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

The ladder, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights.

This is the Iran Rochelle.

Oh right everybody welcome to your own book show on this Sunday February 22nd.

Hope you're having a fantastic weekend and thank you for spending a part of it with me.

Thanks for joining us. I was going to do a member's only show today and I decided in the end that

all this talk about trade and the tariffs and the tariff decision. I should probably do a show

just summarizing the whole issue of trade. I looked I was going to create a playlist of all my

stuff of trade and I noticed that the last show I kind of the shows that I dedicated completely

to the issue of trade a pretty old that is most of a back during the first Trump administration

and I had really I've updated it in segments so there are a lot of short videos of me on trade

but there's no one that kind of takes the whole issue and covers the whole thing trade and tariffs

and everything is involved and all the arguments for and against and so on so

and it seems like now's the time given what's going on and given the level of it just now

I'm really really hoping I think this is a false hope I think this will not happen but I'm really

really hoping that some of you listening live live are confused about trade or think I'm wrong

about trade or think Trump's right or don't think Trump's right but think think you have to do

something there might be something good about tariffs there might be certain good things I'm

really hoping there are some of you out there and that you're willing to ask super chat questions

because I'm really I really want to make this show kind of a comprehensive

of all the issues that people raise regarding trade and that would include all of the objections

as you guys might have if if if there's nobody out there that believes that maybe there's

somebody out there that might want to play act believing it and and ask ask the questions that you

think people are asking out there or people are challenged with or people are confused about

with regard to trade so put those in the super chat and ask them but it would be really good

to kind of get a one video this one comprehensive analysis of everything to do with trade so yes

ask devil's advocate questions and maybe there's somebody out there maybe there are people out there

who are listening to the show who think tariffs are good thing or the trade deficit's a bad or

that we need to bring manufacturing back or whatever whatever it happens to be a big

back now I've made a list of all this stuff I'm going to cover but I I want to embellish that

with all this stuff you want me to cover so please consider doing that asking questions and

if they're not questions you have directly maybe questions you're not sure how to answer

maybe questions that you hear a lot out there maybe just issues around trade that you know

keep coming up and that need to be addressed so today is oh so I was going to do that and then

I said I don't want to do that as a members only show because then it's behind kind of firewall

I want to make it as bad as possible so I'll do the members only show now the time and in today's

will be a big comprehensive one as we discussed on Friday as we've called has ruled the tariffs under

the i.e. EPA illegal that is they they violate the separation of powers that basically Trump has

no authority to impose tariffs under that legislation as a consequence Trump and Friday impose 10%

a broad tariffs on everything basically imported into the country at 10% under Section 122

of a different act which allows him to do that for up to 150 days and after we broad they can't be

based on any different for different countries and they and even there it's not clear that what

he's doing is legal because there has to be a balance of payment or some kind of emergency and

it's not clear that what we have today qualifies under the act as an emergency the deficit doesn't

qualify as an emergency so anyway that that happened on Friday then a Saturday he said

screw this I'm not raising it by 10% I'm raising it 15% so we now have 50% basically we have chaos

nobody knows exactly how that plays out and how that interact with the tavs he's already placed

based on national security and what are the refunds going to do the whole thing is a mess right now

but we today I'm not going to talk about that today we are going to talk about you know talk about

trade more bodily international trade more bodily tavs more bodily not about the specifics of this

particular case but as I said please ask questions and you know if you both stuff in the chat I just

am not going to be able to answer it partially because I can't keep truck of it the super chat it puts

me it puts in a separate section it it saves all the questions I have them all together I'm not

going to be able to remember all the chat questions you ask so please do that I know some of you

disappointed because I don't have a members only show today reading an Iron Man essay I was going to

do that I apologize for not doing that I will do that I in a soon I'm traveling in the next couple

of weeks but after that we will do a members only show where we read an essay and we will continue

to do that as well so it will happen all right let's see so let's let's basically start we'll start

with it with basically the idea the idea of trade the idea of trade which is the idea in its

simplest form a butter of you know the idea that I purchase from you a stuff that you make with

stuff that I make you know this is the form in which trade existed before there was money

and it it's because without money trade like this is very limited but it it can still exist

within the context of simple societies where the number of goods were minimal and where indeed there

wasn't a lot of trade in in the further back you go in terms of in terms of man primitive man the

less trade exists because the reality is that most people provide for their own subsistence if you

think about hunter gatherers some people do the hunting and some people build the weapons and some

people do the kind of foraging and but there's no formal really system of trade there's everybody

brings it in a sense to to the tribe and it gets distributed within the tribe based on on some

right some principles that the tribe has set on how the goodies are distributed once they are

produced but in order to get to a a society in which there's actually trade going on

what you need is what you need is some level of division of labor now even in the most primitive

tribes you have some division of labor again the people of farage are not typically the people who

hunt the people who build the weapons and unnecessarily the people who who who use the weapons

but you need some sense of I guess individual property versus the collective versus everything

belongs to the tribe and the tribe distributes everything and I don't know when that exactly

happened where there was a sense of I'll trade you the weapon for the meat you bring for the hunt

I'll trade you the nuts and berries that are forage for the meat you bring for the hunt

or for a knife or whatever I don't know when that happens in human history

but think about in a very simplest sense that division of labor and as a consequence specialization

is a massive benefit to everybody involved the ability to specialize as a hunter will make

you a better hunter you you'll get good at it you'll practice it you probably chose to be a hunter

because you have whether it's the physical capabilities or the or the strategic thinking that makes

it possible but then you get better at it over time you you learn how how animals behave you you

learn how to trap them you learn how to hunt them you learn how to use the weapons and if you're

building weapons you become you become a specialist at that and and you can you can produce them it's

you know much you can keep improving the weapon you can keep making it better you can improve

your production capacity and of course forage is again it's a specialized you know the locations

of the best berries the best nuts so all of that is is a very primitive specialization the

division of labor even in a pre-trade society in which everything is put together but as soon as

you get any kind of sense of private mine mine my stuff in order to get your stuff there are only

two ways I can do it I can steal it I can take it by force or I can trade and I'm sure there was

a lot of effort to take it by force and violence and war have been a part of human

society from the beginning of time and indeed they dominate human history if you read history

the thing they're really one of the things that stuns me as I read history in terms of detailed

history a particular errors in particular places is how violent they were how much how many wars

they were how much people took from one another how much they stole how much they conquered how much

pillaged and slaughtered and raped and tortured I mean that was just standard practice in in all

of human history they're very very very very very few periods of extended peace where there's

just a long period of time with this very little violence and you know this is why when you get

an extended period of peace it's so unusual and it's memorable so the peace from the Napoleonic war

into World War One even though there were some minor wars in between relatively speaking to

anything that came before that in all of human history wow that's that's a pretty peaceful or

even the peace in much of the empire not at the borderlands but much of the empire during the Roman

Empire the great advantage of the empire is that much of the center of the empire was very peaceful

while the borderlands were very violent or since World War Two to today well yeah you've got

wars here and there but overall in the scale of what history has shown us incredibly peaceful

incredibly peaceful so once humanity it kind of settles down into farming and agriculture where

people start cultivating their plots of land and and there is a sense of ownership whether it's

protected by law formally or not there is a sense of ownership although if you look at the laws

of Hammurabi the first legal code we have is already a legal code that that recognizes private

property it recognizes debts it recognizes the fact that there is this finance there's the loans

being made there's money or loans of grain so once you start settling down once there's any

similar sort of property then trade becomes essential and so trade is a feature of human life

from that very beginning and and even at the tribal level when maybe within the tribe everything

is communal I doubt that's really true but but it maybe at some at some point that was true in

tribes tribes traded among each other and if you go back even to the earliest earliest known

human settlements a human I don't know activity in East Africa you see already tribes trading with

one another trading beads trading trading skins you know some tribes specialized or

tribes near the shore could create beads tried inland had more hunting opportunities

and they were trade beads for hunting or jury for hunting and that's how beads often became a form

of money so trade of goods for goods is really at the beginning of mankind you we can't survive

as a species without it because to be totally self-sufficient is almost impossible for human beings

I mean we are not well designed for our environment we are not a species that can survive at the

perceptual level that can survive without trade in that sense without other people to trade with

it's very difficult now you can do it you know you can you can watch movies about Robinson Caruso

type phenomenal you can read the story of Robinson Caruso and in a system of a desert island yeah you

can survive barely and it's no fun and as soon as one additional person comes in the Robinson

Caruso story as soon as Friday shows up existence improves significantly partially because now you

have two people two people can specialize and they can trade so I think it's really really important

to know trade is at the core at the at the heart at the base of all human activity and all of human

history it's it's the way in which we can start specializing it is at the core of division of

labor we can eat specializing the thing that we want we can labor divides itself into its area of

what's called comparative advantage that is I could be better than you guys in everything that you

do I could be the best at everything and it's still if you if you run the math and I'm not going to

do it today view on the math it's still better for me to specialize and let's you specialize in

the things that you're the best at so I should specialize from purely economic perspective I should

specialize in the thing that I have the biggest advantage over you in terms of productive skill

even if I even have superior production in everything I should I should specialize in that which

