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July 28, 2023 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
27:32
RFK Is Right, We Don't Have Free Market Capitalism

RFK Jr. recently pointed out that America does not have a free market, but rather a crony corporatist system. This is important an important distinction. Historically, whenever an authoritarian socialistic system fails, as they must, the blame is immediately put on the non-existent free markets. The problem in America is not our ability to voluntarily transact with one another. The problem is the persistent removal of that ability.

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A Little Bit About Gold 00:12:29
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today is Chris Rossini, our co-host.
Chris, good to have you with us today.
Great to be with you again, Dr. Paul.
This is Friday.
So, we have to talk a little bit about gold and money and what's going on in the world, a little bit about investments.
And we'll talk a little bit about RFK.
He's in the news.
And it was shocking the other day.
It shocked the liberals when they found out that of all the candidates, Republican and Democrat, he was the most interesting and the most getting the most attention.
So, and they seem to be so annoyed.
And to me, the big thing was they were so surprised.
So, you know, RFK is not a libertarian, but he certainly is a friend to libertarianism when you compare him to the rest of the crowd.
So, I think that's very interesting.
But, you know, today, we want to go into that and what's going on in Ukraine and some of these other things.
But before we do it, we have to acknowledge our partners at Birch Gold Group because they've been our partners now for quite a few months, maybe into the years now.
And we've been strongly promoting their efforts to get more people invested in gold and getting their IRA accounts switched over.
And we believe that preservation and being protected is very important and understanding the system.
So, working with Birch Gold, they offer information, which is always important.
That's the most important thing in everything that we do: information before we make major decisions.
And what they're doing is they're offering some information and printed information and an explanation of what it is like to switch some of the funds, which would be the ordinary Dow Jones average type of stocks, over into being able to protect some of your wealth in the metals.
And this is the reason we work with them.
So, if you're interested in getting more information, you can text Ron 989898.
They make it easy.
You can remember Birch Gold, 9898, and they'll send you information.
They will not charge you for it.
And you can go from there and decide whether or not you want to transfer funds.
But to me, it's very important.
I discovered on a precise moment when I thought this would be important for everybody.
And it was a little bit before I think Chris was involved in politics.
It was 1971.
That was the moment I remember when the gold window was closed and they destroyed any connection of the dollar to gold.
And I thought, this is a big deal.
And that was 1971.
And I knew the world would change.
It changed in the 1970s and it's still been changing.
We're still suffering the consequences, but they've been rather successful manipulating and keep the drug of monetary inflation going.
And it's lasted longer than a lot of people suspected.
But one thing for sure: if governments have license to spend and there's a central bank that has license to print the money at will and manipulate interest rates, believe me, they will.
And it's never worked before.
Temporarily, it helps, but you know, if you're a drug addict, temporarily, some people feel better.
But long term, if you don't break the habit, you know, it's a disaster.
And it's self-ending, it self-destructs.
And so many societies have done that.
And in a way, the Bratton Woods Agreement was self-destructive because it was violating market forces.
So it's something that we should be paying attention to out of our well-being, because I think ultimately it represents freedom and liberty and free markets and this sort of thing.
But it also protects people's wealth.
And I think the more people who are protected when the really big crash comes, the better off all of us will be because that is, you need allies.
And that's also the reason I work in education, because I think you have to have an understanding.
And also the reason that we try to get people involved with Birch Gold to get the information to make the decision, because I think ideas are so, so important.
And we'll continue to do that.
But ultimately, my goal is to promote liberty because I think the people when they live in a free society always pick something of real value for the money.
It's the politicians and it's the warmongers and the people who are stealing from other people.
They're the ones who want to make sure we don't have honest money.
So my goal is to get as many people involved.
And that's why, once again, I'll repeat the number.
Text Ron, 989898.
Chris, welcome again to the program.
What do you have for us this morning?
Yes, Dr. Paul, you mentioned that we're going to be talking about RFK Jr.
