Clint Russell and Guy Swann argue that excessive government intervention has created a fragile economy reliant on Special Investment Vehicles and interest rate manipulation, delaying an inevitable market-clearing default. They warn that ESG scores allow corporations to shift toward stakeholder capitalism under Marxist principles while avoiding regulation, aligning with the military-industrial complex. Despite fears of balkanization or societal collapse, the hosts maintain that abandoning the Federal Reserve for Bitcoin offers the only path to restoring real wealth and ending cronyism, urging a libertarian revolution against current monetary systems. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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America's Next Enemy00:14:53
Fill her up.
You're listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the gas digital network.
Here's your host, James Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Here we go.
Part two of the great roundtable.
Is this the end of the whole goddamn thing?
Of course, we got the same crew as last episode: Guy Swan, my man Clint Russell, and Robbie the Fire Bernstein, the king of the caulks.
Let's get into it and kind of continue the conversation we were having and maybe take it in some different areas.
The question I want to pose, and there's a lot of different things here, but one of the issues, as we kind of addressed on the last episode, a lot of times we try to make predictions about where we think things are going.
And because all four of us are kind of operating in the under the laws of economics, we're like, okay, well, if this has happened, then this has to happen, right?
But what is hard to take into account is what other government interventions there will be along the way.
And so that's kind of, you know, a lot of people predicted after the response to the financial crisis and the Great Recession in 2008 that, okay, this is what's going to happen.
There's going to be a big crash within the next few years.
And people can look back and say, well, look, these great Austrian economists were wrong about that.
But really what they were wrong about is not thinking that the government would actually keep interest rates at zero for eight years or that they would have record high government spending or that every federal that every central bank around the country would go along with the Federal Reserve in keeping interest rates at near zero for this long of a time.
So what I want to talk about now is what might be the responses to what is coming up now that we're not necessarily thinking about.
There's a lot of plans floated out right now.
Nancy Pelosi just announced that the Democrats are going to propose price controls on gasoline because that works.
So that might be the next thing.
Long history of successes.
Yeah, nothing works better than price controls.
I don't like expensive gas.
I like no gas.
That's what I mean.
It's even better.
You know what's better than expensive gas?
Expensive gas and less of it.
That's what it really works.
I like waiting.
You don't like to wait until I get the theme park.
Yeah.
Oh, you mean if there's no gas at all?
Yeah.
Why do you have to wait in line for something that doesn't even there?
Well, another big one is, you know, there's been more and more talk of Biden actually putting together some type of plan for forgiving student loan debt.
I will tell you that this is kind of the pattern of what happens is that as government screws things up more and more, there's more and more calls for real socialism or more government intervention.
There's going to be a lot more calls for government, you know, forgiving debt in general.
That's a thing that I see coming more and more.
So I want to kind of go around and say, what do you think might be, not necessarily what you think will be, but what are potential different responses to what's going on here?
And whoever wants to take it from there can start.
I'll take the first one so I don't get duplicated.
So I think that I think that there could be what's called SIVs or I think they're SIV special investment vehicles.
Could see targeted bailouts of preferred companies very similar to what we saw in 08.
I think that I would be looking very hard if I was an investor at pension funds.
And because I believe that they'll be the ones that get bailed out, because if you see pension funds go bankrupt, you will see people actually go to war.
I mean, these are people that are like retired.
They worked their entire lives, and that's all they have to live off of.
Or at least it's what they have on top of social security usually.
That's the type of stuff that I just can't imagine happening in the near term unless it's just game over, essentially.
So I think that that's a likely government manipulation that we'll see.
I also, I think that it's very possible we see them completely reverse course on interest rates as well as QE.
And they just say, look, we can't have hyperinflation because you'll end up with food riots and all sorts of insanity.
So we're going to go the opposite direction.
We're going to try and walk this fine line where we've raised interest rates to say 2% Fed funds rate, but we're simultaneously going to start to monetize our debt so that we can't like they can make it like their capacity for manipulation is almost boundless because they have the they have the printing press.
I mean, it's such an incredible weapon.
When you think about it, it's almost incredible that they fail.
They have godlike power.
You have the ability to counterfeit money and you still can't fucking figure this out.
So I think that's the biggest thing is like Austrians are way too confident when it comes to like, well, at some point they're going to, they'll realize that this is dumb or they'll have no choice.
Like, well, yes, you're right.
At some point, they will have no choice, but that moment is oftentimes very far in the future.
Whereas we are looking at this from mere mortal standards and we say, well, you know, if it was us, it would end far sooner.
So I'm not at all certain that this is the end.
I think that there's a real chance that we can have another can kicking, if you will.
They kicked the can in 2008.
They kicked the can in 2020.
And I think that they could perhaps do so again.
So I don't want to, I wouldn't bet, I wouldn't go all in that this is the either the end of fiat or the end of the global economy.
I think that it's there's a chance that we have some time.
It feels like they lost the ability to kick the can to me.
It feels like it.
I'll grant you that.
I mean, this has been falling apart since like really the first cracks opened up in September of 2019 when they had to shore up the repo markets for, and it was just kind of like this like quiet thing.
It was like there was like a barely a news point.
Like, oh, we printed $800 billion overnight.
And it was just like, oh, no big deal.
No big deal.
And then, you know, months later come the lockdowns and the mandates and the everything.
And like this just, it just feels like the end game.
And, you know, maybe everything feels worse.
Everything feels worse when you're in it.
You know, like it's so easy to say, I mean, shit, 2008 felt like the fucking end game.
You know, that's exactly my point.
I agree with you that this, this is the end game, but the end game can have a couple innings, you know, like we still may have another inning is what I'm saying.
What's funny is if they, if they did a Vulcan, if they did a, if they raised interest rates to 20% and cleaned all this shit up, we could, we could unravel this thing and be growing again in two years.
Two years.
That is such a good point.
Did any of you guys ever read?
There's this phenomenal book.
God, I'm trying to find it.
It's on my bookshelf over here somewhere.
But there's this book by James Grant called, fuck, goddammit, I can't find it.
It's here somewhere.
I have too many books on the shelf.
But it's called The Forgotten Crash of 1921 or something, something like that.
But so in 1921, this is the thing that's so infuriating about all of this, right?
Is that so in 1921, there was a crash that was worse than the crash of 29.
And this was, of course, all the unwinding of the bubble of World War I.
And, you know, if you think the Federal Reserve is created in 1913, the income tax in 1914, we have in 1918, we're in World War I. By 1921, all of the malinvestment comes crashing down and the bubble bursts and all this stuff.
The forgotten depression, 1921.
Thank you, Brian.
You're the fucking man.
God, it's great to have a producer with Google.
So, and it, and basically at the time, the national federal apparatus was brand new.
You know, the progressive era was like brand new and they just didn't respond in time.
By the time they started realizing they needed to respond, the fucking crash had already happened and was long gone.
And it was cleared up.
But it was painful.
Don't get me wrong.
But a year later, it was completely cleared up and they bounced right back and went right back into the roaring 20s.
Now, they also started inflating more at that point and all that stuff.
But the truth is that the free market has an unbelievable ability to liquidate debt and get right back onto its feet.
It's really incredible.
And today, the truth is that we could deal with this and not feel any like anywhere close to the pain of 1920, of 1921.
