RFK; Deferred Resignations; Funding Freeze; Competitive Compass; Peak Pollution | Yaron Brook Show

the program run by Brad Thompson. And then I'll be going off to Florida to the Objectives Conference of Florida. We'll be giving a talk about the future of objectivism. And yeah, that that's the plan. I'll be back home next Wednesday, so a week from now, after visiting also the Dalhi Museum and visiting other places in Florida. Uh, and yes, I'll be back Wednesday. Shows between now and then Spotty, we'll see. I don't know. I'll try to do as many as I can, but but we will see. Anyway,

that is that is a plan. Today we'll do a relatively short show because I have to go to the eirport, so we won't longer than two hours, maybe just an hour and a half. We'll see, Uh, the super chat fundraising goal set appropriately. Let's just jump in, jump in. As I said, you know, Trump is just sucking all the air out of news. There's basically nothing going on

in the world except what Trump is doing. That's what it seems like, because he's doing so many big things, controversial things off the cuff, things that that that that that is dominating all the news. So we will we will talk about a bunch of a bunch of that. But let's start with what's going on, live right now, live right now. RFK is in front of a Senate committee, uh,

discussing his qualifications for being Health and Humans Service Secretary. Uh. And it is I don't know, it's just it's just it's just a a ridiculous, ridiculous, I don't know, expression of political god. I mean, it's just I mean, this guy who is a conspiracy theorist, who is an anti VAXXA, who is an anti pharma, who you know, it probably lies about a lot of things that he believes in or doesn't believe in for his own financial gain. This is a it's a clown show. I like that ammaed Mars.

It's a clown show. It's a clown show. Now, it's a clown show. It's pathetic, it's ridiculous. It's infuriating that rf case even nominated to a position like this. He's not qualified. He's the opposite of qualified. He could be incredibly destructive in a position like this, and it sends basically the wrong message, you know, to Americans. It sends the wrong message to healthcare providers, It sends the wrong message the farmer and people at the front lines kind

of trying to solve the health issues of Americans. The one virtue he has where he talks about eating better and exercising and doing stuff like that. You could get somebody saying saying the same stuff. You don't have to have somebody who is a complete nutcase to advocate for eating well and exercising. It's part of the clown show.

Here is here Republicans who I remember not that long ago, were really upset and may have Bloomberg for threatening or actually executing I think on a tax, like a special tax on what is a big soda on big tubs of soda because it was unhealthy. Now they want to nominate somebody who'd like to tax most of our food because it's unhealthy. They're once the federal government to basically regulate our food from the top down in terms of

its health. So now we have Republicans wanting can micromanage, micro manage our die and it used to be Democrats who wanted to do that. The whole layout of this hearing is interesting because Republicans don't like our FK because of it stands on abortion, but they love it is anti pharma, anti science, anti vacs, stupidity over COVID, and a bunch of other things, you know, anything conspiratorial, all this whatever, conspiratorial things. They love that, and you know

they'll jump on that. And the Democrats are now suddenly they're the pro science, you know, pro vaccines, pro whatever, and anti conspiracy theories, and they're attacking uh, you know RFK because he's part of an administration's gonna be anti ebocean. And it's just the whole line of questioning is absurd and ridiculous. I mean, this is this theater. It's it's it's comedy. So Tom tillis a Republican from North Carolina, literally asks RFK if he's a conspiracy theorist talk about

a softball question. Uh, you know that that can only be hit for a home run. I mean, really, me a conspiracy theorist. That is not true. It's just a way to malign me because I ask questions. I just I've just asked difficult questions. That's all I'm doing. I don't have a position, it's just I just literally ask difficult questions. And they labeled me a conspiracy you because they want to silence me, because they don't like that

I ask difficult questions. This is this is a in a hearing, you're supposed to tell us where the off case qualified to be. I mean, we're learning nothing in the hearing except that OURFK is very good at lying. He keeps saying. He keeps saying, I'm not anti vax I support facts, my kids are vaccinated. I love vaccines.

I think vaccines are great. What about all your statements in the past that are clearly and equivocally anti where you're anti vax only democrats are asking these kind of line of questions and he goes, oh, taken out of context. They didn't understand the point I was trying to make. They don't get it. In other words, our f case

lying through his teeth. He you know, he's asked about his position FARMA is anti farmer position, he's generally uh, he's he's against all these drugs that are now being used for weight loss, which you know SPOS showing unbelievable promise in terms of all kinds of other diseases. He's against a lot of what FARMA does. And I'm not I'm not against farmer, me me RFK against FARMA. That is, you know, equivalent of defamation. I just asked difficult questions.

I just want to know the science. I mean, this guy is, I mean, he's a horrible human being by every account of his personal life. He is, uh, he is a anti science. You know, he's even he came out during the hewing as pro measles vaccine when he went to Samoa to try to convince him not to use the misos vakiin the number of kids died as a consequence of kind of an anti VAXX movement over there.

And he just he sits there and lies and somebody, Senators, we are supposed to learn something new about him, about his stance, about what he represents. I mean, the whole proceedings were of confirmation to become public. Republic proceedings are

just a joke, right, They're just a joke. I mean, Republicans should admit that they will basically vote yes for anybody the Trump nominates, and Democrats should admit that for the most part, they'll vote no, although that's not always the case that some Democrats have voted for some of Trump's nominees. And and stop playing this game. You know, Trump wants him, will appoint him. That's all the matters

to these Republicans. And and this process, so called process is is just an expression of you know, a farce, uh, dishonest and a way too in a way to just bamboos of the American people.