I have the biggest gap where we have the biggest gap so comparative advantage is is a huge

ultimate value creator and of course trade is win win I give up the beads and accept the

skins because I value the skins more than the beads you give up the skins and take the beads

because you value the beads more than you value the skins in other words both party are better

off at the end of a trade that is the essence of trade it is a it is a positive sum it is a

positive sum not a zero sum certainly not a negative sum a positive sum if you think about war

war typically is negative sum if you add up you know it's it's all negative it's it's it's

lose win or win lose or lose lose usually trade is one of the human activities that is win win it's

why we enter into it it's why we engage in trade because we are better off afterwards

otherwise why give up something if we're not better off now we can make a mistake

you can enter trade and and buy a lemon you can be defrauded but then it's not a trade it's an

act of violence but mostly and the reason you enter the trade is in order to achieve a win win

outcome and both parties both parties enter it you buy an iPhone for $1,000 you're better off

because you got the iPhone $1,000 the iPhone is of greater value to you than $1,000 Apple made a

profit pretty easy straightforward so trade is a win win value creation and it's a win win

value creation at every level in which you engage in the trade that is true whether you do it in

butter that is true when you do it with money it's true if you do it with gold it's true if you do it

with paper money it's true if you do it with people on the other side of the globe it's true if

you do it locally it's do it if you do it exchange if you trade for services it's true if you trade

for goods it's true if you I don't know what are the other options

every act of trade every act of trade is a act that you enter in in order to better your life

you're giving up something of lesser value and you're getting an exchange I think I'm greater value

that's the essence note also and this is important for the whole idea of international trade

it's individuals who trade countries for the most part governments for the most part

don't trade now it's true governments do buy services governments do buy some goods

but the vast over you know for example military hardware and equipment but the vast majority

of transactions that occur in the world in in economy happen between individuals or between

the representatives of individuals the representative of individuals could be businesses

corporations which is just extensions of individuals individuals own businesses individuals own

corporations I want to I want to make this clear when when we say this is really an important point

when we say we're running you know we we buy a lot of stuff we import a lot of stuff from China

yes because the people who are selling us stuff are located in China but it is not the Chinese

government selling us stuff now it's true some of those businesses might be owned by the Chinese

government some of those businesses might be partially owned or controlled or regulated subsidized

or something but literally we are buying from somebody making the stuff in China and there's a lot

of intermediaries along the way there's the company in China there's the import there's the exporter

there's the import there's the company in the United States there's the retailer that we buy from

there a lot of intermediaries but at the end of the day the trade with China is

each one of us buying stuff from people over there the US government does not buy stuff

with some maybe minor exceptions from the Chinese government and the Chinese government is not

buying stuff from the US government so trade is fundamentally between individuals between individuals

there's no such thing as really as trade between countries now international trade

has again a very very very very long history much longer than I even thought the more history I

read the more I discover then even if you go back to I don't know 1000 BC or you know even more than 1000

BC if you go back as far as 10,000 years ago when human beings settle down into communities of farmers

they were trading trading across vast geographic distances there was significant trading between

Egypt and Mesopotamia the two big civilizations ancient civilizations there was trading going on

between Egypt and Mesopotamia and the the nomads of the what do you call it the the Asian plains the euro

Asian plains this is the area that goes from kind of Ukraine and Europe all the way to Mongolia

in Asia which is basically this flat territory that just expands and where all the nomadic tribes that

we know originate from and have had a huge impact on the history of the world there was trade you

know among them there was trade between people in Scandinavia and you know pre classic Greek cities

going back 1000 BC you know there was trade back then there was clearly trade between Egypt and

Greece and other parts of the connected in the Mediterranean by ship there's always been

trade across you know call it country lines state lines geography always

and the reason is that there's massive benefits to it again the people for example

as my understanding is the people in in North Europe specialized in a production of certain

products I think weapons in particular sorts and they were really really good at and they had

access to natural resources that didn't exist in southern Europe and the southern Europeans had

stuff that no no the Europeans wanted and they traded for it again individuals traded and there

were lots of intermediaries and there was trade with Persia and with the Persians traded with other

peoples of Central Asia and those people traded with China and and all of those people are

so traded with India and and that's the Silk Road which has a history going back thousands of years

so trade is something international trade in the sense of over vast geographic areas as always

existed because because of different geographic endowments because in different geographies you

know different it's easier to grow different products it's easier to produce different things

it's easier to mine different things and then of course the different areas individuals individual

geniuses innovated and developed certain created certain innovations that didn't exist in

other places and then they traded those innovations with the others and of course there's arts and

there's jewelry and beads and and and and all this other stuff and the fact is that you're

trade within a community of let's say 100 people in your tribe there's only so much division

of labor and so much specialization and so much value creation that can be created in the

context of a small tribe of a hundred people but if you take that and now you extrapolate it over

a thousand people ten thousand people a hundred thousand people hundreds of thousands of people

who live in a dispersed land now you can create so many different things now specialization

multiplies with every more with more people you get more specialization more division of labor

more value creation more opportunities for trade so the beauty of globalization or whatever scale

you have from ten thousand BC to today is that you get to expand specialization in division of

labor and therefore you get to expand value creation and again specialization means

increased value creation because you get to be an expert at something and you can be more productive

at it it gets to expanded beyond the small group of people that you know

expanded to hundreds of thousands millions and today eight billion people and that means there's

more value in the world the more trade opportunities in the world there's more win win win and

therefore more wins in the world there's more wealth in the world everybody everybody participates

is better off as a consequence so there is no downside to trade

because it's win win now we'll get we'll get to national security issues

in a little bit you know which might be one constraint of trade so now let's look at

what happens once you get nations once you get nations you know with the the the the

with felian nation states that is created in in in the west and today the world is dominated by

the nation state all over everywhere what you get is national economies governments the control

particular geographic areas because we don't have economic freedom really anywhere in the world

you need government intervention in economies

you

once in let me just see if you want to ask questions of some reason you cannot do it on the

super chat you can ask the question on PayPal I'll open the PayPal page and have it open

and available as I mentioned earlier I'm either get you get to get questions from people who disagree

about my free trade stance and who have questions about it and so let me know if you have asked

a question right now William claims says he asked a question on on PayPal I don't see I don't see

a contribution or question on PayPal from Williams so I'm not sure what is not working for you William

but I don't see it maybe Miss live can help you set that up but if you again if you can't ask here

then ask ask ask elsewhere all right so now we have nation states

and you know originally pre 19th century or pre Adam Smith really the dominant idea around the

nation state was you know we don't we don't want to we want to be able in within the nation state to

create everything that we need we we don't want to have free and open trade with other countries

and and think about it in in those days the the the primary money was gold and the sense was we

don't want to send our gold overseas and what do we get in return we get stuff but we've lost gold

but of course this again Miss completely misrepresent what's going on because

if you've given up the gold to get the stuff it's because the stuff is worth more to you

at that point in time or worth more to the individuals doing the trading then the stuff that you're

getting so you're getting stuff that is more valuable than the gold you're giving up

and that's why the trade is happening but there was this idea that the marketer

is told that it's the accumulation of gold that makes you rich that makes you wealthy

not the accumulation of stuff but of course a wealth is actually not measured in gold or money

a wealth is actually measured in the stuff that we have it's what we can use that money for

it's in the productive assets that we purchase it's in the homes that we build it's in the stuff

we put inside the homes that is our wealth so you know value

is not money value is in the usability of something for human life

you know what's the point of the money if you don't use it to live

so but there was this notion you know and it's why you know for example people thought I mean

here's an extreme example of this people thought that by bringing in gold from South America

the Spanish empire would become so rich and so powerful that it would dominate the world

now it's true that bringing in gold from South America made the kings of Spain very wealthy

because they took a certain percentage of all the gold that came in and they used it for their

own consumption but the reality is that all that extra gold coming into Europe didn't actually

make you a richer what did it do what do we know happens when you flood a market with new money

it caused all prices to rise it didn't increase the number of goods it increased the

the quality of the goods it didn't increase it didn't increase the value of anything the value of

stuff is they it's usefulness to human life gold doesn't increase the value of it's usefulness

so what happened when you got a ton of gold coming in from from Spain is

ultimately in the in the medium to long term prices in Europe went up to reflect the new supply

money and wealth in Europe didn't change much in Spain never became rich indeed you know it's it's

one of the one of the consequences of all that gold coming in through Spain is the Spain never

developed industry it never really developed the ability to create values to create values that

actually produce wealth over the long run so milk and elism was the dominant of you of the time

it was this idea that accumulating gold is what makes you rich but Adam Smith in 1776 and indeed

economists even a hundred years before Adam Smith already understood that this was a complete error

that didn't make any sense the trade was win-win and one should engage with as much trade as possible

and Adam Smith in the wealth of nation basically lays out the economic case for why countries should have

open borders when it comes to the transport of goods they should welcome

imports and be willing to trade with anybody anywhere in the world

and then indeed over time what happens is that people in particular countries tend to specialize

in those areas where they have a comparative advantage and other countries specialize in people

in other countries individuals and other countries specialize in the things that they have

comparative advantage and then you trade and that again expands dramatically the division of

labor and the benefits of the division of labor and the value creation that's being created

so basically Adam Smith shows that the free flow of goods the free flow goods with no barriers to

trade is economically the optimal strategy it is good for everybody and at yes particular industries

might lose out so for example when Adam Smith was writing it's probably true that the textile

industry in the UK would have probably lost out it's probably true that it would have been cheaper

the import textiles from India which was part of the British Empire then it was to produce textiles

in but now you know it's hard exactly say because textiles were the first thing that was kind of

the industrial evolution helped to mechanize but that could have happened in India that is the

English expertise could have been exported to India so yes one industry would not maybe have

existed in England if there were completely open borders in Otavis but what would have happened

the capital that was being deployed in the textile industry in England would have then been

reallocated to other industries where England had a comparative advantage so there would have

been more value created because England would have specialized in the thing that England does

did best and then traded for the textiles with countries that did best for textiles

so Adam Smith shows this in great detail it takes about you know it was probably 1776 it

takes basically 70 years until 1846 until the UK over that period of 70 years the UK slowly

eliminates tariffs slowly systematically eliminates all trade restrictions and then with the

corner the passage of the the repeal of the corn laws the last remaining trade barriers fall

in England from basically 1846 until until the break out of world war one 1914 becomes a complete

free trade island it is there no trade barriers in England between 1846 and 1914 and during this period

you get some of the most some of the fastest economic growth in history you get a massive expansion

you get industrialization you get the real surge of the industrial revolution and the great

wealth creation of the industrial revolution and technology advances because you get a reallocation

of resources one of the things that happens one of the things that happens during this period

is pre 1846 the poor in England are suffering because food is expensive why because the corn laws

are making importing grain this tariffs on importation of grain so importing grain is really

expensive so they are restricted to buying domestic grain which is expensive England is not

is not the cheapest produce of grain in the world America was very cheap produce of grain

Canada there were parts of Europe they're producing grain very cheaply and the poor breads could not

benefit from that and for example the famine in Ireland in the early part of the 19th century was

partially caused by the inability to import cheap grain into the UK once the corn laws are

abolished and it opens up the British economy it's true that many of the farming estates in