Despite all of the problems that we have, we still, if you just look at the fundamentals of the economy, it's very hard to have anything like what the pain of the Great Depression, because the truth is that we have, what we have in this country right now is the most important resource of all, which is human knowledge.
If you just look at the average knowledge that the average economist and physicist and doctor and pediatrician, you know, like all they have, they know, they know so much more than they knew back then.
Our technological like advancements are godlike compared to what they were in 1921.
And if we were to actually just do the right thing, guys, absolutely right.
We could clear this up very quickly, you know?
But what the question that we're kind of posing here is, how likely are we to do the right thing?
Like, how likely are we to allow the market to actually recover?
And that's, I got to say, pretty unlikely right now.
And the reason for that is because if you are actually to allow a market clearing where all of the malinvestment gets washed out, the people that pay the price are the people that, for the most part, should be.
And that is the people that have connections to the government.
It's not the only regular people pay the price as well, but those people pay the price too.
And that's enough.
That's enough to really pay the price.
And they pay it big time, though, because you have billionaires that become worth 10 million or they go bankrupt.
Like this is stuff that we haven't seen in our lifetimes.
We haven't seen the fattest of fat cats actually eat shit like they ought to.
So, I mean, if you want to do the right thing, if you want to, you know, feed the populist revolution and allow it to die down, that's what has to happen.
You can't allow the consumer to pay the price via hyperinflation.
If you allow us to suffer because of your terrible decisions, you're going to see more and more people talking about revolution in terms of that nature.
So I don't know.
I agree with you, though.
I think it's highly unlikely.
And one thing I will add to your point, and I grant you that the foundation of this economy is way, way more impressive than it was in the early 20s.
However, the debt is enormous.
And it's global.
But it's violent.
It's just the default is what cleans it out.
Like, it can happen insanely quickly.
Like, that's the beauty of the free market.
And not to shove Bitcoin back into this, but this is why I love Bitcoin.
There are no fake prices.
You don't get to bail it out.
You don't get to pretend that you had this huge deleveraging event.
You cannot build up this imbalance on a Bitcoin standard.
And so on a long enough timeline, Bitcoin wins because it simply can't poison itself.
Like at the end of the day, it's going to get cleaned out.
No one is going to bail it out because there's no fake Bitcoin to send anybody.
And it's going to actually balance things out and it's going to be able to grow.
When Bitcoin crashes, it crashes quickly.
It stabilizes.
And we start building in the bear markets.
You breed a bunch of new Bitcoiners.
You start, you get back to it.
You clear out all the fucking crypto bros and all the morons who just came in because they were stroking it because they found six green candles in a row.
They leave.
They leave.
And please, Jesus, go and don't come back.
And then you get the signal back.
You get the signal back.
Yeah, but then those guys will come back.
They will come back.
They will come back and we'll wipe them out again.
Well, this was, I was asked this question when I was on Patrick Bett David's show.
And I forget exactly what he asked me.
It was something about how to deal with the debt.
And it's kind of like when you're talking, and I was going to say, when you're talking to normies, and when I say normies, I just mean people outside this world that we're in.
Like, you know, he's like an incredible, I mean, he built, he built like a billion dollar company and is a fucking guy worth hundreds of millions of dollars, incredibly impressive guy.
But he was like, well, what's the answer to the debt?
And I was trying to like answer the question.
And I'm like, okay, well, look, it's to default on the debt.
And I know that's like kind of, that sounds a little bit like, because I'm like, well, so you don't really have an answer to that.
But what I tried to say is like, look, it's to default on the debt, which there's, which there's no other answer.
And then as I explained it, he kind of went, yeah, you're kind of right.
Like there's no other answer.
I go default now or default later or default by just printing the money to the point where, yeah, you can pay it back technically, but you've basically defaulted.
And if you do that, if you know, if you print the money to the point where, okay, so let's say you owe a trillion dollars and you print the money to where the money is only worth what a billion dollars would have been worth before, whatever.
Okay, you paid it back, but you basically defaulted on 90% of the debt.
Debt Default as Cleansing00:02:47
Okay.
But in the process, you've destroyed your currency and your country and your economy.
So what's better?
Just defaulting right now or defaulting and ruining everyone along the way.
So that's kind of like, but the truth is, I think that as Guy was mentioning, that, you know, of course, it's not politically feasible right now, but to just default on the debt would be the cleansing mechanism could be done so quickly is basically my point that it could be theoretically.
If you just go, yeah, you know what?
That was promised.
Look, when the Soviet Union collapsed, there was a bunch of debt that they owed.
You know what happened to the people who they owed that money to?
They didn't get it.
Because you know, because there's new governments now, and they're like, Well, the Soviet Union owes us debt, and they're like, Yeah, well, shame for you, Soviet Union is not here anymore, so I don't know what to tell you.
And we could have the same goddamn attitude about it.
Now, the again, this kind of distracts from the real question I was trying to ask because none of this is gonna happen, unfortunately.
What's actually gonna happen is that this regime is gonna you know continue trying to uh maintain itself.
So, what could be, you know, I don't know.
Anyone else have any thoughts of what could actually happen here?
Yeah, I expect to see debt jubilee, like the forgiveness of just massive and massive amounts of debt.
Um, and it seems why do you expect that because that's historically what happens, it just is just common, you know, like the forgiveness of the student loans, like they'll they'll aim at the most politically useful demographics, um, and they'll start forgiving debt.
Um, and I think also we'll have uh I'm really inclined to think, I mean, like maybe I'm you actually kind of alluded to this squint of the uh the SIVs or whatever, um, SPVs, SPVs, SPVs, um, special purpose vehicles, STDs.
Well, that's what I have talking about finance.
No, there's two: there's special investment and special purpose vehicles, it doesn't matter.
I think there will be a form of nationalization of retirements because they're going to get clobbered, um, they're going to get obliterated, and I think the government will come in and save everybody.
Um, so you don't mean a jubilee when it comes to national debt, you mean you know, focused targeted consumer forgiveness of debt?
Yes, okay, that's interesting.
And on the national side, I'm I wouldn't be surprised if we ended up like Japan.
We just said we're going to buy our central bank is going to buy as much debt as we need to.
Escaping the Inflationary Spiral00:02:50
That's actually pretty inflationary, though.
If you start, oh, yeah, 100%.
Yeah, if you forgive student debt, for instance, you'd see a ton of people, you know, millennials that have been drowning under their student debt payments that start to launch into the real estate market or into the stock market.
Well, it turns credit into actual paper money in the economy, right?
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All right, let's get back into the show.
I'll throw another curveball here that if we go the way of Japan, you might see a government digital currency with a negative interest rate, and that there's no way to get away from that.
But in terms of Bitcoin, well, if it's not illegal, which, you know, you might be holding Bitcoin.
I'd just be trying to get the hell out of this country.
My personal plan, firstly, what you guys are talking about, I'm reading Ray Dalio's book at the moment, and I do think there's something very interesting and inspiring that it's basically two years of pain and like we're back to normal.
But I'm stockpiling food.
I live on the second floor and I got a fishing rod.
I'm just going to fish for pussy in the street.
That's what I'm going to do.
I'm just going to cast out tuna fish cans.
Yeah.
I'm just going to catch pussy, Rob.
You got that all back.
You don't know how you don't know how hungry these women are going to be when things go to shit.
So I'm just going to be literally pulling pussy into my apartment.