measles really in America today. There's certainly no polio. You know, if you go iva the what do you call that? Civical cancer is caused by a virus. We have a vaccine against that. The number of civical cancer cases have plummeted,

have just unbelievably plummeted. Research project after research project, have you research project trying to find a connection between vaccines and autism finds no connection between vaccines and autism on every one of the points that he makes, On every single one of the points that he makes, there's no correlation with vaccines. Down syndromes up because of vaccines. I don't know why down syndrome is up. I don't even know if that's true. But all right, but has anybody

shown that as related to vaccines. No, nobody has shown that. Indeed, the studies that have been done show that they're unrelated, that there's no correlation between Down syndrome. So, you know, a correlation is not causation. So a lot of things have happened over the last twenty years and things have increased. You can't because they've all gone up doesn't mean they're related to one another. They caused one another. So if it's true at all, there is no studies out there

the show a cause of relationship between the two. You know, since the Iran book show started in January twenty fifteen, the number of people down syndrome and autism has gone up significantly. I mean, I think it's quite clear that the Youuron Big Show is causing that. I mean, God help us, all right. Another issue that came up, well, if Kate were speaking, was you know, there's been a lot of controversy. It's gone to the courts about MIF MIF, pristone, pristona,

well whatever, something like that. It's the basically the abortion pill. The abortion pillay was the FDA approved since it has been approved since two thousand for use up to ten weeks of gestuation. Uh, it has been studied thoroughly because it's been used for a long time, and it has been shown that this is one of the safest pills

anybody can take, the safest Tyler No. And yet Republicans, in order to try to ban abortion pills, have argued it's not safe, it's wrong, and they've taken it to courts and they've lost in courts, but it's still in the courts in Texas, and there's a real effort among the Republicans have banned this abortion pill. And even though it's completely safe and everything, RFK has said, the President Trump has asked him to look into it, to assess,

assess objectively, completely scientifically, because that's RFK. He's completely objective and completely scientific the safety of this drug. Even though it's been assessed, it's been reassessed, it's been studied, it's been used by tens hundreds of thousands of women. And RFK said, well, of course Donald Trump has asked me. He's the president, I will do it. Tailanol is pretty safe, come on, safe as talentol is not as strong an augumented it used to be. If you take talentol once,

almost nothing is going to happen to you. You don't make take Miffa pristone more than once. It's the safest. Talentol is really really, really strong argument THAILANDO. If you take huge quantities of it, we'll do all kinds of bad stuff to you. That's true. Anything I'm sure, also true of Miffit Pistons. So now it's a safest talent

all and that's a real thumbs up for it. Mirrabins, who is a biologist, a scientist who where she usually knows what she's talking about, except for some of her you know, super chats, some of them, I have no idea what she's talking about. But here she says, people are having kids at old ages when chromosoonal aberrations are more common. Nothing to do with vaccines or pathogens or

anything like that. That's absolutely right, Thank you, Mirrabins. You're going to see as women have babies and older and old ages, you're going to see more challenges as people generally have. You know, you've got a lot more genetic problems with a couple that have babies at lady ages, so that is probably most likely the cause of this, So thank you, mayor ben So being from sanity into you know, Joshua and I says he can halfway agree with us on this because the other half, it's like

the half way he's using his mind. He agrees with us, the half that's dedicated the reason he agrees, the half that is still ingrained with I don't know, mystical tribalism. He can't bring that around. So anyway, we're going to have a health and Human services you know, lead who is probably the most anti science that we have ever had, anti science in the science that we're talking about, in

the science that is health that we're talking about. And the fact that he has a few positive good things to say does not justify the nonsense and craziness of so much of so much else that he that he's doing. All right, let's talk about the food resignations. I mean, this is all this is really fun. I'm telling you. Trump is the funnest president we've had so fun. I know some of you find that that I'm belittling the danger he represents, but believe me, I'm not. It's still

fun to watch personally, because I despise them all. I despise them left, I despise the right. I despise the bureaucrats that are kind of panicky right now. So watching it all, everybody, smoke come out of there.

between now and September thirtieth. They can leave their job. They will be paid until September September thirtieth. This is very much in line with what Elon Musk did at Twitter when he came into Twitter and offer everybody sevenths you know if they voluntarily left, particularly Twitter. This is important because almost impossible to fire people in California, so you want to incentivize them to lead by themselves so you don't have to fire them. Same thing to some

extent the federal government. Very difficult to fire people who work in the federal government because of all kinds of laws and regulation. So the best way to get a mass firing is there is to actually have them, actually have them resigned. So here's what it's about. Federal workers who accepted the further resignation offer will remain employed. Retain all pay and benefits, and be exempt from in person

work requirements until their final resignation. They have September thirtieth, so they might still be working, but they won't have to come in person because one of the executive orders that Trump signed was everybody has to start coming into the job and be in person. Those who take the offer could see their duties changed or be reassigned or placed on leave before their resignation, but other than that

they would be expected to work. They could continue working from home to the extent that they do that, but they would be out of end of September. Those who accepted are not expected to work, according to one of the publications. Again, there's a lot of contradicty stuff that's coming out that the Trump administation is putting out. There's not one consistent message. And the most common question by employees is, you know, will I have to work? Can I take the vacation I always wanted to, you know,

for eight months? Can I just watch movies chill for eight months? So you know, it's unclear, but I think I think at the end of the day, it's going to be up to the particular agency whether your job is going to be moved, eliminated, consolidated, reassigned, exactly what's going to happen to what you're going to do over the next eight months. Under the offer, employees can accelerate

their resignation date, but not extended. If a federal OCA becomes eligible for early or normal retirement at any point before the resignation day, they can also elect to retire according to the office. Those don't accept it, they off expires on February sixth. There's no penalty if they do not respond to the email. Uh and but the announcement does state that the majority of federal agencies are going to be downsized as part of the Trumpet demonstrations overhaul.

They're going to follow employees, they will reclassify employees. They're going to reclassify employees to act will status, which will then make it easier for them to be fired. So they're going to change the way employees are treated in the government, which is all, at the end of the day, really good. This is all good. I don't think that this this letting people design is good, but we'll get

to that in a minute. For those who do not take the offer, they write, we cannot give you full assurance regarding the certainty of your position or agency or agency. But should your position be eliminated, you will be treated with dignity and will be afforded the protections in place for such positions. So you're not going to get this halfway again, right. It turns out not all federal employees are eligible. Agency heads may determine a corve outs within

their agencies. Military personnel employees are the Post Office save the Post Office, and those in positions related to immigration enforcement that is the priority, and national security exempt. So the idea here is to shrink government big time. You know, as far as I know, you know, this has never

been done before. And you know Office of seven cy, I mean I've been given out to government employees, beenever on a scale like this, And so you know, we're going to see what the response is now in Congress, of course, the Democrats are saying that the president has no authorit even make an offer like this. There's no but no budget line item to pay people who are not showing up for work. So and again you know,