England started losing money or the profits were reduced dramatically and they had to

find different uses for the land but people who consumed food i.e. poor people,

minnecrash people everybody really consumed food this is a massive bonanza for them because

they suddenly got massive quantities of cheap food which made it possible for them to live better

lives to be more productive to participate to great extent in the British economy to create more value

all right so

mucontalism this idea a placing barriers is a theory in economics that has been

basically shown to be false from Adam Smith till today as i've said many times on my show

there is no serious economist over the last 200 years since Adam Smith who has believed in

mucontalism who thinks the tariffs or any other kind of trade barriers are good for the economy

a good economic policy and that's just on the basis of economics the other issue of courses

on the basis of individual rights what business is the government from whom i buy my stuff from

why is the government trying to tell me what i can and cannot buy and where and where i cannot

buy it from so individual rights freedom basically dictates

the idea the government has no business trying to manipulate who i buy stuff from

all right now in the united states the history is a little different than the UK in the united

states when it was founded in the constitution convention there is a lot of discussion about

how to raise revenue to run the federal government states had their own sources of revenue

but how to run this federal government and no one of the one of the biggest principles

of the constitution is that even though we have multiple states under federation

there shall be no tariffs between those states

the founders understood that tariffs were destructive tariffs did not promote economic success

and were antagonistic to the rights of individuals and therefore they were clear

that states could not place tariffs on other states that this was economically disastrous

and a violation of the rights of americans but then they had the problem about how

to raise revenue for the federal government and they they they considered lots of different ways

to do it but all the different ways created problems there was no simple way in order to raise

revenue a sales tax throughout the economy would be very difficult to implement

before a a a a a regular system of accounting existed before there were enough government agents

to go and make sure that everybody was charging the sales tax and they could collect the sales

tax the ability of monitor what was going on it didn't really exist you would have to have

government agent at every every every store in order to collect the sales tax and it was no

way to to supervise the stores themselves the stores didn't report how much income they produced

to the government it was very difficult and they believed wrong to tax income and again very

difficult to implement now tariffs were relatively easy to collect

because all goods imported into the country came through the ports there were only so many ports

in the US all you had to do was put a government office at every port called it the customs office

at every port of entry a custom office and then those custom offices could collect a duty

attacks on every item that was shipped into the country it was easy to collect

and the government needs were very very small

government did not government did not spend you know more than three and a half percent of GTP

often much less than that during the 19 during the 19th century except during the Civil War

three and a half percent it did not need a lot of money so it could tax things like alcohol it could

tax a few products which it did again you know exactly the producers are you know exactly where

the point of taxation is and then it could tax tariffs which were very easy very easy to do

and indeed 80 to 90% of all revenue for the federal government in the 19th century came from tariffs

now we'll get to why we can't do that today we'll get to that in a minute

but what else the tariffs do what would they if you will unintended consequences or the completely

predictable consequences they actually talked about it so they knew these were the consequences

of tariffs in the United States during the 19th century well tariffs were the first

opportunity really in America for communism really the from the first bill the past the first

bill that included tariffs the past businesses started lobbying for exemptions businesses started

lobbying for exclusions just like today and this is the first area in which the country started

dividing into pressure groups into different pressure groups with different interests agricultural

interests southern interests northern interests manufacturing interests each one had a different

interest depending on whether they were an importer an exporter whether they want a protection for

competition or didn't want protection of competition and you know tariffs actually became during

the 19th century the second most contentious issue in politics more contentious even than under

Donald Trump today the number one most contentious issue in the 19th century was slavery

please until the civil war the second most contentious issue in American politics were tariffs

so tabs immediately created a situation in America of communism and by the early 19th century

truth of the early 20th century sorry by the early 20th century and really by the late 19th century two

things were happening one one the

the government was going particularly in the 20th century and it needed more revenue

but two the the the communism was getting out of hand people were really really really unhappy with

the communism so and attempts were made to introduce an income tax and the idea was to introduce

the income tax to replace tariffs because tariffs were so destructive because of the

and because everybody understood for matters Smith that they actually made America poor and they did

by every economic every economic study of the late 19th century shows that the high tariff rates

during the McKinley era if you will actually reduced economic growth in the United States actually

hooked the economy and the economy grew as fast as it did during that era in spite of tariffs not

because of tariffs so there was an attempt to introduce income taxes in order to replace tariffs

and that failed in the late 19th century because the income tax were were deemed by the supreme

court unconstitutional and then in the early part of the 20th century there was a constitutional

amendment to introduce the income tax and indeed once the income tax was brought into play tariffs

were for the most part eliminated they were only really introduced again they were introduced

first in the 1920s by Coolidge it's one of the reasons I don't think Coolidge is that great

of a president and then introduced again by Hoover or introduced at very high rates by Hoover

with Smooth Hawley.

All right so again let me remind everybody you want to ask questions you want to make comments you

want to you want to disagree with me happy to do it put it in the super chat you don't have

money go somewhere else here if you want your comments to be addressed by me at least the

super chat is where you can do it if you don't have two bucks to spend on a super chat then you

might want to think about what's going on in life maybe maybe skip the maybe maybe you know

maybe if you if you're this dedicated this dedicated to to asking questions

but you can't afford it maybe maybe you know maybe you should think about spending less time on

the chat and more time working all right let's see so tabs there's no point in in the history

where tabs have actually produced a benefit for the United States they produced income for the

government but on net from the economy of the US they were a net drag on the economy

all right let's see God it's already almost an hour

whatever I want to say all right let's talk a little bit about what happens if

if other countries have tariffs I get this all the time so people say other countries have tariffs

therefore we should have tariffs now this doesn't make any sense other countries

we you know other countries have socialized healthcare does that mean the United States

should have socialized healthcare other countries have huge robust welfare states does that mean

the United States should have a huge robust welfare state other countries have dictators in some

cases does that mean the United States should have so the idea that other countries have it therefore

we should is is like makes no sense we should do what makes sense maybe other countries are stupid

for having tariffs indeed Adam Smith will tell you they are the economic leader I would tell you

that most economists will tell you that tariffs harm the economy the places the tariffs

so it doesn't matter how many countries in the world have tariffs it's doing them their own country

harm now it's doing some harm to other countries as well that for example if you're a US

exporter if you sell stuff and other countries have tariffs your goods in that country are more

expensive so you're gonna export less to that country that's true you're exporting less but the bulk

of the harm is the fact that the people in that country have to pay much higher prices for your

stuff with the one tariffs they couldn't put as much as they needed at the price they needed it at

so tariffs are lose lose nobody wins other than special interest groups special interest groups

in the country placing their tariffs for example who wins from the US steel tariffs

maybe some US steel companies win but most people in the United States lose because we pay higher prices

for steel 99% of Americans lose and some of the steel manufacturers outside of the United States lose

as well because they can export less to the United States so you lose

there's lose lose lose lose that is what steel does

God I see I see the chat is getting rowdy rowdy cpq who claimed he has no money but does have a job

has no money to ask a super chat but has a job is pissing people off good

fight back that's good put him in his place he's talking nonsense on the chat as usual

he doesn't know what he's talking about why do these leftists show up on my chat I get

why the Trump fans show up on my chat why do the leftists show up on the chat

so tariffs are lose lose lose everybody loses except for the pressure group that wins

so other countries have tariffs it's a lose lose there's absolutely no reason why we should

increase tariffs to make sure that we add on to the losses that we should participate in the losing

now you might say oh we can use the threat of towering another country in other words raising

taxes on own people because we are the biggest bigger loses in in when we raise tariffs in the

United States we Americans lose the most because we Americans pay higher prices for the things we

tariff but we can use that to put pressure on other countries to lower their tariffs

if they happen to export that particular good to the United States that's being tariffed

but that actually never happens tariffs have never been used for that purpose

and tariffs have never been successfully used for that purpose and Donald Trump

certainly has no intention of using it for that purpose all the trade deals that Donald Trump

for example assigned involves continuing tariffs you know Americans are paying much higher prices

on goods by about 10% on tariff goods because of the tariffs and other countries

have not significantly lower tariffs on American goods it doesn't work that way

typically what happens is when you raise tariffs on other countries they raise tariffs on you

and that's exactly what's happening right now tariffs for American goods overseas

higher than they were before Trump started this trade war

he creates an artificial level that's high when he first announces the tariffs and then he gets

countries to lower it but they don't lower it to below what it was before he started the

stupid tariff war so there is zero benefit

to raising tariffs tariffs cannot be used and are not used and haven't been used

as far as I know in history to get other countries to lower tariffs to zero

there's no example of that I mean the way we've lower tariffs to zero is by negotiating

which is not ideal because my view the idea is just to unilaterally lower tariffs to zero

but for example we got together with Mexico and Canada and we basically lower tariffs to zero for

95 percent of all the trade between those three countries and then Trump came around and

undid most of that we were in negotiations with lowering tariffs to close to zero with lots of

other countries now again I don't believe you need those negotiations because the ideal trade

policy is unilateral zero tariffs

but tariffs are not negotiating tools they're taxes

I'll shoot myself in the foot in order to get you to stop shooting yourself in the foot

usually what happens is I shoot myself in the foot you in retaliation shoot yourself in the

knee I shoot myself in the knee in retaliation for that and on it goes until we both done real harm

to each other's economy to our own economies and to each other's economies so the fact that other

countries tariff is gives you zero reason to tariff yourself tariffs are taxes on your own people

taxes when they buy something from overseas I buy something from Mexico I pay a tariff that is unique

to the stuff I buy from Mexico the tariff might be different when I buy stuff from Europe

so it makes no sense it just makes no sense to respond to other people's tariffs with tariffs

now you might say wait a minute but our industries are disadvantaged in the United States for example

because other countries subsidize their industries and we don't believe in subsidizing although

in the United States we subsidize a lot of our industries we just look at farming for example

we huge subsidies for farming we

but generally we don't subsidize they subsidize we need tariffs in order to level the playing field

we need to tax our own people we need to force our own people to pay higher prices for the imported goods

so that our domestic industry has a chance because the reason those imported goods are cheap

is because their country is subsidizing it but again

why not just take the cheaper goods if another country is once the subsidize their own industries

why why shouldn't we just take advantage of that now again it is true some people will lose their jobs

some into some companies will go out of business but everybody else benefits because everybody else

is buying cheaper goods and every time the government steps in trying to protect one group and

not protect another group and so on it only distorts the economy so the fact that in China there's

subsidizing goods is destructive to the Chinese economy we know that that's why we don't subsidize

in America do less subsidies in America we're subsidizing more and more with every year

why would we again respond to a bad policy from another country with a bad policy of our own

all of that is lose lose lose lose lose so if somebody else is producing stuff cheaply because

it's subsidized well who are the Chinese the Chinese government is really subsidizing American consumers

