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June 21, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:42:03

1092 Stef on the NSP Radio Show

Gas prices, fiat currency and drinking from toilets...

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	Alright, welcome to No State Project for this June 21st, 2008.
	Glad to be back. I'm Mark Stephens, author of Adventures in Legal End, host for this next two hours of Anarchy Radio.
	That's right. No government apologetics.
	And my regular third weekend guest is definitely no stranger to anarchy or volunteerism.
	I want to welcome to the show from Freedain Radio.
	Welcome to the show, Steph.
	Well, thanks so much. I just wanted to remind people that Anarchy Radio means that we're randomly going up and down the dial, and it's up to you to find us.
	Of course, most people leave anarchy.
	Of course, when you have no choice but to provide some people not figuring out exactly what Anarchy is, Did I lose strength?
	I'm around. You seem to be cutting in a little bit out for me.
	How's my stream?
	Is it okay? Your stream seems fine.
	Cutting in and out.
	I was just saying that...
	Do you have a vested interest in people life?
	Sorry, Mark.
	If you're around, I'm getting a lot of cutoff from you.
	So I'm sure it'll clear up in just a sec.
	But I just wanted to mention, if you want to start your intro, I'll come up with it.
	I can find, of course.
	Well, it's...
	I...
	Yeah, I'm getting...
	You know what? This is just not working out.
	Steph, just cover the... Steph, everyone, I'm going to...
	I'm just going to...
	I'm going to Skype back in.
	So, Steph, I want to...
	We're going to talk about the economy today.
	So if you could just... And taking it away from Mark as he comes back from his technical problems, we're going to start the show this evening talking a little bit about the economy.
	Mark has an excellent, excellent video out there on the quote, high price of gas, which is very interesting and I'm going to summarize the argument and then Mark will correct me where I have doubtless got it wildly incorrect.
	But if you take the price of a gallon of gasoline and compare it to the price of silver or of gold, you will find that it actually remains pretty constant over the past 30 years.
	The difference, of course, being the printing of fiat money by the Federal Reserve has resulted in a deflation of the American dollar relative to the gold standard or in this case the oil standard.
	In other words, where you have a standardized commodity such as oil or gold, you have a fixed price for that.
	And when you print more money, you will end up with that commodity, whether it is gold or it is oil, costing more.
	And we all know, of course, that as the Fed has printed more dollars, the price of gold has gone up because there are more dollars relative to the supply of gold.
	In the same way, when the Fed prints more dollars, the price of other commodities, such as imported food and sometimes domestic food, but in particular oil, It goes up as well.
	So it's not so much that the price of oil is going up mysteriously.
	It is that the Federal Reserve is printing so many monopoly money dollars that it simply costs more of them to buy the oil as it comes off the commodity market.
	So I thought that was an excellent way of looking at it.
	I would add one other little thing into that as well.
	And this is all the complexity that goes on when you have a chaotic and fin de sequel kind of status system.
	That American farm subsidies also have an effect on the price of oil, which is kind of complex but interesting and I'll just touch on it here.
	American farm subsidies, and it's not just American but it's most of the Western economies, they subsidize their farms like crazy, dump a huge amount of crops onto the international market.
	What this means is that rural-based economies like China and India...
	End up being unable to compete in terms of food because you can't compete with heavily subsidized or free food.
	That drives people off the farms and it drives them into the cities in China and in India.
	When labor aggregates in the cities the price of that labor goes down because there are more people chasing fewer jobs.
	That drives industrialization.
	Industrialization drives up the price of oil.
	You need more oil to run a factory than you do to run a farm and that again increases the demand for oil overseas and it's just another example Of how domestic subsidies end up distorting the economy overseas because it's driving up the demand for oil overseas which drives up the price of oil domestically as well.
	So there's a lot of factors that go into play into creating these wildly distorted oscillations naturally and inevitably.
	This will be blamed on the free market by major pundits rather than identifying the true culprit which is the size, power and force of the government.
	Well of course. Am I coming in any better now?
	Oh, that's clear. That's clear.
	It's like you're whispering in my brain.
	Ah, there you go.
	Well, I appreciate that.
	And I agree with what you're saying, Stefan.
	And I didn't get to hear all of it, so I'm going to have to play catch-up here.
	Oh, it was all perfectly correct.
	I agree with it all. Sorry, go ahead.
	Well, of course.
	Well, I do apologize for that.
	that hopefully we don't have any more technical problems.
	I thought I had it taken care of.
	I actually made it seem like 100 times worse.
	But anyway, you had mentioned about the video.
	You went a little bit further than the video that I have, the grand illusion.
	Yeah, I was just reiterating the argument that if you peg the price of oil to the price of a fixed commodity like silver or gold, that it has remained relatively constant.
	It's just the overprinting of money that drives up the price of gas.
	Well, yeah, absolutely.
	And just to jump in here, one of the things that, well, at least many Republicans seem to get stuck on is that the old argument, well, there's not enough gold and silver out there to run an economy like this.
	What do you say to such tripe?
	Well, I mean, the whole point is that silver can be mixed, right?
	So let's say there's not enough silver or gold that's out there.
	All you would do is you would create a currency which would have a mixture of silver and copper or other materials.
	That, of course, is what the Romans did until they began debasing their currency, thus ending their imperialistic empire.
	But yeah, I mean it really doesn't matter how much gold is out there beyond a certain minimum because you can just dilute it with other metals if you feel that this is important.
	But I'm not such a big fan of the gold standard as the de facto way of solving the problem of currency just to put a minor plug in for a book that's not out yet but should be out within a week or two.
	I've just finished a book called Practical Anarchy, which is my stab at how a voluntary society solves problems like roads and education and currency and all of this stuff which is publicly delivered at the moment.
	And we don't know whether a truly free society will decide on gold or silver or Or, you know, old copies of the Chips TV series videotapes.
	We have no idea. But we do know that it's going to be, you know, stable and secure currency so that people aren't going to have to try and navigate their way through the whitewater rapids of statist fiat printing.
	So it may be gold in a free society.
	It may be something else. But the amount of gold is not specific because, as I said, you can always dilute it.
	Right. I also take it from another standpoint that – because I've known people who were libertarians who insisted that there's just not enough gold and silver to drive such an economy.
	You don't have enough. And my answer has always been, well, when the demand of something goes up, when there's not enough gold, let's say there's not enough gold, then the value – and it's scarce – the value will go up.
	So the value of the gold compared to other commodities will actually rise, which will in effect give you more currency, if you will, because it's worth more.
	The last gold will buy you more.
	So that, to me, is the easiest answer.
	Also, like you're saying, the market will decide.
	Hundreds of millions of people will decide, the market will decide what the commodity, what commodity or commodities will not be used based on their effectiveness and how efficient they are.
	Yeah, I mean the problem with gold is that somebody could invent how to make gold and thus deflate the currency and of course the Spanish, I shouldn't say of course, but the Spanish Empire in the 16th century when it discovered gold in the New World completely wrecked its economy although it was fully on a gold standard because they brought in all the Aztec and Incan gold.
	And wrecked the Spanish economy for approximately 400 years.
