Government Shutdown; Lockdowns & Murder; Life Expectancy; Ukraine; Nuclear | Yaron Brook Show

productivity in. We will be doing a show I think tomorrow and a show in Hebrew on Sunday. So here in the Ivon Book Show we continue to plug along. There's no rest for the rest of the year. Jennifer's on vacation until the second. I'm moderately jealous. And yeah, So today we're going to talk about the government shutdown that might happen or might not happen. Who knows, right, I mean Twitter knows maybe Twitter nos, Twitter is insane

and Twitter knows all. We're talking about motivates, motivates. You guys love talking about motivates. Why do they spike in twenty twenty? What caused the spike? Now, there's a study which looks at detail kind of weekly daily motivates and has I think interesting answers as to what caused the spike. Actually, what caused the spike is exactly what I said caused the spike way back in twenty twenty twenty one, so I'm not surprised. But it's not the typical story that

you hear out there. Some good news. Life expectancy in the United States is going is improving slowly, not back to pre COVID levels, but improving slowly, shockingly. We'll talk about why a little bit, and then we'll talk a little bit about Ukraine. A bunch of news about Ukraine, trumpet Ukraine, and finally some good news on the nuclear power front. More good news on the Nuclear Power Fund. This seems to be good news coming constantly on the

nuclear power front. All right, Michael is off the Hell of Us out asking questions, So this is great. You two can join Michael and asking questions. That's what the super Chat it's foot So please a feel fee to jump in ask questions. That way you get to shape the show. I get to answer your question. Instead of talking about what I want to talk about, I get to talk about what you want to talk about action. Jackson says, mumbo rap wasn't the cause. How do you

know it wasn't the cause? Maybe it was. I haven't told you what the cause is. I don't even know what mumbo rap is. Is this such a thing as mumbo rap was? Action Jackson just making this shit up. I think he's making it up. So we kind of went through the whole evolution of this budget Continuing Resolution thing. We went through the whole thing yesterday. The drama just continues, as you know. I think it was breaking news during the show yesterday that the continued Resolution was not approved.

It was voted down basically becau there only two Democrats voted for it and thirty something Republicans voted against it, including Chip Roy from the great tech state of Texas. And Roy basically, you know, gave a great reason why. He said, he's just not voting for anything that is going to increase the president's ability to run deficits and

to increase spending. He is fine with raising the debt limit, raising the borrowing limit that the United States can get into if at the same time there's a real cut in spending, real cut in spending. Now it appears so that went down. If you remember, that was a continuing resolution plus the disaster relief, plus the farmers, but increasing the death ceiling basically by four trillion. Right, So today it appears the Speaker Johnson is going to ignore Donald Trump.

I assume Donald Trump is agreed to this to him, ignoring him, and is going to try to pass what's called a clean continued resolution. Right, It's still going to not be really clean in the sense that it would still it's still going to have the disaster relief and the farmer's stuff, but it's not going to have the increase in four trillion of US borrowing. And we'll see

if that passes. Just A Mash writes, the most of all remarkable thing is that a clean continuing resolution without a death ceiling suspension is the best bill they propose by far, yet it was the third option. Republican leaders are completely incompetent when it comes to strategy. And then he goes on to say, to be clear, I'd still vote no. I don't believe Congress should be spending at these levels under any circumstances. But this proposal does the

least harm and puts Republicans in the strongest position. So this is this might pass. All day today, I've been hearing JD Vance and their lone Mosque basically say it's all Democrats fault. It's all Democrats fault. They could have voted for it yesterday, they didn't vote for it. We're gonna shut down the government and we're gonna blame it on Democrats. I don't think that worked. I don't think it resonated. So they went back and said, okay, Republican

and give you your so called clean continued resolution. You can still spend money like there's no tomorrow. You're still not gonna cut gumt spending like Elon Musk and Vivic claim they want to do. But we're going to keep the gumment open because God forbid, we shut it down and the voters might blame us. And Donald Trump doesn't want to go into office with a shutdown government. Donald Trump doesn't actually want to go in spite of the fact that again overnight, Donald Trump was saying, I don't

care shut down the government. It's on Biden. It's always the president who gets blamed for these things. Blame Biden, don't blame me, even though it is Donald Trump's fault because Republicans and Democrats whore going to vote for continued resolution bill on Wednesday, they would have not shut down the government anyway. This saga goes on and on, And here's what maybe Ellen Musk and Vivic and the rest of the DOGE can learn from this. Maybe they can

learn from this. Well, they can't reopen it on January third, because they will have about the same majority in the House as they have now. And it's that lack of unanimity among Republicans in ours representatives that prevented them from passing the continuing resolution yesterday. Thirty eight Republicans refused to raise the debt limit, and they only have a majority of like I think, in the new Congress, five, so it doesn't help them. It's didn't even make it to

the Senate, where the Democrats have a majority. It can't even make it out of the House because the Republicans don't agree. And you still have some Republicans, honest Republicans who actually care about government spending. A few, not many, a few, but enough to sink a bill that involves dramatically increasing gument spinning. So we will see, we will see.