again this will be sued. They'll sue around this, and the quotes will Ultimately it's whether this is the right way, or this is a legitimate way to shrink government. Now I don't particularly like this. Why don't I like this? Well, it's simple, it's it's so not strategic, right, I get it that you could tell all the agencies to shrink the workforce by ten percent and then tell the agency head that they're responsible to getting rid of of the

at least productive employees. You know, you can even say something like some companies do. I think Amazon does this regularly, the ten percent lowest performing employees, you know, fire them, or twenty percent or whatever, whatever the number you want to have. Or you know, I think ultimately it'll be great if the if whole agencies are shut down and

closed and everybody's fired from there. But this is like a heartchpology that's going to depend on people who are willing to resign and are willing to leave, and of course gonna who's gonna leave. Well, it's just based on incentives. If we just look at incentives, the most competent people with the most options in the private sector are likely to leave. People who don't think they'll ever find a job in the private sector are the ones in the stay.

So you're basically, you know, you're basically providing a you know, a bad incentive structure. Now, why didn't this work at Twitter? The reason at Twitter talented people stayed is because there was an upside. Right, if you stayed, you got stock and if Twitter was a huge success, you would benefit enormously. Here, there's no upside to staying, right, no upside to state.

So the only incentive driving leaving a staying is whether you think you get a job outside, how talented you are, how good you out your job, assuming the better you out your job, the more likely it is to get a job outside. So you know, it's the incentive structure is weird. There's no upside to staying. The only upside I can see the staying. And some people have commented on this is government employees the one to stick around to school with Trump to fight him as government employees.

How many people are like that? Just vindictive democrats, leftists. I don't think there are many of them that are willing to do that. Also, it's not clear how politically smart this is. Right, what happens if I don't know half the people or three quarters of the people in the passport department? You know, the people who approve your passports, who renew passports all resign and suddenly that department shrinks by seventy five percent. Well, people are going to be

pissed off because their passports are not being approved. Or iOS you know, iOS, people who answer questions on the phone lines. And now you're not going to get through that. You're not going to be able to get through the dirs now as it is, it's really, really, really hard to get through the IRS. Imagine what happened now, and you could go on and on. In other words, it's not strategic. It's not let's shrink the responsibilities of these departments and as a consequence, we can fire a bunch

of people. It's not these apartments are useless anyway, they don't do anything. Let's fire a bunch of people. Let's just fire at or let's let go of a bunch of people based on their own willingness to leave, independent of how good they are, independent of how valuable they are, independent of that we need them or don't need them, or anything like that. So it's it. You can't extrapolate from Twitter to the government. In Twitter, the incentives are different.

But again, you know, we will see, we will see how it all plays out in the meantime, everybody's kind of fantaic. Again, this will go to the courts. You know, does Trump have the legal authority to make this offer? And we will see what happens. Now, yesterday we talked about, uh, the the freeze on a lot of government spending, a freeze on you know, all this government spending, those happening and uh, you know, pausing federal grants and loans, and and nobody knew how broad it was. Did it apply

to them, didn't apply to them? The freezing of all foreign aid, humanitarian aid, other kinds of aid except except for Israel Innegia, you know, but everything else. And and and then there was a question of is this constitutional? Can Congress has approved all this money? Uh? And and if so, can the president unilaterally just say no, I'm not gonna spend it, or I'm gonna free said for three months or something like that. And immediately there were calls.

But there's this age program that saves lives, and there's this program where people are suffering. And somebody, some woman who gets welfare from the government and was you know, thought she was not gonna get a welfare check anymore. She freaked out on Twitter, and that went viral and

all this stuff happened. And then so a different departments start putting out different departments start putting out exemptions, right so you know, uh, Marco Rubio put out a waiver if you humanitarian aid, if you if you're doing humanitarian aid, it's okay. And then other departments issued waivers. Oh no, no, this doesn't affect medical research for cancer research at nah all,

this doesn't affect this, It doesn't affect that. And everybody had to make a million exemptions to this freezing rule, and it just created chaos and uncertainty and confusion. And then and then a federal judge step in and basically said, wait a minute, freeze the freeze. I'm putting the freeze on hold. I'm putting I'm freezing the freeze, you know, until I I evaluate this and rule about it's its

actual constitutionality again, the power of the posts. It's with the Congress, not with the with the with with with the president. So I'm going to freeze the freeze. And then, according to Ian and and some others on the chat, NBC is now reporting that the administration has rescinded the order. Yes, makes complete sense. It created so much chaos, so much confusion. It was so unspecified, it was so vague and weird that they had to make all these exemptions. And then

a court says, you can't do this. You might not be able to do this anyway, and I'm freezing it from now and then we'll evaluate and it's it'll be in front of the courts. Now the court hasn't ruled one way or the other, but they were sitting it. That will see what they do next. But this is an administration of chaos. And I think that alone. Musk vibs in a in this kind of environment. He is an entrepreneur, startup guy. You try, this doesn't work, you

go something else. You you know, people have a huge and certainly it doesn't matter they're getting paid a lot of money. You go do something, you change your mind, You move around, you move really really fast. That's what you do in a startup and and in business. And and clearly that is being brought at least to some extent to to how the government is being run right now. Doesn't quite work. The same government employees, people in departments are not quite as ready to jump in and uh

and uh, and and and do that. Yep, all right, let's see. All right, so yeah, Funding Freeze will keep following up on this. We'll see if what happens. We'll see what actually the government actually ultimately does. We'll see how Trump recovers from this. Wilson watch the Deferid resignations. We'll be watching RFK. I mean, this is a funny one again. I'm looking at a feed of rfk's latest questions and answers. And he was asked. He was asked

about what he considers the gold standing in science. He keeps saying, I'm interested in the gold stand in science. That's what I care about, you know. And he said something about real scientific research with replication of studies, which very rarely happens at NIH. I doubt that that is absolutely that that is actually true. I mean, there are problems with replication, but the idea that nobody's interested in