American consumers benefit which means they have they save money which means they have more money

to invest in other things which means the United States can focus on its comparative advantage

individuals here can invest in where they have comparative advantage and create wealth and buy

cheap stuff from China because the Chinese government stupidly is subsidizing us why would we turn

down a gift so you don't do bad things to your own economy in response to other countries

governments doing bad things to their own economy it just it doesn't make any

economic sense and it doesn't make any sense politically because you're violating your own

citizens individual rights I want to benefit from the fact that China subsidizing this company

by buying cheap stuff from them why is it anybody why is it the government's business

why is it my neighbor's business why is it anybody's business

and

aim 1000 Japan and South Korea did not have 25% tariffs before Donald Trump took office in

you know last year check your premise check the numbers what was the average tariff in Japan and South

Korea on American goods in 2024 that's chat GPT

all right we can do that what was average tariff in Japan on US goods in 2024

all right it was 2.4% for non-agricultural goods and it was 11.9% for agricultural goods so what has

happened since Trump's tariffs is that the tariff has gone up to 15% it was significantly 2.4%

on average it says here let's see according to World Trade Organization to the

Japan's simple average most favored nation applied tariff rate across all products was about 3.7%

so now it's 15 so Trump's tariffs have caused Japan to increase tariffs on America from 3.7% to 15%

sorry but that's how tariffs work it's not a surprise tariffs don't lower tariffs

EU tariffs were something like 3% on American goods and now they're higher because Trump raised tariffs

on you you goods coming in this is the thing about that you have to realize Trump is a liar

I know this is a shock to many of you but in this is not TDS it's just a fact Trump is a liar he lies

all the time and he's light to you about tariffs his tariffs have not lowered tariffs on US goods

they've increased tariffs in US goods this is why the trade deficit last year was the same in 2025

as it was in 2024

it didn't change because tariffs don't reduce the trade deficit

they just distort prices and they create missellocations of capital and they make the economy

less productive less efficient overall it's reality and by the way anytime you think about

these things anytime Trump says anything just go to chat GPT and check and chat GPT could be lie

but you can check it with Claude and you can you can cross references and you can find the data

aim 1000 said thanks for the info when you write you write the thing is aim 1000 is I'm almost

always right almost I mean I'm wrong sometimes I admit it but on the big stuff I'm right and it's

it's about time you guys realize that it's like how many times can I be right before you

grant me the benefit of the doubt I don't know all right two more issues I want three more issues

I want to cover quickly God we're running out of thinking huge amounts I guess nobody's asking

questions on PayPal so I can close the PayPal here so William is not asking a question on PayPal

so let me add you know three three more issues that we need to cover one people argue still

that tariffs are going to replace the income tax so if we raise tariffs we can get rid of

the income tax and isn't that better he has the thing about that today the government spends

about 22% of GDP it used to be 3.5 to raise tariffs to the level where they can cover 22% of GDP

or not 22% of GDP just a portion of income tax that's assume it's not replacing all of the taxes

only the income tax I can't remember what percentage of that is income tax but it's high

you'd have to raise tariffs to well over 100% I think it's 130%

so for tariffs to replace the income tax you'd have to raise tariffs to about 130%

now if you raise tariffs to 130% people won't buy the goods because they'll be more than double the price

and if people don't buy the goods then there's no revenue for the government

so it is literally mathematically impossible and I'm not exaggerating this is the reality

to replace the income tax with tariffs that higher the tariffs go the less we import the less we

import the less revenue there is and if we have to raise the tariffs even further to catch up

with income tax but then the less importation there is so it is mathematically impossible

to replace income taxes with tariffs it's reality sorry now you could replace the income tax with

the sales tax because there's so many goods that sell in the United States I mean trade is small

I have some stats so our economy is 30 trillion 30.6 trillion in 2025 that's the size of the economy GDP

gross domestic product 30.6 trillion trade of goods and services is about 4.3 trillion

so it's what 12% 11% of GDP it's not big enough to tax to generate enough income to replace the income

tax but if you if you tax all sales in America or if you had a vat of how you had a tax you could

replace the income tax but then you wouldn't be discriminating imported goods from domestically

produced goods but nobody is proposing that nobody's proposing a sales tax I wish they were it

makes a lot more sense than what we have what happened here whoops what did I do what did I do

all right what happened there okay so that's what about ensuring manufacturing now one of the

ideas you raised tariffs it becomes very expensive to import stuff so people stop importing but

they still want the stuff that they that they were importing so now people will invest in domestic

manufacturing to produce the same stuff and they can produce it at a cheaper cost than the

foreign stuff plus the tariff that's the idea of ensuring now first tariffs have to be pretty high

for that to happen because it's expensive to produce stuff domestically because of our labor

costs because of our regulations because of how expensive it is to do anything in the United States

so tariffs have to be high for that to do to justify it second there has to be a certain

predictability instability and confidence that the tariffs will be there forever for capitalists

to invest capital to build stuff that replace imports because if the tariffs go away after four

years then suddenly they will be the new factories that they build will go out of business because

the stuff the foreigners will start importing again exporting it again at much cheaper rates

so the reality is that and given that certainty about tariffs given the volatility in

tariffs given Trump changes his mind every few days nobody's investing in building factories

in the United States to replace the goods that have been tariffed all that's happening is people

are buying less of those goods and they're taking the hits and they're paying more money for them

that's why the government has received tariff revenue increased tariff revenue because people

actually buying the imported stuff at a higher price that higher price reflects the taxes

so it will not ensure manufacturing because of the uncertainty and because tariffs are

just not high enough they would have to be much higher to ensure it now it's much more likely

that what will happen is you'll get a what's called a tariff arbitrage what will happen is

manufacturing will move from high tariff locations to low tariff countries and will import them from

the lower tariff countries instead of what we used to import from the high tariff countries

but the likelihood that they actually come back to the United States is close to zero and indeed

what we saw last year was a net loss to manufacturing not in an increase we did not see any

increases to manufacturing in the United States because of tariffs tariffs hurt manufacturing

because they heard exports they hurt manufacturing because they heard the standard of living

of Americans and therefore demand by Americans and therefore it drops

okay finally the only legitimate argument you can make about tariffs but it's not legitimate

is national security the sudden industries we need to protect in the United States

because in a national security in a war we need to be able to produce at home

tariffs are not a way to do that tariffs are not a way to do that if you tariffs semiconductors

coming from Taiwan you will not create an American chip industry microchip micro process industry and

if you do it'll be very expensive and very inefficient and very unproductive

that is not the way to secure national security

manufacture for that you need to come up with it with a with a plan a strategy

and how to encourage friend-shoring how to encourage production in friendly territories

or if it has to be in the United States how does the defense department guarantee

that stuff is made in America by having forward contracts by paying above market prices

by paying companies to build manufacturing facilities and mothballing them

there are a lot of ways in order to do it

we have Intel already building out their phone read to produce advanced chips

have you seen Intel's financial statements have you seen how badly Intel is performing

have you seen the fact that nobody wants to buy Intel chips because they're expensive and they're not

very good have you seen the fact that even the advanced chips at Intel's building can't compete

with two nanometer chips coming up from TSMC

Intel is incompetent has been incompetent for a long time it should go bust it should go bankrupt

it should stop making chips in the United States because it's not good at it

maybe somebody an entrepreneur can figure out how to make chips in the United States and be good at it

but nobody's gonna allocate capital to them because right now the government is subsidizing Intel

it's picked the winners and losers and it's picked a bad company as the winner

just check out Intel stock price recently and check out its latest financial statements

and check out the history of Intel and its cognism really since the 1980s

the only reason for tariffs the only thing tariffs

you know facilitate is cognism you can see that with the Trump administration the Trump

administration is hypercogni they sell goodies they give exclusions to the companies they

manipulate the tariff policies to favor some industries the expensive other industries

a complete cognism that is the one outcome that we've gotten from tariffs nothing good

nothing good comes from tariffs it's just the tax and those of us who believed in freedom

generally generally believe that taxes are bad their violations of rights they

they distort the economy and the fewer taxes the better the lower taxes the better and tariffs

were really really really low in America before 2016 before Trump was elected and they had been

declining globally for decades we were really approaching a period we were approaching a period

of free trade really free trade where barriers were dropping China was a reduced tariffs dramatically

over the last 20 years and had reduced non-tariff barriers to trade not our barriers to trade or tariffs

but that was true everywhere around the world it wasn't perfect it was far from perfect

but the direction was the right direction we were moving towards freer and freer and freer trade

Trump has caused the United States at least to reverse that direction trade with the United

States today is the least free it is being since World War II

the rest of the world might still embrace free trade as they trade with one another

but the United States has now creed in an island of inefficiency lack of productivity caused by

trade barriers

all right aim 1000 you can ask a question in the in the super chat if you want me to answer that

but you're basically wrong and you're basically wrong about intel and you're wrong about the

strategy and you're wrong about the optimal strategy of how to make sure we have chips for an

emergency the last thing you want is to rely on intel which has not proved its capabilities and

there are strategies that the US government could engage in in securing chips in the United States

and indeed the two foundries two companies that produce chips in the United States for the

defense department that are not intel and maybe they should be producing more chips but

subsidizing intel and is by far the wrong strategy and taking our equity stake in intel as a

disaster all right I know I keep answering aim I shouldn't I shouldn't I should ignore him

all right uh that is trade now what I'm going to do now is I'm going to look at the super chats

and see take all the questions about trade then I'm going to do some some reviews and then I'll

finish up the questions whatever questions exist beyond that all right uh let's start with Jennifer

pro-tariff arguments trade deficit bad dependence on hostile nations for necessary goods

destroying manufacturing jobs retaliation for tariffs put on us that's all the stupid arguments