It's going to be really interesting dynamics because Trump is going to try to increase goverment spending, must scan to try to decrease gouverment spinning, but they have no power, and Republicans, some of them, are going to try to decrease and there's going to be push and pull and tug and pull and push. I think one reason you know, people like justin a mash a few and a few of them in Congress is because they can't have an impact because Donald Trump is a spender. He is not

about cutting gum and spending. He's not about drinking gument and the chip Roys of the world in the House are going to have a really, really hard time with Donald Trump. Anyway. I don't know if the Continued Solution will pass today. There's a chance it will, right there's

a chance it will. But one of the proposals being made right now is that they increase the one point five trillion the debt limit by one point five trillion, so the government can borrow one point five trillion additional dollars. I mean, notice, we've gone from billions to trillions, just like that, billions to trillions. Trump Us love that, and at the same time, Congress will commit to cutting spending over ten years, a two and a half trillion dollars,

a promise that is worth exactly zilch nothing. It will never happen. So that's one of one of the negotiations that are going on. Note all the negotiations are going on between Republicans Democrats out so it's all between Republicans, and they can't they can't agree. They can't agree because Trump is in the middle of this. Trump doesn't want.

Trump is insisting on an increase in the debt limit, and he's basically saying he's gonna he's gonna get people to you know, primary any representative who goes against his wishes. By the way, what happens if the government is shut down, Well, not much, not much, right, and the deal has to be struck by midnight tonight and passed in the House and the Senate and signed by Biden. So we're probably

looking for a few days of shutdown. So first, what are called the essential workers, And pretty much almost all of the government is considered essential. I mean, if it wasn't essential, what's it doing in the government. So basically the government thinks everything it does is essential. So essential workers continue as normal. They work as normal, they just don't get paid. Talk about indeed indentured servitude. They get paid afterwards, they get it in arrears, so we don't

save any money that way. Well, government employees that are deemed non essential are temporarily put on unpaid leave, but typically what happens when they go back is Congress signs a bill that pays them back leave, so they don't lose anything. She don't save any money when they going to shut down, which is kind of sad. I mean, it would be great if we could. If we could,

I'd like essential workers to stay home. So things like food assistant programs, federally funded preschool and UH student loan issuance, food inspections, and national parks are closed. They're not essential. What is essential it's border protection. We don't want those immigrants taking advantage of Republicans shutting down the government. That would be bad. In hospital, medical care is essential, law enforcement, air traffic control is essential, so security, Medicaid checks are essential.

They keep going out, but benefit verification and caught insurances stop. So you can see there's some random process by which I think government has decided. Well, here's the principle government activities that if they stop pissed off a lot of people. Those are essential government services have stopped. Eh, maybe if you poor people would notice, but nobody else would notice. They're good to go. They can be shut down. That I think is the criteria. I don't think there's anything

beyond that. So it does look like the government will shut down at least for a while. If you remember, in twenty nineteen, the government will shut down for thirty six days. Indeed, when Trump was president, there were three government shutdowns and the one in January twenty nineteen was the longest, thirty six days, and you know, the world continued.

We were told at the time, this is horrible, awful, that it will reduce GDP by huge amounts, that we will all lose money, that we will things will be awful, that economic activity will be reduced. And you know, Congressional Budget Office estimated that the long one, the thirty six day reduced economic output by eleven billion. That was regained, like eight of that was regained. They claimed three billion was lost. Three billion in an economy of fifteen trillion.

Not a big deal, not a lot of money. And I don't believe the Congressional Budget Office has are very good. I mean, just think of all the business like restaurants are going to do because the food inspector is not going to be there. That is three billion just there. Probably all right, they have it, maybe while we speak. While we're talking, maybe the next hour or so House

of Representatives will decide what it's doing and so on. Right, and Elizabeth Warner's already saying that the two point five trillion that Republicans want to cut over ten years is going to mean that benefits, healthcare benefits for veterans are going to be cut, that cut. So she is a master at this and basically immediately going for the jugular right, immediately going for what she knows the voters care about healthcare benefits to the old and veterans. That's what people

care about. Yeah. I don't see anything else happening right now, yep, but you know things will change constantly. Constantly. Elan is fighting with their liftist because the leftist saying because of Milan, this amount of money was cut from the bill because of Ilan, and his response is Democrats are lying again in this case that actually not you know, he basically killed that bill that had all this funding in its true he should be proud of it. All right, let's

see murderates and lockdowns. So in twenty twenty, moderates spiked by a lot, you know, and people blame a lot of different things, you know, basically, homicides In the average UIs city homicides went up by close to thirty percent. Thirty percent, that's a huge number. Across the nation, twenty four thousand people were killed compared about nineteen thousand the year before. That's a huge increase five thousand additional deaths.

And the question has been what caused it. A lot of commentators said at the time, and sense of blame basically defund the police initiatives, that the rollback of police enforcement after the Floyd George Floyd's death, with the idea that police were afraid to go into the streets. Police departments basically told police to back off. There was generally

less policing being done. And so the explanation for the increase has been to a loge extent lack of policing because of the you know, BLM riots and the George Floyd prosecution of the policeman. After the George George Floyd death and all of that.

Then it declined a little bit and then stayed steady but high, steady but high through the rest of the year, and then of course by twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four from the data, we have declined from there pretty dramatically. So why did it increase before Floyd? Well, basically the reason is it's pretty clear that the increase was lockdowns. Lockdowns are what caused

the increase in crime. People were held up at home, they didn't have work to go to, they couldn't you know, they couldn't go out and easily meet with friends and hang out, and the frustration, the angst, you know, the the unhappiness that this all caused, right, is what led to the murders. They basically go straight up starting with the major lockdowns in major cities around the United States. So there's no question the demodelizing and defunding the police

probably sustain these rates. The fact that police were not out in the streets probably sustained those rates for the rest of the year. But the fundamental sin was the lockdowns. When you keep young men at home, or at least pretend to keep them at home, then if they're not busy, the not work, not at school, they get bored and they have to they their energy gets expressed in gang like activities. And then of course the riots and George

Floyd kind of almost legitimized the violence. It was almost okay to go boom stuff down and to harass people and including to shoot them. So it was lockdowns. So add that to, uh, to the reasons many reasons why, uh, you know, lockdowns, except for very stimputer times in emergency situations, are always going to be a disaster. Yep, lockdowns explain it.