It's going to be pretty great.
I think he's got a pretty good plan.
He's going to be.
Yeah, that stage two is you get them pregnant.
You got the tit milk six months later and you got a food supply.
So I want to, I want to, hold on.
I want to, I want to go back to what Rob said there before the whole fishing for pussy thing, which was interesting.
But so you're saying, and then if they make Bitcoin illegal, and guy, you say that's when you'll keep holding, but you'll leave the country.
I mean, is that the answer?
Is that the answer to someone who held Bitcoin through this whole time and then they fucking really cracked down on it?
Bitcoin Crackdown and Exodus00:14:37
Do you got to get the hell out of here?
Maybe, maybe it's, it's been on my table for oh shit, get out of Dodge plan as like an option.
But I also think, I also think the, there is shockingly, shockingly, there is enough of the, you know, don't tread on me, the, the just like, I'm not playing this game anymore culture in the U.S. Like despite everything, the United States of America still remains probably the largest freedom culture on the planet.
Yeah.
Um, we're not the freest, but we have the most freedom culture, but we have the we have the strongest culture toward it.
And because of that, I think we'll see a massive bifurcation of this country.
We'll see the balkanization of the United States.
I do not think we go through an event like this with all states participating.
Well, that's that's a huge point right there.
So that's actually was my next uh uh thing that I wanted to bring up.
So you transitioned into that perfectly, which was welcome.
Well, yes, there you go.
I've heard that term a lot lately.
Um, the national divorce and how that plays into that.
You know, we've seen over the uh the last two years more, you know, and this is something that I think libertarians really need to try their best to appreciate.
Um, and I know sometimes when I will uh give credit to Ron DeSantis or Christy Noam or something like that, I hear screeches from, you know, like left libertarians of like, but they're really bad on weed, you know, and you're like, okay, yes, I know, I know.
And by the way, I hate that too.
I wish they were better on weed.
I, it, it's especially Christy Noam, who had like a referendum to legalize weed and then tried her best to, I think, like stifle it.
I don't know if she successfully did or not.
I can't even remember.
And that's how much I care about South Dakota.
But the point is that you go, look, what's amazing about this is that for the first time in my life, states' rights were really important.
What your governor said was really important, not just like around the margins, like around like whether your life was ruined or not.
And yes, okay, 48 out of the 50 governors blew it, but it's kind of interesting that two didn't.
And so now you have this thing where, and then more and more, the kind of red states started to do a little bit better than the blue states were doing.
And I wonder, particularly with Joe Biden as the president right now, and particularly given the fact that a substantial portion of Red State America views Joe Biden as an illegitimate president and not in the way that like, you know, the blue states viewed Donald Trump with this Russia shit.
Like, I mean, really, they genuinely believe that the election was stolen.
Question, have you seen 2,000 mules yet?
I keep hearing about this.
I have not.
So this is the Dinesh D'Souza, his most recent documentary.
I have not seen this yet.
Have you guys?
Have either of you.
What are your thoughts?
That's what I got.
I thought, honestly, it's, I don't trust Dinesh, unfortunately.
Me neither.
If the evidence that he presents is legitimate, I would say it's a smoking gun.
I'd have to be proven that that stuff's legitimate.
So that's my first take on it.
I tend to agree.
Dinesh D'Souza makes compelling documentaries, but he also like will do these things where he's like, the greatest president ever was Abraham Lincoln.
I'm like, you pronounced worst wrong.
All right.
Well, and there's the other thing.
The other thing that he really fucked up on is that, or I don't think he fucked up.
I think it was an intentional oversight or leave on the cutting room floor.
They keep talking about the different, what's it called?
Basically, the nonprofits that these mules were going back to.
But he never says who they are.
He never says who the nonprofits are.
So what I concluded with that is that those nonprofits were probably bipartisan.
You probably had mules on both sides of the aisle that were doing the same thing.
And they don't and they don't want to bring that up because he is purely a Republican propagandist.
And so, you know, that's, that's my take on it.
Yeah.
Dinesh D'Souza has a long history of being suspect.
Let's just say that.
Did you see it, Rob?
I don't even know what you're talking about.
It's a documentary about the election being stolen.
So, all right.
Anyway, but regardless of all of that, it does seem like right now the potential for states to actually start thinking about splitting away from the union is at least higher than it's ever been.
And if what we're talking about with like a huge cataclysmic, you know, like economic event, in the case of that, I think it would be very likely that you would see some states be like, hey, we don't want to be a part of this anymore.
And that's, look, that, as I've talked about for years on the show, you know, the way the Soviet Union dissolved was that way.
Was that the basically there was this, you know, balkanization, which before you would have used that term, but this term that we're, you know, where the different kind of nationalities within this superstructure started to just like remove themselves.
And maybe that's our best chance.
I want to coin a word.
We're going to Appalachianistation instead of Balkanization.
We're going to Appalachian.
Yeah.
Honestly, I think that's the most peaceful possible path that we have in front of us.
It is absolutely the best outcome.
And I will grant you that it's very improbable.
I mean, it's not like it's improbable that it will be peaceful.
I'll say that.
I don't think it's improbable that it'll happen.
I think it's actually the inevitable conclusion of the United States is that we will eventually break apart.
But the question is, can it be peaceful or will it be violent?
And I think that that's our job as libertarians is to advocate and popularize and get people to start to converse about this stuff.
Your buddy Malice has probably done more for that cause than anyone I know in the past few years.
What's funny too?
Oh, sorry.
No, no, but no, I think you're right.
But what's funny too is that I think that it would actually cascade.
The U.S. is such a linchpin in so much of like NATO and like basically the structures of the political cohesion that have been the narrative of the world for the last, you know, 80 years or 100 years or so.
That if the U.S. balkanizes, I think the European Union falls apart too.
Like, I think, I think Brexit happens like, I think everything starts to splinter.
And I think we'll actually look back on Brexit as the first time that that became black.
I think it's the seed.
Yeah, I think that's the first part of the falling apart of whatever this huge apparatus is.
And I think one of the major keys is, I mean, the thing that's holding it together is the money, really.
And guess what?
If that money doesn't buy you shit, you're not going to have they're not going to be like, oh, yeah, we're going to keep shipping money to the feds.
They're going to be like, no, fucking kick rocks.
And I think that's that's really how it will play out is that if we go the hyperinflation route, you will see the disillusion of the United States.
That's my honest opinion.
Well, particularly given the fact that you have kind of what's going on right now, right?
So to your point, this is all the American empire, right?
Like that's what we're talking about here.
Even though it's a unique empire where it's an empire with many different kind of like, you know, in the same way that our government is totalitarian, but it uses these kind of like corporate entities to enforce the totalitarianism.
We're an empire, but we use all of these different nations and all of these different groups to enforce our empire.
But one of the things that's really interesting about what's happening here is that there does seem to be this unbelievably like focused effort to demonize the right half of America.
Like this is really like it seems that the corporate press and the establishment and all of these people are very concerned about everybody who voted for Donald Trump or everybody who's just not in, you know, as Brennan said, all the terrorists are the anti-government people, the Trump supporters, the evangelical Christians and the libertarians.
He even threw us in there as well, which was kind of nice of him in a way to even think we matter that much.
But so I would have been pissed if he didn't put us in there, honestly.
Yeah, at a certain point, you've been like, come on.
Come on, dude.