	So gold is not a panacea because the problem of production and consumption remains the same as it would for any other commodity.
	i imagine that a currency of the future would simply be an electronic currency that would be triple checked against productivity so that you would not gain more in the production or creation of that currency electronically than there would be goods and services in the economy to try and bring down the variation of inflation or deflation as much as possible i mean that would be my guess as to how it'll work but i always get surprised when libertarians say this or that is not possible in the free market that's
	It seems to me that that's saying that I am smarter than all possible people who may be trying to solve this problem.
	I certainly don't have the intellectual moxie for that.
	Maybe some other people do, but I'm not sure that it's very wise.
	Well, they typically call people like that Republican pundits.
	Right. They have all the solutions.
	Oh, that couldn't possibly work!
	I have the head of Stalin in a box, and I consulted him whenever I need an answer to how a command economy should work.
	Yeah, it's amazing.
	It's incredible, is that people...
	We'll see that even though markets have always chosen gold or silver, some kind of hard metal like that, as a currency, because of certain aspects of them, scarcity, the fact that they are worth, they have value aside from their use as money, You know, it's their industrial uses and whatnot that gives it its value.
	Let's still believe that pieces of paper are really the only thing that you could use and that some people said in response to my video was that fiat is really the best system out there.
	It's the best you have. Like, wait a minute.
	How can you think? You know, and you look at the track record, Steph.
	And the follow-up video I'm going to be doing is about how, you know, maybe three minutes or less of how the Federal Reserve actually caused the Depression.
	But you look at the track record of the Federal Reserve since 1913.
	It has been a constant boom and bust, which you can only do by flooding the market with paper.
	Well, sure. Look, I mean, I have no problem with fiat currency.
	I just want the government out of it.
	I mean, I don't mind if Parker Brothers comes out with monopoly money and people use that.
	As long as there's competition for efficiency, I don't care what.
	I just want to have the choice to choose the most efficient currency and the most stable currency and the most secure currency.
	So as long as the government doesn't have a monopoly, All bets are off and the market will come up with the best solution.
	So whether it's government or gold, sorry, whether it's gold or something else doesn't matter.
	As long as it's not a violent monopoly, I'm happy with whatever solution people come up with.
	Well, I've said before on the show many times, in a free market, anybody should be free to bring whatever product they want to the market for people to voluntarily, freely exchange for.
	So if somebody wants to say, hey, we're the Federal Reserve.
	We're not really federal.
	There are no reserves, but we have these pieces of paper.
	They're not really notes.
	But they circulate as money, and so we think that this is a better medium exchange than all these other ones.
	They should be free to do that.
	Now, obviously, only an idiot would choose to use pieces of paper that these people can just generate at will, but even idiots should be free to come to the market.
	Well, imagine what would happen if I tried to start a bank that took between 5 and 10 percent of your savings every year.
	Would I succeed in the free market of banking?
	But that's exactly what fiat currency is.
	It only survives because of a coercive monopoly.
	Well, that's true. Exactly.
	And when you see all the things that are happening here, I want to talk about gas and also the housing, when you see all of this, if you understand money, it's pretty clear.
	But if you go through a lot of the comments you see on my video, other videos, or you hear other shows where people are calling in and talking about what's going on, for some reason, no matter how simple you explain it, there are people that just don't get the fact that all that's happening now It's probably 90% due to the fact that there is no money system, that it's all based on these pieces of paper that are called notes, which are not really notes.
	And, you know, they say, well, inflation can't work.
	Even the ones that understand it, well, inflation doesn't work that fast.
	It's that same attitude you just mentioned before, like the guy who has Stalin's head in the box.
	Right. Absolutely. It is quite funny how people will rush to defend this.
	The privatization of money is something that is considered to be just crazy.
	People will accept the privatization of roads before they will accept the privatization of currency.
	But currency is just another good.
	It's just another service.
	It's just a way of comparing apples and oranges using an objective medium.
	You don't need a monopoly.
	In fact, 19th century America ran on a plurality of currencies.
	Each bank would offer their own currency note.
	Of course, fiat currency grew out of just having notes to represent gold, as you know.
	And there was a plurality.
	I remember reading, I think it was in Ben Franklin's autobiography where he was talking about some of the challenges of traveling and making sure that you had a way of exchanging these gold notes.
	And yeah, maybe it will be gold in the future, but it's been what, 60 years since we had a gold standard?
	I mean 60 years ago, I mean everything was delivered by mail.
	So the fact that whenever you get a monopoly, stuff just freezes in time.
	It doesn't change, right?
	And so maybe it would be gold in the future, but that's like saying that we should still be using only snail mail because that's what was in place 60 years ago before the internet was.
	Well, now we use, uh, email for the most part and that's because something new, like an electronic means of communicating has, uh, largely circumvaded or circumnavigated the, um, The printed form, the delivery form, and the same thing would happen in the future with currency.
	Who knows what amazing stuff could be done in terms of currency in the future.
	We don't know, but we do know that it's still stuck in a pre-electronic era for the most part.
	Well, at this point, I think someone who's from the Chicago Federal Reserve said, at least for the Federal Reserve, I don't know about Canada or anywhere else, but the Federal Reserve spokesman had said that only 19% of the currency out there is in hard form, which is tangible. The rest of it is all checkbook or keystrokes.
	It's on a computer.
	It's all computerized credit now anyway.
	Except for this 19%.
	Well, that's true.
	That's certainly true that it's electronic, but it's an electronic representation of a monopoly fiat currency.
	That's not quite the same as electronic money, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, it does make sense.
	I just wanted to point it out before we went to a break, and we'll expand more on this when we get back.
	My name is Mark Stevens. You can give us a call here and join us at 512-646-1984.
	That's 512-646-1984.
	We'll be right back on the No Stay Project.
	Alright, welcome back to the No State Project.
	I'm your host, Mark Stevens, author of Adventures in Legal Land.
	My website is adventuresinlegalland.com.
	Welcome back to the show. It's June 21st, 2008, and I am, of course, coming to you live from my fortified compound here in Phoenix, Arizona, where it is about 187 degrees.
	Well, at least it feels that way.
	I want to welcome back to the show, Stefan Molyneux.
	I know it's a little cooler up there where you are, but welcome back to the show.
	Well, thank you very much. I just wanted to mention to those who haven't heard me on this show before that it's freedomainradio.com and all my books, Universally Preferable Behavior, Irrational Proof of Secular Ethics, Untruth, The Tyrion Evolution, Real-Time Relationships, The Logic of Love, and the new book, Everyday Anarchy, are all available for free on my website.
	Why? Because when it comes to business, apparently, I have cheese curds for brains.
	So I just wanted to mention that.
	So please take it away.
	My cheese-eating surrender monkey friend.
	Right. I mean, the last name, Molyneux, that tells you all you need to know.
	I'm eating Christe Renouille and surrendering to the Wehrmacht.
	It always seems to come down to cheese with this guy.
	Right. It's a tradition in my gene pool, what can I say?
	But, you know, cheese would actually be a better medium of exchange anyway than paper.
	Right. At least you can eat it.
	Well, it has value other than money.
	Other than his money. Right.
	But it has value. It does have value.
	And the point we were making before, that yes, you can have...
	And I believe that currency of the future, I agree with you, that it's more than likely going to be some kind of electronic.
