NXR Podcast - THE LIVESTREAM - Where Did We Go Wrong With Capitalism?
Aired: 2025-07-18
Duration: 01:29:55


=== Economic Systems and Capitalism (14:27) ===

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[00:00:16]  You and I both know that this ministry is willing to talk about things that most ministries aren't.
[00:00:21]  We need this content for the glory of God to reach more people's ears.
[00:00:30]  It's no secret that here with Right Response Ministries, we are proud to.
[00:00:34]  Unapologetic Christian nationalist.
[00:00:37]  Everybody knows that, and I've talked about it for a few years now.
[00:00:40]  I even participated in helping to write a statement on Christian nationalism.
[00:00:45]  So, we're nationalists.
[00:00:47]  We're also nationalists, as you can tell from the thumbnail and the title of this video, who have problems with capitalism, which makes us national JK.
[00:00:57]  We're not going there, but we do have some serious problems with capitalism.
[00:01:02]  We're going to flesh out all the evils and all the problems of communism and socialism and other forms.
[00:01:09]  Of economics, but we're going to talk about capitalism and the good that it's produced historically that's undeniable in the world, and yet we're going to talk about many of the ways that it has recently, in the past few decades, devolved.
[00:01:25]  This is a discussion that conservatives have to be willing to have, right?
[00:01:29]  It's kind of similar in my mind to being willing to criticize our greatest ally, right?
[00:01:36]  For a long time, there have just been certain things that are associated with being a conservative that are not particularly helpful.
[00:01:44]  If you're a conservative, it doesn't mean that you need to be burning tires in your backyard.
[00:01:49]  You can be a conservative and actually conserve the environment.
[00:01:53]  We shouldn't just hand issues like that to the left.
[00:01:56]  If you're a conservative, you also can criticize Israel when they're doing heinous, wicked things, as they currently are and often are.
[00:02:05]  And if you're a conservative, you can also criticize and point out some of the immense problems with capitalism, especially given in light of certain technological innovations.
[00:02:18]  And the type of people that we now have, and all this in light of globalism.
[00:02:23]  We're not just talking about capitalism with a national framework here in these United States, but we are globalists, for better or for worse, and I would argue the latter.
[00:02:35]  And so, with this embrace of globalism and crony capitalism, and with a degenerate population, which is what we currently have in America, there are massive problems.
[00:02:47]  And that's what we'll discuss today.
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[00:02:56]  It does a little bit of capitalism, but in a good way.
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[00:03:22]  Okay, let's dive in.
[00:03:23]  Thank you.
[00:03:34]  Real quick, I just got to say, we got the new stinger.
[00:03:37]  Antonio has now been filtered in.
[00:03:39]  And we know that, you know, preemptively, we're going to get comments like this.
[00:03:42]  So I think it's just good to just name it and get ahead of it.
[00:03:44]  Here's the deal some people are going to be like, what?
[00:03:46]  You got a guy on the show who's half black?
[00:03:48]  The big concern is Antonio Pierre, half French?
[00:03:53]  To me, that's the big concern here.
[00:03:54]  So I've done DNA testing.
[00:03:56]  I'm only about 2% French.
[00:03:59]  Okay.
[00:04:00]  But with the name, it's really working for you.
[00:04:02]  But even that is just a shame.
[00:04:03]  2% too much to admit.
[00:04:05]  But this is okay.
[00:04:06]  So today's episode, we're going to let Wes kick it off, but this is very much in your wheelhouse.
[00:04:10]  Do you probably don't want to exactly share where you're currently working and stuff, but do you want to give a little bit of your general background for this?
[00:04:17]  Yeah.
[00:04:18]  So I went to a pretty good university, more on the prestigious side, and I studied business, I studied finance, and I studied economics and those sorts of things.
[00:04:28]  And so I spent four years of my life really from the ground up thinking about economics and Theories, you know, like more sort of baseline theories that we all know, like supply and demand economics, all the way up to some more sophisticated, you know, hyper efficient theories of economics.
[00:04:46]  So, and I've and I've went, you know, politically went through a very, you know, several different kinds of variations of, you know, capitalist, you know, libertarian capitalist early on.
[00:04:58]  Then you become like sort of a conservative capitalist.
[00:05:00]  You say, hey, there are some things that are off limits.
[00:05:03]  And then you become what I am now, which I think is new.
[00:05:08]  And I don't even really have a label for it yet, but I think it's some, it's sort of, you know, Christian capitalism, right?
[00:05:16]  So it's some hybrid between recognizing virtue and recognizing the sacred, even in the public sphere.
[00:05:22]  So all that to say, yeah, spent quite a lot of time both, you know, in my education, but after graduating, spending a lot of time in the business world, working for many different companies.
[00:05:33]  So, yeah.
[00:05:34]  If you could, I've seen it up close.
[00:05:36]  Yeah.
[00:05:36]  If you could name just two or three so that we don't get bogged down here, because we're going to flesh it out a little bit more, but right from, The get go.
[00:05:42]  If you could name like two or three elements of capitalism, not necessarily right now, today, with some of the craziness that we currently have, but historically, two or three elements of historic capitalism, as we've seen it in the West, that you think actually are biblical.
[00:06:00]  No, I can make a scriptural argument for that, and I don't want to see these elements lost.
[00:06:05]  What would they be?
[00:06:06]  Yeah, so I think private property is the biggest one.
[00:06:09]  It's probably the strongest element that capitalism reinforces.
[00:06:12]  I think that's very early on.
[00:06:15]  You see that in biblical case law, recognizing a man's property, a man's assets, if you will, his donkey, his ox, so on and so forth.
[00:06:24]  Not moving the goalposts or the boundary post of someone's property.
[00:06:29]  Exactly.
[00:06:30]  Yeah.
[00:06:30]  So I think private property is kind of the fundamental element to capitalism.
[00:06:36]  You see that really early on in the Americas, is one of the preeminent sort of virtues that our government protected was private property and stood in that way.
[00:06:49]  You know, stood even separate from many of the Western nations, including the UK, stood apart from those.
[00:06:56]  So, to add to that, one of the safeties that I see with private property on the flip side from it just being eternally, and I'm not using that word hyperbolically, but like eternally abused, is the year of Jubilee.
[00:07:12]  That there was an economic mechanism built in with, you know, spiritual reasoning and connotations, but built into the framework of Old Covenant Israel.
[00:07:22]  To where the land would eventually go back to its original owning family.
[00:07:29]  So, and just for the record, all this, they weren't stupid, right?
[00:07:32]  They're not archaic.
[00:07:34]  They're not primitive people.
[00:07:37]  They were intelligent.
[00:07:38]  And so this was all built into their buying and selling.
[00:07:42]  It was like the land, think of it like this it would be prorated, right?
[00:07:46]  So if it's year 45 since the last Jubilee, and Jubilee is happening every 50 years, and you're in Israel and you're going to buy a plot of land, you know that that land is going back to the original family, right?
[00:08:03]  Because the land, when they conquered it and Canaan was divided up with the 12 tribes, And then each of these clans, and then ultimately down to families within the tribes, all had their original allotted land.
[00:08:14]  And so, if it's year 45, you got five years left on the clock, and you're going to buy this land, it's going to be prorated, it's going to be at a discount.
[00:08:22]  And if you're a sojourner in Israel, number one, sojourners, when the Bible talks about the alien and the stranger and the sojourner, these are not illegal, number one, illegal aliens, illegal sojourners.
[00:08:36]  And the sojourner is somebody.
[00:08:37]  Who's there for a time, whether it be business or trade or whatever the purpose may be, but the sojourner is expected to eventually go back unless they're truly going to be kind of like a Ruth situation your people will be my people, your God will be my God, truly assimilate into Israel.
[00:08:54]  And in those cases, Israel still, even when it came to certain levels of acceptance of their worship, like entrance to the temple and these kinds of things, somebody who was actually immigrating and assimilating into Israel.
[00:09:12]  Would not be able to have full access to temple worship until the third generation.
[00:09:18]  And depending where they were coming from and what the history of that nation was with Israel, whether they had betrayed them or whatever the case may be, there were some nations that were listed that they could not enter until the 10th generation.
[00:09:30]  So, my point is this if you're a sojourner in Israel and you're doing business, there's this turnover reset mechanism at the 50 year mark, Jubilee, where the land is actually going to go back to heritage Israelites.
[00:09:46]  It's actually going to go back to the people, the descendants of the original families that started the nation of Israel, that God started this nation with.
[00:09:55]  And so you could be there as a sojourner with some other nationality, some other nationhood, and you could trade and you could live comfortably.
[00:10:03]  You're going to behave yourself as a guest.
[00:10:05]  All the religious laws like Sabbath keeping still apply to you.
[00:10:08]  Well, I don't worship God, the God of Israel.
[00:10:15]  Well, that's fine.
[00:10:16]  We can't control what you do privately in your heart.
[00:10:19]  But publicly, you're still going to keep the Sabbath because this is Israel and this is where you are.
[00:10:25]  And so you're going to behave as a guest.
[00:10:27]  And if you behave as a guest, you'll be treated as a guest.
[00:10:30]  So there are all these laws about not exploiting the sojourner or taking advantage of the sojourner.
[00:10:35]  So you're treated as a guest, but you're also expected to behave as a guest.
[00:10:38]  And as a guest, you don't walk into the house of Israel with mud on your shoes and kick it around by blaspheming God and breaking the Sabbath.
[00:10:48]  You're going to obey all these spiritual stipulations.
[00:10:51]  And then there's also an economic system.
[00:10:54]  That makes sure that the heritage wealth of Israel stays with Israel.
[00:11:03]  And so other people are benefiting and coming in for a time, but then it resets and kicks back.
[00:11:09]  Whereas today, when I so, yes, you can't move the land marker, yes, private property, all those things.
[00:11:15]  And we defend those things, believe in those things.
[00:11:17]  The problem is that for us, capitalism coupled with globalism and just this limitless, indefinite flood of immigration, we basically just, the wealth and prosperity and blessing, economic blessing of heritage Americans for decades now has just been eroded away.
[00:11:42]  But with no system, no reset system where it would ever come back.
[00:11:47]  You're just robbed.
[00:11:49]  Your wealth that your forefathers built for you.
[00:11:52]  Right?
[00:11:53]  I mean, the founders even said in original documents that we're doing this for us and our posterity.
[00:11:59]  They weren't starting this country for India.
[00:12:02]  They weren't doing it for H 1B visas.
[00:12:05]  They weren't doing it for, they sure as heck weren't doing it for Israel, their greatest ally.
[00:12:12]  It was not their greatest ally, shouldn't it be ours?
[00:12:14]  They were doing it for them and their children.
[00:12:17]  And the reality is, the reason why so many people are frustrated today, especially young people, young men, Gen Z, Is because they realize that the inheritance that was supposed to be theirs has been given away to somebody else.
[00:12:30]  So I think it's capitalism coupled with this zero borders, porous borders, limitless globalism has just absolutely destroyed the wealth of America to where America as a sports team, as an economic zone, is still incredibly wealthy.
[00:12:50]  But in terms of the American people themselves, especially the younger generation, they're not wealthy at all.
[00:12:57]  All right, Wes, were you going to say something?
[00:13:00]  So I'm going to go ahead and actually define different types of capitalism.
[00:13:02]  When you say that, it could be very similar.
[00:13:05]  What kind of conservative?
[00:13:06]  Well, I'm a conservative.
[00:13:07]  What do you actually mean by that?
[00:13:09]  There's a number of different types, but to kind of lay the foundation, and someone even, I think it was Cosmic Treason, pointed out in the comments, we have to be very clear that when we talk about capitalism, even in all of these different forms, we're talking about a narrower definition of it that's mostly existed since the 1700s and the Industrial Revolution.
[00:13:25]  To Antonio's point, to Joel's point, the idea of private property and the idea of private trade.
[00:13:30]  Has existed for basically all of humanity's time.
[00:13:33]  We've always understood I have something of value.
[00:13:36]  However, I could have 50 pairs of boots.
[00:13:38]  That doesn't get me food for today.
[00:13:39]  I need to trade it for something else of value.
[00:13:41]  So, nothing what we're going to say here today is a critique of, again, basic ownership of private property, the ability to trade.
[00:13:47]  But what we are critiquing is, especially again, in an industrial revolution age, in an age where a corporation, this entity that's abstract, can absolve all of the failures of individuals within that corporation.
[00:13:59]  It can persist generations long.
[00:14:01]  So, you could have hundreds of billions of dollars that simply Persists in perpetuity, to your point, could just own land, it could just operate, it could just do things just basically till the end of time because it has so much money.
[00:14:13]  Those are some of the things specifically we're critiquing.
[00:14:15]  Not 5,000 years of people owning a home and owning their trade and having a skill and selling their wares, but more specifically, what's come out in the last about two to 300 years.
[00:14:25]  I'm going to give five types of capitalism here.