What more do I have to do, man?
Right here.
We're trying to abolish the CIA.
I'm going to tweet something controversial right now.
Dude, motherfucker.
You know, he'd almost have made me supported Trump if he hadn't included us in that list.
So, but so that to me almost aids this whole thing, where at a certain point, the people who are just constantly being kicked by the establishment, and then they have to deal with all the repercussions of these policies.
Yeah, I could see us getting to a point where there's enough of a majority.
Look, if you have 80% or more of the population of like your state who wants something to happen, they can make that happen.
And if there's 80% of Florida, well, now Florida's not there, but if there's 80% of, I don't know, Alabama or some state like that just doesn't want to be a part of this anymore, they can make that happen.
And I also think it's important to think about the fact this is steamrolling against them that with the pandemic stuff, with the lockdowns and like all the craziness, like two states didn't participate.
That is two states that's going to make five states rethink things the next time this is up for discussion.
Yep.
And like that is going to steamroll against them because we know we're headed to a fucking nightmare scenario.
Like everybody knows that the trajectory for where we are going looks like a disaster.
And, you know, I. Let me add to your point, though, real quick.
It's not, it didn't go from two to five.
It went from like two to 20 because there was all these states that came out against vaccine mandates when they tried to push them.
And all the state governors or governors, they just came down and they're like, we ain't going to enforce it.
What are you going to do, feds?
So I think that it's already begun, man.
And the fact that it's now, you know, popular.
Yeah, the tide has really shifted on that one.
And we've also seen the cultural shift begin to take hold where people are like sick of just like sitting and taking the beating.
And, you know, it's really easy, like in the 90s and the early 2000s and stuff, it's really easy to, you know, things have to get worse than the level of uncomfort you have to deal with to challenge somebody.
Like, right.
It's easy to put something off when everything's nice.
It's easy to not rock the boat when the boat isn't rocking.
But when you're in the middle of a hurricane, nobody gives a shit.
Nobody's going to, nobody's going to hold their tongue when that happens.
And that's what it feels like where we are right now.
This is kind of the microcosm of what's happening with Twitter is everybody's like, I'm fucking sick of you telling me to shut up.
I'm not going to show up anymore.
Well, and on top of that, you also have massive migration inflows of people that lean more liberty-minded that have fled to these states that have already signaled, hey, we are going to buck the feds dictates.
So you now have an even more fertile ground for that governor in those states to say, fuck you when they try some more tyrannical bullshit.
Yeah, I think that's right.
I think that's right.
That's been a really interesting dynamic too, right?
Like we have all of these different things that have happened over the last couple of years.
There's been a dramatic increase in the homeschooling community.
I think that's really important.
That is watch.
Yes.
Fucking numbers on that are nuts.
I'm homeschooling, by the way.
Yeah.
Hell yeah, dude.
Me too.
And there's hashtag me too.
And there's been a dramatic increase of people kind of like ideologically self-segregating.
Like the people, like the floods of people leaving California and leaving New York and all of these states, right?
And that tends to be people who are at least more on board with, yes, we supported the policies of this state versus the one that we're fleeing from.
And this can take states like Florida that was a swing state and we'll see, but this will be very interesting if this makes it like a hard red state.
And so this, I think, is a very like encouraging sign.
Because one of the things, you know, and this is what's difficult about this whole conversation and what's difficult about predicting the future.
But look, if the world were, as we were talking about on the last episode, if the world were to bail on the dollar reserve standard, that could cause a lot of pain for Americans.
But at the same time, you go, the apparatus that is sustained by the dollar reserve currency is the greatest threat to the American people and the most oppressive force to the American people.
And to people all over the world.
The Dollar Reserve Threat00:02:20
Yes.
But look, there's no certainly, but look, there's no question about that, right?
It would be better for the children in Yemen if America was not the empire of the world.
No one's arguing that.
But the question is almost like what?
But would it be better for our children and their, their future?
And I would suggest that ultimately yes, it would be now.
It might be really really bad in the short term right, but at the same time, you know and this is one of the things I try to get across when I talk to, like right-wingers who are like really concerned about China or something like that, and you go like okay, but look, even if you really are concerned about China, I mean hey, I think the Chinese Communist Party is nuts.
I wouldn't want them ruling over me.
I feel really bad, for there is no question that the Chinese Communist Party is the absolute biggest threat to the Chinese people.
You know, but who's really the biggest threat to you now?
Who, like?
They didn't.
They didn't lock you in your home for a year, you know.
They didn't like destroy your business.
They didn't know our government did that.
So in many ways, what could undermine our government could ultimately be the best thing for us and our future.
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Value Flooding Back to Workers00:09:23
You heard about it on part of the problem.
We'd really appreciate that Rockauto.com.
All right, let's get back into the show.
I think I think one thing to remember there is that I actually think the United States stands to benefit in a major way in, like a really big way, if we let the dollar reserve die um, and that doesn't necessarily mean that the dollar is gone.
It means that we are no longer obligated to satisfy the reserve currency dilemma like there is.
There is a major downside to having a world reserve currency is that we essentially must, we are obligated, to export paper currency, which means that we, we gut our manufacturing, we gut our, our actual meaningful economic base, and we become the finance capital of the world and we just We become this huge derivatives gambling machine for the whole planet.
And that's where we've been.
We've gutted everything of actual value out of this fucking economy and we've exported it on a bunch of paper dollars because we've had to uphold this standard, which is currency as a world reserve is a shit idea.
It just doesn't fucking work.
Which is what Trump got into office based off of.
And of course, he prescribed all of the wrong things.
He was prescribed sanctions, all sorts of bullshit.
And then he bitched at the Federal Reserve for not having as low interest rates as he did under Obama.
What the hell, guys?
We had 0% under Obama and we're coming up on 1% under May.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
No, that's right.
But that will flood back.
That's a very good point, guys.
That value will flood back to us.
Our economy will actually bolster again.
We'll gut all of the bullshit that we have malinvested in, the trillions of dollars of wasted capital.
Yeah.
And we'll get back to innovating stuff.
Well, that's what that's kind of like what I think it was Robert Higgs who said this, but where he was basically like, look, you're never going to have a fucking like real depression short of like H-bombs dropping on America.
So short of us actually pushing Putin to fucking a nuclear war, then maybe you're looking at a real depression.
But no matter what the economic realities of this country are, I mean, we have so many factories and so many engineers with the knowledge that they have that even if their work was destroyed, they could rebuild it tomorrow and all of this.
And that it's like, yeah, if we maybe if we could just get off of being addicted to this fiat currency and addicted to like ruling the whole world, we could see a real flooding of this back.
There's still so many people in this country who are like innovative, who are hardworking, who are like, you know, and I would love to see a system where those people are like rewarded for their work rather than gender studies majors.
You got to go through some real pain to get there because the current system is you have minimum wage laws and you've got the government saying, hey, it doesn't matter what your job is.
We're going to make sure you got healthcare.
Doesn't matter how much you're earning.
We're going to make sure that you got retirement.
The government's coming in and it's offering you a lot of stuff that you would normally have to work really, really hard for and requires us enslaving other people in foreign countries and having a currency where we can have endless debt.
You need people to face a very heavy dose of reality.
We're suddenly showing up to a factory.
I mean, by global standards, like $2 an hour, that's a fucking good ass wage.
