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Like most pundits, he's hit or miss. I agree with him about crime, IQ, and so on , but he's probably wrong about obesity. It's interesting how in 2021 he found a following in an otherwise saturated market of Twitter politics by capturing the small but influential anti-populist, post-neocon center-right niche that had been underserved by the dominant post-Covid , Trump-era populist consensus. Richard rejected the anti-vaxers , but also rejected the pro-mask and pro-mandate side, which was the elite position to take that made him allies with important, wealthy like-minded people in tech and VC. Same for rejecting Jan 6th. it's a small niche but its adherents are people with large platforms, like Marc Andreessen, Musk, and Chamath which helped his niche ideas spread, much more so than had he parroted stale populist talking points like everyone else.
His book does not need to sell that many copies, as he has good income from substack, donors, and the people who read his book are important and help spread its message to those in high positions of power and influence. It was never intended to be as big of a seller compared to a talk radio host's book. it's somewhere in-between a mainstream book and an academic book.
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