a belief in scarcity, a
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: belief in limits. Economists, and really one of the great
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: economists of all time, somebody everybody should read, Julian Simon,
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: thought the opposite. People aren't just mouths and stomachs. They're minds.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: In Social Science Quarterly, he challenged anyone to bet that
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: raw materials would get more expensive. So Julian Simon said, abundance,
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: there'll be more raw materials in the future than there
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: are today, so prices will come down. Because human ingenuity
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: will find new ways to discover new resources. Ehrlich took
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: him up on the challenge. Here's the bet. This was
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: formalized on September 29, 1980. 46 years ago. It was
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: settled on September 29, 1990. 36 years ago. $ 1, 000. spread
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: across five metals, $ 200 each, chromium, copper, nickel, tin, tungsten.
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: Ehrlich and his colleagues chose the metals. So Ehrlich could
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: choose whatever metals he wanted. If inflation adjusted prices rose,
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: Simon paid. If they fell, Ehrlich paid. All five metal
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: prices fell in real terms. inflation-adjusted terms. Tin, for example,
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: went from 8.72 a pound to 3.88. Tungsten fell by
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: more than half. At the same time, world population grew
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: by more than 800 million people in one decade, the
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: largest one-decade increase in history. In October 1990, Ehrlich mailed
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: Simon a check. Simon offered to go again for $ 20, 000
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: on any resource, Ehrlich declined. I mean, if you look
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: at what today humanprogress.com has coined the Simon Abundance Index,
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: from 1980 to 2025, the population has grown 85%, while
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: resources became 536%. 536% more abundant measured in time prices.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: I like time prices. I think this is the best
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: way to kind of measure prices. All 50-track commodities are
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: more abundant than in 1980. Now, what this means is
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: you track them based on how many hours of work
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: you have to spend to buy something. So, what took
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: an hour of work to buy in 1980 now takes
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: about 18 minutes. Wow. I mean, so our lives have
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: improved dramatically. Again, another story about life improving. the world
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: getting better, things getting cheaper, from a perspective of how
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: much time you spend working to gain them, they're cheaper.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: And that's what counts. How much effort do I have
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: to put in to get my car, to get my home,
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: to get any one of these things? The hours of
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: work to put in to buy stuff. So we live...
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: in relative abundance, we live relatively wealthy lives. Everybody's depressed though.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: Everybody thinks things are much, much worse than they used
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: to be. Go figure. All right, guys, we will now
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: turn to the super chats. Talking about super chats. We
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: need more. We're way, way, way, way, way. I don't
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: know what's happening today. Yesterday you were generous. So today
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: everybody's disappeared. Um, way, way behind where we need to be.
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: So please consider showing some love here financially to, what
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: do you call it, incentivize Iran to continue doing shows
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: from the road. Today is the last show of September.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: There will not be a show tomorrow. There won't be
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: a show the 1st of October. So you've got two
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: days to make up for whatever expenses you have today.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: So please consider supporting the show. You can do so
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: with a sticker. Thank you, Roland, for the sticker. Let's see.
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Roland. Thank you. Any other stickers? Yeah, Mary Alene.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: The Countant. Exit. Stephen Harper. Mary Alene. All right. Thank
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: you guys. Really appreciate the support. Let me also remind
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: you that the Ayn Rand Institute is a sponsor of
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: the show. I start teaching my ARU course next week.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: You can sign up for it now. aynrand.org slash ybs.
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: Go to ARU. It's going to be a course on
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: Western Civilization. Basically, Western Civilization versus Christianity. This will give
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: you a early look at the new book I'm working
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: with with Don. We don't have a publisher, so I'm
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: not sure exactly when and if it will be published,
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: but you will get a draft copy and PDF of
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: the book. Obviously not a final version, but a draft
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: copy as part of the course. And if you are
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: a graded student, I don't think you pay any tuition.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: Ankar is also starting a three semester long course on objectivism,
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: which will significantly. I don't know how, I don't care
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: how well you know the philosophy, this will improve your knowledge.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: This course will improve your knowledge significantly. So sign up,
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: sign up for that. Alex Epstein is the leading authority
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: on all things energy, fossil fuels, and now data centers.
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: Alex is doing amazing work defending data centers right now.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: He's got a new, he's writing a new book on
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: the topic, which I'm excited for, and we will definitely
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: be helping market that book once it gets released. So
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: check out alexepstein.substack.com. Hendershot Wealth, Hendershot Wealth, Hendershot with two Ts,.