I can think of okay let's see trade deficit bad trade deficits uh I didn't talk about trade

deficits I should so thank you for asking that Jennifer trade deficits how can trade deficits

be bad I mean I have a massive trade deficit with the grocery store I uh I go to grocery store and

I spend my money there and the grocery store never does a super chat never does a super chat so I

never get my money back from the grocery store now does that mean I'm worse off a better off

if I have a trade deficit with the grocery store I traded with the grocery store I gave them

money and I got stuff I'm better off they're better off that's the whole point of win win

now when you're talking about international trade it is true that when I buy something from

Mexico they now have dollars and when they want to go buy stuff in Mexico they can't use those

dollars so what do they do well they have to either buy stuff from from an American

using those dollars or they have to invest in America by a bond by a stock store by stuff by

real estate in America so the reality is that trade deficits are offset by investment subpluses

there's an a massive surplus of investment in America

because every dollar that some foreigner has because he sold something to an American and got

a dollar in exchange every one of those dollars comes back to America typically as an investment

some of the dollars are spent on importing on our exports but there's an imbalance right there's

trade deficit the gap about a trillion dollars is following investment in the United States

so trade deficits don't matter because the dollars flow back to the US and let's say the

Mexicans doesn't want to buy anything from the US but he needs to buy I don't know he needs to buy

I was going to say gasoline but they have plenty of oil in Mexico so he needs to buy copper from

Chile so he uses the dollars to buy Chilean copper because the dollar is used for international

trade now the Chilean has the dollar the Chilean needs oil so he gives the dollar to the Saudi

and he gets the oil now the Saudi has a dollar he buys American

stocks with their dollar and the dollar is back in the US that's how trade on a global scale happens

and it's wine by the way that dollars used as the as the kind of currency it's because everybody has

them because they're all selling stuff to the US they all have dollars and yet they have to in a

sense get rid of those dollars stay might as well use it for trade among each other and the

dollars relatively stable and they trust the political system in the US at least they used to

and therefore the dollars used for most global trade but the dollars all flow back to the US

so trade deficits don't matter dependence on hostile nations for necessary goods that's a

necessary security issue and yes we should think about are they goods that we have to produce in

the United States and if they are then we need to find strategies by which to make those goods in

the United States but national security is way way way overused as an excuse just notice that

tariffs on furniture are justified by national security tariffs on cars automobiles justified by

national security but if we find a good let's say rare earth materials then what we need to do is

deregulate the mining business deregulate land ownership deregulate the ability to build

manufacturing plants that can produce the mining and then the the the defense department can then

companies that own the mines and owner of finding capabilities and say we'll buy

X amount of this rare earth material for the next 10 years at 20% over market prices

and that is a subsidy in a sense but that is a way in which you're now creating an incentive

for capital to flow in for people to produce the people to create for competition to arise

and yes the government will be overpaying for the next 10 years but now you'll have a domestic

industry that's producing that rare earth material that you actually need for national security

reasons it's just like when we buy f-15s the government is overpaying for f-15s

they have to otherwise nobody's going to invest in f-16s f-35s f-16s or whatever it is

there's no we're not going to rely on international competition to build our weapons systems

so we overpay for the weapons systems knowing we're overpaying but knowing that we have to buy

them domestically anything that we have to buy literally have to proven through national security

strategy overpay make long-term commitments and you'll see capital flowing into that industry to

produce the thing that you need destroying manufacturing it's true that foreign competition

can destroy a particular industry in the United States but it does so by lowering prices

by making it more efficient and thus by improving the quality of life and standard of living

of Americans it's just like what would happen if in another state let's say you know you're

earning an auto factory in Michigan and in somebody opens up a auto factory that's much more

productive much more efficient and doesn't use what do you call it union labor in South Carolina

well some auto companies in Michigan will have to close some factories because they can't

compete should we ban that should we ban competition well now we're just expanding competition

across the oceans which is great more division of labor more specialization yes more what

Schumpeter called creative destruction but creative destruction is a net net positive win win

ultimately and that creates more jobs not less jobs higher paying jobs not lower paying jobs wages

have gone up with globalization not down and the number of jobs has gone up not down the number

of jobs in manufacturing has gone down but that's mostly because of automation we still many

factor a lot in the United States in spite of globalization and we make more money because

we have focused on the things we're particularly good at comparative advantage

all right the rest I think I have covered thank you Jennifer Adam by USA why not just by only

from your state your city your neighborhood of course we wouldn't be better off time to revisit

objectivist island yeah yes I mean absolutely it is no logic in buy USA you should buy

the best cheapest highest quality for the price product you can buy because it's in yourself

interest to do so and you shouldn't care where it's made indeed as Harry Benzwanger writes in his

essay on buy America is un-American if you buy because something's made in America and not because

something's the best quality per dollar spent you are being un-American because you're being

sacrificial for the sake of the states for the sake of I don't know some some buy USA mythology

by the best at the best price and that's true of buy USA it's the whole we now have buy local why

why I want to buy the best you know there's so many things are if you bought local you would never

buy a computer never buy chip microprocessor you wouldn't buy anything with microprocessors

because almost none of you live in a locality when microprocessor built

and that's good because building microprocessors needs economies of scale

West thank you for the 50 bucks really appreciated I never understood how other countries are

supposed to pay the tariffs I mean how does the US government collect the tariff from a Chinese

company it's obviously obvious someone in the US has to pay the tariff yes that's another myth

about tariffs that somehow foreign countries pay the tariff now here's how theoretically it would

work but they wouldn't pay anything they would just eat it so the idea is they so want to sell

their stuff in the US that what they do is they reduce the price by the amount of the tariff

so that American consumers don't pay any higher price they paid the same price they did before

the tariff but now a certain percentage of that price goes to the US government as the tax

and while the and the US consumers know worse off it's just the Chinese company is getting less money

and the US government is getting more money that's the theory and it's works right it works

if foreign companies eat the tariff prices for US goods don't increase

it's just the recipient of what you pay changes from the Chinese company to now the Chinese

company plus the government but the reality is they can't profit margins on most of these goods

are very small and suddenly you're increasing the cost by 15% and you expect them to eat that

and you're increasing the 15% on all the competitors as well

so they're not going to eat it they're going to make the consumer eat it which is exactly what

happens and we saw last year that the effective tariff that US consumers are paying

in a sense of higher prices it was 7.6% last year it'll be over 10% this year because it's

rolling in now with the change in tariffs as of yesterday or as a Friday we'll see how it actually

works and what it actually works out to be but there's literally I mean so that's how West

that's how Trump can credibly argue the foreigners pay it because prices don't go up

and then the foreigner but they get less money for the product because the taxes has to be paid

out of that price so they're eating it but the reality is that that's not happening and it never

does happen when tariffs go up it's the consumer that eats it because profit margins are not

high enough for businesses to eat the tariff foreign businesses to eat the tariff Chinese companies

barely make any money on the stuff they sell Americans if we leave it more capitalism the belief

that man cannot decide it is the idea that collective or king is above the individual it is

collectivism the denial that man needs to think to negate man as man bad economics is just the

consequences yes I mean every time the government is intervening in the economy it is a reflection

of a belief that you as an individual shouldn't in a sense cannot make decisions for yourself

that there is some central planner there's somebody up in government who is better qualified

better equipped to make decisions for you and therefore any time any government intervention

in the economy whether it's mercantilist or otherwise is there a fraction of a a philosophical

system that denies you agency denies you the ability to make decisions for yourself

and it's it's a implicit acceptance of a philosophy that says you are not capable of

not competent to or don't have the right to make decisions for yourself and that's true of tariffs

as well the government is going to decide whether you should import stuff and buy stuff from China or not

let's see

Gail says well you mean to say the tariffs don't add billions and billions to the make an economy

no they do add billions to government because there are tax that's been raised and we pay that

tax and therefore the government has higher revenues and that is not good that is raising taxes

never mean good if you want to close the deficit which we all should want not the trade deficit

which is irrelevant but the government deficit which is very relevant that is that the government

spends much more than it takes in the way to do that is by cutting spending not by raising taxes

Republicans always used to understand that but now with tariffs they advocate for raising

taxes actually it's not true Republicans always used to understand it but Republicans have

always been the political party of tariffs going back the 19th century Republicans were the ones

who were pro tariffs Democrats were the ones who are anti tariffs that's true through most of

American history with exception of the late 20th century where Democrats were pro tariffs and

Republicans were anti tariffs until Trump

um

let's see

um

uh

Simon says why does the US President or government have any say in economics or trade

between individuals or companies, or because we haven't restricted them from having that say.

We don't recognize economic rights the same as we do other kinds of rights.

We have granted the government the power to intervene in our lives when it comes to economics

in a big way. And our economic rights have not been protected at all.

That's just that's true of trade, but that's true of all the regulations and taxes and so on.

Plus we have a huge government that has to fund itself in some way.

And therefore we have approved them to tax us, which is a clear violation of our rights.

It's the amendment to constitution that allows the income taxes, an example of that.

But as you can see, as devil's advocate, the problem isn't trade.

It's Trifan's dilemma, which the US is required to run persistent deficits to keep international

trade running. That's just not true, right? International trade can still run even if the

United States has a balanced trade. It just means that the dollars flow back to the United

States in the form of purchasing American goods. So there's just no, now there's nothing wrong

with deficits. So running a deficit in order to facilitate lots of dollars out there in

the world is fine. Although the reality is, again, the dollars all come home in the form of

either buying from the United States perspective exports or in the form of investments.

One way or the other, the dollars come home. Let's see if there's any other

that's how to understand the argument.

All right, Philippa says it's hard to understand the argument of national security for tariffs.

You have says, US has plenty of dollars and it can buy and stock ready-made stuff for future use.