replication is just not true. He said, we should be giving at least twenty percent of NH budget to replication. We should make sure that all science is published through all data. We should make sure that peer reviews are also published. The reality is, for example, that the safety or the non causal relationship between vaccines and autism has been replicated and peer reviewed and all of that, and it didn't change the fact that he still was anti

vacs anyway. Again, Republicans are giving him soft balls and Democrats are laying into him, and I haven't seen yet a Republican asking him engaged in asking him tough questions. So if all Republicans vote for him, he will be the next Health and Human Services, which is I don't know. I mean, it's just I think unbelievably scary. All right, This one's kind of funny, just to show you that the US goverment is not the funniest and not the

only dysfunctional government out there. So we've talked about this before, and there's been a bunch of stories about it and a bunch of interest in this. You know, the German economy is heading into probably its third year in a recession. The European economy continues to stagnate across Europe. Europe has I know Americans don't believe this, but the reality is that the American economy has drowned nautically outpaced the European

economy over the last twenty years. I mean, it's not even close how much wealthier we have become in the United States as compared to the Europeans. There's almost no innovation in Europe. The no unicorns, successful successful companies, and you know that the fundamental reasons are basically well known, and they're being reports about this. There was Mario Drogi, the former head of the European Bank, put out a

report a few months ago. We talked about this on the show where he basically blamed the massive amount of regulation which makes it impossible to innovate and for startups and a bad startup environment and a bad VC environment, and he blamed primarily blamed regulation. We also know the cost of energy, particularly in Germany, less so in France. So what's Fancy's excuse. Fancise relatively cheap energy because they have nuclear. Germany has very very very expensive energy because

they will like so much on solar and wind. And it varies from country to country across Europe, but generally energy costs a high because of environmental regulations and because of really bad decision making on the part of leaders. But you go, you know, so Europe is really hooting,

really stagnating, really difficult times economically, in Europe. So the European Commission has now introduced a Competitiveness compass, what they call a comprehensive strategy to boost Europe's economic competitiveness over the next five year plans. So yeay, Europe has just come up with a five year plan to be more competitive, to increase productivity. And the reason, by the way, for the lack of economic growth, the reason for the the fact that wages and wealth is stagnated in Europe is

because productivity is stagnated. So then if she is supposed to increase productivity in Europe. So the central planners in Europe have now figured out a way to improve the European economy and it has three main pillars. First, they are going to enhance productivity through innovation. Yay, the government has not decided it's time to innovate. Please innovate, you guys out there, innovate. It's the only way we're going

to increase productivities. To please innov we'll talk about how they plan to do this, right, So, enhanced productivity through innovation, that's good if they if they know what that means. Integrating decombonization with industrial policies. Ooh, what does that mean, well, decombonization is one of the reasons they have such high energy costs. One of the reasons industry is failing because it can't compete because of high costs. So what is that about. It sounds like more of the same to me.

And maybe the problem is maybe I'm just speculating here. Maybe the problem is industrial policy. Maybe the problem is for planning. Maybe the problem is that Europe has an industrial policy, Germany has an industrial policy. That's the problem. And then finally insurance, security and stategic autonomy, which is great to ensure security and stateg aotonomy. Not clear how that increases competitiveness. Indeed, to the extent that it sucks a bunch of money out of the rest of the economy,

that probably reduces competitiveness. But it's a good thing to do. It's important. It's part of the job of government. Protection of individual rights include security, and security requires some level of independence of autonomy autonomy I think here meaning autonomy from the US. So how theyre going to achieve these things, particularly innovation. Key actions include simplifying regulations. I like that. Simplify the regulations. You still have the same regulation, but

just make it simple. Easier to persecute people, easier for people to understand how you want to limit their freedom, not reduce regulation, not eliminate regulation, not completely restructure regulation, simplify regulation. Why to reduce bureaucratic budens is that the problem bureaucratic buddens, or is the problem that the private sector is being hampered, its hands, tides, cosion and force being placed on it, and that is why it's not innovating.

So they have no clue. What Europe needs is a massive, thorough, systematic review of all regulations and the elimination of most of them, I mean ultimately all of them, but most of them at this level, not simplifying them and reducing bureaucratic burden. The problem is not bureaucratic burden. The problem is too many regulations, regulations that are too restrictive, regulations that suppress innovation and suppress economic activity. What else supporting startups?

How are they going to do that? A government's now get again into the bench capital business and start literally supporting supporting startups. Not not a good idea more central planning, more industrial policy, more of the same, more of the same, same same. But they have a compass It's a really pretty compass that measures decombonization, competitiveness, reducing excess regulation, no, reducing excessive dependencies, and increasing securities. That's the US, all

of that on a compass. I don't know what the compass means, but it looks cool. Improving access to finance, Huh. I wonder if that has anything to do with deregulating finance, enhancing skills and job quality, Right, how do you do that? That would be great and fostering a robust single market. Don't you already have a single market now? Through deregulations, you could create a much better single market, but that

would require some revolutionary deregulations. Plan It says also aims to align European national and local efforts for sustainable growth with specific goals like saving companies over thirty seven billion dollars annually through regulatory simplification. There we go regulative simplication in but sustainable growth, sustainable growth. You know what sustainable growth capitalism. If you implement capitalism, the result is sustainable growth.

Growth will not be only high, it will sustain itself over the long run. That is in the nature of capitalism. Regulatory simplification does not get you sustainable growth doesn't even get your growth. So some this is kind of a comment. Well, the initiative has gone to support from the news story for its focus on innovation, environmentals, sustainability. They are concerns about addressing high energy costs and investment in clean energy technologies.