So if all of a sudden in America, you're making $7 an hour with zero government benefits, but like we're talking about living in an environment where you can actually like buy things with, you know what I mean?
It's like you're talking about two years of pain where people suddenly realize like, yes, I will take a factory job for $7 an hour with zero.
Like you just have to understand the amount of pain that like people have to go through in order to acknowledge the shift that you guys are stating would benefit us.
And I agree with.
Yeah.
I agree with, right?
But like someone needs to kind of allow people to experience a lot of pain in order for us to kind of enter into that reality.
Well, the want to push back on that just a tiny bit because at the end of the day.
You're going to pitch me out again, guy.
At the end of the day, go ahead.
The value of the money is what's important.
What can you buy with it?
Think about how much capital we have thrown at shit that is destroying stuff.
When you're looking at something that's like 8% inflation or actually, like if you're shadow stats, you're looking at 12 to 15% inflation.
You're talking about something where we can prop up a company that makes 5% nominal profit and is actually like 10% in the negative.
It is actually destroying capital for us.
Like that is what we're doing.
We are literally propping up trillions of dollars in capital that is bleeding, that is just a giant parasite.
When we remove that, yes, we're talking about $7 factory worker.
That's potential, favorable, potential wages, but we're also talking about millions of people that are spending time being leeches, turning time to actually producing things.
So you're also, you're simultaneously a massive increase in production of goods and services.
Yeah, I gotta say, I'm on God's side on this one.
I think that.
No, but I'm just saying that the idea that we're gonna, we're not gonna be going back to making $7 an hour.
I mean, whatever the dollar value actually is.
Like what we're talking about.
Yeah, yeah, forget that.
Like we're talking about like real wealth.
We're not going back to like my grandfather's day of like the way we produce things because we have the knowledge that isn't going to evaporate from people's minds of how to produce things way more effectively.
And the truth is that there's this huge, there's this huge portion of our society who produces nothing and gets paid for it.
And so the fact if we move them into actual production, we're going to be wealthier in the real sense of the word.
All right.
But look at it from in the short term.
No, look at, no, no, look at it from look at it from the worker's perspective.
So fine, we are more intelligent and we've got greater technology in terms of what we can manufacture.
So in your grandfather's era, he's standing there and he's turning a wrench and now he's turning a thing on a machine and the machine's working in fucking triple or quadruple time.
At the end of the day, the global workforce right now is significantly larger as we've exported a lot of capital to other countries.
So at the end of the day, if I'm a corporation, you actually have a free market and I'm going to hire someone here over a worker in India.
It's a pretty simple math equation.
The guy in India probably makes $2 a day versus here.
So I cut off some of the exporting costs, but what do I have to pay over here in a real free market?
And then you're talking about the United States government saying, hey, I'm not giving you free stuff for just sitting at home.
So you got to show up and work for $4 an hour.
And then you're talking about, I'm just saying on top of that, like think about like the modern media landscape of what would have existed in what was the greatest wealth expansion in human history.
But you were talking about kids working in factories.
Can you imagine a CNN story about what real working labor conditions would be here in a free market?
And I'm not saying any of this would be bad.
I'm just saying that you would have to go through a couple years of substantial pain in order for people to accept that that is the best option.
It would be a shit show for a well, and the big, the biggest mind shift would have to be that instead, I mean, and this is actually a negative and a positive.
In the short term, Robbie's absolutely right.
It would be excruciating.
But the real paradigm shift or the mentality shift that you'd have to witness is people instead of looking at their house as being their retirement funds, they would now be able to look at their cash that is no longer being eroded through the Federal Reserve.
And they could say, okay, now I can invest this at a real 7% or 8% return on investment, because if you're no longer dealing in funny money land, the rate of return would actually be probably around there and it would be a legitimate return on investment.
Whereas today, it's just paper returns.
So there's like, it's a, it's a total, it's a total shift.
And honestly, it's probably not going to happen anytime soon.
But I think that long term, it would be so much better.
If I was able to actually save my hard-earned money and invest it into real productive vehicles and then to make a real return and to not expect that I'm going to lose, you know, half of my purchasing power over the next decade, like that, that changes everything, man.
And it would be, it would be glorious.
I mean, our production, you're absolutely right, though.
Our production capacity would skyrocket because we would no longer be exporting to China because they'd be the ones that are debasing their currency.
Whereas we're now dealing with the sound money basis.
Like it's, it's a, it's, it's almost like impossible for me to imagine because it's, it's just never been feasible in my lifetime.
Solving Problems with Sound Money00:07:21
What could happen?
Fix, but that's but fix the money, fix the money, fix the world, man.
Well, yeah.
And look, the point, the point to that is, and I think, I think that is true.
And I think that the, the, the point is that, like, look, if you're let, let's just take one basic field, right?
Like, say, modern medicine.
No matter what happens in the economy, doctors know things now that they didn't know in the 50s.
And that's not going anywhere.
So it's, it's not like now they're okay, there could be a shortage on the drugs that they need.
There could be problems with like the medical machinery that they need, but they're not going in the 50s.
It was, uh, and you can look at this through like actual studies.
It was debatable whether uh medical care helped or hurt.
Right.
Like you might have been the best two years.
I'm not sure it helped.
Well, I'm going to show off your arm and it might help you out.
No, no, no.
But look.
Bloodletting.
You're talking about if you're talking about whether it helps or hurts Nat, listen, I'll say that, okay, yes, there were people who were recommending the vaccine and stuff like that.
And like, but no, no, the truth is, and this is something I've dealt with intimately, but yeah, my, my, uh, my boy would have died 20 years earlier, but he's going to be fine now, right?
Of course.
He's going to be fine.
And even within the COVID stuff, right?
Forget all the craziness about the vaccines and the pharmaceutical companies.
They got better at treating COVID like within a month.
If you got COVID on like May 14th, or if you got COVID on April, you know, April, sorry, if you got COVID on June 14th, you were way better off.
Yeah, right.
Like way better off because they had already figured out they figured out really their shutdown so they didn't have to put you on a ventilator and blow out your lungs and kill it.
But literally, the whole problem, the whole healthcare thing was a political problem.
It wasn't even a healthcare problem.
Well, that's right.
But even that, I'm saying, but even that, like, you know, the way they basically figured out the ventilator thing was not from any like politician dictating it.
It was that doctors were going, Hey, look, I'm looking at my patients who I put on ventilators.
I'm looking at the ones I didn't.
This is not working out well.
And regardless, there's so many examples like that with just come.
And there's examples like that in every single industry.
I'm just saying that there's a lot of things that no matter what we go through, you're going to, we're going to be, we're going to be going through it with a modern understanding of how to solve these problems.
This is something that I think is actually like a white pill, something to be very optimistic about.
That no matter what happens with the markets and no matter what happens with the currency, we're still going to be in a world where we have a modern understanding of a lot of these things, which really does matter.
It's very easy for people who want to get like blackpilled on all this shit to like just be like, ah, we never should have had the enlightenment and we never should have had any of this because look at what we've led to.
But like, look, I'm telling you, it's way better off if you're, if your kid has a serious illness to have people who know how to fix it.
And it's way better off if you have like, even if you're building a new factory, you know, we now build factories that are probably 5,000 times more productive than the factories that my grandfather was working in.
So that's all I'm saying.