And uh so you if you if you're interested in the data, if you're interested to see the relationship between different neighborhoods or different different cities and what happened and the increase in violence of different cities and when it started and how to relate to the lockdowns. There is the report that came out was issued by the Bookings Institute, and the Bookings Institute you can find you know, you can find this this kind of data data and they

do a pretty thorough job. I mean they really analyze the data. They look at examples from before twenty twenty, so they look at other examples of murder spikes to see what actually what actually happened. So, for example, Baton Rouge saw significant spike and murders in two thousand and five as it absorbed thousands of displaced students from low

performing schools in New Orleans. After how it came Katrina, and again young people not busy, not really doing anything, just hanging around unemployed, and what you get is increasing crime. And by the way that those motiv rates in bat moves stayed very high for a long time after that, as people stayed in bat moves and didn't go back

to their homes. And then the same thing happened in twenty sixteen when a massive flood struck bad Moge in August of twenty sixteen, damaged fifty thousand homes, pushing large numbers of teens out of school. Thousands of families became homeless, and local schools closed. When he closed schools. When you close employment opportunities, crime spikes. Crime spikes, and they stay high for a while. Afterwards, they don't just spike can go back down. They go hop up and they stay

up all right. So I encourage you if you're interested in these kind of stuff, the Bookings Institute. Just look up Lockdowns and Murder Bookings Institute and you can find a report. It's available online, really interesting and really really detailed. Up Just I'll add to this one. Well, now we've got to set a topic. Life expectancy on the good news side. Good news, life expectancy in the United States is actually going up, or you could say, your deaths

are actually going down. The one cause of this, surprisingly, where is this? One cause of this is the fact that opioid deaths are going down quite a bit in quite dramatic fashion. You seeing fentanyl deaths and deaths from other drugs going down. Maybe people have gotten onto the fentanyl will kill you kind of stuff. But if you look at overdoses from other substances, even cocaine and heroin, which were never very high, but they have come down.

But psychostimulants, which have high levels of death from overdose have come down, and of course fentanyl and synthetic opioids over those deaths have come down. So deaths generally from opioids have come down. Hot to know exactly why, hought to know exactly why again they spiked when they spiked. Really the spike starts in twenty twenty, so I don't know. Lockdowns.

You get a huge spike in lockdowns, they stay up there through twenty twenty two into twenty twenty three, and then they start going down in twenty three and twenty four. So add to the cost of lockdowns not only motivates going up, crime rates generally going up, but also over those deaths going up significantly. COVID and the lockdowns that resulted from COVID were, as Andrews says, at depressing time.

But I think the response to it and the doubled up, tripled up, quadrupled up, the level of depression was it was completely unnecessary. So good news. It's finally coming down. It's not down the levels it was in twenty eighteen, but it's it is coming down quite a bit from

those levels. By the way, it could very well be that part of the general malay that people well during the Biden years has to do with these kind of phenomenas Motier rates up, you know, over those rates up, depression up, and all as a lagging consequence of lockdowns. They were started under Trump and continued forever under Biden. A lot of the turbulence politically that we have felt is very could very well be a consequence of COVID and the response to it. Even the BLM riots. You

know what, do we have had riots like that? If we did, people were not locked up, if people were not already unbelievably frustrated by what was going on in the world around them. Some other reasons that that life expectancy is going up has to do with the fact that deaths from other causes is also you know, improving, or there are fewer deaths from other causes, for example, heart disease fewer deaths. Some heart disease had a list here,

but the list is list is gone. Death Rates are declining across all racial and ethnic groups in both men and women twenty twenty four suggests, I mean, preliminary date from twenty twenty four suggests that the trend continues. That is, a life expectancy went up in twenty two three, will go up even more in twenty twenty four. It's still not returned to the pre COVID levels, but it's significantly

higher than it was at the bottom of this. So death from COVID, obviously, deaths, some heart disease, and deaths from other main health related causes, including overdoses are all getting better. And that's all good news. Heart disease deaths dropped by about three percent of twenty twenty three and dropping a little bit more in twenty twenty four. And let's see what else do we want to see? Yeah,

I mean, I do want to say this. It's kind of shocking and really really surprising that life expectancy is increasing because I was told by authoritative people, authoritative voices, people with medical degrees and some with not medical degrees but PhDs nonetheless, that the COVID vaccine was going to kill us all over time, and that because of the COVID vaccine, because all of us took it. Cancer rags of going up, heart disease rates are going up, and

everything else is going up. I don't know what's going on. Somebody, somebody has been spreading fake news. Don't know who it is. Don't know who it is, but somebody seems to be, you know, spreading fake news. So yeah, life expectancy is improving. It could be improving a lot faster, would be improving a lot faster if not for these anti science bureaucrats in the government. We now have an anti science bureaucrat who's going to be heading up the Health and Human Services.