Absolute. And the US produces a lot of stuff. And in time of walking shift production, very quickly.

And the United States has more manufacturing capacity, capabilities today than ever in its history

with less labor, but that's because of automation. But it has the manufacturing capabilities.

So yes, the national security argument is a bogus argument.

National nature observer says, I don't think there's any national leader who thinks the tariffs

are wrong in principle. They do trade deals only to make trade stable of, quote, fair example.

Connie does this. Yes, I agree. There is no national leader. Maybe with the exception of

Millay, who at least understands this, whether he's willing to implement it or not, we'll see.

But there's not who understands the tariffs are wrong in principle, but they are wrong in principle.

Because there are no national leaders out there willing to give up the power that tariffs give them.

That's the reality.

Steven says, would you command, command Roberts, command Roberts for his clear and logical writing?

Did you understand EPA versus West Virginia? Can you explain that case?

And how would the first from learning? Well, we're not going to do that now because it's not

related to tariffs. Yeah, I mean, Roberts did a good job. Again, I think Corsuch did a better job.

I think Corsuch is an argument. But I haven't read Roberts in detail yet.

Roberts came to the right decision. So good for Roberts.

And his decision is clear and short, 21 pages. That's an achievement. It's a good frame.

All right, let's do some song reviews.

And then I'll go back to your questions and finish up the superchats.

So you can keep asking superchats questions. By the way, we've only raised half of what we

should be raising because we're in the second hour. We're probably going to go into a third hour.

We're way behind on the fundraising. So not good.

Not good. Last few days we've been last few days have been short on

contributions on the superchats. So it would be great if some of you picked it up a little bit.

All right, let's see. I'm looking for. Okay, so let's start with first song is called the

Let the Bad Times Roll. This is from John. John Glude, Let the Bad Times Roll. It's the

Offsprings 2021 hit Let the Bad Times Roll. This is kind of a what would you call a

satirical song. It's kind of upbeat music and it's playing off Let the Good Times Roll.

And this is like the Bad Times Roll. But it's got that same upbeat music as if it's about the

Good Times. But it's really criticizing kind of what's going on in the world. And it's

primarily criticizing kind of the world and the Trump and kind of what happened

under the Trump presidency. There's direct references to Trump in the song.

It's kind of a fun beat and a fun melody. It's again upbeat and crazy. Oh, baby,

let the Bad Times Roll, Machiavelli flow. Hey, Lincoln, how does your grave roll?

I'd give Lincoln rolling in his grave given what's happening here.

There's some direct references to kind of Trump. So Mexicans and Blacks and Jews

got it all figured out for you. Gonna build a wall. Let's decide apathy or suicide.

I think the you know, this apathy and suicide keeps coming back. It's the idea that you have

a choice. You can either commit suicide, which is basically vote for Trump or the status quo.

Nothing changes, which is what the alternative is. And the passion

is on the side of suicide. And the apathy is on the side of the status quo. And you know,

that the bad times roll, the bad times of rolling is a consequence. So

well, don't think we're crazy, crazy. When you see all the hell we're raising, it's

it is. It's a fun song. You know, I like that. I wouldn't listen to it again. I don't think

but it's got a nice beat. It's it's it's got a nice uplifting. And again, it's it's cynical and

critical of of what is what is happening. Let me see if there's something else I wanted to say.

It became a major rock hit. It's up billboard mainstream rock charts. It's all about political

disillusionment. It's a reflection on kind of world leaders giving up, unsolving crisis. That's

the apathy. So the people who are doing stuff are suicidal. The people who are apathy have given

up. And that's the best we can hope for is they're given up because the others are suicidal. It's

Machiavellian, right? Machiavellian flow is in the lyrics. Again, direct references to 2016

election. Do it. Oh, there's a reference to locker up. Where's the locker up? There's a direct

reference to locker up here. So direct references to Trump. Yeah. Now it was all a lie, but that

bitch won't get in my way. Keep shouting. What I like, locker up, locker up. Now that's a good

one. I got to say. So clearly a song that is reflection of reflecting on Trump and his way.

I enjoyed the music. I guess it's in its own way a protest song. I don't know how effective it

is at a protest song. You know, the upbeat positivity of the melody and the beat

crash with the with the with the cynical downbeat, let the bad times roll, lyrics of the song.

But that's kind of what I guess makes it makes it fun and somewhat interesting.

All right. Second song is no doubt. No doubt. It's my life. It's my life. So it's my life is an

older song, which was it was a song by Talk Talk in 1984. And it was re, you know, it was done by

no doubt with what's the name? Agli Loa singing the lead in it. This one is again, it's a beat,

fast, melodic, very, it has an 80 sound to it, even though this particular version was done in

in the early 2000s, I think, or maybe the 90s. But it's got that 80, 80 feel to it. Gwen Stefani,

sorry, not Agli Loa, Gwen Stefani. So it's sung by Gwen Stefani. She has a good voice. And you know,

it's got it's got that beat melodic and very, you know, a live kind of a beat to it.

Again, it's got this in spite of the kind of positivity of the sound, the melody, the beat.

It's a pretty downer of a song. It's my life. But it's my life, which is being, you know,

people are screwing over. And you know, so it's a, I'm standing up for myself. This is a woman

standing up for herself. But one that is, it's in defiance of other people trying to screw me over.

So it's a very defiant song. Certainly the music video has a femme fatale character killing

three different men in it. It's not clear what the men have done to her. But she murders all three.

And then she's in the music video she has executed for it. But it's a, it's got a feel good.

And again, the music video contradicts the feel good. Like she's killing people and she gets

killed herself by the authorities. She's on trial. But it's like I stand up in your face.

I'm going to do it again. It's fun. It's, it's, it's, it's got a candy quality to it in terms of the,

the, the music, but it's, you know, it's not a, it's not a song that, it's not a song you're going to,

I think, when dislikes, it's just not particularly interesting. I don't find it that particularly

interesting. You know, oh, it's my life. Don't you forget. It's my life. It never ends. It never

ends. It never ends. But then she's being executed. I guess it doesn't. Funny how I blind myself.

I never knew I was sometimes played upon afraid to lose. Oh, I'd let myself, I'd tell myself,

what good do you do? Convince myself. It's, it's about putting yourself down and it's standing

up for yourself. It's my life. Don't you forget. It's my life. It never ends. It never ends.

So it's got this conflicted character who's, who's been used and abused and let herself be

used and abused and then decides to stand up for herself in, in spite of that. So kind of,

again, a mixture between, and a, a bit of a contradiction between, I think, the music and the actual

theme. But very 80s upbeat, cute. Again, I would never listen to it more than once. It's like candy.

You know, you taste it and it's fine and it's good, but it leaves no, no lasting impression.

It's not, it's not going to stay with me. All right. Here's a song that is not candy.

This is called Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Song by Youngblood. So this is Hello,

Hello, Song by Youngblood. It's a nine minute song. Very atmospheric. It's got a very melodic,

very pretty, beautiful beginning. It then gets very angry and, and, and, and, you know,

the singer's yelling and anti melodic and it ends again on a very kind of soft, soft note.

It's hard to tell what it's really about, just from the lyrics. You know, it's, it's, it's not

clear. Is he talking to, is he talking to God? Is he talking to his past? Is he talking about

the future? What does he actually want? Then it goes into this anger. You know, since I was a

little boy, I devised a windmill gateway. They kicked me in the mud and they told me that's the price

you pay. So it's very, again, somebody's got beaten up and kicked around and he's angry and he's

going to, he's going to move into the future in spite of that and he's going to succeed in spite of

that. I mean, I think it's interesting musically. I like songs that change in mood and don't have one

just, just simple story to tell, but it has actually a change and a, and a fluctuation, which

this definitely does. You know, it, it, you know, supposedly the, the hello, there's a lot of

hello, hello, hello, hello, repeated in the song. Supposedly that as a double meaning, it's

agreeing to his future and it fell well to his past self. So a lot of this is a dialogue with

this past self. There's a line one step into heaven, but first you'll go to hell and back. That's

repeated a number of times. This symbolizes the painful processes of supposed self reclamation,

self moving forward and and and and give, you know, stepping out of the past and moving forward

and achieving. So it's got a certain positivity instead of moving forward. I'm not going to be dragged

down by Mac past. I'm not going to be dragged down by the bad things people have done to me.

There's a hello, are you out there? Do you know me? Do you love me? Do you hate me?

Uh, this is this is kind of the opening lines. This is again, vulnerability. Is he talking to who's

he talking to exactly? It's not clear. Maybe he's talking to himself, which is probably the, the,

the most likely thing. And again, trying to move forward, maybe he's talking to the audience.

There's a chance I won't see you tomorrow. So I will spend today saying hello.

Um, and this is in the, uh, in an acoustic kind of midsection. Um, I don't know if I can make it,

but I know it's how I feel. So again, emotional driven, driven forward,

but acknowledging kind of a painful past. And it's an interesting song. Again, I don't particularly

like it. And you guys, you know, you, you know, you choose music. I don't particularly like.

You know, you really have to dig to figure out the meaning of the lyrics. And it's, it's hard to

completely sympathize. Again, I like the chain of tone. I like the change of music, the change of

pace in between. If you're going to do a nine minute song, you'd better have variation in it.

As a voice, I like it more when it's, uh, when it's soft and, and melodic with an acoustic less

when he's yelling or, or, or, or angry, uh, but rock is angry. I mean, rock,

been havently is, is, is, is angry. All right. Um, for one more song, let's see, this is, um,

nefax. Nef, this is winning by nefax. I don't know what nefax win. Nefax. Now, supposedly nefax has been

influenced by objectivism. Somebody said, and you can see in a song, the lyrics, uh, there's some

lyrics here that, that, that, that, um, uh, sound like they've been influenced, uh, the second line.

So here's the, the first part of the song. I, I, I can feel the blood creeping up from the

heathens. Got will, got fight, got pride, got reason, got reason, got reason.