That I don't think we're going to fall back to when you're talking about Rob, you know, you say, but not even the Stone Age, but when Rob says, you know, like going from $2 an hour to $7 an hour, if you're talking about like people in like rural China being pulled out of extreme poverty, short of H-bombs going off in our major cities, I don't see us being in any situation close to that.
I actually agree with that.
I don't think that it'll get that bad.
I do think that the transition period, just because we have such will be tough.
Yeah, it's just, it's just such a cucked, like, there's so, I mean, there's such a dearth of like hardworking, intelligent young people in particular.
And that's not to say that there aren't a lot.
There are obviously a lot, but it's just, it's like, it's been popularized to kind of be like, you know, stay at home, cash those, those COVID stimulus checks.
Like, I'm speaking from experience because I have two younger brothers who are like 20 and they haven't done shit with their life since the lockdowns happen.
And that's obviously that's, I blame the government to some extent, but sure.
That's very, it's very widespread, man.
And I think in some ways, you can actually take a white pill there and say like, even the higher ups in the military have to be looking at these kids and going like, we can't beat China in a war.
Like we, we can't even consider a war with China.
They have a fucking shorter they can barely see.
I'll fuck them up.
That's the bravado of the Americans, of course, but I'm not sure that we can actually.
But, you know, like, I just want to say that I'm actually like, like as messy and as awful as things look right now, I'm actually really optimistic.
You know, like, like something that, you know, Robbie was saying, like, you know, every, like everything has to get shittier, like really shitty.
But the thing is, is that like, you don't change stuff until things get shitty.
You know, like when something needs to be fixed, you don't fucking fix it until it really breaks.
Well, yeah, culture doesn't or our culture doesn't.
Culture, nothing does.
You know, you know, there's a, there's a, uh, a segment from uh Thomas Payne's Common Sense.
And there's a great piece by Parker Lewis actually that I read on the show called Bitcoin is Common Sense.
And he alludes to this thing that until we declare independence, like the country will feel as a man who continues to putting, to put off some unpleasant business that he knows must be done.
And he hates to admit it.
He wishes he didn't have to, but it haunts him day to day.
And that's what I feel like where we are.
God, Thomas Payne was the fucking man.
Thomas Payne was a fucking boss.
But like, that's what I feel like where we are.
We know what has to be done.
And we're just waiting for it to get bad enough to stop procrastinating about it.
Let me also say that, you know, in 2008, I was just coming out of college because I fucked around and drank too much and took a long time to get through college.
But and I was a starving college student.
I was delivering pizzas.
I bought my first property was a fucking mobile home in Oceanside, California for $130,000.
I ended up selling it for a loss after the market tanked and I bought my first house, my first real house two years later.
And basically, in a decade from coming into my adulthood in the Great Recession, in a decade, I was a millionaire.
Seizing Delta 8 Opportunities00:02:56
I mean, these are opportunities that are, especially for the libertarians out there, which is who I am always preaching to on Liberty Lockdown.
I want you guys to know that you have a competitive advantage that is so powerful and we do not take advantage of it enough.
We understand economics in a way that no one else does.
We are in the 1% when it comes to this particular niche area of expertise.
And yet we aren't all rich and it drives me fucking crazy.
So this is your opportunity, gents.
The market's going to eat shit and you have the keys.
Go fucking build your castle.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, look, I completely agree with that.
And I think that like, if there's nothing else libertarians can do, it's like, look, let's try to see what's coming here and try to position yourself in the best possible way.
And by the way, God damn it, guy, Thomas Payne in that pamphlet, Common Sense, says, and this is like the pamphlet that fucking changed the world.
They say it's the most like influential pamphlet in the American Revolution.
He says that government at its best is a necessary evil.
I always love that.
Like, I love that way of looking at it, that you're like, if you want to think about government, that to me is the perfect way to think about it.
That it's absolute best.
It is a necessary evil.
Those are the types of people founding a country.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Exactly.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Defeating the Money Machine00:15:14
All right, Rob, what the fuck else should we talk about?
Well, I think we can pick between one of two very big topics and you can take or pick.
Okay.
I think we got two financial wizards on the show.
So I think ESG scores is of interest as that's going to be a tool of the government to try and solidify critical industries, preach socialism and keep the rich rich.
That's topic one.
Topic two would be: we got some insights about the way the NIH works and potentially Fauci's profits and conflicts of interest.
So I think we got probably time for one more.
Let's do ESGs because I think that's probably the best.
And then me and you can talk more about the fucking NIH and all that stuff.
So, okay, who wants to start this?
All right, Clint, we'll go to you.
All right.
Sorry, Clint raised his hand first.
He dinged in first.
You'll get your turn as well, guy.
But Glenn, you go first and you can, what do you got to say?
All right.
So ESG was a basic ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance.
And do you want the full like breakdown or have you already covered this?
No, give it your breakdown.
Okay.
So in 2004, it was Kofi Annan who sent out a letter to 50 of the CEOs of the biggest, not American corporations, but global corporations.
And what do you know?
They respond back, yeah, let's do it.
So what he includes in this letter is that basically we need to have a shift from shareholder capitalism to stakeholder capitalism, stakeholder being, you know, the workers, the people that live in the country where the where the company does business.
Like we have to look out for everybody.
It can't just be about making money, which sounds nice.
Well, it kind of sounds like socialism gooblygock.
Well, it sounds nice.
And it also sounds like Marxism is what it sounds like because it fucking is.
So he gets Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs and all these big boys to sign on in 2004 to ESG.
And from there, BlackRock, which at the time is not that big of a company, but has swiftly become the biggest money manager in the world, having over 10 trillion under management.
And now there is north of estimates are that there's north of $50 trillion that are under ESG guidance when it comes to investing protocols.
And what this amounts to is that you have these metrics, ESG.
So you have the, it's a third, third, and third, and the total is 100 points.
And if your environmental score is, you know, say 30, and then your social score is 20 and your G score is 20, then that puts you at 70, which means that you are now qualified to receive a capital infusion from any of the big money managers that will invest only if you have an acceptable ESG score.
An acceptable ESG score, I think, is over 60.
So that's how it works.
And you would think, okay, well, what's wrong with just making sure that you're only investing in companies that focus on reducing pollution?
Well, if it were that simple, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, but it's not that.
And it's completely tied to the governments in these local countries.
And now it's also tied to the, you know, like Saudi Arabia and China are able to dictate their policies.
So while they can talk about how terrible and racist America is, you can't talk about the Uyghurs in Xinjiang or however you pronounce it.
So that's basically what it is.
And that's Clint's people, by the way.
The Uyghurs, yes.
I'm a huge fan.
Uyghurs all day.
And ESG is, in my opinion, essentially the explanation for every single bizarre thing that we've witnessed over the past decade in that we now have wokeism, which has been infused with business in a way that made no fucking sense to me.
And for the longest time, I was trying to figure it out.
I was like, why would Gillette tell me that I'm a terrible human, toxic masculinity victim perpetrating?
You know, like, why?
Why are they saying this to me?
And I couldn't figure it out.
And then all of a sudden I figure out about ESG and I'm like, fuck, this is it.
This is it.
Because they're no longer interested in what the consumer wants.
They're no longer interested in what the shareholder even wants.
They're interested in what Vanguard and BlackRock and State Street and all the biggest money managers in the world want because that's the only way you get the money.
If they won't buy your stock, you are going to tank.