So maybe we'll see a reversal of this trend of increased life expectancy with the appointment of rfk Uh. So we'll see, we'll see what actually what happens. But there are opportunities to dramatically increase life expectancy in the United States summer. Some of what RFK is proposing is actually true. That is, people should be eating better, and they should be exercising, and they should be doing stuff like that, and life expectancy will probably increase dramatically if people do that.

I mean, obesity is the main cause of death one way or the other. Which is not really captured and can be taken care of if just people took care of themselves. All right, Rick says, doesn't RFK have to be approved by Congress? Yeah, by the Senate, not by Congress, by the Senate. Yeah, and you think you won't be What makes you think that you just ask to get I mean, the Republicans will control the Senate and he just has to get all the Republicans to vote for him.

And Donald Trump is going to tell them to vote for him. And why would they not do what Donald Trump tells them to do? You need about four Republicans to say, know to RFK. Who are those four Republicans going to be? Who are the brave four Republicans who actually turn RFK down? I mean, the guy is a complete and utter nutcase, and an evil nutcase at that, allying, evading, disgusting nutcase. Roy is a Congressman. So you know Roy

from Texas is a Republican. He can't vote here. This is just this is just senators, Senators, you think Ted Cruz from Texas will vote against him? No? No, So this is the clowns show that I promised you we would have with Donald Trump. And we are having it, and it has some entertaining value, and it has some value for the Iron Book Show because I have a lot, I'm going to have a lot to talk about. But oh my god, RFK Health and Humans Services, Oh my god.

David Sustan says, Ben Shapiro came out in favor of RFK, So now you know, I mean, now there's no doubt that Ben Shapiro's basically sold his soul to the devil. In this case, Donald Trump completely sold out. I mean, Ben is smarter than that, more knowledgeable than that. Then he doesn't believe the vaccines caused autism, He doesn't believe that polio vaccine causes cancer. What else did RFK say the other day? Polio causes cancer? Oh? The what is

the one that prevents civical cancer HPV? The HPV vaccine causes civical cancer. And if you look at every graph HVV vaccine, bam, civical cancer has gone down. I mean, the best news on the cancer front, the best news on the cancer front has been in civical cancer because basically, if you get the HPV vaccine, you're not gonna get civical cancer. I mean, they're probably other causes for cancer other than this value is. But it's it's an overwhelming.

as a consequence of that though. But that's what he's trying to prevent. He's trying to prevent people abandoning him by and he and he does that by basically becoming a mouthpiece for anything Trump proposes. All right, does look like there's been a terrorist attack in Germany at one of these Christmas markets. I don't know if you ever been a Christmas market in Germany, really really pretty lots

of lights. They usually take a square. They put these like old like buildings that look like look like old German kind of little buildings and they sell food and and stuff, and it looks like, uh, you know, it's it's it's probably obviously to be a going to be a Muslim. It took a car a truck and drove right through the Christmas market, and it's several people are dead and injured. But we don't have a lot more

information about that. Here's what Rodern, Republican representative says. I'm just looking at Twitter and this stuff comes up, and it's it's hilarious. This is what this is What this Republican congressman says, this is very He's obviously a constitutional scholar, knows exactly what the Constitution says about the role of Congress. He says, quote, Republicans need to get on board with President Trump. Our role is really to.

next election. Yeah, there's actually video of this attack in Germany. It's pretty horrible. The cod just mows down people and just keeps going, Wow, that's horrible. Yeah, there must be a number of people who had dead there, you know, some people not getting off the ground. That is just horrible. And uh it says here killed at least eleven people, wounds more than sixty, you know. And by the way, uh Elon Musk endorsed the a f D, and you know,

his tweet was only the AfD can save Germany. And that is that sentiment is going to grow dramatically, is going to grow. Only the far right, only the semi fascist right can save Germany. That is that is the new message. All right, where were we? Oh yeah, I'm still doing the news, right, We're still we have to go to Ukraine. Okay, Ukraine. So in Ukraine. So two aspects of this one. Trump it looks like has basically said that he will continue to support Ukraine militarily, that

he will continue to provide aid to Ukraine. At the same time, he has said that he is going to demand that NATO members member countries increase the defense spending to five percent of GDP. It's supposedly right now two percent, and not all the countries meet that. He wants it to increase the five percent, but then supposedly in a side comment, he said he'l except three and a half percent, but he wants NATO to dramatically increase spending. But he

is willing to continue to aid Ukraine. I mean, this is a big deal. I wonder how how many of his supporters would feel about this. So, as somebody writes in the chat, so he's really not going to end the warned twenty four hours. It turns out it's a little bit more complicated than that. And really the bottom line is what he realizes he can't just capitulate to Putin. I mean, capitulated to Putin will make it very difficult to deal with China, and also it will just be

a sign of weakness. And as weak as Donald Trump is, I don't I think he realizes that he can't. He can't actually do that. Not a good look, not a good thing to do. Right. Also, he might also realize, and there's something we talked about the beginning of the Ukraine War where maybe if people don't remember, Ukraine is sitting on massive quantities of natural gas and minerals, something around twenty six trillion dollars worth of probably more. That's

just one estimate of what they have up. They've got massive quantities of natural gas. And part of the explanation for White Putin invaded was always he wants to get his hands on these reserves. But it's not just natural gas. They are vast mineral deposits in Ukraine that have not been capitalized on because they haven't had the resources, the capital to do it. Things like iron, ore, titanium, manganese, but also rare earth materials like rare earth metals that