And it's great to see him, even despite the desire to censor him and keep him out of the public eye that he's doing so well with favorability.
And when he was on Hannity recently, the town hall, I believe it was, he mentioned something that was so accurate.
But there was a little tweak that I wanted to make.
He mentioned that we do not have a free market capitalist system in this country.
And that is true.
He said that there is cushy socialism for the crony corporatists.
That's very true.
But then he said something that I tend not to agree with.
And he said that everybody else in the country lives under a brutal, savage, merciless capitalism.
And with all due respect to him, and he is somebody that I greatly respect, I don't believe that that's true at all, because we have perhaps the biggest welfare state in the history of the world.
I remember reading that 50% of our country, 50%, half, in some way receive federal money.
Money is handed out to people who aren't even citizens.
So that's how bad the socialism is on, you know, outside of the corporations.
So socialism is squeezing us from the top and from the bottom.
And the middle class is being squeezed out from both sides.
So there is no brutal, savage, merciless capitalism.
First, that implies that capitalism is brutal, savage, and merciless.
And we do not believe that that's the case because it's just voluntary interactions between people.
But we have a society-wide socialist problem and no free markets or very, very few pockets of freedom in our economy.
And I understand the appeal to, oh, well, we need a safety net, need a safety net.
I understand that even though I disagree with it, I believe it can be and should be provided voluntarily through charities.
But because when you get the government, it all becomes a way of life.
It becomes, you know, the government gave me this for free.
They should give me that for free.
You know, and our wants are unlimited.
We could sit here all day and talk about our wants.
And the politicians are like, yeah, I'll give you this for free if you vote for me.
So it's a very vicious cycle socialism.
And it ultimately, you run out of everybody else's money.
And that's why the problem is not just the crony corporatists, which is a very big problem, but we have The citizens are addicted to government money too.
That's for sure.
You know, during the presidential campaigns that I participated in, it was always annoying to me because those who ran the debates always wanted to segregate economic policy and foreign policy.
And my claim is you can't separate the two.
You know, bad economic policy leads to war and war leads to more economic problems.
And I think that's what we're facing today.
You know, we have all this mischief and capitalism that is fake and this thing going on that really gets attention to Robert Kennedy because he's saying something different, but he's also seen as telling the truth.
And that's where all of a sudden he stands out.
And that to me is great.
But right now, we see the combination of economic policy and foreign policy because, you know, they and also the war against COVID.
You put all that together, involves liberty.
That's the big one.
But it also involves a mess in Ukraine and spending money and why we have deficits up to $32 trillion.
And it continues to go.
But they're always offering solutions to the problems they created.
And somebody that was involved very much in the building of this was BlackRock, you know, and they were very much involved in promoting some of these policies, these social policies.
And we've gotten to the point and BlackRock and Fink are literally backing off from it because I think the slogan go woke, go broke.
And that's what that is a good result of what's happening because the people are waking up.
But the people who took advantage of all this, whether it was during the lockdown and the pharmaceutical industries and other corporate interests and government bureaucrats, they participated in all this.
Of course, it's the philosophy behind that that motivated them to do it to get away with it.
And that is monetary policy spending and all these other things.
So this has been going on.
But right now, we're at some crossroads because they said this is a justified war for liberty.
That's why we're in Ukraine.
We have to protect and save the freedom in Ukraine.
And one person I came across just recently when we've been looking at this, even though I probably heard a little bit about it, but Lisa Morkowski, she is something else.
She is a super, super supporter of all this nonsense.
And she gets high praise because she's sort of independent-minded, but she's independent in the wrong way.
She doesn't pick up the good thing.
But anyway, she's really gung-ho over all this spending.
And this is the answer.
But the one thing that I want to talk about a little bit more in a few minutes, and that is what are they doing about?
What are they planning about?
Is the war nearly over?
And who's going to rebuild it?
And I used to half kiddingly, but I was really quite serious.