I mean, they have no clue. They just don't know

what to do. They are so captured by a central planning mentality, a mentality of top down running of an economy, a socialist mentality at the end of the day, that they cannot get away from that, and as a consequence, they can't even imagine what they would need to do, or Europe would need to do, in order to actually reform itself and actually get it to a place where they can really compete with economies that are far more nimble, and as bad as the US economy is, it is

far more nimble, far more bottom up, far more entrepreneurial base, far less industrial policy oriented than the European model. They have no clue that what they need is more freedom. Economic freedom is unthinkable to the central planners in Europe. So you know, everybody's excited because they have a compass, they have a compass, it's going to fail, and so you know the people are writing it's time to restart Europe's innovation engine. We have the compass, we have the

political will. Now what matters to speed and unity because the world is not waiting for us. I mean, people are delusionalble What they need is a massive restructure of the whole regulatory regime at the EU level. They should drive regulations to zero. That will drive competitiveness, that will increase productivity. All right, oh, good news, we have some legitimately good news. It's rare. Once in a while we

get it. According to Our World in Data, which is a website that just looks at data and analyzes it and gives you graphs and stuff like that, the world has probably passed what they are calling peak air pollution. Like we all value clean air, right, Well, the air is cleaner now then it was a few years ago, and it's getting cleaner on a global scale. So I'm just going to read from this post by Our World in Data, global emissions of local air pollutants have probably

passed their peak. And they show charts that show a sulfur dioxide so two peaked probably in the nineteen seventies and has been going down steadily since then. Carbon monoxide COO peaked. It's how to tell from this grass the exact years between the nineteen eighties been going down since then. Organic carbon OC probably peaked recently, but it's starting to go down, starting to go down. Nitrogen oxide again peaked relatively recently, but it is definitely on a downward trend.

Black carbon peaked, you know, in the twenty teens, on what looks like a downward trend. The only one that's up is ammonia. Ammonia's up, So the Audico says, it looks like emissions a peak for almost all of these pollutants. Global air pollution is not falling, and we can save many lives by accelerating this decline. Except in as ammonia, which is mainly produced by agriculture, its emissions are still rising. Uh. This These systems come from the Community Emissions Data Center system.

So yeah, life and planet Earth is getting cleaner. H And at the same time people are getting richer and standard in quality of life is going up, is going up. Uh, pretty funny. One of the things that Yeah, anyway, so good news, I mean good stuff is happening out there. I think what is getting cleaner is getting cleaner. Clean is good. We're getting cleaner and richer. And in spite of all the craziness good things happening around the world,

technology is improving. Uh and and because technology is improving, we can we can cut down on these kind of emissions. So one of the funny things, I mean, it's not funny, it's kind of sad and pathetic, But that happening in the Trump administration is is they're cleansing the past people Trump doesn't like, people that Trump feels betrayed him. So like General Miley's portrait in the Pentagon is gone. Miley's not a good guy. Trump doesn't like him. Trump accuses

him of treason. So not only as a security Clearan's gone, not only as any kind of protection. He's one of these guys that has their threats to his life gone. But his portrait in the Pentagon, which has the portraits of all the chiefs of staff, is gone. I mean it's almost Stalinist, right. And then Mike Guesper's who was Secretary of the Army in the past. Uh. In the Pentagon's Army Secretary hallway Mark Espers, he was he was Defense secretary and secretary of the album. His portrait is gone.

They've taken it down because I don't remember what Esper's did to Trump. I mean, was he was Defense secretary. He must have said no to Trump about something. So Esper's is now purged. He's gone, He's disappeared, right, Yeah, we know. I think I already talked about the fact that there's no they've taken this secret service detail away from Bolton, away from a number of others, from Pompeo, even though Pompere has remained loyal to Trump throughout, doesn't matter.

Something he said Trump didn't like, so he's out. I mean, it really is like a Soviet style. Well not quite. They're not going to gulags. But it is funny that it is a kind of rewriting of history, rewriting of history. It's really about as despicable and ridiculous, uh, as as as possible. Right, all right, let's see, Yeah, I wanted to one more. Well, we've got a few more stories. Let's let's just do some of these other stories. I

just want to say one more thing about Boom. Remember the story for me yesterday Boom reached Uh uh, supersonic speed. Yesterday the test plane reached that speed. A huge milestone, the first time a private company, designed, operated, you know, built plane has reached supersonic speed a civilian. Uh. This is a crucial step towards now building a a commercial plane and then testing it, flying it, and then going into commercial production. They've already got orders from a number

of them. So fantastic for Boom. One of the things I saw today I think Blake Shoals the seeo Boom posted this. There was no sonic boom hood on the ground. So one of the things that Boom has done, and one of the things that technology and new materials and new design innovation have made possible as compared to the Concorde, is that they have reduced the sonic boom dramatically so that you know, under certain conditions and at certain altitudes

you can't hear the jet from the ground. That'll make a huge difference if you want to fly, for example, the LA New York route, which could be incredibly lucrative if you could use it, so instead of I don't know what is it taking out five hours, five and a half, six hours, you could do it in three

or even four. That would be huge. And so of cutting down uh you know, cutting down travel time, if you could do that, the conclude could never do it because it was it was too noisy, it was there was real Uh you know, the sonic booms across the entire country here if if, if you can have no sonic boom or a minimum sonic boom, again, the potential is huge. I also saw there was a lot of posting about boom today, uh, and Blake posted a lot

and it was good to see you. Remember I told you the story of I was very skeptical and I when I heard about this, and yeah, you know, one of these one of these amazing dreams. And it turns out everybody was skeptical. That is, everybody Blake talked to basically said are you crazy, including his wife at the time, who basically said, Okay, you can try this out for a year, but that's it, you know, unless it takes

off in a year, is that I'm married anymore? But but but but you know, others in his uh friends and associates, we're all pretty skeptical about this. And he talked about that and he said even he he wanted to take a shot at it. He wanted to try it. He was I don't know what probability you would have given himself at the beginning that he would be successful. But it's you know, it's pretty it's you know, it's pretty amazing that he actually did it. One of Femann says,

sonic booms are not a problem. Just take off sub sonic and transition to sonic over the ocean. But that's the point, right, The point I was making is that they are problem if you want to fly from Los Angeles to New York City, because there's no ocean, it's all land. So can you fly from New York City to LA at supersonic speeds? You can if there's no sonic boom, or if the sonic boom is minimal, and that expands the usability of a supersonic jet dramatically and

it makes it much much more profitable. It then means a lot of other companies will we'll take it on. So Jetifer says it's called boom, but there's no boom. Yeah, they think of changing the name to no boom, no boom. So I mean it just shows how, you know, the vision, determination, passion, you know how important those characteristics are and how the