=== Critiquing Modern Capitalism (15:42) ===

[00:14:27]  The one that probably everyone's really familiar with is free market capitalism, laissez faire capitalism.
[00:14:33]  That's where there's minimal government intrusion.
[00:14:35]  And we have some problems with that, we'll get into it.
[00:14:37]  Then you have a type of welfare capitalism.
[00:14:39]  This is more common in Northern Europe.
[00:14:41]  So, this would be your government, for example, that provides services like your healthcare and insurance and things like this.
[00:14:48]  So, it does provide through welfare some of these things.
[00:14:51]  There's not private insurance companies or private hospitals that are competing for your business, but the economy itself is generally not as interfered with.
[00:14:58]  Then you would have more interference, and that would be kind of a state capitalism, where the state specifically says we're going to set quotas for these different sectors of our economy.
[00:15:07]  We're going to take control of manufacturing, for instance.
[00:15:09]  We're going to have state officials that are on the ground.
[00:15:12]  They're running it.
[00:15:13]  They're saying how this should be.
[00:15:14]  So that's laissez faire, free trade capitalism, no boundaries, welfare capitalism, state capitalism.
[00:15:21]  And then the two that I think we have the most problems with corporate capitalism, large corporations exerting significant influence on the economy and society.
[00:15:30]  And so the government may have some involvement in that, but really it's just big corporations.
[00:15:35]  The government may say, hey, you cannot monopolize, right?
[00:15:37]  So Amazon, T Mobile can't just get together and say, we're just going to force everyone out of business with low cost because we're so profitable.
[00:15:44]  But for the most part, that's a lot of what we have.
[00:15:47]  Here.
[00:15:47]  And then the final one would be crony capitalism.
[00:15:50]  And then, kind of, there's no system that's purely one of those things, not no system, but typically a system's not one of these things.
[00:15:57]  And so, the kind of final stage that all countries will be in at some level is called a mixed economy that an economy will incorporate some elements of capitalism and some elements of welfare capitalism or some elements of corporate capitalism.
[00:16:10]  And then, crony capitalism, as we all know, has a susceptibility to come up everywhere.
[00:16:14]  I want to go through some of the benefits to life that have happened in just.
[00:16:19]  The average life, mostly in the West, in the last 200 years.
[00:16:22]  So if you go back, let's look at GDP per capita, gross domestic product.
[00:16:27]  This is a measure of productivity.
[00:16:29]  So you can see on a graph here, this is a graph from 1820 to 2018, kind of the tail end of the start of the Industrial Revolution through to about seven years ago.
[00:16:37]  The GDP per capita, and this is adjusted for inflation.
[00:16:41]  So this is not just saying, you know, $20 then, $20 now, it just does less.
[00:16:46]  It actually, the production is incredible.
[00:16:48]  If you kind of trace it in, and I'll describe it for anyone that's listening.
[00:16:52]  Probably 3,000 per capita in Western, specifically Western offshoots, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, probably about 3,000 per capita in 1820, a little bit before.
[00:17:03]  By 2018, that's over 55,000.
[00:17:06]  So you're talking about close to 20 times GDP.
[00:17:09]  And I think that actually is a good measure of productivity, as in literally per capita, these Western offshoots, specifically Western European nations or America, including Canada and the United States, per capita, we're producing more.
[00:17:23]  And then you have obviously down the list, you can read all the different nations.
[00:17:26]  And this carries across in the United States specifically as well.
[00:17:29]  So, this is another chart.
[00:17:30]  And the growth is just astronomical.
[00:17:32]  Again, this is adjusted for inflation.
[00:17:35]  So, in real practical terms, as far as GDP, as far as production of product that can be sold in equivalent dollars, standardizing everything, we've had huge growths in the amount that we produce, the value of what we produce per capita, what it can be sold, what can be brought in, what can be shipped out.
[00:17:52]  It's just in the last 200 years, the Industrial Revolution has unleashed.
[00:17:57]  An incredible capacity to build, to sell, to create.
[00:18:02]  Anything to add to those two, gentlemen, before I get into life expectancy?
[00:18:05]  Yeah, I was just going to say that you can think about statistics around GDP, but not only GDP, other measures of productivity.
[00:18:13]  So you can think about cost being one element of that.
[00:18:16]  So freight costs are something that economists look at a lot in the 19th century, which is essentially how much does it cost to travel over rail, to pay for travel over rail of one ton of freight?
[00:18:29]  And you see these things have in less than a decade.
[00:18:33]  You see real output of commodities like corn and wheat.
[00:18:38]  These things double, triple sometimes in several decades in the late 19th century.
[00:18:44]  And so there was a time, you know, where capitalism was doing precisely what it was expected to do, which is increase quality of life, increase real world output, you know.
[00:19:00]  Tides coming in, it's raising all the boats.
[00:19:01]  Everyone's being, everyone's wealthier, everyone's doing better off.
[00:19:06]  And there was a time, and I think particularly after World War II, there was about a decade and a half of American hegemony, economically speaking.
[00:19:15]  And then we start to see some of these things taper off as it relates to productivity and quality of life and, you know, GDP adjusted for inflation, so on and so forth.
[00:19:24]  Yep.
[00:19:24]  So, an innovation, like we would all agree, the cotton gin is more for sure humane compared to human labor and just efficient.
[00:19:30]  It is a better way to take cotton, which hopefully you're wearing cotton clothing.
[00:19:34]  We all still wear cotton.
[00:19:35]  A lot of the synthetic stuff, your polyester, your nylon, is not good for you.
[00:19:39]  So, we still have a need for this resource.
[00:19:40]  We've captured incredibly effective ways to harvest it, to take it, to spin it, and to make it into clothing.
[00:19:46]  And that's just objectively better than what we had before.
[00:19:50]  Two more graphs.
[00:19:50]  So, this is life expectancy.
[00:19:52]  This is for England and Wales from 1700 to 2013.
[00:19:55]  Some of the statistical reporting only starts right around 1850 or so.
[00:19:59]  But you can see for every single age, so at the top is life expectancy of a 70 year old, of a 60 year old, of a 50 year old, kind of goes down.
[00:20:07]  There's a huge dip right there in 1940 with World War II.
[00:20:10]  But by every single metric, as far as life expectancy, every single group, GREATLY increased life expectancy.
[00:20:17]  This one is incredible.
[00:20:18]  This is global childhood mortality.
[00:20:20]  So, this is the expectation what percent of children are expected to live in past the first five years of their life.
[00:20:26]  So, you have 1800 to 2015.
[00:20:29]  1800, it's about 42% were expected not to make it.
[00:20:33]  That's about one in two.
[00:20:35]  Generally speaking, if a family had six children, you'd expect there were five to six that didn't make it.
[00:20:40]  By 2015, it's 4.2%.
[00:20:43]  Now, of course, we can't credit all that to corporations, to Amazon, but we can generally say, Innovation, we can say hospitals, scale, industry, and innovation have been the drivers of real, genuine improvements in life, lower childhood mortality, living longer, and producing more.
[00:21:02]  And that, again, has been the last two, three hundred years, very capitalistic, very open market, free market in nature.
[00:21:07]  Yeah.
[00:21:08]  I wanted to add, Joel, going back to your question at the front, which was what are the elements that we would say are particularly biblical?
[00:21:16]  We talked about private or property.
[00:21:17]  I think the other one that we should mention is.
[00:21:23]  The degree to which capitalism is the most meritocratic system, you talk about do not muzzle an ox, you talk about the parable of the talents, right?
[00:21:31]  And that a man is able to go and create a return with that which he has given.
[00:21:37]  So, capitalism isn't egalitarian.
[00:21:39]  It doesn't say we all start at the same place.
[00:21:42]  But what it does affirm is that every man with his God given abilities, God given vocation, God given resources can go and bring a return with those things.
[00:21:52]  And more or less, capitalism is a system that removes the shackles, particularly the shackles that government would place on man's ability to do that.
[00:22:01]  So, government arbitrarily muzzling a man, saying, These men and these men only will have these resources.