Um, if you want to go eat, then you know I'm going to feed them. If you're coming for me,

hope you're ready for a demon. So this is some kind of like an anthem. This is like standing

up for yourself. It's very much sung. I don't know what would you call the style, uh, wrap. Uh,

I don't know. I, I don't know the, the, this is not my kind of music. And I don't particularly,

I don't particularly like it. I, I don't like the, the singing, but it's, it's, it's resilience

against hardship. It's self-reliance and discipline. It's like, I can do this. I'm, I have a competitive

edge. I'm thinking long term. I've got reason. You know, I've got fight. Uh, I've got pride. Uh,

it's very much a standing up for yourself. And I guess you guys like these kind of songs,

because that's a theme. It seems like, um, I can feel the blood creeping up from the heathens.

I can feel the blood creeping up from the, have it, heathens, got well, got fight, got will,

got fight, got pride, got reason, got pride, got reason. If you want to go eat, if you want to go

eat, then you know, I'm going to feed him. I don't know what that means. If you coming for me,

if you're coming for me, hope you're ready for a demon, right? So this is, I'm going to,

I'm going to beat you. I'm, I can be a demon. So I don't know. I, not my music. I don't like it.

It's, it's no, uh, melody. It's all rhythm, right? No melody, no harmony. Just rhythm, rhythm,

rhythm, uninteresting. Um, it's, it's like, maybe it, maybe it stands up as poetry. And I'm not

an expert on poetry. Maybe there's poetry here, but there's no music here. It's not musical,

in my view. So I can't really relate to it. But I get, you know, I, I do find it interesting

that somebody would say, got reason in a song like this. It's, because nothing in the lyrics,

other than got reason, suggest reason. Everything else is about emotion. So it's almost like a

gratuitous thing there, because he's been influenced by objectives and say, no, he knows he has

to be poor reason or something like that. All right. Finally, um, finally, uh, there is, uh,

a philosophy at work asked me to review the academic festival overture by Brahms,

which is a 10-minute piece by Brahms written in, I think, in 1880. I think it's in 1880.

I, uh, and, uh, in particular, uh, there's, uh, there's a famous performance of this piece by, um,

by, um, Leonardo Boonestein, who is one of the great conductors of the 20th century. Not one of

my favorites, but a great, still a great conductor of the 20th century. Um, this is a beautiful piece.

This is my music. This is the music I love. Um, it's supposed to be, this is, uh, uh, a piece of

music written by Brahms for university in, um, in, in, in thanks for the fact that they gave him an

honorary doctorate. But it's not the kind of piece the university probably expected, because

it is a piece that basically takes drinking songs, kind of German university drinking,

pub drinking songs. I think four of them, and weaves them together into an orchestral 10-minute

piece. Um, it's, it's got this tension between being a little formal and, and a little, um, um,

standoffish and revelatory and a drinking, right song. And you can see it in the way, there's a

video of, of, um, Boonestein conducted this, which I encourage you to watch. It's a lot of fun.

You can see it in the way he conducts the parts where he's, he's holding the orchestra back,

you know, he was strained, and then they go all wild. And that's more of the drinking stuff.

And it's, um, it really is a joyous and interesting piece. I mean, this is what great music is

like. It has, it evokes a number of different emotions. It, it changes peace. It's got different

melodies, you know, weaving one into the other. Um, it, it is just a, it's entertaining.

It's only 10 minutes. It's entertaining, but it's, it's, it's, it's, it's driven. It evokes strong

emotions. It's complex. The fact that you've got a whole orchestra means that you can elicit,

a whole variety of different sounds out of them. There's the wind instruments and the violins and

basses and the, it, it really is a fun piece. I encourage you to watch it 10 minutes. If you're

not into classical music, this is a, a good piece to, you know, one of many to introduce yourself

to it, particularly if you watch the video. Um, and it's, it's, it's, it's not a, not a bad way

to, to get a little, a little piece of it. Um, yeah, I mean, people have identified the four

songs. You can, there are elements from, in, in the melody of all four songs that, uh, that, uh,

are included in there. It's called the academic festival overture, uh, which was a celebratory

orchestra work by Johann Brahms. Um, it's, uh, it was, uh, described by the composer as,

quote, boisterous potpourri of student drinking songs. Fun. All right. Those, uh, I think I'm,

I think I've done all the song reviews. If you have asked me to do a song review and I've,

it's, and I've not done it yet, then I'm missing it and you can have to remind me or send me

something to remind me about it. It's not on my list for some reason, uh, and it needs to be.

All right. It would be great if somehow we manage to bring in, um, about a hundred and fifty

dollars still to get to our, uh, two hour goal, nevermind a three hour goal. We've already passed two

hours. So we'd be good to get to the two hour goal. So, uh, please consider, you know, uh, uh, supporting

stickers are great because you don't have to think of a question and, and stickers at any amount

are really valuable. Jeffrey did a $20 sticker. Thank you, Jeffrey. Uh, exit did a sticker. Uh,

let's see who else did stickers up here. Julia, that I didn't think. Paul, thank you for the sticker.

Uh, Tony and, uh, the thumb, Catherine, free market capital. Thank you guys for the sticker.

I really appreciate it. Um, we still got a hundred over a hundred people watching. Uh, just

do a stick out, whatever, whatever you, you, you value the show or you could afford or what,

or the combination of the above and, uh, support the show in some way. And that just chips away at

the goal and it helps us fund the show because this show is only exists because of support from you.

Can't exist other ways. My time is, is dedicated to show rather than other stuff because you are

paying me. That's the way it is. All right, Michael, there's a two part question. Thank you, Michael.

Are people able to hold a Kantian epistemology because they don't really hold it because you can't.

It's just a game of moving words around, uh, for Gacha, whereas the people who gravitate towards

objectives and have actually attempted to apply different philosophies to really see what's

actually true. Well, I don't know, uh, what exactly you mean by the question. So the question is

not that clear. People hold the Kantian epistemology by default. They haven't really learnt to think.

They've been told that reality, um, maybe exists, maybe doesn't not to take it too seriously.

They haven't been taught Kant. They haven't been taught to Kantian epistemology.

They've been taught more likely skepticism. They've been taught not to trust their mind,

not to trust reality, not to particularly put any weighting on facts versus emotions.

But that's not because they've been taught a Kantian epistemology. Those are the consequences

of Kantian epistemology, ultimately, as filtered through many, many thinkers on the way.

Or they've been taught kind of postmodernism, which is, there is no absolute anything. There's

no real reality. There's, there's just, or they've been taught the kind of linguistic analysis.

Would play. So they've been taught all kinds of

weird defective philosophies that are basically undermined, they capacity to think.

So what that manifests itself in is primarily skepticism, emotionalism,

and inability to use their mind and inability and lack of interest in using their mind.

So again, it's not like people hold an epistemology. They don't, they hold a particular way of

using their minds. That has been shaped by views of epistemology that they've been,

and they've been taught this way of using their mind, or in this case, not using their mind.

And that's what they've absorbed and integrated, and that's how they live.

Thank you, Michael.

Paul Ferris, uh, finally live on YouTube. Intel is a corny company making it,

making its second hand, therefore inferior, because it does not have the pressure of competition,

competition to make a superior product, and to do tariffs, have a similar,

make a superior product, and do tariffs have a similar effect. Yes.

To have to do exactly the same thing, they protect domestic industries,

that they don't have an incentive to become more and more efficient.

They sit on their laurels because they know they're protected. Nobody's going to buy imported goods

because they're too expensive. They can raise prices almost at the level of the, the external

products plus the tariff, and they can stay inefficient and unproductive, and over time,

that becomes costified and becomes worse.

Intel is being subsidized and protected by the American government since the 1980s.

And while it's gone through bouts of innovation, like in the late 80s, early 90s,

it is mostly atrophied, and the innovation has been at TCMC, and not, or even at AMD,

Intel's competitor domestically, or at Nvidia. Think about the fact that Intel

completely missed AI chips. AMD did not. AMD is a competitor to the Nvidia. Nvidia dominates

that space, but all the innovative chip designs are made outside of Intel,

and all the innovative fabrication of chips is made outside of Intel. Intel is one of the

only companies in the world that does both design and fabrication, and that's not a good model.

That's a model that's been shown time and time and time again, not to be productive.

Not to be a good way of doing things.

So, but that's what tariffs do. They protect industries. In Intel's case,

going back to the 1980s, they had quotas and Japanese microprocessors coming in memory chips

in those days, coming into the United States in order to protect Intel.

And now the United States and the chip back gave them a huge subsidy, and now

Trump has taken a government has taken a 10% interest in Intel, which basically guarantees

it won't go bankrupt. So, you've got a massive misallocation of capital as a consequence.

And tariffs are just another form of intervention in economy,

another form in which you distort the economy, another form in which you create misallocations

or capital in the economy. So, they're just as destructive. Thank you, Paul.

All right, let's see.

Linda asked yesterday, but I didn't answer. What do you think about requiring politicians to be

educated? AOC comes to mind. I don't think it makes any difference. I mean, you've got very

educated politicians who are just as bad as aOC. AOC is not particularly bad.

The problem with politicians is not their miseducation. It's their philosophy, it's their

corruption, it's their lack of ability to think, it's their pragmatism, it's their selling out

to pressure groups. It's not that they don't know stuff. That can be fixed, but it's not like

AOC is open to being educated. And think about some of the more educated people there,

are just as bad as the less educated people. Like Elizabeth Warren is very educated.

Scott, she's a law professor. Doesn't help.

Catherine says, I hope you read with us, I meant essay in the members only show soon again.

I enjoyed reading them a singling. Yeah, I will. And by the way, we also did

selfishness without a self. If you missed that show, it's in the members section and you can

catch up with it over there. Let me just see something.

So Raphael says, I saw Benzo Guzoli's

triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas at the Louvre. I thought the main battle was against

Augustinian plateenism, but in the painting of Veronaise is defeated,

representing another form of Aristotle. It's quite possible, but what it could represent

is a shallow understanding of the whole thing, which means it really is

Christianity defeating Islam, rather than two Aristotelians battling it out.