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: com slash YBS. Hendershot Wealth has products that can save
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: you a lot of money on capital gains taxes if
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  Speaker 1: to go public at $ 2 trillion, you will have a
• 1:23:00
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• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: Hendershow Wealth has products that can reduce that liability dramatically.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: Check them out. Check them out today. And check out
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: the interview I did with Robert on the playlists under sponsors.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: My interview with Robert, my interviews with Robert are always good.
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: This one was fun to do. All right, Mikael, Mikael,
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: my call my call thank you for the sticker really
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: appreciate it and uh let's see what else that i
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: want to those of you who are not watching live
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: and it can't do stickers it can't do super chats
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: check out patreon and become a monthly supporter uh of
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: the show right all right let's uh jump in with
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: steven uh i think i don't think yeah all $ 20
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: questions no 50s so we'll go with steven Steven says,
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: will you attend Ayn Rand Con Vienna in April? I
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: have already signed up for it, the Rand's Day Conference
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: at the end of January and the Summer Conference in Colorado. Excellent.
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: I will be at all three. I will be, at
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: least as of right now, I'm giving two talks and
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: maybe a couple of panels at the Ayn Rand Con
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: in Vienna in April, what is it, 16 to 18,
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: something like that. So if you're in Europe or if
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: you're in America and you want to come, You should
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: definitely join us in Vienna. It's a magnificent city. I mean,
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: talk about art. There's some fantastic museums in Vienna. There's,
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: of course, a great opera and a great orchestra. Great place.
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: I will also be at the Rand's Day Conference. I'm
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: giving a talk on Israel's founding. And I will also
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: be at the Summer Conference in Colorado. So I'll see
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: you in all places. All right. Jennifer, if I buy
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: apples from Washington instead of Michigan, should I pay a
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: tariff to protect Washington jobs? No people would say because
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: Washington is America. But if I buy Ontario apples, oh, no, Canadian,
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: just tribal crap. Yeah, and the only reason we don't
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: have the Washington tribe versus the Michigan tribe is because
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: the founders basically– put in the Constitution protection against tariffs
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: between states. So we have, constitutionally, we can't protect the people,
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: you know, we can't protect the Michigan jobs or Washington
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: jobs from one another. That's constitutionally protected. Otherwise, today, Every
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: state would have tariff on every other state and our
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: tribes would just be smaller. If you're going to be tribal,
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: big tribes are better than small tribes. But it's still tribal.
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: It's still barbaric. It's still primitive. It's still collectivistic crap.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: Lowest form of collectivism. Tribalism. All right, Andrew. Why do
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: intellectuals seem to like convincing the public that they are
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: poorer struggling and can't afford anything. Well, because then people
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: pay attention to them. And this is the basis for
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: radical cultural change, right? So if you want to bring
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: about socialism in America, tell them capitalism has failed and
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: show them capitalism has failed. It's kind of how Argentina is, right?
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: Argentina really did fail, and that made it open to
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: a melee. Well, if they can convince us America has failed,
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: and that the reason it's failed is capitalism, which is easy,
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: then we're open to either the fascist from the right
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: or the socialist alternative. So those intellectuals who want to
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: see radical status changes, want to smear capitalism, by convincing
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: people that they are poorer than they really are. Schasbach.
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: Fox Mulder, the X-Files, had a poster in his office
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: which said, quote, I want to believe. Would it have
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: been better if it said, I want to understand? Yes. Yes.
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: Very much so. I want to understand. I want to know.
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: Belief is, I want to believe in what? And believe
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: on what basis, right? So I want to understand would
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: it be much, much better. Anonymous, do you think your
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: show would do better if the YouTube's algorithm were different?
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: What are they doing right? What are they doing wrong?
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: What is the principle? that YouTube uses to determine if
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: a video is worthy of promotion? I really don't know.
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, suddenly we know certain things, like the more chats,
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: the more engagement, the more likes, the more shares. I
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: think one of the things that hurts me is I
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: don't think you guys share my videos much, particularly my
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: live videos because they're so long. You don't share them.
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: So sharing is a big, big deal. Liking. So this
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: is why press that like button right now before you forget. Comment. Chat.
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: All these things help. So that we know. engagement. Relevance, right?
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: Topic relevance. Now there I think I should be doing fine, right?
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: But then I think I get penalized for controversy and
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: for saying things that are controversial and a lot of
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: people disagree with. So I definitely think the algorithm impacts me.
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: But I also think what is impacting is the fact
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: that I say things that upset people and people don't
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: want to hear those things. So they might listen, but
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: they don't subscribe. They might listen, but they don't return.
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: So I don't have as much return traffic. So I
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: don't think it's just the algorithm. I think if the
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: algorithm was just the way it is, and more people
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: listened to me and said, oh, wow, that's really super interesting.