We'd be voting on a foreign policy.
I remember very early in my career in Washington, they were voting for money.
I think it was in Lebanon or someplace.
I said, you know, I said, you're going to send the money over there and spend all that money.
Then you're going to have to spend money because those things will be turned against us.
Well, that's tradition now.
You buy all these weapons.
Where did all the weapons go in Ukraine?
But that's the reason you can't separate the two.
It's not a foreign policy issue.
It is a weapons history.
It's a weapons industry.
And there are some very, very powerful people who can manipulate behind the scene and make a lot of money off it.
And right now, they're getting more fearful that that is maybe ending because it looks like nobody in the next week or two are going to declare victory.
And I think they're getting together.
There's strong evidence that the same people who created this monster, this mess that we have, are going to plan their strategy on how they're going to take over the rebuilding of Ukraine, return to liberty, and great prosperity.
Incentives and Chaos 00:03:50
Well, I would advise people to be very cautious about the nonsense you hear about that.
That's right.
And all you have to look to is how we rebuild Iraq and Libya and Syria.
And that's, you know, we've done nothing of the sort.
Those places are in very bad shape, unfortunately.
Yeah, on the topic of cronyism, there is no perfection in political systems.
Every single combination you could think of has been tried, whether it be dictatorship or democracy or kings and dukes.
And everything has been tried.
Communism, socialism, there's no perfection because people are imperfect.
We will not create a perfect political system and because we are creative, you know, so the bad guys are always scheming on ways to enslave us.
And we're always trying to figure out how to keep us, keep them off our backs.
You know, they get they break constitutions, people break laws and find creative ways to avoid being enslaved, and life goes on.
What you want, though, if you're going to do this, is the right incentive structure.
And the free market, we believe, has the right incentive structure.
As imperfect as a free market is, because it's made up of imperfect people, at least the incentives are there for entrepreneurs to risk their own capital, to satisfy consumers in the most efficient and profitable way.
And when they succeed, they're rewarded with profits.
And when they fail, they lose their capital, their money, and the money and capital flows to those who are satisfying consumers.
Under corporatism, it's the opposite.
They risk taxpayer money.
They want government contracts, like what Dr. Paul mentioned, Ukraine.
This is government contracts.
We're going to go over there and rebuild using taxpayer money.
And if they lose, so what?
It's not their money.
It's taxpayer money.
They will perhaps get a taxpayer bailout if they're lobbying well enough and claim that they're too big to fail.
So the incentives for crony corporatism is not consumers.
Their incentives are politicians, you know, and their product doesn't even have to work.
The vaccines are a perfect example of that.
You know, in a free market, those companies would be bankrupt by now.
But in corporatism, not only does nobody get punished, they're exempt.
Everybody's exempt.
And the same is with military contractors.
They don't have to help humanity do anything beneficial to humanity.
It's all destruction.
And if the tanks get blown up, they'll just make more tanks on our dollar.
And that's it.
So the free market, the incentives are in the right order.
And that's why it's a far superior system.
You know, as imperfect as it is, because people are people, it's much, much better than the crony corporatism that we have today.
You know, I mentioned the fact that economics and foreign policy can't be separated.
But the one thing that has come up with lockdown and the things that are going on now was the inclusion of social reforms.
Know with these programs in order to maintain some type of availability at the banks and government and contracts and all this, they also preach social reforms like in the ESG programs and you're doing noble things, you're not ripping the people off.
They've used that, and they also have the DEI information.
And again, it's social conditions and what the people are supposed to be doing.
And that is an incentive, but it's also a serious problem because a lot of people really believe in that.
But do you ask also, what is the real reason for them doing all this?
Is it money?
Yes.
Is it money?
Is it power?
The Chaos Theory 00:03:29
Yes, it is.
And how did they best achieve this?
It's by the creation of chaos.
And they're doing a pretty good job there, unfortunately.
Fortunately, the people are starting to wake up to this, but they would like to cause the chaos.