[00:22:07]  This land can only be owned by these families with this last name, so on and so forth, or with these honorary titles, as you see in feudal systems.
[00:22:14]  And so, capitalism is actually a rejection of those things.
[00:22:17]  And I think in that way, certainly more biblical.
[00:22:21]  The other thing I wanted to mention, just to talk a little bit about the history of capitalism.
[00:22:25]  And we'll look at corporations specifically.
[00:22:27]  So, the modern corporation is something that you or your mom or your sister could start in a day.
[00:22:34]  Okay, so that's not how corporations were thought of as sort of separate legal entities in the late 18th century.
[00:22:42]  In the late 18th century, with the creation of the corporation, corporations were actually chartered.
[00:22:48]  And what that meant was when someone wanted to create a corporation, they went to the government, they made an appeal to the government, and particularly the body politic, to say, we want to create.
[00:22:58]  A chartered corporation to do this specific thing, create a railroad, go and grab resources across an ocean.
[00:23:08]  We want to do this for the public good.
[00:23:10]  And as a consequence, we want a unique legal designation where many people can own a piece of this company.
[00:23:19]  So it's not structured like a partnership.
[00:23:21]  And there's all sorts of legal advantages.
[00:23:24]  And those things were denied all the time because the people, fundamentally through the parliament or through the Congress, We're able to say that doesn't deserve a charter.
[00:23:36]  That isn't in our best interest.
[00:23:39]  And that is how the corporation was initially conceived of.
[00:23:43]  It was primarily for public good.
[00:23:46]  So in the modern corporation, it's kind of the opposite.
[00:23:49]  It's like you create a corporation for personal tax advantages, you create a corporation for easy access to raising funds or whatever the case is, but it's certainly not for the public good.
[00:24:03]  Well, it's just kind of like the economic.
[00:24:05]  Um, outflow of democracy, if that's the governing form, then you know, then the kind of capitalism we have today is the economic form.
[00:24:15]  So it's like, we'll let the people decide, right?
[00:24:17]  It's a free market, and the people will decide if it's a public good.
[00:24:21]  Yeah, but what happens when the people are degenerate and they decide that OnlyFans is a public good when objectively it's not, right?
[00:24:28]  It's like, um, like that one, you know, video of it's some uh, some Muslim guy, but I agree on this point.
[00:24:35]  He says, um, It's like democracy is for the people, of the people, by the people, but the people are retarded.
[00:24:43]  So, democracy is for the retarded, of the retarded, and by the retarded.
[00:24:47]  And I think that sums it up pretty nicely.
[00:24:50]  And so, crony capitalism, where it's like, well, anybody can start a corporation in a day.
[00:24:58]  And, well, we are getting the people's consent in this kind of organic sense by simply just starting it.
[00:25:07]  And the corporation will close itself.
[00:25:10]  If no one's willing to patron it, you know, but then what you're assuming is you're betting on the nature of man, that man is fundamentally good and therefore will only spend money on things that are virtuous.
[00:25:24]  But the reality is that that's not true.
[00:25:26]  People will spend money on plenty of things that are not virtuous.
[00:25:31]  And so, yeah, so I don't want a perfectly free market.
[00:25:36]  I want the state first, I want the state to be Christian, which we currently don't have.
[00:25:42]  But I want the state to be Christian.
[00:25:44]  Separation of church and state, that's fine.
[00:25:48]  But separation of Christ and state, no way.
[00:25:51]  There is a God above the state, or else the state is God.
[00:25:53]  And so I would like the true God, the one that actually exists, the triune God, to be the head of the state.
[00:25:59]  And then, assuming that a Christian state, I want that Christian state to be able to govern even economic affairs.
[00:26:07]  And not necessarily in a meticulous way, not in a way that's overbearing, but absolutely, I want the state to be able to come in and say, Oh, I see you have a business here called OnlyFans.
[00:26:20]  Right.
[00:26:20]  That's shut down.
[00:26:21]  Oh, but the people want it.
[00:26:23]  Oh, yeah.
[00:26:23]  But the people are retarded.
[00:26:24]  That's shut down.
[00:26:26]  So, and the big piece, go ahead.
[00:26:28]  I was just going to say quickly like, the important, I guess, the consequence of that kind of analysis is that similar to the Constitution, we know that the Constitution assumes a particular kind of national life and virtue in the body of the national body.
[00:26:46]  And so does an economic system, similar fashion, social construct.
[00:26:50]  It assumes these things.
[00:26:51]  And we were talking about before we went live, you know, Adam Smith, right?
[00:26:56]  The founder of capitalism.
[00:26:57]  He wrote a book, a famous book called The Wealth of Nations.
[00:27:01]  A lot of people don't know that he actually wrote a work of moral philosophy prior to writing that book, which was actually the underpinning of the economic work, which was called The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
[00:27:12]  And in this book, he actually, contrary to the notion of capitalism as sort of like my selfish motives compete with your selfish motives for the collective good, he actually talked a lot about self command and discipline.
[00:27:28]  Benevolence was one of the key philosophical points he makes.
[00:27:31]  In that book, self command was one of the major ones as well.
[00:27:37]  But he talks a lot about virtue and the requirement for virtue in economic life.
[00:27:43]  And so these things were assumed.
[00:27:45]  And we would be fools to assume those things now when we try to interpret the economy.
[00:27:51]  So a neocon might hear what we're talking about.
[00:27:53]  Oh, you're a socialist or you're a communist.
[00:27:56]  You're agreeing with AOC.
[00:27:57]  But it's like, frankly, I'm just recognizing the moral degradation in our society, right?
[00:28:03]  And seeing how far we've fallen from.
[00:28:07]  Where we were in the kind of capitalism we had.
[00:28:10]  That limited liability piece, just before we go to our first commercial break, is huge.
[00:28:14]  It was about the mid 1800s that in England, for example, they allowed corporations, but then there was an act in, I think, 1820 that they could be registered without a charter and without approval.
[00:28:23]  And then the limited liability piece was stamped on.
[00:28:26]  And what that means is that individuals could form a corporation and they could take your money.
[00:28:30]  Dabney has a great critique of this in an essay in Forgotten Saints.
[00:28:33]  But they could take your money and they could say, we're going to use it for this.
[00:28:35]  They could blow through it and say, I'm sorry, the product just didn't work.
[00:28:38]  We couldn't get this, that, or the other, and your money is gone.
[00:28:41]  Partnerships, typically, on the other hand, you could be personally liable.
[00:28:45]  If I went to Joel's dad and I said, Hey, you need to take your retirement savings, and I found the cure for cancer, and you need to give this to me, and I can promise you 10X returns.
[00:28:53]  And I'm a corporation, and all of that money, unless there's criminal misuse, I could say, We tried, the drug didn't actually work.
[00:29:00]  I would have no responsibility for the things that I promised, the things that I told them, taking people's money.
[00:29:06]  And so when you have that structure, someone pointed out, well, that protects people from being sued into oblivion.
[00:29:10]  Well, maybe we shouldn't have structures that have the ability to take someone's entire livelihood.
[00:29:14]  I think of Alex Jones and Infowars being sued for, I believe it's in the trillions the judge settled on.
[00:29:20]  So then you have the problem where, well, we're going to take people's stuff through court, through suing them.
[00:29:26]  But then they say, all right, we're going to form this type of thing that protects us from being sued.
[00:29:30]  But then you have these corporations.
[00:29:32]  Vivek Ramaswamy, the way he made his money is he took a drug, a Parkinson's drug, that basically everyone knew wouldn't work.
[00:29:39]  He got his mom to tell this story about how promising it was.
[00:29:42]  Had his company IPO, initial public offering.
[00:29:45]  So tons of different people bought the shares, thinking that by owning a small percent of the company, that that company would go up in value because they had the first Alzheimer's drug.
[00:29:54]  The drug failed trials.
[00:29:55]  The company went bankrupt.
[00:29:57]  He sold all of his ownership to people who thought it would be more valuable.
[00:30:00]  So now he's a multimillionaire and about to be governor of Ohio, unfortunately.
[00:30:05]  And tons of people lost their investments because he can't be personally liable.
[00:30:09]  I don't support a system like that.