kind of obstacles you've can overcome. I mean again, the idea that you could do is Swasonic jet after Concorde, that you could do privately without Boeing and Airbus with that government money. Remember Boeing and Airbus get huge subsidies right from the government. Is pretty is pretty amazing. And as I said, nobody thought was possible given the regulatory regime that we had. And yet it doesn't matter of Republican's Democrats. He got it done. He got it done

the whole with politics. I'm just gonna drive to get it done and I'm going to overcome the obstacles. It's amazing. So again, congratulations. All right, one quick one. We've talked a lot about deep Seek, so that most stories coming out so now it that ai open Ai Open Ai, sam Oltmann's company is accusing deep Seek of using its

proprietary models to train their own AI system. So suppose this is illegal along so there's down investigation by both open ai and Microsoft into potential unauthorized data acquisition, and so there's a lot of trying to figure this out and what did they do and how did it happen, and are they cheating in any way. In other words, are they cheating in anyway? The other aspect of this city is interesting is some people are claiming, well, maybe

they did use Nvidia's most advanced chips. Maybe they got them smuggled into China, and they won't admit it because they're not supposed to have those chips. But maybe this is a sign another indication that even though the US banned the Nvidia chips and being exported to China, them making their way there anyway. And in this context I read some way that a big chunk of in Vidia's sales of its most advanced chips is going to Singapore. Singapore.

Now there are some computer assembly electronic assembly plants companies in Singapore, but it doesn't seem to match the quantity that's being sold to Singapore. And the suspicion is it wouldn't be a crazy suspicion. I don't think that what happens is that in Singapore they're repackaged and sold on to the Chinese, and in video chips are making it into Singapore in spite of everything. And maybe Deep Seek did indeed use it video chips in developing its software.

So again a lot of uncertainty, a lot of speculation about what actually is going on here, what actually happened, how bad is it, what is it imply for in video? What does it imply for open ai? And so there's a you know, and this will continue until people figure it out, and it might take years to truly figure it out. And sam Aldman had a great response though. At the end of the day, he said, this is great. More competition is good. It keeps us on our toes.

We will produce better products, cheaper products. We intend to beat these guys at whatever game they're playing. So yeah, being on the competition, that is the right attitude. Good for sam Altman. Okay, I think that is the news. An hour later, that is the news for this January twenty ninth, Wednesday. All right, we are way behind on the first hour goal, never mind the second hour goal, which we're entering into right now. So the first hour has one minute to go. We're about one hundred dollars

short of the goal for the first hour. So please consider supporting the show if you value the news as produced by the One Book Show, if you get something out of it, you're here suggest that you value it to some extent. Please consider making expressing your support by making a contribution here live. You can do so by by doing a super chat or by doing a sticker and you know, supporting the show in that way. This

show cannot exist without support from people like you. Thank you John, Thank you Mark, who just both did stickers right now again, can't exist without support from people like you, from listeners like you listeners or what make this show funding from listeners. And of course you can also do this on a monthly basis by going to Patreon Patreon dot com, putting in your on book show and becoming

a monthly supporter. All kinds of folks associate with different levels, including at the ten dollars level and up you get a ads free podcast link so you can listen to it on any podcast app. But you you, you you go. If you go through the Patreon, you get it without ads. And I will say that the posting of those podcasts lags a little bit from the from the live one. We haven't figured out how to automatize automate it, so my assistant has to have the time after the show

to upload it. Sometimes she only does it in the evening or the following morning. So there is a certain lag associated with it. So I'm one of you in advance. But overall you can get you can get it at free. All the shows go up ultimately, all right, Yeah, somebody's just posted just a few of rfk's crazy batchit crazy stuff that he said over the years. Lme disease is a bioweapon. Covid spares Ashkenazi Jews. Now I can tell you as an as Kanazi Jew genetically, it didn't spare me.

I got COVID pesticide and is as filled with Askanazi Jews. It's all had a lot of COVID pesticize, make people transgender. God, I didn't even know he said that. Yeah, who knows? He said these all on the re code. You can find video, you can find the statements. I mean, the guys nuts. He just comes up with crazy stuff. COVID sped thin people. I know a lot of thin people

who got COVID. I mean, if you if you're in good shape, if you're healthy, in good shape and healthy, then you know COVID wasn't a big deal, but you still got COVID. A lot of people got COVID that I know, and I know people who were in great shape who landed up in hospital because of COVID. So hard to generalize. So my hope for the day, we'll end this and go to super chat. My hope for today is that if Congress does one good thing, it's not going to do many. We've done one good thing.

It's to reject RFK, to lead the HHS. So many people who would be better reject RFK. That would be one amazing good thing that Congress for Change could do. I don't expect them to do it, but we can hope. We can hope. All right, this is it. Let's see,

this is a funny headline. You can judge it for what it is, although it does you know, open ai furious the deep seek might have stolen all the data open ai stole from us, and a sudden truth to that in a sense that open ai use so called public available information online, but it never sought anybody permission to use it or didn't provide competition anybody. Indeed, there's a bunch of lawsuits against open ai because they used certain newspapers stuff for without competition, and they use to

train their models. So yeah, it's it's it's a good headline. I think, all right, let's see, let's go to the super chat and uh and go from there. Let's keep this open over here so we can see the exciting breaking news as it happens. All right, let me just thank Allen. Thank you for the sticker. That's his fifth super Chat. Thank you, Allan, Thank you Richard, thank you John, Thank you Mark. Let's see we've got more. Thank you Mark again. Thank you Jonathan, thank you Mike, Thank you Silvanas.