	I'm sure a lot of it's going to be based on something like e-gold, where it's actually tied to something tangible.
	Because this idea that people can just create currency or create money out of nothing...
	That's where this problem comes in, where banks, of course, just when they make a so-called loan, they're not actually giving you a loan.
	It's all on paper.
	And so here they're taking, in a nutshell...
	They take control of your home in exchange for the loan.
	It's collateral. So that's why the banks go and they do their thousands and millions of foreclosures now.
	And I actually have some numbers in that we'll get to.
	So that's the problem.
	So how can a currency, though, Stefan, be electronic and be to where something isn't being created from nothing?
	Well, I think my answer to that – and again, I certainly don't claim to be able to replace even a tenth of a percent of the free market.
	But my answer to that is to say, well, if I wanted people to enroll in StephBucks, the currency of the future, available on my website for real dollars.
	But if I wanted people to enroll in StephBucks, I would need – To reassure them that I wasn't going to inflate the currency, I would need to build up the reputation slowly.
	I would need to ensure that my currency would be pegged to a series of commodities, right?
	And I would guarantee people that if it ever oscillated beyond a certain percentage point, maybe 2% or 3% a year, inflated or deflated, that I would pay them a certain amount of money.
	Like I would simply put cash – and maybe I would pay them that money in gold or something like that.
	So I would simply give people a guarantee like all good entrepreneurs do.
	To say, look, my currency is going to be secure and it's going to be stable.
	And if it ever veers more than 2% or 3% according to independent verification, then I will give you 1% of your holdings in gold.
	So you just provide guarantees with incentives which makes it more cost-efficient for you to keep your currency stable than it would be to print a little extra and inflate.
	Exactly. The idea that I have is something like that.
	Of course, right in line with what you're saying is you are actually ensuring the value of the currency.
	Yeah, like all entrepreneurs, you simply are going to make the customer understand that it is more profitable for you to serve their needs rather than your own needs, right?
	I mean, that's what entrepreneurs do, and there's six million different ways of doing that, so I don't consider that to be a huge challenge.
	And of course, even if we consider it to be a significant challenge, at least it's a challenge that can be solved, unlike the problem of fiat currency, which is only solved through economic development.
	Mayhem, right? Oh, yeah.
	Well, absolutely. Devastation.
	We have JT. He's going to be joining us.
	He's just called in. JT, welcome to the show.
	Thank you, Mark. Stephan, hello.
	Hi. Apologies for being late, gentlemen.
	Not a problem. We're talking about currency.
	And I know you and I have talked an awful lot.
	We talk an awful lot about the problems that the Federal Reserve is causing.
	And just not possible when you have...
	Well, look, the whole thing is based on fraud.
	The fact that they...
	You look at the word, the names of the fraud, and I don't know what it says on Canadian Money.
	You can let me know. I don't know if it's comparable, but it says Federal Reserve Note.
	And it's a lie-to-word ratio of one-to-one.
	You know, in that it's not federal, it's not a government agency.
	That's the thing, it's already privatized currency.
	So why people would have a problem with it is totally beyond me unless they believe that it actually is federal.
	But the Federal Reserve System is private, of course.
	It loans fake notes to the government.
	And then, of course, there's no reserves.
	And the fact that it says it's a note.
	And legally, a note is synonymous with promissory notes.
	Which it's not a promissory note at all.
	So the whole thing is complete fraud.
	So, JT, I wanted to just mention a little bit about what Jim Willey in the Golden Jackass report had mentioned about what we should be looking out for right now.
	Oh, where do I start?
	He's predicting everything short of economic collapse before the end of the year.
	It's cataclysmic. The mask is coming off, and there's nowhere else for the fiat money to hide, save gold and silver, and they're trying desperately to suppress that as best they can.
	Go ahead.
	I'm sorry, I just wanted to get Steph's take on it, because, Steph, you're in Canada.
	I believe you're in, was it Ontario?
	Yeah, it's a little different here.
	The currency has just been redesigned and now there's a little small piece of text along the bottom which says, you're hosed, eh?
	And there's just a little picture of the queen giving us the finger.
	I'm not sure what that means, but I think it probably ties into the other thesis that the gentleman has.
	But it's the same nonsense up here.
	I mean, I just wanted to be annoyingly precise.
	The system is not founded on fraud, Mark.
	The system is founded on violence, as you've pointed out before.
	Well, that's true, yes. The note is fraud that is put in place through compulsion through the violence.
	The only reason why they can get away with what they're doing is because of the violence.
	You're absolutely right.
	So what J.T. is saying about economic collapse, is that something you see happening in Canada also?
	No, no. I don't think it's going to be a year, but I mean this stuff is very hard to predict and certainly none of us have the information that the people on the inside have.
	But no, I don't think economic collapse is going to be how – there's just too much intellectual and human and physical capital built up in the US for there to be pure economic collapse.
	I think that there will certainly be a transition, and it's going to be a painful transition, but I don't see collapse.
	The difference, of course, here in Canada is that we don't have a military-industrial complex to nearly as great a degree.
	We're not the world's policemen and so on.
	We have three guys.
	One of them has a ping pong. The other one, I think, has a blow dart.
	So, as far as that goes, we're sort of a haven relative to the U.S. dollar because it is the military-industrial complex that I think is primarily responsible for the downfall of the U.S. dollar.
	We don't have that. So, much like the euro, the Canadian dollar is gaining in strength as the U.S. dollar weakens.
	With respect, the Canadian dollar is gaining in strength relative to the so-called United States dollar.
	The reason I think that Jim Willey's correct, notwithstanding the fact that he has a PhD in statistics from Carnegie Mellon University, but if the system is founded on violence, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and they only have one thing to do and one thing they can do, and that's to print, print, print, print, print.
	And we'll have to get back to that in just a moment, JT. My name is Mark Stevens.
	We'll be back in just a moment on No Stay Project.
	Well, that's real appropriate that's real appropriate for what we're talking about.
	My name is Mark Steve DeSuis from the State Project.
	The Royal Bank of Scotland has advised clients to brace for a full-fledged crash in global stock and credit markets over the next three months as inflation paralyzes the major central banks.
	And he says, a very nasty period is going to be upon us.
	Be prepared. Wow.
	That's the bank's credit strategy.
	So, we're going to talk about that and more.
	If you want to join us here on the show, Thank you very much, Mark. I appreciate it. Do you have a good Scottish accent?
	Ah, it's not bad, laddie!
	I'm still working on it.
	So far it just appears that I sit on a cactus wearing only a sparran.
	That's as far as I've been able to get.
	This would sound so much better.
	It's a very nasty period.
	It's soon upon us. Well, all right, there you go.
	Not the best either.
	Anyway, I want to get back to this. I want to ask you and JT this.
	I'll put it out to both of you.
	And I don't want to come off as a doomsdayer or a fearmonger.
	I just want to examine the situation and kind of try to predict the way things may possibly go.
	Because there are people that are saying, you know, like this guy, the bank, you know, the Royal Bank of Scotland and other so-called experts and pundits and whatnot about the total economic collapse.
	And one thing I would throw out there is to both of you.
	JT, why don't you take this first and then, Stefan, you can...