=== The Danger of Limited Liability (04:52) ===

[00:30:10]  That's what we're saying.
[00:30:11]  That reminds me, there's this famous, uh, Now, I well known South Park clip, not an endorsement of South Park, although they do have some funny clips.
[00:30:22]  They're on the nose sometimes.
[00:30:23]  They're on the nose.
[00:30:24]  That's true.
[00:30:25]  There's this clip.
[00:30:26]  One of the characters goes to like a bank.
[00:30:29]  He's like, hey, I just got $100 for my birthday or something like that.
[00:30:33]  I'm probably butchering it.
[00:30:34]  Gives it to the teller.
[00:30:36]  The teller's like, okay, we'll put that in a mutual fund and it's gone.
[00:30:42]  He's like, what do you mean?
[00:30:43]  It's gone.
[00:30:44]  Next customer.
[00:30:45]  That's the embodiment of the limited liability.
[00:30:48]  That's awesome.
[00:30:49]  Great.
[00:30:50]  We'll hit our first commercial break.
[00:30:51]  We'll be right back.
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=== Wealth Creation Without Value (12:16) ===

[00:35:03]  All right.
[00:35:03]  To introduce this segment, we're going to really get into the meat of some of our critiques of capitalism.
[00:35:08]  We're going to play just a short video here 20 seconds.
[00:35:10]  Let's kick it off.
[00:35:31]  So for anyone maybe that was listening, what that was was a short video, a young girl.
[00:35:35]  She said, Hey, could you just stay nine seconds and take a look?
[00:35:39]  Because my dad is at risk of shutting down his Disney lamp business.
[00:35:42]  And she sews some really sentimental scenes of her father doing some sketches and some painting.
[00:35:47]  And the product she actually shows that's being sold is a crappy Chinese drop ship product that's made for pennies on the dollar in China.
[00:35:56]  As in, someone goes in and they take footage like that.
[00:35:58]  I don't even know if she herself would be the drop shipper.
[00:36:01]  And they emotionally manipulate people.
[00:36:03]  We're going to go in and we're going to pull on the heartstrings with the music.
[00:36:05]  And man, look at this.
[00:36:06]  This is a dad who hand paints Disney characters for kids.
[00:36:12]  And won't you please just support our business?
[00:36:14]  Now, their margins on it are 90% because it's made by child labor in China.
[00:36:18]  And this gets to some of it, it's kind of a humorous example, but it gets to really the example of the type of thinking, the type of regard for our neighbor.
[00:36:26]  The second greatest command is to love your neighbor as yourself that capitalism can tend towards.
[00:36:32]  Enabling.
[00:36:33]  Early on in the Christian church, always early as the Council of Nicaea, the Christian church put a ban on usury.
[00:36:38]  And Thomas Aquinas expounds one of the big reasons for this is that ultimately it's artificial.
[00:36:44]  It's creating value.
[00:36:45]  Usury is the charging of interest on money.
[00:36:47]  It's creating value.
[00:36:49]  It's creating wealth where there is none.
[00:36:51]  So if I take money and I lend it to someone, money is not a plant.
[00:36:55]  Money is not a child.
[00:36:56]  Money is not a field.
[00:36:58]  It doesn't actually physically grow, it's an inorganic object.
[00:37:01]  And so from the earliest time, be it ancient philosophers prior to Christ, the early Christian church, The Middle Ages, the Christians have said, look, usury, speculation is a bad thing.
[00:37:14]  It tends towards greed in people's hearts.
[00:37:16]  We all have greed in our hearts that can be enabled by the possibility of lucrative gain.
[00:37:22]  So, whether it be inclinations towards greed and towards gain, whether it be needless speculation, spending time speculating on could I make this type of return here, could I purchase this, or just general consumerism, coveting, a violation of the 10th commandment.
[00:37:36]  For a long time, the Christian church has recognized hey, when value and money and all of these things are very abstract and you're speculating on their value detached from anything real, detached from an actual product, detached from an actual service, detached from an actual skill, that can actually be corrosive to the soul.
[00:37:54]  One of the big parts of modern capitalism, it would not be what it is without the stock market.
[00:37:59]  The stock market is what actually moves when I buy a stock, right?
[00:38:03]  If I had to go into Robinhood and I was to buy a stock or I was to buy options, What am I actually purchasing?
[00:38:09]  Well, practically, tangibly, nothing.
[00:38:12]  Theoretically, I notionally own a portion of the company which could increase in value.
[00:38:16]  But the stock market as it is right now, it's 247, it's worldwide.
[00:38:21]  So I can speculate on Atlantic salmon futures markets.
[00:38:24]  Like I think in the future, salmon will be worth this amount and I can speculate on that.
[00:38:30]  It's very disconnected.
[00:38:31]  And so I think definitely one of our critiques of capitalism is not just the excesses.
[00:38:35]  Well, of course, OnlyFans or of course, perversion or of course, these things that aren't good.
[00:38:40]  But also, even as Christians, just mindless speculation on value, a fixation on money that when you detach money from its use in trade as an intermediary, you get.
[00:38:53]  Yeah.
[00:38:53]  Yeah.
[00:38:54]  I think, like, you know, the way that the American economy has shifted from the manufacture of goods into predominantly white collar professional services over the last 40 years.
[00:39:05]  Like, as far as I'm concerned, professional service now, you can be a legal, you know, you can be a lawyer, you can be an accountant and offer legitimate.
[00:39:14]  You know, worthwhile advice.
[00:39:17]  But the reality is, when you have an economy composed of HR, marketing, like all of these sort of fickle, intangible services being provided, you kind of have a soulless economy.
[00:39:31]  It's like no one, you've gone from the tradesman who's like manufacturing furniture in his garage.
[00:39:39]  There's a ton of honor ascribed to that.
[00:39:41]  There's a ton of hard work, labor, the labor of love that is embedded within that thing.
[00:39:47]  When you buy it, it's more than the Product itself.
[00:39:52]  It's a recognition of your neighbor's hard work and diligence that's gone into those things.
[00:39:58]  All of those things are stripped from our economy, both in the kinds of work that we do, but also as a consequence of sort of global capitalism and making everything be a race to the bottom.
[00:40:08]  How cheap can I make this thing?
[00:40:11]  You've essentially punished the very things that capitalism was designed to reward.
[00:40:17]  Right.
[00:40:18]  When I think of capitalism in its kind of fundamental, State.
[00:40:24]  It's the customer is always right.
[00:40:26]  But because of the stock market, it's the shareholder is always right, which is very different than the customer.
[00:40:32]  So you can actually make decisions, and corporations do this all the time.
[00:40:36]  They make decisions that knowingly will frustrate the customer, that will produce a worse product over time.
[00:40:43]  But in order to make the bottom line go down so that the profit margin increases for a short term, the next quarterly earnings report, so that the shareholders Are pleased, and we see this happen all the time.
[00:40:56]  A couple years ago, BMW got in huge trouble.
[00:40:59]  They said, We're going to charge people, I think it was like a hundred dollars a year, for their heated seats.
[00:41:03]  So, it was a functionality that was already in the car.
[00:41:05]  It was not as though, like, hey, there's additional labor, additional parts.
[00:41:08]  No, we are charging a certain amount of money for you to unlock the functionality that already exists in your car just so we can make more money.
[00:41:17]  Yeah, and people are like, Are you kidding me?
[00:41:19]  Like, this isn't it, it didn't cost you anything, it doesn't add any value.
[00:41:22]  But to your point, shareholders love that.
[00:41:25]  Yeah.
[00:41:25]  Like if you serve the shareholder, and we were talking about quarterly reports, Antonio, I can give it to you.
[00:41:29]  The shareholders who you answer to, well, you're going to pursue capital.
[00:41:34]  Yeah.
[00:41:34]  When they announced that decision initially, I wouldn't be surprised if the stock bumped, you know, spiked up 5%.
[00:41:41]  If it's publicly traded, I don't know if it is.
[00:41:43]  BMW?
[00:41:43]  I'm sure it is.
[00:41:44]  Yeah.
[00:41:44]  BMW.
[00:41:45]  So, yeah.
[00:41:46]  So, all that kind of stuff, there are problems with that.
[00:41:48]  Another thing that I've always despised, and I may just be ignorant on this point, but I hate, I hate, I hate the concept that seems so prevalent where anytime money moves, especially a significant amount of money, there's a ton of people who have nothing to do with it, right?
[00:42:04]  You have a buyer, you have a seller, and then you have 15 other people that have nothing to do with it.
[00:42:09]  Like the, it's like on Finding Nemo, like the seagulls, like mine, mine, mine.
[00:42:15]  And I think of this, I'll probably offend, you know, some of our people, but look, if this is you, you can get mad at me, or what you can do to absolve your conscience is you can just donate some of your money to this ministry and, you know, and be forgiven.
[00:42:30]  But real estate agents.
[00:42:34]  That's the male equivalent of OnlyFans, to be honest.
[00:42:36]  Well, there's no males really in it anymore, sadly.
[00:42:39]  That's actually true.
[00:42:40]  Because honestly, and I know this personally, I know a few men who are still in real estate, and they say all the time that they've just been utterly replaced by women returning to the work field, and particularly women with low cut blouses and who are generously.
[00:43:00]  Endowed in their bosoms.
[00:43:04]  And they're just doing this, but it's this busy work.
[00:43:07]  It's like, you got a house.
[00:43:09]  I want to buy the house, but I can't just buy it.
[00:43:13]  We've created this system where it's so many hoops, legal hoops to jump through on purpose so that I won't be able to do it, not while continuing to be a husband and a father and not quitting my day job.
[00:43:28]  So I just don't know how to do it.
[00:43:31]  So you have the product that I want, the house.
[00:43:33]  You're willing to sell it to me for this price.
[00:43:35]  I'm willing to buy it for that price.
[00:43:37]  But then between the two of us, we have to come up with an additional 3%, 5%, whatever, to pay somebody else.
[00:43:46]  With a low cut blouse to come and do something that didn't even traditionally have to be done, but was created just, well, money's moving and everybody should get a piece of it.
[00:43:58]  And I'm like, why?
[00:44:00]  Why is that a thing?
[00:44:01]  Yeah, all of the intermediaries.
[00:44:03]  I mean, it's not just real estate agents.
[00:44:05]  You think about it, I just bought a house recently and it's like four or five intermediaries that are taking some various proportion of the price.
[00:44:15]  And as a buyer, you're not necessarily paying all of that.
[00:44:18]  A lot of times the seller's footing that stuff, but.
[00:44:20]  Yeah, it's.
[00:44:21]  But still, I mean, that's just as unfair.
[00:44:23]  The seller should be able to get the full.
[00:44:25]  Right.
[00:44:25]  No, exactly.
[00:44:27]  There was a time in which.
[00:44:28]  Instead, he's losing a piece here to this person, this person, this person.
[00:44:32]  It's like, I've got something that I worked for to buy.
[00:44:35]  I'm now selling it, and I have to give all of you a piece of it.
[00:44:39]  Yeah.
[00:44:39]  Why?
[00:44:40]  I mean, and this is like two rabbit holes that we won't go down, but the first one is government regulation.
[00:44:44]  The natural consequence of overregulation and red tape is more intermediaries.
[00:44:50]  Now you need an expert on real estate law.
[00:44:52]  Now, you need an expert on tort law, whatever the case is.
[00:44:56]  And you end up having four or five people come to a table in contract negotiations and the transfer of assets, so on and so forth, because of all of the regulation that it can't just be a man's word with another man's word and that contract be legally binding.
[00:45:10]  That's one.
[00:45:11]  The second one.
[00:45:11]  I should say, too, National Association of Realtors is one of the biggest lobbying groups in the United States.
[00:45:16]  Now, who is paying those lobbying groups all that money?
[00:45:19]  Mom and pop realtors?
[00:45:20]  Nope.
[00:45:21]  It's REMAX, big corporations that systematize scale.
[00:45:25]  Taken massive amounts of money and then could turn around and pay people to influence our politics to get policies that get them more fees.
[00:45:32]  Yeah.
[00:45:33]  And here's the other thing.
[00:45:35]  We talked about AI on the last episode or one of the more recent episodes.
[00:45:42]  If you do one of these things that we're describing, get good at something quickly because you are the jobs that everyone wants to replace.
[00:45:52]  If I'm a seller, I'm selling a house, I'm like, can Chat GPT, can Grok?
[00:45:56]  Do what I'm paying that person $15,000 to do.
[00:46:00]  Right.
[00:46:00]  Yep.
[00:46:01]  And so get good at something quickly.
[00:46:04]  Yeah, eventually.
[00:46:05]  That's one thing that, I mean, AI in the long run may destroy all of us.
[00:46:09]  Who knows?
[00:46:11]  But what I do like is that AI, at least initially, is kind of like a repellent for leeches.
[00:46:17]  Like it really is.
[00:46:18]  Like the portions of society that don't actually offer a tangible good or service.
[00:46:24]  Like they're just busy work, it's just bean counters.
[00:46:27]  And pencil pushers.
[00:46:30]  And also, I'll be honest, this is a little freebie, but I would like to see, you know, like make motherhood great again.
[00:46:37]  I'd like to see women return home and be mothers first.
[00:46:41]  And so I like AI for that reason, because, you know, I was really hoping for a revival and just a return to the word of God.
[00:46:51]  But sometimes it doesn't look super hopeful that we're going to get that.
[00:46:55]  But what we'll get instead is artificial intelligence that can do some of the most menial jobs, which, oh, Conveniently, they are held by women.
[00:47:07]  What are the leech type of jobs that you don't really need that are currently filled by 80% women and 20% men?
[00:47:17]  HR.