you can only find in place like China. Ukraine has. They also have lithium, which is necessarily for batteries and graphite. I mean, this is huge. And to hand all that over hand that over to the Russians, I think even Trump gets that, maybe that's not a good idea. Maybe figuring out a way to at least make it possible for Ukraine to exploit these resources and then to trade them into the West is a better deal than handing

them over to the Russia and increasing Russia's power. So it could very well be that there are people around Trump who are more rational than jd Vance, who is terrible on Ukraine. And so now there's certainly what's his name, the new Secretary of State Rubio has been fairly good on Russia, and hopefully there are others who are good on Russia. But there's this is going to be a

constant battle within the by the Trump administration. Those who want to support Ukraine, want to provide them with weapons, want the war to keep going in order to give the upper hand ultimately Ukraine, and those who want to just capitulate to Putin and ultimately view Putin as the real ally not Western Europe. And so it's going to be really really interesting to see who within the Republican

Party has the upper hand within the Trump administration. Within the Trump administration, Pz says, lithium for batteries is not rare. It's common misunderstanding. Okay, Well, even if it's not rare, having Ukraine habit is better than having Russia have its Russia is a lot of already. I think UKRAINEO says some uranium. Anyway, what Ukraine needs is get rid of the corruption, get rid of the war, get rid of the corruption, and then see a steady flow. I told

the Ukrainian parliaments. I was in the Ukrainian parliament in twenty fifteen. I met with Ukrainian and Peace in twenty fifteen in the parliament building. I sat around a conference room and they asked me, you're on, how do we make Ukraine rich? And it's a funny question because I get asked out a lot and my answer is always the same, Well, just do what rich countries do. And they were like, what's that. I said, privatize everything, privatize

everything and sell it to anyone. They were like shocked. I said, I know you guys. You guys believe that Ukrainian land and Ukrainian natural resources should be held by Ukraine. I said, that'll make you poor. You want Ukrainian resources and Ukrainian land to make you rich, sell them to

anybody except the Russians. By then, of course Russia is the enemy, because twenty fourteen privatize, sell right, Well, I know, rule of law, set up a system of rule of law, as I said the other day, So that is that is the first thing. But the chaka for them was the idea that they would have to sell Ukrainian land.

And the context here is natural resources. Sell the land, sell the resource, sell it all, don't keep it staate owned, bring in fund capital, phone expertise, fund companies, fond ownership to exploit all these resources. Uh So, anyway, that never happened, and Ukraine is still poor as a consequence. But that is still what they should be doing. Privatize, privatize correctly, not like what's his name, Jeffrey saxetd in Russia, privatized

with the recognition of property rights. All right, So were we following Ukraine primarily this perspective, this new perspective of Donald Trump where he is actually now supporting Ukraine and going to keep supplying him with arms. That is a real breakthrough. We'll follow that. I'll see if he actually actually stands up, stands up to that. Right. Finally, on

the nuclear front, some good news. Sam Altman has a Sam Altman who is the CEO founder of open AI, who's in this big battle with legal battle with Elin Musk. Sam Altman has a nuclear power company called Klo Uklo, and OClO has just signed a power agreement with a

big data center operator called Switch. Basically, the idea is that OClO will develop nuclear reactors called Euroa powerhouses, total capacity of twelve gigabytes, and they will deploy these nuclear reactors, each with yeah a capacity of twelve to fifteen megawatts, will deploy them at these basically at these data centers. The contract is through twenty forty four, with them hoping to start deployment of these nuclear power reactors by twenty

twenty seven. Now that strikes me as unbelievably ambitious to deploy by twenty twenty seven. But the one area in which we might see major, major positive changes within the Trump administration is energy. And one of the areas and energy that I think Chris Wright and others, some of the other good appointees that Trump has made one of the areas and energy that they want to really revolutionize

and really shake things up in is nuclear. So we might see, you know, nuclear approvals for these power plants go quickly. I mean, we can hope and twenty twenty seven might be realistic. I wouldn't say it was realistic if if Biden had once. So this is the one area, generally energy and specifically nuclear where Trump winning is a huge plus, is a huge plus and could make a big difference. All right, let's see, uh one of the quick good news piece. So, autonomous taxis managed by Weimo.

Weaimo the autonomous taxi company in San Francisco, and I think in Arizona. Autonomous taxis have now driven twenty five point three million miles twenty five point three million miles with no human being inside. Uh. You see a reduction of eighty eight percent in property damage claims and a ninety two percent reduction in bodily injury claims compared to human drivers per mile driven. So uh, I'll just read

you from the study. To study compared Waymo's liability claims to human driver baselines, which are based on Swiss res data from over five hundred thousand claims and over two

hundred billion miles of exposure. It found that Waymore driver demonstrated better safety performance when competed human driven vehicles within eighty eight percent reduction of property damage claims and the ninety two percent reduction of bodily injury claims in real numbers across twenty five point three million miles the waymore drivers was involved in just nine property damage claims and two bodily injury claims. Both bodily injury claims are still

open and described in the paper. That is, it's not clear that the WEYMO was even responsible for them. For the same distance, human drivers would be expected to have seventy eight property claims in twenty six bodily injury claims. That is huge. That means this is about ninety percent safer. And maybe if the two bodily injury claims are now way Moos's fault, maybe it's one hundred percent safer for

human beings. Maybe there's a scratch and a dent here in there, but for human beings, one hundred percent safer. Talk about life expectancy. One of the causes of death in the United States, and the United States is particularly higher on this relative to other countries is car accidents. Imagine if that goes away because of autonomous vehicles. I mean, that is super exciting, super exciting. So technology wins again, wins again. PZ says only TESTLA is a scalable safe

self driving solution that is obviously bs. The reality is way Moore is not driving Teslas, so Weemo clearly is doing something right. You know, you get ignored the reality at your own cost. These are numbers from waymo, not from Tesla. They're using standardized taxis all over San Francisco. We will see if it's scalable. We will see. All right, let's see, Well, cities is where you expect taxis to be.