	Give us what you think after.
	With gas going up the way it is in the price of oil, where it's absolute, I mean, it jumped five, I think, three to five dollars a barrel yesterday, before it closed yesterday on June 20th.
	And so they're going up.
	I mean, they're predicting we're going to have two hundred dollar a barrel oil before the end of the year, which is going to be nine, ten, twelve or fifteen dollars a gallon of gasoline.
	I think, and you're starting to see this already, where in Spain, for example, there was a trucker strike, and you're starting to see where the trucking industry, the shipping industry, is under increased pressure to stay in business.
	So if oil does skyrocket, continue to skyrocket, Won't that shut down, you know, most of the ship, or cripple the shipping industry, and what kind of effect will that have on the economy?
	Well, the majority still here in the so-called states, the majority of transportation is done by independent truckers, so it's going to have a horribly deleterious effect.
	And as an aside, there was a gentleman on CNBC yesterday, which I watched because it's just bad vaudeville, but this guy comes on and he was a geological professor.
	I can't remember what institution, but he very somberly predicted $5 to $550 a barrel oil in the next three to five years, and of course they couldn't usher him off the air quickly enough.
	But no, it's going to paralyze shipping, absolutely.
	So paralyzed shipping is going to have a ripple effect throughout the entire...
	I mean, you're basically shutting the economy down.
	Well, but it can't happen that way.
	I mean, with all due respect.
	I mean, because if oil becomes too expensive to purchase, the price will simply drop.
	The only reason that the price is increasing at the moment is because people are willing to pay it.
	And they're willing to pay it because they still need to do stuff.
	But there's simply no way that trucking can be shut down because that would just mean that the people who have oil would have no one to sell it to and the price would drop, right?
	But with the slosh of fiat currency, and when we went to break, you were talking about the loonie being on par or better now with the dollar.
	But when you're measuring things against other things that are just as fraudulent, it really doesn't have a meaning.
	Those excess dollars have to go somewhere.
	They're just not going to disappear.
	And that's why oil is up in dollar numbers across the globe, because those excess dollars have got to go somewhere.
	Well, but if it was excess dollars, if it was just the overprinting of currency, then all consumer prices would be going up because currency is used for all consumer prices.
	But they are. But not relative to oil.
	Oil is a special case that's going up that much more quickly.
	So it's something other than fiat money.
	I mean, I think fiat money is a part of it, but there are other factors that are driving up the price of oil, not just the fiat currency.
	Otherwise, all prices would be going up, like in the hyperinflation in Germany in the 20s, all the prices would be going up like crazy.
	Right, but what's different between now and Weimar Germany and even the early 70s United States and the world is that there's greater control than funneling and where the expansion of money is happening, so it's taking a longer period of time to reflect down through the rest of the economy.
	They're bailing out their buddies in the private investment banks, but it's leaking out into petrodollars because we have a political relationship with the Saudis.
	The Saudis are ticked off that their dollar-denominated asset, i.e.
	oil, is being worth less and less and less because it is denominated in worthless dollars, and I think that is precisely why the dollar price of oil is up so high.
	Absolutely. It certainly is a factor, and I certainly won't defend the fiat currency, but increased industrial demand from China and India is also bidding up the price of oil, and that, as I've argued in a video on YouTube, will result in lower consumer prices for the goods that are produced in those nations that are sold into the United States.
	That is a factor, but as Mark's wonderful video so glaringly illustrates, It is the money, because the same amount of silver buys as much more gasoline now as it did in 1947.
	That's true, and that is true.
	However, technological advances has actually caused the oil to be cheaper, especially when you compare it with gold.
	But what I want to jump in and say is that it...
	Steph, you have a point about total economic collapse that it may not actually come to that because they can price themselves right out of the market and then they've got no one to sell it to.
	What I want to mention before we get into that is it takes a while for the hyperinflation to work its way through the economy.
	What we're seeing now So you had the prices skyrocketing.
	California, my gosh!
	Stephanie, out here in California, some houses in some areas were going up $8,000 to $10,000 a month.
	Now, the effect of that on the price of, let's say, a commodity like oil didn't happen overnight.
	It took a couple years to get to that point.
	So it does take time for it to work itself through the economy, and prices have been going up.
	The prices of food and energy have all been going up.
	But no, you're right.
	They're not going up at the same rate as gas and oil yet.
	Yeah, and definitely the part of the increase in the oil prices that is driven by fiat overprinting is also going to be, I mean, just economically speaking, is going to be the same for most of the other commodities.
	So I'm definitely with you there.
	I just don't believe that the fiat currency is responsible for all of the gas or oil increases, that there are other factors such as demand overseas and so on, the farm policy which I talked about earlier.
	So I'm with you guys for the most part.
	I just think that there's more to it than just the fiat currency.
	I don't disagree. I just think the majority reason is the fiat currency.
	Yeah, I think we can all agree that it's definitely the majority reason why.
	But we have a caller, so why don't we go to Dusty in Ohio.
	Dusty, welcome to the No Stay Project.
	Hey Mark, thanks. I have a little tidbit that I think you'll find interesting on the currency situation, but first I have a personal problem just briefly.
	I need to find some books On tax avoidance by corporations, maybe something that you've written, because we've got a corporation going, and before I get into a situation where I need some professional help from a person like yourself, I think I'd better do some boning up.
	We have been granted a Let me cut you off right there.
	With an issue like that, get with me off air, or let's say next week when we're talking about a different topic, we want to stick strictly on the currency and economy right now.
	Alright, now, how do I do that?
	Do I email you there at your website and the rest?
	Mark Stevens at adventuresinlegoland.com.
	You had something to say about the currency, right?
	Right, now that is something from the Iron Man again.
	And he points out that the first currency that was ever used in the colonies was what was called the Massachusetts Bay dollar.
	I'll hang on. Okay? Okay.
	My name is Mark Stevens. This is the No State Project.
	Joining me today is JT, good friend, supporter of the show.
	Glad to have him on. And also, from freedomainradio.com, Stefan Molyneux.
	And you can join us here.
	The number is 512-646-1984.
	That's 512-646-1984.
	We'll be right back. Don't go away.
	All right, welcome back to the State Project here on the We The People radio network.
	That's WTPRN.com.
	Welcome back, JT, and Stefan Molyneux of FreeDomainRadio.com.
	Welcome back, guys. Thank you so much.
	Thank you, Mark. Yeah, and we have also, we're going to finish your call.
	We have Dusty from Ohio on still.
	He had just mentioned, welcome back to the show.
	You had mentioned about the first currency used in Massachusetts.
	Well, according to the iMan, it was a currency, paper money, Which was tied to commodities, all right, but they were commodities that the people used every day.
	Bushels of grain, pounds of wool, things like that.
	You know, there's no way of getting out of the situation.
	We're all greedy stinkers, and I don't care if you privatize money, you make it public money, whatever you do.
	There's going to be greed and inflation involved in that.
	But if it's tied to commodities, what happens if you had more bushels of corn this year than you had last?
	You're just richer. That's all.
	The economy grew, and you're richer.
	There's no way to hide inflation in that kind of a currency.
	Well, that's not necessarily...