=== Artificial Intelligence and Women (05:46) ===

[00:47:19]  This little legal service that's not actually like a lawyer who's defending you in a court, but it's just writing a will.
[00:47:25]  It's like, that'll be $15 bajillion.
[00:47:29]  It's like, but I could have written this on a napkin.
[00:47:31]  That'll be $15 bajillion.
[00:47:33]  Well, now you'll be able to use AI to write a will, to do this, to do that.
[00:47:38]  All these kinds of.
[00:47:40]  All these things that are really common sense things, but it's all the legislation that requires you to, you know, instead of it being a common sense thing, you have to pronounce the perfect incantation, get the spell just right for it.
[00:47:55]  It's like, well, you said that, and I know what you meant, but doesn't count.
[00:48:00]  It's like, it's literally what the Pharisees did in the first century in the ministry of Jesus.
[00:48:06]  They would say, remember, Jesus actually combats them, says this about taking oaths.
[00:48:10]  He says, well, you say, That if you swear by the temple, you're not bound by your oath.
[00:48:17]  But if you swear upon the gold of the temple, then you're bound by your oath, which is the equivalent of literally like a five year old bratty kid, like looking his dad straight in the eyes and his dad saying, Hey, will you, I want you to go and clean your room.
[00:48:32]  And he says, Yes, daddy.
[00:48:33]  And then he goes and plays and never cleans his room and then pretends that somehow he's justified because when he said, Yes, daddy, well, daddy didn't see, but technically he had his hand behind his back with his fingers crossed.
[00:48:46]  That's literally what the Pharisees were.
[00:48:47]  The Pharisees were five year old legalese brats.
[00:48:53]  Who were the Pharisees?
[00:48:54]  The HR department.
[00:48:55]  Who were the Pharisees?
[00:48:57]  The assistant for the assistant for the assistant of lawyers.
[00:49:01]  The Pharisees were the people who would come in and they did it economically, not just religiously, but they would come in and they would create pencil pushing, bean counting busy work that added no value to society whatsoever with all these little loopholes that.
[00:49:18]  That weren't actually like, hey, you need to be a logical person or a reasonable person to understand.
[00:49:22]  No, like any reasonable person could understand, but you had to get the incantation just right.
[00:49:28]  And so they would make all these little legal loopholes to where the only way you could function in the society economically, religiously, culturally at every level was you had to be familiar, perfectly up to speed with hundreds and hundreds of different laws and all these different regulations.
[00:49:50]  And today, it's like, yeah, we absolutely still have Pharisees.
[00:49:54]  It's the people in society who create the busy work.
[00:49:58]  They don't actually add a real value.
[00:49:59]  They don't have a real service or a real good to offer someone, but they come and attach themselves every time someone is selling a real good or offering a real service and somebody's willing to buy it.
[00:50:11]  And they say, but you need me.
[00:50:13]  And I'm like, why do I need you?
[00:50:14]  Because the law says.
[00:50:16]  And who made the law?
[00:50:17]  Me in our lobbying.
[00:50:19]  And, and, and, It's like, well, who are these people?
[00:50:22]  Well, they're feminists.
[00:50:24]  They're the teachers' unions.
[00:50:26]  They're the real estate lobbyists.
[00:50:28]  And ironically, a lot of them are still Jews, just like the Pharisees in the first century.
[00:50:33]  It's very speculative.
[00:50:34]  Not all of them, but a lot of them.
[00:50:36]  Yeah.
[00:50:38]  And I see that as saying, like, okay, this actually makes sense.
[00:50:41]  I can see a direct correlation in that sense.
[00:50:46]  There really is continuity for the last 2,000 years.
[00:50:49]  The spirit of.
[00:50:52]  Being a Pharisee, adding no value, attaching yourself like a leech to something that you're not contributing with, but lobbying certain legislation to where nobody can actually move.
[00:51:03]  They're all bound unless you're a part of it and you get a percentage.
[00:51:07]  That spirit is very much alive and well.
[00:51:11]  And it's not just alive and well in Judaism at the religious side of the equation, but it's alive and well in capitalism on the economic side as well.
[00:51:19]  I mean, think about the thing that drove Jesus to break out a whip and flip tables.
[00:51:24]  They were coming into the temple, poor people, to offer sacrifices.
[00:51:27]  And it was the exchange rate that they were jacking up.
[00:51:29]  So people would come to try to offer service to God.
[00:51:31]  And it's like, okay, you gave $15, wink, wink, but once I did the exchange to a certain type of shekel, What that actually converts to is you have nowhere near as much money as you thought, just to again rip people off, not provide a service whatsoever.
[00:51:45]  And Jesus hated it.
[00:51:46]  You can force your categorization.
[00:51:48]  That's literally why he was turning the table for it.
[00:51:50]  This is hating your neighbor.
[00:51:51]  Have your neighbor, with his hard work, come in here and you rip him off and rob him blind to put more money in your pocket.
[00:51:58]  Jesus hates that.
[00:51:59]  Yes, amen.
[00:52:00]  It's like he can't worship without a sacrifice.
[00:52:03]  And there were different tiered sacrifices, all the way from a burnt bull, which would be very costly, down to a dove offering or a pigeon offering.
[00:52:11]  Something much smaller and more affordable.
[00:52:14]  And so, you know, the poor would worship, you know, with a smaller offering and the rich would worship with a larger offering.
[00:52:21]  And it cost a certain amount.
[00:52:23]  But then here are the money changers these Pharisees, religious rulers who are treating the house of God that's supposed, according to Jesus, to be a house of prayer for all nations.
[00:52:37]  And the nations are now represented there.
[00:52:39]  They've come to worship the true God.
[00:52:43]  And these people are saying, not only do you have to, you've already spent money because you've taken off work, you've spent money on all the travel and the lodging, and you're going to spend money now on the sacrifice, but you're going to spend four times, five times, 10 times what it should actually cost.
[00:52:57]  But essentially, what they did is the best way I can describe it, I feel like a helpful illustration I came up with a few years ago was they turned the house of God into a Chuck E. Cheese.