And then they come in with another ism.
You know, it is said, has been said, that the socialists and the authoritarians like to add, when they talked about free market capital markets, they wanted to call it, put an ism on it because it knows something negative.
And it's still used, and most people use it.
And we know, if you know the person, that's usually pretty good.
But, or if you say free market capitalism, that's okay.
But I personally don't like to use the word ism on it.
I talk about free, free markets because that is the difference.
But here we have, but one time you can use a word and put an ism on it that really is helpful is corporatism.
You know, corporation is it avoids this controversy.
Oh, you called me a fascist.
Well, that's what you are.
Oh, no, don't do that.
Just because you are, we won't do that.
I'm sorry, I didn't want to really call you a fascist.
So, you know, they so that's why free free market is a good term.
So, uh, they now are getting frightened about what is happening.
And it's just astounding to me.
And we saw some of this this week about pins and needles on what the Fed was going to do: race, hold tight, lower.
What are we going to do with interest rates?
And they look at it and they have a history.
And it's such a joke because they don't know what interest rates should be.
If you allow the market to operate, and if you say that credit card interest rates, I wonder if that's, I keep wondering, I wonder if that's a market rate of interest.
Somebody said, I said something, well, that could be 13 or 14 percent.
No, it could be 20 percent.
They tell me.
So the market's telling you that there's something risky about those things, but no, you can't have that.
So this whole idea that you fight inflation, price inflation, prices going up.
And that's always the thing that we wanted when it was too low, we wanted it up to 2%.
When it got to 2%, it was 10%.
Oh, we have to get that back down to 2%.
And they play these games.
I get such a kick out of this because it's so ridiculous and so silly that when you think of it, they raise the interest rates.
The argument they are going to bring prices on is causing an economic downturn.
In a free market, you never have some central body in a central bank to purposely make the economy weaker.
No, if prices go up or down and interest rates go up or down, that's an important message.
But they destroy the message because they think they know better and they just go on and manipulate these interest rates.
But this say they, you know, back in the 70s, they took the interest rates up to 21%.
And it was still the prices wouldn't come down, prices wouldn't come down.
But, you know, if interest rates, if interest rates are a cost, why wouldn't that push up prices?
The Greedy Coin Flip 00:02:53
They never say that.
We're raising interest rates to stop the market.
But what if they have to take that and add that in the cost?
It's really increases prices and it's also increasing the true market force of monetary inflation.
Chris.
Excellent, Dr. Paul.
I will finish up my closing thoughts.
Yeah, the isms, that's a part of our vernacular.
And what we're talking about today is corporatism.
But we're only really supposed to focus on one side of the coin, and that's corporations.
We're told they're the greedy ones, you know, the greedy corporations.
But there's another side to the coin, and that's the politicians.
And they're greedy too.
You know, humans are greedy.
There's nothing magical that happens once you walk into a corporate office.
The greedy politicians become rich from the corporations that buy the special privileges.
But there's a dispenser of the privileges, and that's the politicians.
So they're not innocent bystanders.
It's like, oh, no, here comes this corporation with all the money.
What am I going to do?
They become very, very, very rich.
They're some of the richest people in our society, and they're called public servants.
Well, they're serving themselves to our hard-earned money.
And that's, you know, why do they tailor to corporations?
It's because the corporations have the big money.
You know, the regular guy doesn't.
You know, if you go and try to lobby your politician with nothing versus a corporation who has billions, who do you think he's going to side with?
They go with the corporations.
Now, it doesn't have to be that way.
They can take their oath of office seriously.
And while Dr. Paul does not talk about himself, there's no rule that says I can't talk about him.
And when he was in office, the corporations would walk right past his office because they knew there would be no deal.
There would be no bribing or lobbying for favors because this was a man that followed his oath of office and did not play that game.
But, you know, we don't have an entire government filled with Ron Paul's.
There are a few in there, but that is a reflection also of our society.