	I disagree with that statement because if it's a currency that's based on something tangible and has a use outside of money, say in industry and manufacturing, and it requires labor to create, then yeah, there isn't going to be inflation.
	There wasn't inflation in this so-called country for 150 years until the Federal Reserve.
	Of course, you know, even before the goldsmith got into the deal, The shamans from way back, religious leaders, the people would bring them stuff, you know, just like they do to gurus over in India to keep them tied down on the ground to keep them from levitating, so-called. And they tried to figure out, well, they had storehouses and they'd store up this stuff and store them.
	They couldn't figure out, well, we're out of storehouses.
	What are we going to do now?
	How are we going to condense the bringing in?
	And so that's how coinage got started in the first place, is the greed of storing up more than the commodity is worth in the first place.
	Guys, I'll let you go and let you discuss on.
	I appreciate the discussion.
	Thanks a lot, Dusty. That's Dusty in Ohio.
	I appreciate the call. I know.
	The reason why corn typically is not chosen by the market anyway is because it does vary so much.
	It'd be kind of rare for the market to choose something that varies and fluctuates like that.
	It's like the old selling point for the Federal Reserve.
	You need an elastic currency.
	What they didn't say is what they meant by elastic is that we're going to control the value, not you.
	Well, and weed is perishable, right?
	So it doesn't use it or lose it.
	Yeah, I want to still get on the point because I think it's a valid point trying to predict about, you know, what will happen.
	I mean, what they call the Great Depression from 1929 to, I guess, about 1941, 25% unemployment was in total economic collapse, but it was pretty bad.
	It was pretty bad. And so probably we won't see complete economic collapse, but, you know, I see things as getting...
	Pretty bad before they start getting better.
	But that's good for us. I mean, sorry, but that's good for us, right?
	I mean, at least it's good for the truth, right?
	And it's good for the people who've been saying this system is corrupt and evil and is destructive.
	Because there definitely is going to be an adjustment.
	Mathematically, anything which cannot continue will not continue.
	And of course, my particular opinion is that the hyper-militarism of the past half century is really to do with pillaging the public treasury because they know that it's going to run out in their own tenure.
	So – but it's good for us.
	The important thing is through shows like this and the books that we write and the speaking engagements that we have to get the word out to as many people as possible that it is an evil and corrupt system to use violence to provide goods or services, whether it is money or other things.
	And so when it does hit the wall to whatever degree it's going to, the more that we can get the information out about this is the result of coercion, not freedom.
	This is the result of government, not the free market.
	This is the result of guns, not voluntarism.
	Then it actually helps our case I think.
	Well, I think you're right because one of the points that I wrote down that I wanted to – so I didn't forget when we came back from the break was – now you've got to – about the other factors.
	We know that probably mathematically we can show that the fiat money, the currency or the fake note is responsible for most of the economic devastation that's going on right now.
	And the increase in prices, well, the illusory increase in prices.
	But there is also increased demand in these, you know, what used to be called third world nations.
	And also with the really industrialization of China.
	However, the reason why...
	I'll throw this out.
	It still has to do with the violence because the market is not allowed...
	You cannot bring alternatives to gas to the market because you're violently – you're stopped violently.
	The United States government, for one, absolutely will not let an alternative come to the market.
	You just can't do it.
	Well, in the road system, it's hugely subsidized, right, which is one of the reasons why people are so addicted to cars to begin with.
	Well, yeah, I don't see the problem being the car.
	The problem I see is the damn government, this gang of killers, decent liars, who will not allow an alternative to the market.
	So there, there may be...
	You see, that's the thing. We can prove the coercion there, but we can't prove any kind of collusion between the oil companies and the government.
	But it still all goes down to, like you just mentioned, to the violence.
	We've got another call. We have Al in South Dakota.
	Al, welcome to the No Stay Project.
	Al? Al, welcome to the show.
	Did we get another mic? Well, I just had one comment on...
	There was a caller that said, you know, if we had a really bang-up year and we grew all kinds of crops, then inflation would happen.
	And I just wanted to kind of correct that a little bit, because what would happen is the parity values would change.
	In other words, corn would become worth less, and your gold and silver would buy more corn.
	In other words, what I just wanted to point out was that A money based on a substance, whatever substance it is.
	It is true that if you and your neighbors produce more than can be used, it's going to be worth less.
	But it's never going to approach the point of worthlessness that our fiat money is going to approach.
	That's true. Because the fiat's worthless to start with.
	Well, right. It's a two and a half cents piece of paper with actually cotton with some ink in it.
	It's not just that.
	If you listen to that video that's on the WeThePeopleWTPRN.com, on the homepage there, it's a video called Meet the Federal Reserve.
	There was a spokesman, the PR guy for the Chicago Federal Reserve.
	There's mercury in that stuff.
	They're toxic.
	In fact, the EPA banned them from burning it because it's so toxic.
	It's awesome to watch that video.
	Wtprn.com, you can see that.
	And so, you know, they've said for a long time that 90% of the dollars in the Federal Reserve notes have cocaine on them.
	Hey, that's the least of your problems, that there's cocaine on them.
	So, Mark, what you're basically saying is we can't even use them for heat.
	That's a real shame. Is it okay to wipe?
	Can we use them for that at least?
	Well, if you want a mercury wipe down there, yeah, I think we'll be okay.
	That's true. Well, Al in South Dakota, I do appreciate the call.
	Oh, you bet. You guys have a great day.
	Thanks. I want to move on.
	I hope I didn't cut him off there.
	We do have Barry in Arizona.
	Barry, welcome to the No Stay Project.
	Hey, Mark. How's it going? It's going pretty good.
	Good. Good to talk to you guys again.
	Just, you know, my own perspective here, it's like, Everybody talks like gold and silver have intrinsic value, right?
	But you can't eat it.
	And if I set a big gold brick in the middle of a cow pasture, I can even stamp Rothschild on it.
	And the cows are just going to eat around it.
	They're not going to really care.
	But when it comes to human beings, we have to have a medium of exchange, as they say.
	But my stepdad, Mike, who was at one of the seminars up here in Sedona, he has an interesting way of putting it into context.
	Precious metal, or what we call actual money, is just a way of storing your labor.
	And you can't really do that with paper, because you don't go dig it out of the ground or anything like that.
	Certainly, no banker is going to roll his sleeves up and grab a pick and a shovel and Get a mining sleuth and go try to get the gold out of the river or anything like that.
	We do that. You know, we ended up turning it into them for this fiat paper currency.
	And, you know, if there really is going to be a crash, I think, you know, me and my neighbor and my community are willing to exchange gold and silver between each other.
	But, you know, this money is just going to deflate, you know?
	Like you said, I mean, you could maybe throw it in your wood stove.
	I don't even think it would make very good toilet paper, to be honest with you.
	But, you know, I wouldn't even dare try to blow my nose on it.
	But, you know, every time...
	We see prices going up and stuff like that.
	It only goes in one direction.
	That's because what they have built into the system is kind of like this check valve.
	And they always get more and do less.
	And we always get less and more.
	It's just the way they've got it wired and the way they've got us mind-controlled to support it.
	Sure. That's why people can talk about gold and silver on TV and they call it funny money.
	But paper isn't.
	Yeah. But anyways, love the show, and I hope to see you again sometime.