=== Toxic Pursuit of Profit (14:12) ===

[00:53:06]  Yeah.
[00:53:07]  You know, it's like, well, I want to play this game.
[00:53:11]  Can I put a quarter in the machine?
[00:53:12]  No, you need a Chuck E. Cheese coin.
[00:53:15]  Okay, well, is that cost a quarter?
[00:53:18]  No, it cost two quarters for one.
[00:53:23]  And that's essentially what they were doing.
[00:53:25]  And so I feel like the Pharisees have always done this and they're still doing it to this day.
[00:53:31]  Yeah.
[00:53:32]  So we identified already two big flaws, which would be the speculation, the abstract nature of it.
[00:53:36]  We also identified robbing your neighbor man to man.
[00:53:39]  You're robbing him, you don't actually provide him a service.
[00:53:41]  And here's a third one actual damage.
[00:53:44]  I think one of the best stories of this is the biotechnology giant Misanto.
[00:53:48]  So Misanto.
[00:53:49]  Created biotechnology through experimentation and research, created genetically modified seeds.
[00:53:55]  And these seeds would be resistant to glyphosate, or Roundup was the commercial name.
[00:53:59]  And so you'd be able to take crops and you could grow them and you could spray them with this herbicide that would kill fungus, it would kill bugs, it would kill all sorts of things that were on it.
[00:54:08]  But because the seed itself and the plant that grew from it was genetically modified, it itself would be resistant to it.
[00:54:15]  Now, for decades, people said, hey, this stuff is toxic.
[00:54:18]  It had a relation to non Hodgkin's lymphoma.
[00:54:21]  Carcinogenic, causing cancers.
[00:54:23]  So, for decades, people were telling the company and research was coming out this product that you're using, that you're putting on our food, so that you get more of it when you harvest it.
[00:54:32]  You also, if you do it really late, you don't have to, but if you do it really late, it also helps to dry out corn, for example.
[00:54:38]  So, you're doing it all the way through its life cycle so you can maximize return on it.
[00:54:42]  And you're doing it taking this toxic chemical, this herbicide, you're putting it out at the very end so it dries out the corn and it's causing cancer in people.
[00:54:51]  Misanto was ghostwriting articles.
[00:54:53]  So, they were paying scientists.
[00:54:54]  To make fake articles about how safe it was.
[00:54:57]  And in 2015, they settled the initial settlement was 290 million and then billions more of people that lost loved ones, of people that got cancer, of people that were disabled.
[00:55:07]  There were farmers that would grow the seeds, like, hey, we're trying to do this too to increase, you know, it's a mom and pop shop.
[00:55:12]  Hey, we grow corn as well.
[00:55:14]  This would be helpful for us for this acre back here to be able to grow these and be able to just maximize.
[00:55:19]  They went on lawsuits against them.
[00:55:21]  They issued cease and desist letters.
[00:55:23]  Even farmers that cross grew, so like the plants drifted over, you had a farm nearby.
[00:55:28]  They started growing it as well.
[00:55:29]  They aggressively said, like, hey, you can't grow this there.
[00:55:32]  So you have this giant corporation and they destroyed thousands, if not tens of thousands, of lives so that they could maximize returns on their crops, maximize returns on this herbicide.
[00:55:44]  Even after four decades, people were sounding the alarm and saying, this stuff is toxic.
[00:55:51]  Another example is Lucky Charm cereal.
[00:55:53]  If you compare it to Europe, and Europe actually gets this right, Rare European W, the colors on Lucky Charm cereal, kids cereal, They don't look as vivid.
[00:56:02]  Well, they don't look as vivid because the dyes that are used in the United States are banned in Europe because we know red dye 40, yellow 5, I think it's blue 1.
[00:56:10]  We know that they're all also toxic to children.
[00:56:13]  We know that they're carcinogenic.
[00:56:14]  But why do they put them in the cereal?
[00:56:16]  Well, they think it's healthy.
[00:56:17]  No, they put it in the cereal so it's brighter, so your kids are more stimulated and they want more of it.
[00:56:22]  And so, this third category that capitalism can tend towards, especially a type of corporate capitalism, is absolutely destructive to your neighbor.
[00:56:31]  And it is the Christian duty to say, You have no right to destroy the life of your neighbor to maximize your profits.
[00:56:38]  That is immoral and that is wicked.
[00:56:40]  And ideally, in a Christian society, it would not just be the corporation that's responsible, but individuals that purposefully covered it up, that harmed individuals so they could make more money.
[00:56:50]  Paul does say the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.
[00:56:54]  People love money and they will do terrible things to get a hold of more of it.
[00:57:00]  And so, practically speaking, especially in our time with globalism, big corporations, You might have a bigger state in some respects.
[00:57:07]  We've talked about this before, smaller in others.
[00:57:09]  Department of Education, zero.
[00:57:12]  But food safety, that might be a department for a while that has to be bigger under a Christian nation.
[00:57:17]  You can't feed children this.
[00:57:19]  You can't make vegetable oil.
[00:57:21]  I think the FDA panel that voted on it mandated inclusion of vegetable oil in certain baby formulas, which very conveniently benefits vegetable oil manufacturers.
[00:57:31]  So you might need a bigger state for a bit coming in and saying, you can't do this and you can't do that and you can't maximize profits this way.
[00:57:38]  Because it's immoral and it's damaging and destructive.
[00:57:41]  Yeah.
[00:57:41]  For the longest time, I just thought, you know, the biblical answer is small government, period.
[00:57:47]  And by default, you know, small government would be righteous government, big government would be wicked government.
[00:57:53]  And now I realize, like, I mean, I still think that our government is absolutely bloated in a million different ways.
[00:57:58]  And that if it was Christian, it would actually, on the whole, be smaller.
[00:58:02]  But in terms of departments, categories, I do believe there are some categories of our government that if it became more righteous, Some categories would be enlarged.
[00:58:11]  They actually would be larger, smaller on the whole, but some sectors of government actually would be larger, at least like what you said, Wes, for a time, at least initially, as the law is working as a tutor, training the populace, training the citizens to actually care about virtuous things and to kick their vices.
[00:58:32]  So, yeah, I don't think it just means if that's all it takes to be righteous, then we might as well be anarchists.
[00:58:41]  There's no government in anarchy.
[00:58:42]  Yeah, let's just have no government at all, right?
[00:58:44]  Why settle for a small government when you could be extra righteous and have no government at all?
[00:58:48]  But that's not what the Bible teaches.
[00:58:50]  Romans 13 tells us the good of the state and tells us what the state is for.
[00:58:55]  It's to punish the evildoer.
[00:58:57]  So then that to me seems to immediately raise the question okay, well, can you do evil in markets?
[00:59:03]  Yeah.
[00:59:03]  Right?
[00:59:03]  Can you do evil with money?
[00:59:07]  Like, yeah, punishing the evildoer is not just punishing, you know, the person who commits murder, but it's also the person who's taken, you know, I think of the Old Testament where it says that, you know, to take someone's.
[00:59:23]  I think it's millstone is what it uses, and not like wrapping it around your neck to be thrown into the sea.
[00:59:28]  That's a different passage.
[00:59:30]  But a millstone used as a tool to produce, to make a livelihood.
[00:59:36]  It says that if you are borrowing it or have taken it as collateral for something, that you must give it back in a timely manner.
[00:59:46]  I'm paraphrasing.
[00:59:47]  It says you must give it back in a timely manner for it is his life.
[00:59:52]  And if I'm remembering correctly, the text doesn't say his livelihood.
[00:59:56]  But his life, because his livelihood is directly correlated with his life.
[01:00:03]  A man's livelihood essentially is his life.
[01:00:06]  And so to do certain things that knowingly destroy someone's livelihood and not beating them fair and square well, I'm just providing a better product at a better price.
[01:00:19]  No, like you actually are weeding out the competition, providing an inferior product.
[01:00:24]  Your product is poisoned.
[01:00:26]  Your product is actually bad for people, it's killing people.
[01:00:29]  And yet, you're still winning.
[01:00:31]  And how are you winning?
[01:00:32]  Through lawfare, through lobbying, through being a Pharisee in these wicked kinds of ways.
[01:00:40]  Well, number one, you're hurting people's lives.
[01:00:43]  If you're in the food industry and your food is poison, you're hurting their physical life.
[01:00:47]  And then, on the other hand, you also have up seeded and ruined the livelihood of all these other people that were producing that food or whatever that was healthy and are no longer able to provide for their families, their livelihoods.
[01:01:01]  So, in two ways, You have destroyed people's lives and your life.
[01:01:07]  I believe your life should be held as the payment for that.
[01:01:14]  Yeah.
[01:01:15]  And I would just say quickly like, unless people think that we're creating some kind of new version of capitalism or trying to articulate something that hasn't existed in this country before, I'd point you to Sabbath laws, which existed very early on in this country and persisted into the 19th century.
[01:01:33]  I'd point you to temperance laws.
[01:01:35]  So, we're all familiar with prohibition in the early 20th century.
[01:01:39]  There were still laws in the 19th century that forbid the sale of alcohol after a certain period, a time of day, for example, after 10 p.m., after 9 p.m.
[01:01:49]  And so, there's always been these state level laws.
[01:01:51]  I point you to usury.
[01:01:53]  In the 17th century, Massachusetts had a cap on usury at 8%.
[01:01:58]  I would point, you know, the list goes on and on, right?
[01:02:01]  In terms of price gouging is another one, right?
[01:02:04]  Like, price gouging is an intentionally deceptive technique in a market.
[01:02:09]  And all of these things at various points have been illegal in this country.
[01:02:14]  This is not new.
[01:02:16]  We have actively digressed in our view of capitalism and our licentiousness and our willingness to simply just open the market to any gratifying desire, to any day of the week and any product.
[01:02:29]  And as long as there's a buyer, it's okay.
[01:02:32]  That is not the historic view of capitalism.
[01:02:35]  And our Christian forefathers would just simply be appalled at what the market looks like today.
[01:02:40]  It truly has become an idol.
[01:02:42]  In many regards.
[01:02:43]  Just to give a comparison, my father in law works in the cutting tool industry.
[01:02:46]  He's a sales representative.
[01:02:47]  He said when he started, this would have been 30, 40 years ago.
[01:02:50]  So think of timeframe.
[01:02:51]  This is about a generation.
[01:02:52]  When he started working, I think he said maybe 10 to 20% of companies would be owned by a bigger, be it another conglomerate, another corporation, or private equity.
[01:03:00]  He said now it's close to 80%.
[01:03:02]  Private equity companies are coming in and they're buying up these businesses.
[01:03:06]  And he said they'll come into these businesses.
[01:03:08]  He's heard guys tell them this story.
[01:03:09]  And they'll say, We've looked at all your books, we've looked through your financials.
[01:03:13]  And here's your problem you're just paying your people too much.
[01:03:16]  So you build from the ground up, say you build a $15 million carbite cutting tool business.
[01:03:21]  And you've got great guys that work for you and they work hard and they do good labor and you provide a good product.
[01:03:26]  And then private equity comes in, they say, We would love to give you a $50 million paycheck.
[01:03:29]  And one of the first things we're going to do when we come into this company is we're going to cut staff and we're going to lower pay so that we can make more money.
[01:03:38]  And this is, like I said, in a generation, you've gone from an economic landscape, certainly not as much marked by private equity, large corporations, big multinational corporations, to now the point where Business owner, they have to make very conscious decisions.
[01:03:54]  I'm not going to sell to someone overseas.
[01:03:56]  I'm not going to sell to private equity.
[01:03:58]  I'm not going to sell my home.
[01:03:59]  I just saw a huge statistic billions and billions of dollars of international buyers of real estate.
[01:04:05]  I'm not going to sell my home to people that are foreigners.
[01:04:07]  I'm going to sell it to Americans.
[01:04:09]  This is something new, last 10, 15 years that Christians have to navigate.
[01:04:13]  Yeah.
[01:04:15]  Just last point I'll make on this.
[01:04:17]  Teddy Roosevelt, right?
[01:04:19]  Often framed as a progressive, many of the quote unquote progressive policies that he supported.
[01:04:25]  were actually kind of in the vein of some of the things we've been talking about.
[01:04:29]  One of the major bills that he was a proponent of was the, I think it was clean food.
[01:04:36]  It was something like the Clean Food Act, which essentially just was regulating companies would, you know, you would butcher a cow or you'd butcher a chicken in Chicago and you'd ship it to New York City, for example.
[01:04:48]  And it would sit in a warehouse for 12 hours, 24 hours, not on ice, not on salt before being shipped.
[01:04:55]  And it was, and he came in and he would, He would himself go and inspect these facilities.
[01:05:01]  He would go to tenement houses where immigrant communities were making cigars in apartments in just absolute squalor.
[01:05:08]  Children there crying on the floor.
[01:05:10]  I mean, just decrepit environments.
[01:05:12]  He would go and inspect them and say, This is not Christian and this is not American.
[01:05:20]  And obviously, he's been framed as a progressive, but I mean, the reality is that this modern notion, this is the last thing I'll say, the modern notion of this sort of This capitalistic engine that's global and it's hyper efficient.
[01:05:36]  Like all of this stuff was never the point of American capitalism.
[01:05:42]  I love that because it's just in our past, 100 years ago.
[01:05:46]  No, you can't develop this land.
[01:05:47]  It is to be enjoyed.
[01:05:48]  No, you can't make things in these conditions because it's unsanitary.
[01:05:51]  No, you can't put these people to work.
[01:05:53]  No, you can't have bars even open during his time in New York City.
[01:05:56]  You can't have bars open because this is immoral.
[01:05:59]  Here in the United States, you can't do this, says the government.
[01:06:02]  Because it's bad.
[01:06:03]  Now fall in line.
[01:06:04]  Good things were better.
[01:06:05]  Yep, let's go to our last commercial break and we'll be right back.
[01:06:09]  Hello, brothers in Christ.
[01:06:10]  Let me ask you something real.
[01:06:13]  Are you truly protecting and providing for your wife and children?
[01:06:16]  Not just in this life, but the one to come.
[01:06:19]  Here's a reality check only 45% of adults in America have life insurance.
[01:06:24]  And of those, nearly two thirds are underinsured.
[01:06:29]  That's not good stewardship.
[01:06:30]  And as Christian husbands and fathers, we're called to do better.
[01:06:34]  But what if you could protect your family's future and wisely grow your wealth right now?
[01:06:40]  That's where private family banking comes in.
[01:06:43]  It's a proven strategy that allows you to leverage your existing cash flow, build tax free legacy wealth, and give your family lasting security, all while aligning with your biblical call to provide and protect.
[01:06:58]  This is what it looks like to turn post mill talk into post mill action.
[01:07:03]  Tap the link in the show notes to book your free discovery call and take your next step toward financial discipleship and multi generational impact.