And that is, that is how Marxism is taking over not just America, but the entire world.
Yeah, it is not, it is not a coincidence that the fifth pillar of the Communist Manifesto is control of money is a central bank.
And like you and Lenin even said that if you can get a central bank to control the money and the financing of a country, you're 90% of the way to communism.
Like that is what Lenin said.
And he was not wrong.
He was right, unfortunately.
ESG is that.
ESG is that.
There's a great piece that I read on the show.
I'll show my show a little bit on Bitcoin Audible.
There's a piece by Alan Farrington.
He's one of my favorite authors.
He and Sasha Myers have put together some amazing pieces and a fucking phenomenal book, Bitcoin is Venice.
But he has this piece titled, I Finance the Current Thing.
And it's about how ESG is kind of the virtue signaling of getting political capital.
It's the, you know, the during the like the Bolshevik revolution or whatever, you had like people, like the little shopkeepers, they had workers of the world unite.
But like, it wasn't that they had like some passion about this.
It was like a defense mechanism.
You know, it's like, it's like the BLM of the Starbucks in Portland.
Like it wasn't because Starbucks was like really passionate about Black Lives Matter at that particular time.
It was because they didn't want their place burned down.
Right.
It was a shield.
It was a virtue signaling shield to not be the subject of the anger, of the political anger at the time.
They don't give a shit.
And this is exactly what ESG has become.
It's this virtue signaling investing because the access to capitalism is a political tool.
You don't have capital if you do not play the political game.
All of our money is a consequence of political whim.
And this is why you have to defeat the fucking money.
You have to undermine that system.
You have to undermine their pricing system and start suffocating them of capital because otherwise it's the only way, it's the only way to produce.
And like that's, oh, fucking God, this is such a fun.
Can I add something?
Yes, yes, please.
So this is exactly why Disney is now propagandizing children with some, you know, some sort of sexual progressivism agenda.
Like you have to think about it.
Disney is a huge multi-billion dollar company.
Do you think that they wanted to upset all of the parents and the user base that goes to Disneyland and watches Disney movies and watches Pixar movies?
Like, no, they don't.
But they have to go down this path because they have to walk the woke line or BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, all these big boys will not invest in their stock.
And if they don't do that, they eat shit.
So now these companies are actually put in this terrible predicament of having to choose.
Do we want to like they have to walk this line where they don't upset their consumers so much that they lose everything, but also that they don't upset the biggest invest money managers in the world or they'll lose everything that way.
So I think it actually benefits corporate America if we can find a way to fight this.
And obviously the most effective way, the reason that this is such a hard fight is that State Street and BlackRock and all these guys have access to the Fed window so they can get money for next to next to nothing.
If we can actually break that, then we understand that.
There almost needs to be such a huge populist uprising against this shit that it's that we make it so that it's like more profitable for them to cater to us than to cater to those guys.
And so here's what I just told recently it had not been that way.
There's one more piece of the puzzle, which is I believe that BlackRock and others are gambling on government legislation that will make the investments profitable.
So it's true.
If left to the free market, the ESG racket will fall apart because people will come in and they'll compete with them.
But if government creates legislation where you have to self-report your ESG scores, and that's just a small piece of the puzzle.
But it's also like, oh, you're not actually allowed to just run your fossil fuel car.
Oh, you have to have on top of your business, you know, fucking sunroof bullshit that doesn't work, or you have to hire these individuals, or you're not allowed to do that.
Like what they're gambling on is that the government's going to come in and pass legislation that's in line with the way that they invested so that it becomes profitable and people can't compete.
They don't want a free market.
They're looking to, yeah.
So what we really need is for enough people to come educated about this.
And it's interesting because certain states, the most recent example is the SP in its review of states for investing in like government bonds is starting to use like an ESG score.
And so states like Utah are like, this makes no fucking sense.
We create energy.
You're going to give me a low ESG score on the basis that we literally produce fossil fuels and shit that benefit the economy.
So it's a scary, yeah, it's a scary new revolution where they're kind of upping the socialism and they're trying Jan Yellen happened the other day in a meeting where she said that she thinks global warming is an existential threat to our existence.
So yeah, if government comes in and they shut down our usage of fossil fuel, then BlackRock will become profitable.
You know, if it, if it's mandated that it's only investing in companies that have done green energy things that otherwise would never exist on the free market, it relies on government legislation to make it profitable.
And this is new.
This is brand fucking new.
This did not exist two years ago.
We're talking about something that is brand new.
And hopefully enough people become aware of this and they see like what's going on with supply lines and everything else.
Like what happened with France with the people that protested over the gas prices.
They're just like, fuck no.
I want my gas to be $3 a gallon.
I don't give a shit.
I want to be able to eat my home.
I want to be able to eat food.
Fuck you.
I don't want to hear about these laws.
And it's really like, this is brand new.
And it's a very important thing to educate people on.
Right.
So it seems like the best hope is that this is, which is always the best hope of people who love liberty, that perhaps this is an overplay by the establishment.
Like perhaps their hubris has gotten the best of them and that this will actually like this will fuel the national divorce.
Dude, people are wise and fucking hold it back.
Even Pence, who's a pussy, is talking out against it.
So it's like people are, people are wise to it.
And I do think that they've overplayed their cards.
And as long as, you know, we flip, we flip kind of the president and senators in the next election, this thing's going to fall apart.
But check it out.
Honestly, ESG survives until somebody has to cut the lights off.
Yeah.
Like when there's rolling blackouts, that shit falls apart.
And we also have to remember that this is, this is actually just a giant monster of the passive investment wave of the fact that everybody's just investing in these huge fucking indexes and they don't realize they've signed over.
Like BlackRock and Vanguard have all of the power over all of the companies, not because they own all of the companies, but because everybody who has an owns an index, who has a retirement account, has signed on the dotted line that the voting rights go to BlackRock and Vanguard.
So they're voting on all of our money.
It's a little, it's circular, though.
Which means we have to real investment is the way to destroy this thing.
It's slightly circular because the reason why BlackRock is the safest choice is because they're also currently the ones that are in with the Fed.
You have to remember that when we were processing SPV loans, the money was literally handed to BlackRock, who bailed themselves out of their own junk bonds investments, what they were calling like high-yield investments to pretend like it weren't junk bonds.
So, part of if you're a pension fund, part of the reason why you hand your money to BlackRock is because they're kind of the biggest player in the game and they're being backed by the Fed the same way most people keep their money in the bank because it's insured.
So, it is a little bit circular.
I do think that they, you guys are right, that they've overplayed their cards.
And I don't think the world's ready to accept full-scale socialism the same way that, like, we've been talking about this on the last episode.
If it was up to the Democrats, me and Dave Smith, and you guys would probably be in jail.
They would love to have some minister of truth and they're trying to, they're literally trying to do it, but the market's kind of like, hey, that's ridiculous.
So, hopefully, the same thing happens.
Hopefully, the same thing happens with ESG scores.
However, when it comes to general government EPA regulations, in particular when it comes to the financial landscape and handing money to particular companies over others, that stuff happens a little bit behind back doors.
It gets confusing.
You start entering the repo market.
So we're in new and scary territory.
And to speak to the optimism, hopefully, you know, the consumers get wise and they go, why the fuck?
All right, Clint, I'll give you the final word and then we're going to have to wrap this up.