	Yeah, I do appreciate calling there, Bear.
	I need to get out of the valley for a while, so maybe we'll get something going up there in northern Arizona.
	I do appreciate the call. My name is Mark Stevens.
	This is the No Stay Project.
	And for June 21st, 2008, don't go anywhere.
	We'll be right back with the second hour of the show.
	All right.
	Well, the project.
	This is the second hour.
	June 21st, 2000.
	I'm glad I'm back.
	I'm in Phoenix, Arizona.
	Welcome back to the show.
	JC and Stefan Molyneux, FreeDomainRadio.com.
	Welcome back, guys. Thank you.
	Thanks, Mark. Stefan, you back with us?
	I sure am. How's it going?
	I want to get back to this.
	What you mentioned before is something that I've said, and Ernie Hancock has mentioned before also, in that what Ernie has specifically said is, if you have to vote, we shouldn't be voting anyway,
	but if you have to vote, if you can't get away from that, Voting with the possible people that you can so that they start implementing all these totalitarian policies and the whole system collapses under its own weight, we can actually get to a voluntary society that way.
	Basically what you're saying, if there is collapse, there's near collapse, that this could bring in, wake people up.
	The question is, In your everyday experience, as things continue to deteriorate, they are damn well getting worse every week.
	Are you noticing that people are seeing the problem for what it is, that it's not just the evil oil people, that it is actually government and it's under reserve?
	Yeah, I mean, people that used to look at me like I had three heads now are engaging me, and, you know, your video was kind of a breakthrough that I sent out to my list, and I had people that wouldn't talk to me for years coming back and saying, wow, I never thought of it that way or looked at it that way, but yeah, you're right. So yeah, definitely.
	You know, like Stefan said, Misery has a way of bringing clarity to people's thoughts and having them realize what the real problem is.
	I think this is something I shared with you in experience.
	It's an item that I buy frequently that used to run me around $3 apiece at the grocery store, and in the last couple weeks it's gone up $1.30, which is nearly a 40% increase.
	I mean, it's crazy.
	Yeah, it is.
	It is. I talk to people all the time about it, and I try to let people know.
	I mean, I do let people know.
	I spoke to someone just last night.
	But, Stefan, how about you?
	I mean, in your regular day-to-day thing, are you noticing that the average state of people that you wouldn't think would blame government for these things are?
	Oh, yeah. No, it's a massive, massive improvement.
	I mean, I've been arguing these topics for 25 years, and I think it was even more than three heads at the beginning for those of us who've been doing this for a long time.
	And at the beginning, it is perceived as real kinds of crazy talk.
	I mean, completely outside the mainstream, and it makes people very uncomfortable to look at these topics.
	And it's changed enormously.
	Of course, The internet has helped a lot.
	It is our new Gutenberg for original ideas.
	But it has changed enormously, even over the past few years.
	So I just think it's a wonderful step forward that the same electronics that gives the government so much power is also giving those of us who are opposed to this institutionalized, organized use of force such an ability to communicate.
	And it's sort of like...
	You don't want to see the collapse, but you can't stop it and it is going to be helpful.
	So if you are somebody who's a researcher and you're the first people to figure out that smoking causes lung cancer, it's not like you want to see people die of lung cancer, but if people won't listen to you until people start dying of lung cancer, you can at least extract some silver lining from that cloud, if that makes sense. It makes perfect sense.
	JT, I love the quote when you said that misery brings clarity of thought.
	And I was speaking to someone just last night at the gym.
	He's an older guy. He's probably his late 70s.
	But he's old enough.
	He was just a child at the time.
	But he's old enough to remember Roosevelt.
	And... Not everybody who's over the age of 65 or 68 is enamored with FDR. I brought him, I think, all the way there, but he did see a parallel between what is happening now and what happened immediately preceding and causing the depression.
	So that's really encouraging.
	Mark, can I also tell you how nice it is that you refer to somebody who's older as in their 70s just because the listeners that I have are mostly in their teens and early 20s.
	So it's real nice to be looking uphill to the older people.
	So thank you. I think that I've got some hair back.
	Well, you know, it's...
	If you look at the insight on the YouTube videos, the majority of the people watching that latest video are between 45 and 65.
	Oh, that's interesting. That's interesting.
	Yeah, well, they're the ones...
	Look, when you realize, they're the ones who really have the most...
	Somebody over 55 stands to lose a heck of a lot more than someone 18 years old.
	So, they are watching the value of their assets go down on a regular basis.
	So, I think that's...
	Worse than even that...
	You know, when I go to a local grocery store or a Walmart or so forth, I'm seeing so many folks in their 60s, 70s, and even 80s working.
	And they're not working to stave off boredom.
	They're working because they have to work.
	And I think it's because, you know, back when I remember my grandfather being in his 70s, I don't ever recall seeing the number of people his age out in the workforce in any capacity.
	But nowadays, it's just...
	It's legion, and I think there's a reason for that, and I think it's because that generation has been hopelessly sold on dollars, and they're paying a price for it.
	Well, absolutely. I find it amazing that the previous generation—and this is one of the things I said last night to this guy—I can't believe that there wasn't one of the most violent revolts in history in March of 1933.
	I'm not saying that people were not outraged, and I'm not saying that there weren't people that didn't stand up.
	A lot of them did take to the courts about what was happening, but my gosh, how do you make gold illegal and not have people with torches and pitchforks marching on Washington, D.C. in every state capital in the country?
	How do you even...
	I don't understand how they even got away with...
	To this day, I still...
	Maybe one of you guys can help me.
	How the hell did they get away with that?
	You've got total economic devastation.
	You've got 25% or more of the people out of work.
	You've had assets of people and businesses that were completely wiped out.
	And this son of a bitch comes in and on March 1933 makes it a felony to own gold.
	How could there not have been a violent revolution?
	It's beyond me. Especially given the fact two weeks before the election, he promised he would never do such a thing.
	Yeah. To me, to this day, it still boggles my mind that that was not the last straw.
	So that leads me again to a question we've asked before.
	How bad...
	Does it have to get before people have this misery that brings about the clarity of thought?
	To where action is taken?
	Because I think I agree with you guys.
	Because I think there's a lot of people waking up and a lot of, you know, for me to have someone that I go to church with, where it's predominantly, overwhelmingly mind-numbed Republicans, for someone to talk to me about libertarianism, it was a shock.
	But really, I mean, how bad?
	I mean, what, does there have to be 25% unemployment again?
	Well, change is painful.
	You know, statism is, you know, it's like smoking.
	You know, having that next cigarette is a lot easier than quitting, right?
	And postponing, having to deal with, you know, this is how addictions start, right?
	Is that breaking the addiction causes a lot of short-term pain.
	And this is true with statism, and we've talked about this before.
	I'll just touch on it briefly, but I believe that the major barrier to an acceptance of a free society and the values of a free society It's not the logic because ever since Adam Smith, or you could go even earlier, we've had the case for the free market and the free market has proved itself spectacularly so regularly and central planning has proven itself to be such a disaster that there's no reasonable human being in the world who doesn't at least admit That the free market is an incredible machine for producing goods and services and enriching a country.
	So we've won the economic case.