=== Protecting Family Wealth (15:10) ===

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[01:09:57]  So, welcome back.
[01:09:58]  Let's get practical here in the third segment.
[01:10:01]  Capitalism as we know it.
[01:10:02]  It's not going away.
[01:10:03]  China will be as long as we will take them.
[01:10:05]  They will be sending boats full of plastic products to our shores for probably the next couple of decades.
[01:10:11]  But practically, as Christians and as Americans, 2025, what does it look like, I think, to invest is the biggest thing.
[01:10:18]  So, the stock market.
[01:10:20]  I think we would all make the argument it is moral for Christians to participate in it.
[01:10:25]  Part of it because that's just the way things are right now.
[01:10:29]  Your money, it's kind of funny.
[01:10:30]  We were talking about, oh man, I'm blanking on his name.
[01:10:34]  He's in the thumbnail.
[01:10:36]  Warren Buffett.
[01:10:36]  Warren Buffett.
[01:10:37]  Yeah.
[01:10:37]  He's got a lot of his wealth just sitting now in cash.
[01:10:41]  And it could be like, well, he doesn't have it stored in anything right now.
[01:10:44]  No, he has it stored in something.
[01:10:45]  It's called the US dollar.
[01:10:47]  And it's a terrible place to store your wealth.
[01:10:49]  You're always going to store it in something.
[01:10:50]  It could be literally fiat, the US dollar.
[01:10:53]  It could be crypto, gold as a tangible asset, something that you can hide under your bed.
[01:10:58]  You're going to store your wealth in something.
[01:11:00]  And I don't think it's immoral for Christians in this time, in a fiat currency environment, when your wealth is being inflated, when your dollars practically do not go as far as they went five years ago, most certainly.
[01:11:12]  Not 10 years ago, to say, I'm going to speculate moderately with a good portion of the wealth that I'm generating in the hopes of a modest return, my five, my seven, my 10%.
[01:11:25]  I will throw out the question, though, what about specific investments in some of the companies that we've named that are somewhat immoral?
[01:11:32]  Palantir would be a good example.
[01:11:33]  It's a AI, a data and analytics company that is literally run by a communist, Alex Karp.
[01:11:41]  Like these guys are not pro America, not most certainly pro Christianity.
[01:11:46]  What about BlackRock?
[01:11:48]  Alex Karp, I think you told me he said his greatest fear is being thrown out of the window by Christian nationalists.
[01:11:53]  A couple years ago, in a tweet that's now deleted, he said something to the equivalent of, My greatest fear is that in the middle of the night, Christian nationalists are going to come and throw me out of a window.
[01:12:03]  And he's the CEO of Palantir.
[01:12:04]  So it's like if you're buying Palantir, that is saying, You know what he's doing?
[01:12:08]  I would love just 1% of that, just to own a little bit of it.
[01:12:14]  Well, I would just quickly say, on that question of where should we put our dollar?
[01:12:21]  The consequence of the stock market becoming what it is today is that to invest in a stock actually is more or less.
[01:12:29]  I mean, there's a line, but it's a gradient, I'll put it that way, of moral indifference, which is to say, when I invest in a company, it actually, as much as we'd say you notionally own a piece of that company, you don't.
[01:12:42]  You have no control.
[01:12:44]  Your dollar actually, because the stock market is primarily, unless it's an IPO, it's actually secondary markets.
[01:12:50]  It's not like the money you pay for the stock goes to the company.
[01:12:54]  They don't have shares with your name written on them.
[01:12:56]  So, indirectly, enough purchasing activity in the stock market does drive the value of stocks up.
[01:13:02]  Then the company could issue more shares and benefit that way.
[01:13:06]  But practically speaking, if Wes owns a stock in Joel Co., and I purchase that stock, Joel doesn't benefit.
[01:13:13]  So, in that way, it's actually morally indifferent, I would argue, on a gradient to purchase the stock, for example, of Palantir, because your dollar doesn't support them per se.
[01:13:22]  It's simply an investment vehicle.
[01:13:24]  And I would suggest that, you know, it.
[01:13:27]  Christians ought to be prudent about it, right?
[01:13:29]  Like, it's not, I mean, there's certainly a line that I wouldn't cross if, you know, Planned Parenthood was a public company, right?
[01:13:37]  Like, I wouldn't invest in Planned Parenthood for obvious reasons.
[01:13:40]  But certainly within the, there's a, I think, a degree of reason where you could say, yes, I'm going to invest in this stock.
[01:13:47]  No, I don't necessarily like what it's, what the company's about or what the CEO is trying to enact.
[01:13:52]  But it is a good investment vehicle for my family to ensure wealth, to ensure my dollar.
[01:14:00]  Holds its value.
[01:14:01]  Right.
[01:14:02]  Because it's being inflated away.
[01:14:03]  Correct.
[01:14:03]  Because it is being printed at an astronomic rate.
[01:14:06]  And if I do nothing, what I will be handing my kids, if I save $350,000 and I do nothing with it, I will be handing my children something that's worth in real power less than what I even earned it at.
[01:14:19]  Yeah.
[01:14:19]  Yeah.
[01:14:20]  It hit me years ago when, you know, for the longest time, I thought, like, where's the best place to invest my dollar?
[01:14:27]  And then I realized that the better way to think of it is.
[01:14:31]  Where's the best place to invest my wealth?
[01:14:33]  And the dollar is one of those investments.
[01:14:36]  So it's not so much where do I put my dollars, it's where do I put my wealth?
[01:14:39]  And the dollar is just one alternative for putting your wealth, and it's a bad place.
[01:14:45]  So, like, if you, stocks can go down, but the dollar always goes down.
[01:14:53]  Yeah.
[01:14:53]  Always.
[01:14:54]  It's, you know, so like investing legally, it always goes down.
[01:14:58]  Yeah.
[01:14:59]  Because it's always being printed more and more and more.
[01:15:01]  And, you know, they have a target inflation rate.
[01:15:03]  Yep.
[01:15:03]  Target inflation rate.
[01:15:04]  Exactly.
[01:15:06]  So, just putting money, you know, under your mattress or in a coffee can and burying it in the backyard.
[01:15:12]  Is a poor investment.
[01:15:14]  And it's not just that it's foolish, but it actually is wicked because God has commanded us to be good stewards and to show a return for all the resources He's given us, including those monetary resources.
[01:15:28]  So, yeah, cash is not, I don't believe cash is a Christian option.
[01:15:33]  I think that to have some cash as an emergency fund that's available, that you, you know, so if something happens, you don't have to liquidate with certain penalties that may be attached.
[01:15:45]  I think it's wise to have some cash on hand for such an occasion.
[01:15:49]  Other than that, as a storage for long term savings and growth, cash is one of the most foolish decisions you can make.
[01:16:01]  Yeah.
[01:16:01]  Yeah.
[01:16:02]  I like what Foxhound21B commented by wealth production assets, farms, building companies, factories, or mini factories.
[01:16:09]  Obviously, that's at a scale that's not as accessible for most people, but practically part of your portfolio being land, being businesses.
[01:16:17]  Like Reese Fund, he is not a trust fund trader.
[01:16:19]  Betting on indexes, like, well, we're actually balanced to this side or the other.
[01:16:22]  David Reese is going in and purchasing manufacturing businesses that make a real product and saying, I think that we can grow them.
[01:16:29]  So, in as much as possible, Ecclesiastes speaks highly of diversifying your investments.
[01:16:34]  So, it's not, instead of cash, 98% Bitcoin.
[01:16:37]  And I love Bitcoin.
[01:16:38]  I think you should be in it.
[01:16:39]  One of the reasons is there can never be more.
[01:16:42]  There will never be more than 21 million Bitcoin.
[01:16:44]  It can't be.
[01:16:44]  Well, there won't even be close to that because of the amount that's been lost.
[01:16:47]  Right.
[01:16:48]  There will never certainly be more than that.
[01:16:50]  Right.
[01:16:50]  Even 19 million.
[01:16:52]  You just own something.
[01:16:54]  That is truly limited.
[01:16:54]  It's not fiat currency, so it's not directly controlled by the government.
[01:16:58]  It can't be inflated because it's a fixed amount, so it has rarity and scarcity.
[01:17:04]  And then also, because it's digital, it's more easily transported.
[01:17:09]  Even when you think of gold and things like that, it's possible, it's feasible that all of a sudden some country discovers, just hits a literal gold mine and discovers, oh my gosh, we just have mountains and mountains of gold.
[01:17:26]  And the way that God made the world, it wouldn't actually surprise me.
[01:17:29]  We discover things all the time, whether it's oil or natural gases or whatever it may be, different resources.
[01:17:37]  Or it's like, okay, well, no, we know there's no more gold, at least not mass amounts of it hidden on the planet.
[01:17:43]  But then all of a sudden, some meteor is in orbit and we grab it and pull it in.
[01:17:50]  And lo and behold, the entire core is made of gold.
[01:17:54]  There's a moon on Jupiter that actually rains diamonds.
[01:17:57]  Yep.
[01:17:58]  I've heard that.
[01:17:59]  So, my point is building a rocket now to get out.
[01:18:02]  He's like, we can do it.
[01:18:04]  So, my point is that even these things, I'm not against investing in precious metals, but my point is that even these things, the reason why they've been good investments historically is because of scarcity.
[01:18:14]  But there is the possibility that all of a sudden you discover a whole bunch more and it's not so scarce.
[01:18:21]  Whereas something like Bitcoin is actually in the system, it's set to where there'll never be more than what you said, 21 million.
[01:18:31]  Yep.
[01:18:31]  Even Crypto, though, well, we should bifurcate crypto from Bitcoin.
[01:18:37]  A there's a pretty substantial difference between you know Bitcoin and fart coin, you know.
[01:18:42]  So, like, this is small, you know, to just say, like, well, Bitcoin's crypto and crypto is uh filled with a bunch of scams, yeah, crypto is filled with a bunch of scams.
[01:18:50]  Um, but there are uh some coins that like are actually you know, uh, have function, you know, like uh, layer two you know, blockchain technology or or AI you know, coins that have certain like so.
[01:19:03]  There actually are you know, some coins that the um, the coding actually has like produces some kind of benefit, it has some kind of functionality.
[01:19:11]  But Bitcoin has been around for a while now since 09 and really has stood the test of time.
[01:19:20]  And that could be, I think, a wise investment for someone.
[01:19:24]  I was going to say, and not knowing who the creator is, like Ethereum has a governance board.
[01:19:29]  We don't know if he's even still alive who actually created it.
[01:19:32]  So there's not even an individual that could go in and say, 21 million, that was a little bit low.
[01:19:37]  For all practical purposes, we don't think that person exists.
[01:19:40]  And if he does, he is most certainly not actively involved in his governance.
[01:19:43]  Right.
[01:19:44]  Yeah.
[01:19:45]  I was just going to, two points.
[01:19:47]  I think the first one, and this is simply for polemics if I had to steal man fiat currency.
[01:19:53]  So essentially, you know, in the history of pre Federal Reserve, pre National Bank, what you would see historically in the American economy is basically a boom bust cycle.
[01:20:04]  You're probably familiar with this.
[01:20:06]  Essentially, every 13 years, there was like a run on the bank that would throw the entire economy in a severe recession slash depression for a number of years.
[01:20:15]  And so the concept of fiat currency was that you would be able to sort of arbitrarily ramp up and ramp down money velocity, which would kind of smooth over the boom bust cycle, but sort of arbitrarily, arbitrarily and sort of in an artificial way.
[01:20:34]  It would be smoothing out boom busts.
[01:20:36]  So there is a case to be made.
[01:20:38]  I think still you have a problem of speculation.
[01:20:41]  Boom busts fundamentally are that cycle revolves around speculation and sort of consumer sentiment.
[01:20:48]  Can I trust if I go to the bank?
[01:20:49]  My money's going to be there.
[01:20:51]  Oh, no, I can't.
[01:20:51]  Okay, I'm running to the bank.
[01:20:52]  That's literally where you get bank runs from.
[01:20:54]  And then you see that person running to the bank, I've got to run to the bank and now get my money out.
[01:20:58]  And everyone now is storming to the bank.
[01:21:00]  They've got to get their money out of the system before they're the people that are left with the short end of the stick.
[01:21:06]  So there was, even before the federal banking system, there was still a problem of speculation.
[01:21:13]  There was still a problem of consumer sentiment that still will have to be dealt with, even if you move into.
[01:21:21]  Other forms of currency.
[01:21:23]  So that's the one thing that people should just note about that when they talk about these things.
[01:21:27]  Right.
[01:21:28]  The inflation problem is a much more, especially the amount printed, diluting the value that's already there.
[01:21:33]  That certainly is a much more recent problem.
[01:21:34]  So I would not pretend that for 200 years of our American history, it was always just growth.
[01:21:39]  That was multiples.
[01:21:41]  It hasn't been actually for a while.
[01:21:43]  And I root that in the people that America was made up of.
[01:21:47]  It would actually, as well as the government, the quality, the character of the men that were there, it was much more tame.
[01:21:53]  Compared to, I think, doubling our money supply in something like five years, or like 80% of our money has been printed in the last five years.
[01:22:01]  So it works, but if anything, the takeaway from this episode, there isn't a perfect system that works everywhere forever.
[01:22:08]  There's always going to need to be, whether it be the state or even the individual, hey, right here, right now, our country's much bigger, our country's much smaller, much smaller.
[01:22:16]  This is going to be the best way to deal with this.
[01:22:18]  Yeah, and I love that as a matter of prudence.
[01:22:20]  And it's like, hey, you know, men, you didn't grow up with a trust fund, you didn't grow up with an inheritance.
[01:22:26]  These are things that you have to.
[01:22:27]  Take the time to understand.