You don't need, uh, you don't need taxis outside of cities, So cities is the primary place in which you're going to use taxis. Whether you know whether Tesla solution is the best solution. Actually, talking to people you know in the that I've talked to in the industry, there's a there's a company in Israel that does senses for self autonomous cause you know they they actually think that, uh, Tesla solution is is not going to be the best solution,

is not going to be the best solution. That ultimately, yeah, ultimately that's mobile. The MOBILEI is a better solution and and and scales better than Tesla. So I have no opinion. We will see, But in terms of taxis, I'm hoping to see the entire taxi industry killed by self driving way more cause that would be that would be huge, huge. I mean it's already taxis are suffering because of uh Uber, but now I imagine it's self driving ubers. That would

be That would be amazing, That would be amazing. Frank sky Net is coming. Yes, it is. Run for the hills. Build that nuclear bunker quickly.

the end. It does in the end, right if you recognize that content is responsible for kind of the most subjectivism that makes black ghetto thug culture not just exist but five in the culture. So that kind of subjectivism, that kind of detachment from reality, from standards, from real values that Ran says conscient is responsible for. And in that sense, yeah, he is responsible for that as well.

But there's a sense in which kndrs responsible for every aspect of bad culture and existence today because he is the major influence on modern philosophy and in most of its different variants, even the ones that reject Kant are content without knowing it. At least that's Rands and Lenipeacp's view. They have the philosophers. When you deny reason, you open

up the world to any subjective, any crazy, any irrational idea. Andrew, It's interesting how Nathaniel Brandon went from writing The Psychology of Pleasure exalting pleasure's role in life according to objectivism, to claiming that objectivism represses people, leading to a set

of thoughts. Yeah, I mean, Nathaniel Brandon phenomena is a complicated phenomenon because I would argue that a lot of the a lot of the repression that Nathaniel Brandon blames on objectivists was something that he promoted when he was kind of the leader second only time. Rand within objectivism. When you hear stories about objectives movement in those days, it was it did encourage repression. It was a movement scared of Nathaniel Brandon, scared of his judgment. And all

of that comes across in his autobiography. That is, it's not that he heights this fact about himself and how he interacted with the objectivist movement and what he kind of demanded of the objectivist movement. He was a very very negative force within the movement, driving it towards this asceticism and repression. So then to criticize something that he was instrumental in creating, it's not inherent in objectivism, but it is inherent in I think Nathaniel Brandon's rationalistic or

repressed approach to objectivism. And if you understand what happened to him, he basically was faking his objectivism, so of course it was repressed. He was repressing his true self. So Nathaniel is a complicated character. David, thank you. Fifty dollars. Thank you, David. And by the way, we're like still one hundred dollars short from our first hour and we just hit the first hour, So second day in a row, we're coming up show its David says, how does government

spending at the GDP? There's no added value? Right? Well, I mean the proponents of government spending claim there is. I mean they're building infrastructure and it's creating economic stability and it's providing I don't know. They all claim it is. Much of it is not. Obviously it's not added value. But the reality is that just the way it's calculating GDP, the way you calculated it includes government expenditures one part of the GDP formula, and it's additive. So basically government spending.

The high the government spending is, the higher the GDP. And a good example of this I've often talked about this is the GDP goes up during wartime, particularly something like World War Two. So USGDP go up a lot, and it went up a lot because gouverment spending went

up a lot. But when government spinning went up a lot, instead of living went down because of taxes and debt, private investment went down, private entrepreneurship went down, but the government spending went up so much it overshadowed all that and GDP went up. GBDP was like up twelve percent. I think it was in nineteen forty two, the first two year of the war. That doesn't make any sense.

The quality of life, stand up, living was down, you know, and half the male population will sent overseas to fight in a war, many of them killed, never coming back. How can GDP go up under those circumstances? How can you measure the measure of economic weal being go up? It doesn't make any sense, But we really don't have.

Economists have not come up with, as far as I know, a better measure of real economic activity, a real economic well being, productivity, gains, income and wealth capita, things like that. But GDP is the proxy for all that Russia in the Ukraine war. GDP went up. It actually does add up mathematically, it all works. But because GDP doesn't take into account a lot of stuff, So the stuff that is depleted taken out of the economy during a war doesn't it's not counted, so it's not a negative. But

the gumt spending does count, so it's added. So it doesn't make any sense in the sense of a descriptive good descriptive of economic activity. But it's all we got is just no better measure that is regularly reported, much better measure that's regularly reported than we have. Again, Russia is experiencing the same thing. GDP is going up during the war with Ukraine, even though quality of life stand up living, even the number of people is shrinking because

people are leaving Russia and GDP is going up. Why because government spending on military, on paying soldiers, on building weapons, and that counts towards GDP. Government spending is all from taxes and debt, absolutely, or it could also be from putting money, from putting money, but it doesn't matter. That is, the taxes and debt are not reduced on the other side of GDP. That is, GDP is just an increase. GDP just measures gum and spending it, you know, and

some other things. It doesn't get decreased because debt and taxes have gone up. And don't forget, they do print money. Russia is experiencing heightened inflation right now because it had to print money, you know, to fund its expenditures. Well, we can explain it. I'm not sure what the issue is. We can absolutely explain it. The math all works. There's no problem with the math and it makes complete sense.