	The moral case, of course, as you say on your website, Mark, nobody believes that you should provide goods and services at the point of a gun.
	So we've won the moral case.
	We've won the logical case.
	We've won the empirical case.
	We've won the case in economics.
	So the major question is, why do we keep losing?
	Why is it that we are not making progress but rather going the other direction?
	And I think that the answer is that when you begin to speak the truth in your social circle, in your family, in your church, wherever it is that you are, people get really uncomfortable and they get kind of hostile.
	The truth is like blood in the water for most people.
	And this has been the case since the pre-Socratics, right?
	I mean, it wasn't like they gave Socrates the key to the city, but rather a poison cup to drink from.
	The truth makes people very tense and it makes people very upset and it makes people very anxious and it makes people very irritable.
	I think that a lot of people go through the conformity not because they don't believe that there's a good case for the truth but rather because they know what's going to happen if they stand up and speak it, which is that those around them are going to be very unhappy or angry or upset or cold or withdraw.
	And I think it's that social pressure.
	That is what keeps the truth at bay within society.
	In a sense we're not slaves because we're owned by slave masters but because we are willing to attack each other for calling ourselves slaves.
	And I think that's the part which libertarianism doesn't focus enough on which is the interpersonal relationships that keep these illusions sustained.
	It's interesting you say that because I was wearing a shirt that Mike, gosh, I can't, he's the co-chair of the Maricopa County Libertarian Party, and I apologize for blanking on your name, Mike, but he had given me a shirt that, the exact quote is, none are so blind that those who falsely believe themselves to be free.
	And someone at the gym says to me yesterday, he says, you know, that's some shirt you got there.
	I said, oh, thanks.
	He says, you know, something like that can get you shot.
	And my response was, well, you know, those who would take offense at a shirt like this have already had their balls cut off.
	Whoa! Sorry, Mark, that story confuses me just a little bit because my understanding was that you worked out in the women's section of the gym with the little pink weights with the tassels.
	Oh, no, no, no.
	I remember you saying that you had the pink tassels on it.
	Sorry, just working on that.
	Hey, if rewriting history can work for the government, why not for us anarchists?
	There you go, there you go.
	We'll have to have we the people destroy that part of the archive.
	Right. Into the memory hole!
	Into the memory hole! There you go.
	There you go. Well, we have another call.
	We have Richard in North Carolina.
	Richard, welcome to the No Stay Project.
	Hi. I'm sorry I missed the last little bit of what you were talking about because I switched from the monitor on my computer to the telephone.
	I don't think you missed much.
	Yeah, but it sounds like you were coming.
	You were addressing the issue kind of that I was going to bring up, too, which was the Gerta quote about none...
	Or so, you know, who believe they're, falsely believe that they're a free thing.
	But were you moving in that direction about the kind of the long-term PSYOP in the country that's kind of convinced everybody to believe in the system and it's very hard for them to get out of that mindset?
	Well, I was going to go there, but I made a crude joke first, so...
	And I backed him up on that joke, too, so...
	Well, you know, when you were talking about why people don't revolt and everything, I think that that's probably a big reason why, is that people have this underlying basic faith in the system that they've been taught to believe in for so long that it's very hard for them to get out of their mindset to even think about something like revolution, hardly that, without suffering really great distress.
	I think your guest was talking about that.
	Yeah, well, I understand.
	I agree with the battered citizen syndrome and whatnot.
	It's just, I think when it comes down to, and I think this is something that is probably going to happen now, because one of the things I mentioned was the over 55 population.
	And when you've worked all your life and you're looking at being wiped out, I think that has a tendency, generally, to cut across, because you're going after someone's family.
	And at least in my experience, when you start going after the family, that's when people start taking notice and that's where the line is drawn.
	It's just like with JT, you know, we've mentioned before, you know, like my wife draws the line strictly at family.
	If they were to impose, you would see, my wife would be the loudest libertarian or voluntarist out there if they instituted a draft tomorrow.
	Because that's where she draws the line.
	And so I think that's where, so that's why when you're talking about the Depression, you're talking about wiping out People's savings, like they did in Germany, for example.
	Or Yugoslavia, too, recently in Yugoslavia did the same thing, where they just wiped out the entire population's savings and assets.
	Let me know what you guys think if the religious aspect of statism, that emotional bond there, can be broken to a degree when there is such economic devastation.
	I think it can. I mean I think though that the – you know what libertarians need to do since we're the ones who define the initiation of the use of force as evil and I think rightly so.
	then when we're talking to friends and even family, and it's a horrible thing to have to do, but I think it's important for us to do it if this is what we claim we believe, and we have to say to them not, do you support the violence of the state in abstract, but to go up to them and say, I believe that the initiation of use of force is wrong.
	I believe that the government is an agency that is based on the initiation of the use of force.
	If you support the government, then you support the use of violence against me.
	Do you support the use of violence against me to make it personal?
	Have them look you in the eye and say you should be thrown in jail for not paying taxes or for trading on your own.
	And if we can do that, if we can have them look us in the eye and say, yes, you should be thrown into one of the rape rooms of state prisons because you disagree with my ideology, we're making it personal and powerful in a way that articles and talking about the Fed just never will.
	That's a good point.
	I didn't even hear the music.
	No, I didn't either. Sorry, Adam.
	I was too loud. I was too loud again.
	No, you were no louder than you were me, but it's no biggie.
	You finished right as the commercial started.
	Excellent. No harm, no foul.
	That's damn good timing there, big guy.
	Just don't want to kick the bill payers in the nuts.
	That's all I'm saying. Well, I don't think we have to worry about that.
	No, you did good. I think we still have Richard on.
	That's a good call. Yeah, that was interesting that I had those two conversations yesterday.
	It kind of dovetailed right in what we're talking about.
	And I thought it was outrageous that somebody would say to me that a shirt like that can get you shot.
	Yeah, Lord. Well, I mean, they've been talking about disobeying the state.
	That's what the state does, right?
	That's their thing. Yeah, yeah.
	It was a much younger guy that said that to me.
	The older guy is a nice guy.
	I think this guy, he's probably, like I said, late 70s or mid-70s.
	So I think I'm going to have him be a full-blown anarchist here by the end of the summer.
	Go meet your maker and overthrow heaven.
	No, I didn't mean that way.
	I'm just in pretty good shape.
	He's in pretty good shape.
	By the end of the summer, I've been talking with him a bit.
	It's actually kind of rare to find somebody born at that time who's not a fan of FDR. My father-in-law is 84, so somebody born prior to 1930 typically has a pretty good understanding of what kind of a monster he was.
	But people who were, you know, the children, like baby boomers, they don't typically see that.
	Right, right, right.
	Well, they get the propaganda, not the original stuff, right?
	I just made this point in a video recently about how when you're living through this kind of corruption, like it's easy to believe that Korea was somehow justified, but it's very hard to believe that Iraq is justified.
	So when all you get is the propaganda, it's so much easier for you to believe this nonsense.
	But when you actually live through it live, as these people did, they're not going to hear about him as the hero who saved civilization, but as the guy who stole our gold, right?
	Right. Right.
	Right. I figured that would have been the last straw, and I'm sure there were people that there were armed confrontations.