And I think we're caught up on it. Thank you Jonathan. We caught up on the stickers. All right, So let's go to the questions. We'll start with we're start like eighty dollars short of the first out goal. We really need to get to more than the first out goal to make our January goal. So please consider it, James says. First, Richard Hanania is quoting Rand left and right. Now Brett Cooper is leaving the Daily Wire and quoting Iron Rand left and right. Is objective as an exponential growth process

coming sooner than you think. I don't know. It's very hard to tell because there were a lot of fake growth graphs. So during the tea party, it certainly looked like there was going to be exponential growth. I mean, Iran sold almost a million copies in one year of all of her books. It was just a start. Was the best year ever for Iran's books during the tea party, and then it all went away. So it's hard to tell how much is it sustainable. What is really really

encouraging about Richard Hanania. Maybe Bett Cooper will see what the quality of at cooper stuff is. And there's also a podcast that came out of two literature people talking about at La Shrugged and how good of a book it is, just from a literature perspective, which I thought was huge academics that the are all intellectuals. They're not just politicians sucking up to somebody. They're not just you know, random commentators. But these are intellectuals whoever an impact on

the culture. Now. I don't know again about Brett Cooper. I don't know how intellectual she is. But yeah, it's great news. But I don't want to get you excited about exponential growth. I think it's too soon. I think you have to see many, many years of this increasing significantly to really have an evaluation in terms of the actual sustainability. And and uh, you know, and and and whether this is ongoing or whether this is just a BLib.

You know, Jennifersis Cooper supports Trump, Vance, Tucker, ORFK. Anybody who supports Tucker and uses an i Ran quote, it's bad for It's bad for objectivism. If you support Tucker and you support RFK, and you support Vance, and you support you said about all of those people, and you're using irand, then it's bad. Then she's also anti abortion. So it doesn't help us that bad people quote Ironran. It hurts us. It hurts us because then people think

Irand is of the new right. Richard Hannani is different because Richard Hanania, at least as of now, is secular, pro immigration, you know, pro capitalism. You know, he's wrong on a bunch of different things, pro abortion, wrong and a bunch of different things, but really really good on a lot of things, a lot of things. He's consistent with Iran anti racism now, even though he has a history of racism, he's anti racism now. He's changed, So

that I think is matters. It's important, all right, that's James. So I wish we had exponential growth. Oh Rejesh, thank you for the Sticker really appreciate that. Keeping them coming. Guys, gotta keep them coming. Clock says, it seems like Rand's name comes up in waves. Oh okay, so it's the same question again, like in two thousand and nine after the Great Recession, and now a bit because of Vali Keepstein's influence. It just doesn't seem to last. People are

like goldfish with fifteen second attention spans. I think that's true. But it does last, right, I mean, don't minimize this. Of the million people who read Iron Rand in twenty ten or twenty thirteen, whenever the peak was a bunch of them, it stuck with them. It wasn't a million, but a bunch of them that's stuck with them. A bunch of people who are introduced Iron Ran. Now it's gonna stick with him. So it won't be the full number. But generally the movement is growing. I don't think it's

growing exponentially, but it's growing steadily consistently. The number of intellectuals out there who Noahvin Rand is growing, the number of objectivist intellectuals who are going to enter into the advocacy field. The field of talking about ideas is growing, and you know, given all that it's growing steadily slowly, but it's going it's not going fast, which is sad. But to grow exponentially, we're going to have a lot more intellectuals. When we have you know, one hundred alexes,

one hundred yurons, that's when exponential growth will happen. Spite us something looks like I'm not sure what that name is. Any economists suggests a cap on printing dollars to the exact amount GDP grew by and using only that money to pay for government spending superficially seems like a good way to pay for government spending without taxes, and also you know, no inflation. Yeah, I think superficially, that's right. So you know, I think this is similar to nominal

GDP growth. You want to go to the money supply with nominal GDP, which is for steady nominal GDP, which is Scott Sumner's theory or something similar to Scott Sumners anyway. But of course, what it is taking away is can we really measure Is GDP really a good measure of

increased productivity and increase economic growth? I've said often the GDP is not a very good measure for example, you would increase the money's like quite a bit during wars and when go and spending went up them and spending would go up more because GDP goes up, so it's not a great measure. It would also because the money would all flow into the government, it would have distorting effects regarding relative prices where this money entered the economy first.

So while it wouldn't have maybe overall inflationary changes, that is, prices wouldn't all go up, the price level wouldn't go up. Relative allocation of funds would be impacted by it because of you're still increasing the amount of money. That amount of money isn't chasing all goods all at the same time, it's chasing those goods as the government's buying. So it affects prices in a particular reachion in a particular space,

which distorts relative prices. So there's just no there's just no way for the government to there's no free lunches. There's no way to print money, spend money without having negative impacts. Now it could be I'm a bit if you're going to have a FED, then having the FED only increase the money supply based on a rule, there's something called the tailor rule. Well, Friedman had a constant

growth rule. This is a GDP goal rule. Is much much much better then having a federal reserve that can arbitrarily spend money at its own discretion without any rule that guides it. So in a sense that this would constitute a rule, yeah, it's better than what we have. It's it's definitely an improvement. Thank you Silvanos, Wow, one hundred dollars. Really really appreciate that you got us to you got us passed our one hour goal and into

our second hour goal. Really appreciate the support. So when I says, hey on, I know you enjoy PoCA, but do you play anything else? It is Is it mall to play games that feature deception or deceitful aspects to win? Sure, as long as it's a game, right. You know, in baseball, the pitcher wants to hide from you what kind of pitch is coming next, and he does all kinds of things to try to deceive you. When you're shooting a

penalty kick. In soccer football, you want to deceive the goalie in terms of which they're actually you're going to kick the ball. Quarterbacks want to deceive the defenses and how they're going to of course, it's so there's no problem in games as long as it's a game, as long as it's understood that the deception is for the purpose of the game and nothing else bluffing and poker

bluffing and all kinds of other games. I mean, the other game I like and I played, but I haven't played in years and years, but I really enjoyed it when I when I played it is Bridge Bridge, which is a fantastic game. It's a it's a strategy game, it's a mind game. It has some elements of deception in the sense of you try to come up with ways to bid with your partner so that your opponents don't quite understand what it is that you're bidding. Uh. But but yeah, absolutely, Oh we got we got a

question from We got a question from Croatia. So the previous one where I couldn't pronounce his name is from Crooisha. I'd love to come and visit Croasha. I really really liked uh Dubrovnik that I visited years and years and years ago. But I would love organize a talk for me. You don't get one of the universities in Quasha to invite me to go and give a talk, and I will come. I have often said, invite me and I will come. If you build it, they will come. If

you invite me, I will come. Pretty straightforward, pretty cool. So yeah, I would love to come to cos your question is a beautiful, beautiful country. Uh let's see not you average algorithm? Part one? What do you mean people's images? Images shouldn't be used in AI without their consent. Much of satire users a photoshop, Yeah, and I don't think you should be able to just randomly satirize somebody using photoshop. I think you have to get somebody's permission if you're

going to use their image. So now maybe there should be an exclusion for what do you call it? Uh uh public uh, public people. So there's it's very tough uh you know, to uh for for somebody who's in the public eye too to win a deformation case. So because of satire and things like that. So if you're a politician or something like that, So they have to be clear rules and when you cannot cannot, But you can't just take my picture and use it for something.