That is GDP is measuring not actual increased production in the economy or GDP is or wealth creation in ectomoty. GDP is measuring government spending and some aspects of private industry. That's it. That's what it's measuring. So as long as you know what it's measuring, it's measuring it right, and

it's completely understandable. It's completely true. And if you believe, like most Kynesians believe and Neo Kynesians and state of left and right, that government expenditure is what generates economic activity, then it's a very flawed measure of wellb very flawed. To what extent James asked, to what extent is your audience made you more optimistic since she started the IBS show.

M Yeah, I don't know. I think it's sometimes it makes me more optimistic and sometimes it makes me more pessimistic. When I see some of the stuff on the chat,

it makes me more pessimistic. So it varies. Yeah, But overall I think that the growth and I steady growth, then I steady growth and income over the years, the general support that you guys provide, the passion you have for these ideas, Yeah, all of that a net increases my my optimism by the way Urduwan, president of TUKI recently, you know, I think today or yesterday, has claimed that Jerusalem is part of in a sense greater tokey hawking

back hackning back to again the Ottoman Empire. All right, let's see, we're still about fifty We're still exactly fifty six dollars short, just to keep you updated in terms of where we are in terms of a goal. Fifty six dollars short. But that's only for the first hour. There's another two hundred and fifty for the second hour. All right, thank you. I saw John for the twenty dollars and Mary Ellen for the ten. Thank you for the stickers. Really really appreciated that you two can do

a stick YouTube. Yeah, super chat is lackluster yesterday and today. I'm not sure what's going on. Maybe people are saving up at December thirty first, both questions and money. Hopefully it's not a bad omen for December thirty first, but maybe people saving up because on December thirty first, we're doing a big fundraiser. We'll start it on December thirty first at one pm Eastern time, and we'll just go until we raise at least fifteen thousand dollars. That's the goal,

that's the goal. What else today? Yeah, so yeah, Also want to remind people if you want to support the show on a monthly basis, patreons a great way to do it. One of the things that if you do ten dollars on Patreon, if you do ten dollars month on Patreon, you can also then get the audio the podcast on any podcasting app you want, free of advertising. You get a special link to be able to get it fear of advertising for ten dollars, for ten dollars

or more on Patreon. So Patreon again is supplying, is making that possible. A Patreon is probably the easiest platform to take contributions, and you can change you can change the level, you can go in and change your profile. Much more flexibility than PayPal, but still accepting contributions on PayPal as well. All right, we've got a few questions left, not many, not many, David, thank you, Thank you for

that so slowly chipping away at the number. Michael says people are not ready for the type of world they they are advocating for. I think that's right. I think that's right. I think that'll be surprised on how bad it is. Michael also says justice as a virtue, what happens when injustice becomes accepted as an ideal, Well, you get kind of the horrors of Holocaust, you get the horrors of I don't know, woke, you get the horrors of dei DII is incredibly unjust, but it's considered the ideal.

You get the hours of the far left. But again you get the hours of kind of fascism and anti Semitism as well. So yeah, I mean, when injustice becomes an ideal, really really really really bad stuff happens. Justice is an important virtue holds the world together. Simon, what are your thoughts on someone like Canniston saying Israel is conducting a holocaust on the Palestinians. She's also blaming Jews for the pornography industry in the United States. She's also

blaming Jews for everything wrong in the world. She's just an anti semi who hates Jews, hates Israel. She doesn't know what a holocaust is, she doesn't know what's going on in Israel with the Palestinians. She is basically an evasive, ignorant hater, an awful, really disgusting human being. I think that's pretty clear what I think of Candice own, so she doesn't know what she's talking about. In other words, Fank, did Russia really make cancer vaccines or is it? BS?

I mean, a lot of companies around the world are working on cancer vaccines. Some forms of cancer more than expected. Some forms of cancer are created by a virus, like cervical cancer. Other forms of cancer can be dealt with the vaccine that like an m and a vaccine that actually cause that actually cause the body itself to fight the cancer cells s. There's a lot of ways in which vaccines can be a real legitimate cancer treatment, and a lot of companies and a lot of places around

the world they're workie on it. So I have no reason to think that the Russian version is completely BS. Edwards says, candace On is smart maybe, but she's evil. And really, if you're not willing to say she's evil, you really shouldn't be on this chat. She is evil. She is an evil, antisemitic, horrible human being. And anybody who defends candace On is not welcoming you on bookshow, right, So that is the reality. I don't care how smart people are. Hitler is smart, I care about whether they're

all standing. Hitler was an evil bastard. Candice own is evil, her ideas are evil. She is an invader, and she is a collectivistic, racist, horrible human being. Other than that, yeah, an old consciras smart. I called him the most evil person in human history. So Smart has nothing to do with it. It's a question of whether you're willing to pass all judgment on her. Kirol, thank you for the

five hundred check something something other. I hear quite often that rich people don't need liquid cash, as they can just borrow against their stock value and keep be borrowing and perpetually stay rich. Something along those lines. It's just silly. If yes, why well, I mean it's they only stay rich as long as their stock portfolio does well. It is true that they can borrow against the stock, just like they can borrow against their homes. They can borrow

against the real estate. That might have so a lot of ways in which you can, if you have assets, and stocks are assets, gain liquidity through borrowing. But you have to pay back the borrowing at some point. You have to have cash flow coming in that pays for it, which will require you either to have income maybe from dividends, maybe from work you do, or sell the stock or the or the.