And that wouldn't be surprising, right? Because the paints have probably didn't understand

the sense in which what made Aristotel, which made Aquinas and of Veronaise so significant,

was Aristotle. So I'm not surprised that they saw it in a most superficial way, which is

Augustine as a Christian, of Veronaise as a Muslim, it represents the victory of Christianity

over Islam. Now, remember that Aquinas read all of Veronaise, and he is much of his understanding

of Aristotle, comes from Veronaise. So the issue of Islam versus Christianity is insignificant

in the big picture. Lion, thank you. Does dissident and disjointed classical music reflect the

composer's negative sense of life? That is Schoenberg's Pyro-Luniel, or Shostakovich Kotet,

number eight? I mean, I think it's more than that. I think it reflects a rejection of reality,

in some sense, a rejection, certainly of, because it's not just, you can have a bad sense of

light, but it still produces beautiful music that's just dark and malevolent. This is worse than

that. This is rejecting beauty, it's rejecting the essence of music, it's creating non music,

in a sense. I think dissident and disjointed is non music, some of it borderlines a noise rather

than music. So I think it's much more than just a negative sense of life. It's an explicit

conscious rejection, a beauty, and yeah, I said this, of the essence of what music is and what

makes music. It's a rejection of melody, it's a rejection of harmony, it's a rejection of beauty.

Stephen says, in a voluntary tax system, can there be transaction fees or other kinds of fees

involved in selling your property? Yes, absolutely, to the extent that you needed registered with the

government, or you'd extend that the government needs to be a guarantor in some way or another,

then various fees and contracts on various types of contracts is a good way for the government

to be raising revenue. Yes, I think that's a major way in which the government raises revenue

in a voluntary tax system. Michael, do you know if Jeopardy's us as Red Rand a fan? I don't, but I

suspect he has. I suspect he's Red Rand, I don't know if he's a fan, but I'm pretty sure he's

Red Rand. Kiki is Adelson a trader for getting Pollard pardoned. No, any more than anybody else is

a trader for getting somebody pardoned. Pollard spied, but he spied for an ally that is a lot less

bad than spying for an enemy. And you know, Trump ponds people every day who've done worse

for this country than Pollard who've stolen your money, who've defrauded you on a massive scale,

you know, or who tried to overturn an election, January 6th. So all pardons, all the pardons that I've

seen have been, not all, almost all of them have been horrific and awful. Pollard is just one more

that you can add to the list, but not any worse than most of the pardons I've seen.

Stephen, how do you explain all the economists who sent a letter to Congress asking them to raise

the minimum wage? There were a lot of really bad economists, a lot of really bad economists who,

now some of them are willing to accept the trade off and the trade off is that some people make

more money and some people will never have a job. And since we have a welfare state,

they're willing to accept that some people remain on welfare and will never have a job. Those are the

least skill people's in our economy. And they're willing to take that trade off. I remember Janet

Yellen writing an op-ed basically acknowledging that trade off. And then coming out on the side

of, yeah, it's better to have a minimum wage than not one. Given a complete understanding of

the consequences, and I think these economists understand the consequences and are willing

to live with them. I think they're evil and wrong, but it's not that they don't get the economics.

They understand that raising the minimum wage reduces employment.

Blue sole, I was going to buy a trip to Puerto Vallarta in Mexico today. Good thing I didn't

with the violence today. What do you think Mexico does about the drug cartel problem?

Similar to El Salvador, love to show you one. No, they're not going to do El Salvador.

I mean, what they're doing is performative, what's called performative virtue signaling.

They're trying to keep the Trump administration at bay. This administration in Mexico is no

interest in taking on the drug cartels. It's too violent and too difficult for them.

And you know, most of the drug problems really in the United States, not in Mexico.

But the drug cartels do kill a lot of politicians and do are too powerful.

The Trump administration is making noises about maybe sending troops into Mexico or

drones or bombing Mexico or whatever. And let's Mexico does something about the cartels.

So Mexico seems to be doing some stuff. So today killed the leader of the most violence of the

cartels. And there's a consequences mass of violence erupted in parts of Mexico.

But you know, nothing, they're not going to do what El Salvador did.

And the cartels are not going anyway. The cartels will still exist tomorrow and in a year for

now and in five years. And as long as drugs are illegal, there will be cartels.

Stephen, would you comment, commend Roberts for his clear and logical writing? Yeah, I think he did

a good job. Did you understand EPA versus West Virginia? Can you explain that case and how it

differs from learning resources? I'll just say I'm not going to get into a whole analysis in it

for now. That would require a whole show and it would quite be in the legal expert. But the basic

idea is that the EPA doesn't get to make up the rules. That is that it can only do what Congress

told it to do. It cannot rely on its own experts to interpret the law. The law has to be clear

and set. That is, and judges have in a past because of Chevron, this is a 1980s case.

The courts were basically told to defer to the agencies in terms of interpretation of the law.

And what EPA versus West Virginia basically says is it brings the courts back in

to interpret the law and to basically see where the agencies are

going beyond what actual the law actually says and taking on more power than the law has actually

granted them. Real, real spark. Can you return tariff dollars by giving IRS tax credits?

No, because, well, maybe for some corporations, in corporate taxes, you could do something like

that, I guess, but it's not going to be too individuals. The other attorney tariffs the

individuals. The attorney tariffs that the companies who paid them and the individuals

are never going to see those, even though ultimately the individuals paid, because the companies

just rate prices on the individuals. So its exporters will basically build the government for it,

and the government will maybe through the taxes that may the other way will refund them the

tariffs. All right, Michael says, have you ever got a question during Q&A that has changed your

mind on a subject? No, I've got a lot of questions that have got me to think more deeply about

a question, but I can't remember any specific case where I actually changed my mind or something.

Maybe it's happened, but I can't remember. Real spark, Ukraine hit Russia missiles today.

Please comment. I can't because I don't know. I haven't seen it. Ukraine hits Russian missiles

on a regular basis. Ukraine is becoming much better at hooding Russia and attacking Russia,

so, but this particular one, I just don't know because I wasn't watching the news today,

because I wasn't about to do a news show today. So I didn't pay too much attention to

news this morning. It was busy doing other stuff. Whoops, what did I do? I tried to do something

and it didn't work one second. Give me a minute. Let's see. Ukraine hits Russian ballistic missiles,

producer, according to Kiev, Ukraine. Oh, this is the interesting thing. These are flamingo missiles.

These are ground-to-ground missiles produced by the Ukrainians, built by the Ukrainians.

They used the flamingo missiles to help a Russian plant manufacturing ballistic missiles in

Russia's remote southern region, which means quite a distance, 1400 kilometers, 800 miles.

So this is a proof of concept. They're proving their ability to use, they domestically produced

flamingo missile to hit deep into Russian territory. These are the kind of missiles the United

States has refused to sell the Ukrainians, and now they're producing them themselves, which is

pretty amazing. And they hit a factory that actually also produces Russian nuclear missiles. So

great, good for Ukrainians. It's a good step. It's a good move. And it shows how Ukraine has improved

and advanced its fighting capacity, and with the right support could actually defeat the Russians.

All right, let's, we're like $75 short of a goal, but just stickers now, because I don't have time

to answer questions, because I have a hard stop in like 10 minutes.

John says, there seem to be a growing movement against data centers. Have you been following this?

Yes, there is. It drives up a electricity cost because it uses so much power.

Supposedly, they use up a lot of water, so there's water constraints. And of course, there's just

an opposition to AI more broadly in this opposition to industrialization. And the opposition

of data centers comes both from the green left, from environmentalists and from MAGA, who is

very skeptical of AI. But it's not surprising. Anytime there's a big advance, anytime you actually

want to build manufacturing or any kind of other capacity in the United States, people push back

against you. This is part of the myth of the reindustrialization of America. Part of the reason

why we don't have a lot of manufacturing is because of the environmental regulations that were

passed because people objected to industrialization. Part of the reason we don't manufacture

rare earth materials in the United States, the entire reason we don't is because of regulations,

the restrict mining and restrict building factories to refine the rare earth materials.

So it's all self-inflicted. And that's what people kind of ignore.

Michael, instead of making home affordable, Mombani propose of stealing more from homeowners

through property taxes. Socialism at its finest. Yes, the property taxes go up. Rents will go up,

not down. Housing will become less affordable, not more. Of course, then owners of big apartment

buildings will go bankrupt. The city will take them over and it's a way for Mombani to nationalize

the stock of housing in New York City with all the disasters that will lead to.

Roman, should there be trade restrictions against countries with slave labor?

Not necessarily. You as an individual should not buy goods where you know the goods were made

by slave labor. It's something governments job to protect you and to prevent you from doing

something immoral. It's immoral to buy goods from slave labor. But that's your responsibility as

an individual not to do it, not the government's responsibility to protect you from yourself.

Michael, I noticed Indians are getting some of the same haters Jews. Yes, successful minorities.

Yet no other group have a larger net positive contribution to society. I don't know what a net

positive contribution to society is. That's kind of a collectivistic terminology that we don't

use in the Iran book show. They make a lot of money. Their net massive contributors to themselves.

And they're not a drain in the government. So yeah, they hate it just like the Jews, like any

successor minority has hated. They're different and they're successful, which breeds resentment and envy.

Stephen, thank you for the sticker. Paul, thank you for the sticker. Stephen has a last question.

Are there any sane and modern Islamic countries today? For that matter, any relatively sane and

right suspecting countries at all? No, I mean, they're better Islamic countries like Albania,

which is a dominantly Muslim, but very secular and a very secular government.

Bosnia is probably the same thing.

Kosovo, Azerbaijan is secular, but a dictatorship. Those are the ones at least three countries.

But no, there's no right suspecting country. Singapore may be to some extent, but not other

respects. There's no right suspecting in any kind of big way in the world today, sadly.

All right, everybody. Thank you. I appreciate it. After one, I will see you all tomorrow. We've got

two shows tomorrow, a new show early. It'll be at 12 p.m. Eastern time, 12 p.m. Eastern time.

And then I mean, if you're doing terrace Smith at 7 p.m. Eastern time, so terrace Smith,

tomorrow at 7 p.m. Eastern time, and a new show at 12 p.m. Eastern time. And thank you to all

the superchanners. Don't forget if you want to become a monthly supporter to check out Patreon.

And I guess I'll see you all tomorrow. Bye, everybody. Have a great rest of your weekend.