And please try to end on a note of optimism.
I will actually.
I always have a note and optimism.
This is actually very optimistic.
You have a node of optimism.
I know.
I have three nodes of optimism.
Look at how orange-pilled Dave is.
All right.
So, so this is how this, I'm going to start with the sinister and then I'll end on the optimism.
So the sinister aspect of this is they were trying to argue that Halliburton and the military-industrial complex that was arming the Ukrainians should have a good ESG score.
So, like, because it's a fight to defend democracy, as if they're not also arming a bunch, like probably the war in Yemen and a bunch of terrible shit simultaneously.
So, this is a complete just evil alliance between the two things that good libertarians ought to hate more than anything, which is crony corporations and the government.
Those are like the two things we next to war, which is corny corporations.
Yeah, this government.
Same thing, right?
Crushing Corporate Power Structures00:06:37
So, so this is it's it's extraordinarily transparent when you actually dive into it.
What this is, it has nothing to do with the woke line that they use.
And Dave has actually made this point that that's what crushed the Occupy Wall Street movement back in 2011 or so.
And this was all, it aligned or it lined itself up perfectly because you had this kind of Marxist populist revolt that was coming after 2008.
The big businesses are feeling the heat.
They look at it and they go, wait, we can do nothing, but we can still make outsized profits just by talking the talk that they want.
Right, right.
And that's and that's what they did.
But it got way worse because then they had to align themselves with government and government does a whole bunch of evil shit.
So they're both working in tandem, taking us down this path to hell, essentially.
But the good news, the good news is that this isn't sustainable.
Ultimately, if you have any sort of free market competition, these companies will fail.
And I think that while we're witnessing the collapse of the dollar, perhaps, you'll see that this game comes to an end very rapidly if that comes to pass.
So I think that that's an optimistic note.
And then the more optimistic note that I really want to hammer home is that the same way I feel about, or I felt about lockdowns in 2020 in about April or so, is the same way I feel about ESG today.
This is one of those rare opportunities where libertarians can front run the news, front run the education of the American people.
And we can be the Paul Revere riding in on the horse saying, Hey, we see this problem.
We understand it clearly.
No one else does.
Anybody that tries to talk to you about it is basically bullshitting you.
We know the truth and we know the solution.
And the solution is ending the Federal Reserve.
We can actually, we can tie together the Ron Paul revolution with the populist revolution of the MA people.
I think it's a tremendous opportunity.
So that's how I'll end it.
Yeah, I think that's exactly right.
To tie together the Ron Paul revolution with ending the Fed with defeating the woke insanity that so many people are revolting against, right?
And as people on the entire right half of America and large swaths of the left half of America are going, man, this whole thing seems insane.
And then tying that back to monetary policy, which ties it back to Guy's whole message about how we need to escape the monetary system by going to Bitcoin and ties it back to Rob's whole message about how sandwiches are really the answer to all of this.
All right.
Listen, I have, I've loved this.
I've loved this two-part episode.
And I will tell you that we got to do this.
I think we need to make this regular thing with this group here, with all four of us.
We'll do this.
I would love to, if Clint and Guy, if you guys are down to do this, I'd love to do this more often.
100%.
I'm loved for it.
All right.
Fuck yeah.
We're going to have to sue Reed Coverdale for patent infringement on the four horsemen, but whatever.
Yeah, this isn't the four horsemen.
That's some fucking gay shit that we don't even want to be a part of.
This is way beyond the four horsemen.
Four horsemen.
What is it when Reed goes off into the woods and jerks off the other guys?
I don't want to be a part of any of that.
This is our own thing.
That's exactly what that is.
Well, I don't know exactly how we're going to brand this, but it's going to be way better and bigger than that.
Perhaps it's the four giant men on huge horses.
That sounds super gay, but I'm down.
All right, listen, let's go around the horn one more time and let everybody plug their stuff.
Clint, where can people find you?
At Liberty Lockpod on Twitter.
By the time you're hearing this, I will probably have broken 40,000 followers on Twitter.
So thank you.
And also Liberty Lockdown, search for me on YouTube.
Subscribe over there.
Hit the bell, leave a comment.
You know, do the thing.
If you want to pick up any of my shirts, go to toplobster.com and you can check that out.
I wanted to shout out the homie Top Lobster and check me out on Tower Gang or Tower Power Hour.
We are now nuked from YouTube and we are exclusively on Odyssey.
So it is what it is, man.
That's it was a matter of time.
Yes.
Well, you know, when you do an entire tournament talking about who you're going to genocide, you don't expect to last long on YouTube.
That's true.
That's true.
All right, Guy, where can people find your stuff?
I can't believe I just can't believe that has happened.
You know, it is shocking.
It is.
Shocking and disturbing.
Yeah, I'm the guy Swan on Twitter.
And you can check out Bitcoin Audible, the show.
And, you know, like, ultimately, I think like so much of everything that we just talked about, like the problem is the money.
The problem is the fucking money, man.
And like, if there even, you know, Hayek said that I don't think we'll ever have a good money again until we take the thing out of the hands of government.
And that we cannot take it violently out of the hands of the government.
We have to find some sly, roundabout way to introduce something that they can't stop.
And that is what I fucking think Bitcoin is.
And, you know, even if that's a 10% chance, it's like, what fucking other thing would I bet and waste my time on?
You know, like if there is, if there is 10% is much of a chance, that's pretty fucking good, man.
Seriously.
For the, what is on the line?
Like, that is not a bad bet.
And I will take, I will take these dumps.
I will take the swings.
I will take the volatility because fuck me.
Like, I am at least a little bit hopeful that we can get out the other side of this and that we can actually separate money from state.
We can actually take this shit from them and build our own system.
Like, why do we need them?
Why?
It just doesn't.
It doesn't make any natural sense that they should be running the thing.
And, but that's a long about way to say you should listen to Bitcoin Audible.
And two episodes on the conversation that we have just had that I've loved to reads that I did are I Finance the Current Thing by Alan Farrington and Bitcoin is Common Sense by Parker Lewis.
They're absolutely remarkable.
You have to dig a little bit, but they're in there.
Okay.
Thank you.
Recommended Books for Listeners00:01:25
Okay, Rob, your plugs and my plugs.
Give them both.
Absolutely.
Run your mouth as always.
I just did an episode with Guy Swan as a rebuttal to Warren Buffett, who was criticizing Bitcoin and preaching our need for the Federal Reserve.
Also, if you go down the archives, me and Clint did an episode of Liberty Lockpod talking about ESG scores.
Please go check out the Run Your Mouth podcast coming out at the California Summer Porch Store show.
And remember, if you walk away from the show with one piece of information, it's buy tuna fish and fish for pussy.
Invest in breast milk.
All right.
Listen, gentlemen, thank you all so much for both of these episodes.
I appreciate it.
And I think it was really great.
Clint, Guy, Robbie the Fire Bernstein, and thank you to everybody for listening.
Peace.
Oh, what?
What?
What do you mean?
I just wanted to say real quick, man.
I just, I owe you so much.
My show just did 100,000 downloads last month.
I couldn't have done it without you.
And I just wanted to say thank you so much.
You are the Joe Rugan of the libertarian movement.
And I really appreciate all the support you've given us.
Well, thank you so much, brother.
And I'm glad to do it for people who deserve it.
And you're right up there at the top of the list of people who deserve it.