It's like my picture is mine, my image is mine. You can't use it. By the way, often when like when an institute does video tapes a talk that somebody gives and it's gonna videotape the audience, Yeah, the audience signs a waiver to allow thee to use the image only for this talk, not to use the image for other things. So this is not unusual. This is understood today. Now they might be exceptions for satire or whatever, but it's understood that people cannot use your image for whatever

they want. They have to compensate you for it, or they have to get your permission. Not to have a joao it says, I take video and edit it however I want of anyone in public without their concer That's just wrong. It's a fon freedom of the press, which is a First Amendment protected activity. No, it's not. It's not freedom of the press. You can't go out into the public and photograph me walking across the street and just use it. That is you know that that's a

violation of my privacy. It's a violation of my you know, of me owning my own likeness. And again, in a lot of circumstances, you see people have to sign waivers so that they images can be used, and you do see a lot of videos on the news in other places where somebody's being interviewed and the people in the background and their faces are shaded out because they didn't get their permission to have them on TV. And it's really really important. You know, you don't have a right.

You don't have a right to see. Hey, whatever the hell you want to say, wherever you want to say it, in whatever context you want to say it. For example, you don't have a right to defame me. You don't have to write to use my property, and my image is my property. So no, I don't think I don't think that you're right. There are laws about this. I

don't know how clear they are. Given that you're in video and you take videos, you should get clarity around the laws because even today, I'm not sure what you're doing is legit and it's not protected by the First Amendment. First Amendment does not protect your right to publicize my image. Justin says me Lee spoke a divas Davas give it a listening commentary. I intend to haven't had a chance

he had to catch his talk. Jason As mentioned yesterday, Brett Cooper's official trailer has now one point five million views. I watched it. It features nine men speaking her narration a total break with your past world. All of that is good, except that she does not break with the past world. She's probably religious, She's probably conservative, She's probably an altruist. She's probably just a conventional conservative, and Ainrand would be horrified by her voice being used to promote

a conservative, A standard conservative. Larry Green says Trump justice seated the order to freeze federal aid spending. Yeah, we talked about that. I just, of course was asked a long time ago. I'm not surprised at all. I mean, given the chaos in the incompetence in this administration. Jason in cousin Caroline Kennedy's YouTube appeal not to nominate RFK, did you hear her mention that America's healthcare is the envy of the world. I did not. I did not

hear her mention that. If she mentioned that, that's pretty cool. Oh, but I wish the world knew that it should envious. I don't think, unfortunately, the world actually knows it should envious. By the way, thank you to Kim, Thank you to nev fall into a geon for their stickers. Youtubo can support your own book show by using a sticker, no question needed. And they did it for like, you know, two dollars, so you can do a two dollars one

as well, and that's great. Really appreciate it. Apollos of Scarface versus Miami Vice, who is more immol Tony Mantana for providing illicited substances to destroy lives, or Crockett and Tubs who are helping to take away your right to choose what you can't put in your body, thus violating your individual rights. I mean, look, you can't defense Scarface because he lives in a world of violence that is

based on a world of violence. It's not like, oh, he really wants to provide you with something helpful to your life or even whatever that you have done and full So that's youma. But then you know the police. If you join the police, your job is to follow the law. It's not your job to decide which laws are right and which laws are wrong. So I don't blame police for arresting drug dealers. I blame the law.

The police are just doing their job, So I wouldn't if you you know, so, I don't think it's fair to compare them. At the end of the day, Crocketted Tubs is not killing anybody. They are indeed enforcing the law, and they're putting in jail people who break the law who know that if they get caught this as well happened to them. All Right, last question for today's show, and then I guess I'll hit to the airport. Hey, Ron, if Superman was an objectivist instead of altruists, what do

you think his stories could be about. Would objective as superheroes be cool? Yeah? First of all, they kill the bad guys. They wouldn't keep letting them free without killing them. They wouldn't have more qualms about killing murderers, killing bad guys. They'd announced to the world that you know that they are doing this as a trade, and that you know they're doing this to live in a better world, because

they want to live in a better world. But hey, if the world wants to give them a super Chat or send them a sticker or do a Patreon, uh, you know that they are open to be compensated for the superhero deeds that they that they that they can meet,

that they that they engage in. That you know the world shouldn't think that they can just free ride off of Superman, but they should be induced to to, you know, pony up something they would also I think Superman would also coordinate much more with the police and the military of the good guys to make sure that he's going after really evil and he has the Corporation when he

does so. So yeah, you could find superheroes that are cool because they're self interested, and it would be cool to see somebody saving the world in the name of his own interests. I think that'd be super cool. All right, guys, we will call it a day again. I'm not sure when the next show will be. I might try to do a show tomorrow from Clemson. I'm not sure if that's possible, if we can pull that off, but you know,

we'll see when I get to Clemson. Maybe maybe I can interview Brett Thompson or something like that, but that could be fun anyway. I will see you all whenever the next show is, which I cannot commit right now for when that will be suddenly Sunday. We'll do a show maybe Saturday, but suddenly Sunday, and we'll try to

do some of the shows other times. But I am going off to travel some of you, some of you I'm going to see in Naples at the conference, at the Rand's Day conference that we're going to celebrate together one hundred and twentieth birthday of Iron Rand. So please do that. Don't forget to note the sponsors, the Ironman Institute,

which is also doing something special February second. You can find information about that and sign up for the webinar at ir dot org, slish dot here and Alex Epstein, who of course provides incredible, incredible value to all of you at your ability to communicate about these ideas and you can discover more, and you can sign up to get the value from Alex by going to alex Epstein dot substack dot com. All right, guys, see you soon. Bye by body