it's not a very sophisticated truth. That is, there's a lot of detail that goes into that, right, there's a lot of detail in terms of how much interest you're making, how are the stocks doing. If the stocks do badly, is the bank and a call back the loan and say you don't have a life collateral for the loan. You can't borrow the entire value of your stock, so you can only borrow a certain percentage of it. So it's not a perpetual motion machine because you just you

keep you keep spending. Ultimately, the loan has to be paid off some point, whether after you die or whenever. It has to be paid off, and the way it gets paid off is by selling those stocks or by selling that realistic it's like, yeah, having a mortgage, and constantly you know you're paying your mortgage off, so your principle increases, but you keep taking second mortgages on the

increased value principle. Well, it's still true that one day, maybe when you sell the house, you can have to pay the loan off and you have to make payments on a monthly basis, and you have to have some income coming from somewhere to pay that off. So there's no free money. It's not a perpetual wealth machine. There's no such thing. Baire Lens is. Happy holidays everyone, Thank

you bailed in. By the way, we're eighteen dollars short of our first hour goal, even though we're well into our second hour autan Can dating apps have positive incentives when people remove them after finding one partner? Is polyamory in model? In your opinion or under objectives to ethics? Can dating apps have positive incentive when people remove them after finding one partner? I'm not sure I understand that.

So you remove them, and then the incentive is to stay with a partner because you don't have the app anymore. You can upload the app back. It's not that much work. I don't know. And do you really need an incentive to stay with somebody you don't want to stay with otherwise, So no, I don't think I maybe maybe, And then is pelo amory immoral in your opinion? And the objectivism doesn't have a position of polyamory In my opinion, it's not per se imol, but it's probably, and I'm not

saying for sure, probably impractical. And in that sense, im all that is you probably try it, discover it doesn't work, and have to abandon it. And if you do that and figure out it doesn't work and then keep doing it, then that becomes them all. But maybe people have to discover that for themselves. Maybe it's something you have to

experiment with to discover that it doesn't work. So yeah, I think that polyamory experimenting with it is not immol once you come to the conclusion it doesn't work, continuing to do it is. David says it's a good idea to remove dating app once involved with someone. Okay, I you know, having not dated in an era of dating apps,

that probably makes sense. It's a signal or at least a person, but it doesn't it's not a huge incentive because dating apps can easily be uploaded again, so downloaded again, whatever it is, right, you can re engage with the dating happen at any point, all right, Frank, Maggionia Thompson's story is reminding me of Knight of January sixteenth, Karen Andrey and beyond Faulkner cheering on the murder of the rich. Can you see that too a little bit? But the

main point of January sixteenth is Karen Andrey's character. And there's nobody in this the Maggionia Thompson's story. That's Karen Andrey, and that's what the whole story it hinges on. Who sorry, And also the character beyond Faulkner folk is not like Thompson at all, So the characters are not the same. The only aspect that might be the same as the cheering on in the Murder of the Rich, But that's not what the essential part of Knight of January sixteenth,

Iron RAN's play is about. So no, it's not what comes to my mind. Andrew reading anything good lately, I told you about Unit X, I still need to do a show about that. That was good. I'm reading a strange book right now, history book. I can't remember its name. I'll tell you more about it when I've read a little bit more of it. But it's a kind of a modern history book that's really interesting in many ways, but it objects the things that are wrong. But I want to get more into it before I talk more

about it. Let's see Andrew says there are a lot of jokes in the business world who make their way through intimidation. Ultimately, they're usually miserable sobs, but they can be superficially successful. I think for a while, and again, I think a lot of that is because we live in a relatively irrational world. The more rational people are, the less people like that could be successful, the more they'll be easily identified and and and turned against, and

people will turn against them. All right, guys, I mean that is That is all the super chat I have. I'm still here and we're still short, but that's all

the superchat questions I have. I'll remind you that Alex Epstein is a is a sponsor of the show, and you can support Alex and should support Alex by going to Alex Epstein dot substack dot com, where you can engage with his talking points and talking points are his talking points are pretty amazing because they provide you with succinct, easily digestible, easily understood arguments about some of the hottest issues in the world today, from climate change to fossil fuels,

the energy more broadly, to environmentalism more broadly. So you don't sign on. He's one of the most influential people right now in the world, saline the United States in the Trump administration and when it comes to energy, and it's good to know what he's thinking. Alex Epstein dot substack dot com. All right, Fank says, are Italian tomato farmers subsidized like US, like the US? I don't know, like USA corn It's quite possible. Italian farmers generally heavily subsidized.

I don't know about tomato farmers, and generally European farmers massive subsidies across the board. On European farmers, it's one of the in Europe, it might be the most subsidized of all products is farming. And this is why they're real. There's real well, uh, real people are really upset by the by the fact that Europe looks like it's going to sign a free trade agreement with South America that

includes farming products. Right, but but yes, farming generally heavily, heavily, heavily subsidized.

the weekend. Have a great weekend, See you soon. Bye, everybody,