=== No Perfect System Exists (07:25) ===

[01:22:30]  You know, you talk about schools of investing.
[01:22:32]  You have value investing.
[01:22:34]  This is like the Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham esque investing.
[01:22:36]  I'm sure we'll probably do something a little bit more in depth on these things, which is to say when I buy a company, I pretend as if I'm an owner of that company.
[01:22:44]  And so I care about the fundamentals.
[01:22:45]  What's its EBITDA margin?
[01:22:47]  What's its sort of, there's Porter's Five Forces analysis.
[01:22:51]  What is its barrier to new entrance?
[01:22:53]  How defensible is the business?
[01:22:55]  Does it have a moat?
[01:22:56]  So on and so forth.
[01:22:56]  Then you have the school of technical analysis.
[01:22:59]  These are the kinds of skills that day traders exercise.
[01:23:03]  Can I identify a trend in a stock price?
[01:23:06]  Can I understand the different Sort of variables like price to equity ratio, so on and so forth.
[01:23:12]  And those two schools of thought actually both work and they've made a lot of people a lot of money.
[01:23:17]  I mean, just knowing when to apply them, knowing how to leverage those different investing philosophies is important and it's worth us talking about and it's worth people going out and investigating on their own.
[01:23:29]  Yep.
[01:23:30]  I think we have at least one super chat for the day.
[01:23:33]  Nathan, can you pull that up?
[01:23:34]  Here we go.
[01:23:35]  This is from Quinn Peterson $10 from Quinn.
[01:23:38]  We appreciate it.
[01:23:38]  Thank you.
[01:23:39]  He said, You guys are killing it.
[01:23:41]  Thank you once again for your consistency and hard work.
[01:23:44]  I have a large question that I'll comment in the regular chat.
[01:23:49]  If you don't read it, I get it though.
[01:23:52]  Thanks, guys.
[01:23:52]  All right, so we're going to do our best to read it.
[01:23:54]  Here it is.
[01:23:55]  He said, Thank you for responding to my comment last week about the JB Jordan book.
[01:24:01]  James B.
[01:24:02]  Oh, okay, yeah.
[01:24:03]  Jim Jordan.
[01:24:04]  The reason I asked about it is because much of what he claims seems to coincide perfectly with the things you guys often say.
[01:24:13]  He builds the case that history cycles through eras of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
[01:24:20]  He defines the time lines of the cycles he sees in history through the Old Testament, and he believes we've nearly made it through one full cycle since Christ brought the new covenant.
[01:24:34]  He predicted that we would continue to sin against the Spirit by rejecting the proper order of loves and destroying marriage in our culture, and at that point, judgment and grace.
[01:24:47]  Would begin a new cycle as the West deviates from the globalization being attempted and we break out in tribalism.
[01:24:56]  But that crisis will ultimately occur so the church can grow by appealing to people with the local community and kinship we offer.
[01:25:06]  What do you think of that idea?
[01:25:08]  By the way, he wrote this essay in 2009.
[01:25:11]  I don't know.
[01:25:13]  What do you guys think?
[01:25:15]  Any thoughts?
[01:25:16]  This traces a very similar idea to Professor Mark Taylor.
[01:25:19]  He's one of my professors when I was in school.
[01:25:22]  He would probably, he wouldn't consider himself a Christian.
[01:25:24]  He would ask, Well, what do you mean by being a Christian?
[01:25:26]  But brilliant guy.
[01:25:28]  And there's been a lot that have made this identification of a transition that has happened of an age kind of the father and an age of the son, just in Christian history, the transition that has happened through it.
[01:25:39]  And it's kind of been this idea of the death of God, that like God is prominent in a culture and he rises.
[01:25:44]  And Francis Schaeffer speaks about this of the arts and the beauty and everything it creates.
[01:25:50]  But then a process happens where it collapses in on itself.
[01:25:52]  But then what happens paradoxically is.
[01:25:55]  The Christian faith is again reborn.
[01:25:57]  And in the macro, so not just talking 100 year cycles or 50 year cycles, but talking 2000 years, I think it would be applicable to say I haven't read the essay, but it sounds like some great reading, and I'll see if I can find it.
[01:26:10]  But I think it does sound applicable that there's something about an end of an age that's happening right now.
[01:26:15]  That just the apostasy that the West has undergone, nuclear war being a possibility, that we could significantly wipe out large regions of the planet to be uninhabitable, capitalism in the sense of we may be interplanetary at some point with people living on Mars that have never stood on Earth, touched grass, so to speak.
[01:26:39]  So I find it a very compelling idea that something is ending, the first age of first Christendom, and something else is beginning.
[01:26:45]  And he's not the only one, James B. Jordan, whether it's Fukuyama, kind of in the political, the cultural sense, or religious, Karl Barth and others, they've all kind of sensed something happened around the mid 20th century, the mid 1900s, that kind of something ended and we're seeing the birth of something new.
[01:27:01]  Yeah.
[01:27:02]  For better or worse.
[01:27:03]  Yeah.
[01:27:04]  Yeah.
[01:27:05]  Ray Dalio, I've read his book a few years ago.
[01:27:08]  He's a former CEO, I think, of Bridgewater Associates.
[01:27:11]  He's a billionaire.
[01:27:12]  He's talked a lot about economic cycles in the same vein, I think, as you go through powers of sort of like he basically has.
[01:27:20]  Created an economic theory that mirrors America and Rome and how economies grow and they become empires and then those empires implode, so on and so forth.
[01:27:29]  And he's done a lot of work on that.
[01:27:30]  But I would say, on its face, I'm amenable to the idea that you can, an interpretive lens of history is a series of, like, you could think like an analogy, like course correction on a vehicle, right?
[01:27:44]  Or lane correction.
[01:27:45]  Like, once your vehicle, like, tactically, it's felt it's gone too far and over to one side, it kicks it in gear and takes it back to the other side.
[01:27:54]  And so on and so forth, that were to go to the other side, would course correct to the middle.
[01:27:58]  And I think that you could interpret history that way that there are ditches on both sides of the road, so to speak, and that we know, like tactically given biblical anthropology and human psychology, what those ditches are.
[01:28:10]  And we can kind of evidence in history the thresholds at which man says, you know, you think of the hard men create, you know, good times kind of cycle.
[01:28:20]  Like we know the threshold at which enough hard men say, this is enough.
[01:28:25]  This has gone too far.
[01:28:27]  And we've seen that time and time again in history, and we can create some kind of thesis based off of that.
[01:28:32]  So I do tend to find work like that, like James B. Jordan and some of these other guys you were talking about, Wes, interesting at the least.
[01:28:42]  Yeah.
[01:28:43]  I like James Jordan.
[01:28:44]  All right.
[01:28:44]  Well, thank you guys for tuning in.
[01:28:46]  It's Friday.
[01:28:47]  Make sure to go to church this Sunday on the Lord's Day.
[01:28:50]  And we will see you guys, Lord willing, on Monday.
[01:28:53]  Do we have any ideas for next week?
[01:28:55]  Just see what happens in the world.
[01:28:57]  Address it as it comes.
[01:28:58]  We'll be here.
[01:28:59]  That's what we can almost guarantee you.
[01:29:01]  We can almost guarantee it.
[01:29:02]  We say, if the Lord wills, you never know for sure.
[01:29:05]  But barring some kind of disaster, I guess, I mean, it's somewhat plausible.
[01:29:09]  We almost got washed away with the floods.
[01:29:13]  Georgetown was pretty bad, man.
[01:29:17]  I saw some of the drone footage and yeah, pretty gnarly.
[01:29:20]  But yeah, we'll hopefully see you guys on Monday.
[01:29:23]  And we've got, I kind of tease it out, I think, on Wednesday a little bit.
[01:29:27]  But yeah, We have some really big things in the works, so be praying for wisdom for us.
[01:29:34]  But we're going to be kind of unveiling some pretty large projects and endeavors in the very near future.
[01:29:43]  And I think you guys will be excited.
[01:29:45]  There'll be a lot of people who are mad, but that's always the case.
[01:29:49]  So, Lord willing, we'll see you guys on Monday.
[01:29:51]  Go to church this Sunday, and the Lord be with you.
[01:29:54]  God bless.