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: I want to hear more. I would have a lot
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: more subscribers. I would have a lot more views. My
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: views are pretty good. And your engagement, given the level
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: of subscribers and views, is pretty good. And I produce
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: a lot of content. A lot of content. There are
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: very few people on YouTube that produce as much content. Certainly,
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: I produce a huge amount of live content. But also,
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: every live show gets split up into videos, and then
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: we put out shorts. I produce a huge amount of content.
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: So it's either the algorithm or the actual content. actual
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: nature of the content that limits the number of people
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: who subscribe and the number of people who but look
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: there's no question the algorithm but but youtube has been
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: very nice to me i think because of you guys
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: because the super chats uh by the criteria the super
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: chats i do very very well for the size of
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: show we raised a lot of money on the show
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: relatively speaking Not today for some reason. So if any
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: of you want to change that, help me change that,
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: that would be great. You know, at least another 70
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: bucks in the next few minutes would be good to
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: just get some of our goals achieved by this month,
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: end of the month, maybe. So YouTube has been very
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: nice to me. So I don't think YouTube is purposefully,
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: you know, they're like, they're like, offer to help, and
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: there's a person I can call if I've got an
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: issue and problem. They don't offer this to all creatives.
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: They've been particularly nice to me. So I think if
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: it's the algorithm, it's in the nature of the algorithm.
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: It's not something guided and purposefully done by YouTubers. Uh,
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: Linda says in the 1970s and eighties and later, the
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: people hiring me were mostly women. So much of being oppressed. Yeah.
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, I, I think that makes a lot of sense. Um, there's,
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: I think very, there's still probably discrimination that goes on in,
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: in some places at some times, but it's night and
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: day as compared to what it was in the sixties. And, uh,
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: And I don't think it affects women significantly anymore. All right, Matt.
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: I have a narcissist like Trump in my family. It
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: stopped being about tariffs a while ago. It's about proving
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: he's right about tariffs and a possible task. Yeah, I
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: think that's right. I think that's right. He can't tolerate
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: the idea that he's wrong. And that people think that
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: he's wrong. Why are AI companies seeking antitrust exemptions? This
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: is from NM. Well, because they want to be able
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: to collude in slowing down the development of their models.
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: At least that's what they're saying. So the big AI
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: companies want to get together and determine criteria for how
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: to slow down the development of frontier models. These are
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: the models that might kill us all, right? They can't
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: do that today based on antitrust. They can't sit down,
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: you know, all the big AI companies can't just get
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: together and have a policy around how to release models.
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: That would trigger antitrust. So they want antitrust exemption. I
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: think they should get it. I think everybody should be
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: exempt from antitrust. The whole world. life would improve significantly. Yeah,
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: part of what will happen if they get together is
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: they'll find ways to exclude new entrants. So part of
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: what they want to do is capture the market. And,
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: you know, excluding them from antitrust would help them do that.
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: But I'm all for excluding from antitrust. You know, so... Again,
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: I think everybody should be excluded. Tamer, did you see
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: Cash grilled by Senator Kennedy on bestiality? Who's Cash? Watch
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: the clip. He also sold pills claiming to reverse COVID
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: vaccine effects. Cash Patel. I mean, the guy's a weirdo,
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: so it wouldn't surprise me. Bestiality. All right. And I've said,
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: should a few industries get it depending on how much
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: pull they have? I mean, look, one industry getting it
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: doesn't hurt another industry. So every industry who can get it,
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: good for them. I mean, give it to the NCAA,
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: give it to AI, and then slowly give it to everybody.
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: Better some than nobody. Andrew, is the problem in regard
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: to getting a publisher for you and Don's proposed book
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: on Christianity that it's too hot for publishers to handle?
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: I don't think so. I mean, that would be a
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: convenient reason, but I don't think that's the case. I
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: think they're actually eager to publish hot topics, at least
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: some of them are. I think they worry about Don
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: and my credibility regarding this topic. Neither of us are
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: historians or theologians or philosophers. And, you know, one of
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: them said, you know, if they were writing a book
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: on economics like their previous books, we'd publish that. But
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: we're not sure where the audience is given who they are.
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: So it's more about me and Don and the topic than...
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: than the topic itself. I think. I can't prove that,
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: but I think. Anyway, I haven't given up complete hope,
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: but my agent stopped answering emails, so who knows. All right.
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: We might self-publish. We're still trying to figure out exactly
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: what we'll do. Self-publishing has virtues and it also has problems.
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: All right. Thank you. Thanks to all the Super Chatters.
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: Really appreciate the support. I will see you guys on Friday. Friday.
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: So we will start a new month on Friday. And yeah,
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: I'll see you guys then. Bye, everybody.