And we talk about this on the show too.
It's the moral character of the people.
The people need to expect, you know, and be of themselves of high moral standing.
And then they will expect it of their politicians.
And if a politician gets out of line, they can hold them accountable.
Today, that is not the case.
Our morality has also gone into the sewer.
So of course we have the politicians that we have today.
So, you know, corporatism is a double-edged sword.
It's a two-sided coin.
Let's not just blame the corporations.
It's the politicians too that are to blame.
Very good.
Picking Up the Pieces 00:04:48
You know, I have a couple of headlines here I want to read where people are concerned and are talking about, you know, what we're moving into, and that is the picking up of the pieces.
Of course, some will say, oh, we're just on the verge of victory, you know, and we can win this war.
Just send us $10 more billion dollars tomorrow.
And now we're up to how many trillions of dollars are spent.
It's just really crazy.
But here's a very recent article, July 26th on Zero Hedge.
Blood commodities, Black Rocks Roll in the Ukraine carnage to pick up the pieces.
That's what they plan to do.
And they have an organization, the preliminary organization has already been started.
And it's called Ukraine Business Compact 2023.
It's not official, but they want to get dozens and dozens of corporations locked in, just like they had the corporations locked in and put fear in their hearts when it came to not following the lockdown laws.
They said, Well, you're going to lose your banking privileges, you're going to get canceled, and all these threats by the government.
So that's what this organization is talking about.
Here's another from a Europe newspaper, and it says Zelensky, BlackRock CEO, CEO, Fink, agreed to coordinate Ukraine investments.
And you know, it's very, very blunt.
People say, Well, that's good.
That'll rebuild it.
Yeah, but I tell you what, they're going to divvy up the loot.
They divvied up all the loot and the profits, you know, when they were building all those weapons.
And did the pharmaceutical companies, you know, do a good job in providing great service and medical advice during the so-called epidemic?
Not so good.
And yet, they made a lot of money and they're also planning for the next epidemic.
So it's a terrible situation, but they profit on the way up and they grab hold of more of our liberties from us.
And we lost a lot with the lockdown.
We always lose something during wartime because if you oppose the war, then you're unpatriotic.
And people don't like to be unpatriotic.
I mean, those charges usually hurt people.
But this is a matter of semantics and how they do it.
But they've been doing that for a long time and it's common.
So we can expect that.
And they're going to continue to do that.
They will try to pick up the pieces.
But even they're making all these plans, and it looks like they're powerful beyond reproach.
I predict that the market is still more powerful.
They were able to manage and manipulate the Bretton Woods Agreement and a pseudo-gold standard because we were so rich, so wealthy, and the only country that really survived World War II.
And we threw our weight around, became the central banker of the world, and were able to inflate the currency to our benefit.
But that was special, but it lasted a long time.
You don't know how long these events will last.
But the one that we're going through now to try to adjust, we're seeing the conclusion of those many years they got away with building up debt.
A lot of individuals and companies can borrow for a long time, but eventually, you know, somebody might have six credit cards and they hit the maximum, and then some of the banks want their money back and it doesn't work.
And that's going to happen.
This cannot happen.
If it worked, nobody would have to work for a living.
You know, you just spend the money and spend it.
And governments, in a way, get away with that.
But right now, people have to remember in the general picture, if you go woke, you're going to go broke.
So I think it's adequate warning for that because what we need is we need liberty, we need freedom, we need economic understanding.
And believe me, people need more confidence.
I think that's what hurts the most.
People lack confidence.
They figure we have to do it.
I don't have, I don't think I can do it.
I mean, we have to do our own merit.
And they've been taught that you only get ahead by describing and having somebody tell you how miserable you are and how inept you are.
You need to hand out our money.
So it's pretty hard to have confidence in being free.
But that is really one of the biggest obstacles we have right now.
We're going to do our very best at the Liberty Report to continue to promote our liberty.
I wanted to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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