	We probably just didn't hear about it, because we're not nearly old enough to, you know?
	We weren't there. Right, right.
	So, I guess it's just an assumption.
	Well, it's just like they say in Braveheart.
	History is written by the winners.
	Right, right, right.
	All right, we'll come up here.
	Remember, remember. Yeah!
	Welcome back to the No Stay Project.
	We're here on the We the People radio network every Saturday afternoon from 2 to 4 p.m.
	Pacific Time and 5 to 7 p.m.
	Eastern Time. That's right, two full hours of anarchy radio.
	No government apologetics here.
	We know government is just a group of men and women providing a service at the barrel of a gun.
	If they want a particular life living property, then they wouldn't be the first ones looking to take it.
	And they certainly wouldn't be forcing us to use pieces of paper called set of reserve notes.
	I want to get back to the show.
	I want to welcome back JT and Stefan Molyneux of freedomainradio.com.
	Welcome back, guys. Thank you.
	Thank you. I think we still have Richard in North Carolina.
	Are you still with us, Richard? Yeah, I am.
	I just wanted to express my appreciation for the show and I really enjoy you two guys when you get on and you have the banter back and forth.
	I'm not sure what's going to happen in the next few months and in terms of the country, and I have a lot of worries about the false flag issue and some other stuff, but you've discussed those things before.
	I won't hassle that now, but I do want to mention one thing, is that I am one of those over 50 people.
	I'm a 59-year-old, but I had the advantage of being in SDS back in 1968, so I already had a strange bent to my mind anyway.
	And you don't lose that, really, just with the years.
	But one thing that really did send me down the rabbit hole was the 911 thing, and once that happened to me, I realized that All the people that were around me, to a large degree, in my southern town, Baptist town, are, rather, completely oblivious to it all and completely caught up in the palliative of the election.
	But other than that, they don't discuss these issues.
	They don't think about them.
	They're completely deluded.
	So I don't know if there's any cure for that or not, but I'll get offline and let somebody else talk.
	Well, I do appreciate the call, Richard, and don't despair.
	I'm getting to those points that I've put on the form I've mentioned here.
	If we want a voluntary society, then we should get Britney Spears as a spokesperson because that seems to be all people give a damn about.
	People can tell you probably more about Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan than they can tell you about how an economy functions.
	Well, it's a short attention span society.
	I think it's gotten to be more so where people are more interested in distraction and comfort.
	And whatever they consider a nuisance, what you and I see as huge warning signs of impending doom or increased control in slavery, they see the nuisance as long as they can root for their favorite sports team, go to McDonald's, get their drive-thru, go bowling, get their beer, and watch television.
	I think that's part of it.
	What's wrong with that? I mean, they can't do anything about it anyway, right?
	So why would you necessarily even want to?
	I mean, we have a particular fetish for examining and talking about these truths, but I don't know why it would be irrational to look at Britney Spears rather than pour over the price of gold relative to oil in 1974, which is Good and fun, but I don't blame the general population for doing that.
	That's just a rational allocation of resources based on what they can actually control.
	Well, it's a rational short-term allocation of resources.
	However, in the long run, it's going to have a deleterious effect on their ability to maintain that lifestyle if they don't look out beyond that lifestyle.
	But what are they going to do if they find out this stuff?
	I think it's indeed possible to live a freer existence if you choose to do it.
	It depends on what's important to you.
	I think amongst all of us, we all want our degree of comfort and so forth, but I think that we're all willing, speaking of the three of us and the majority of the audience, I think we're willing to sacrifice a greater degree of gadgetry and comfort In exchange for hopefully waking up enough of the populace where we can have true freedom.
	I mean, there was more freedom in this.
	There was an article I just read today where we've got more gadgets now, but if you go back to 1950, people had more free time, did more with less, and were able to save, put four kids through college and have a spouse that didn't work and still save for retirement.
	The quality of life was better 50 years ago than it is now in spite of the cheap Garbage food and the cheap entertainment.
	It seems like a slothful existence.
	I don't disagree with what you're saying, Stephan.
	I understand that. We're a higher animal than that, aren't we?
	Dogs do that.
	Well, I agree with you, but the system can't be reformed from outside.
	The system is going to just have to hit the wall, and I think that those of us who have the interest and the talent to communicate this stuff should do so in as entertaining and positive a manner as possible, so that we can woo people away and say, look, there are better stimulations.
	But we're just free market competing with Paris Hilton, and I think You know, it doesn't do any good to slag the competition.
	We just have to find ways to make things more interesting than Paris Hilton.
	I have a number of outfits that unfortunately I can't show you here on the radio that are designed to do that on video.
	But we just have to compete with that stuff and find a way to woo people away from the easy stuff, right?
	Like, I mean, just to make the case like any nutritionist should, that they'll be happy if they don't always eat at McDonald's.
	But I don't think that blaming people or saying that it's dog-like or slothful That's just our free market challenge to find a way to make thinking more fun than passively consuming dollar debt.
	Right, and I say that as a descriptive term.
	I don't mean that in an accusatory manner.
	I agree completely with what you're saying.
	And entertainment is a way to do that.
	Mark's video is exceedingly entertaining as far as I'm concerned.
	Your stuff is great, Stefan, but I've got to tell you, the one that sticks with me is shopping in the trunk of a car.
	It's one of my all-time favorites.
	It gets the most response of everybody I point towards it.
	It's fantastic.
	It wakes them up. Yes, it does.
	And that is the challenge that we have, which is to try and make thinking more fun.
	Because, of course, most people have heard of economics and philosophy and politics as incredibly dull and seemingly interminable op-ed pieces from Pompous Windbags.
	And to try and find a way to get people engaged and enthusiastic about philosophy and politics and economics Is a real challenge for sure.
	And I think that we're only going to get better at it because we're competing with such trashy and easy entertainment.
	Like a sports team gets better if they play tougher opponents.
	And the fact that we are competing with this other stuff, I think, just causes us to up our game.
	And I think that we should, in a sense, be thankful for it because it causes us to improve or to need to.
	Yeah, I agree.
	As an aside, I can't believe Mark was almost not considering putting the Hitler bit in his latest video because I think it makes it.
	It makes the point beautifully in that he takes the frivolity and stupidity of a current political statement in regards to oil and OPEC and superimposes Uncle Adolf by giving his speech.
	It's visually and auditorily stimulating.
	It's hilarious. But it gets a great message.
	I appreciate that. You start going through the rules and things for viral videos and what you need to do, and I had made a promise to you.
	I told you on the phone a couple days before, man, I'm going to keep this to a minute 30.
	That's it. It was impossible to keep it from going over.
	But I agree, the humor and doing a better job is definitely the way to go.
	Look at what The Daily Show has done.
	The humor is definitely a way of doing that.
	And it's not so much that I'm saying that people should not pay attention to things like Britney Spears or Lindsay, you know, these other people.
	It's just a matter of priorities.
	There are things that are more important in life...
	And I think one of the more positive things that we can talk about, of course, is because, Steph, you raised a valid point.
	What can they do? And that's what a lot of people say.
	They say, well, yeah, Mark, you're right.
	And they'll call the show or they'll email me and say, yeah, you're right, but what the heck are we supposed to do?
	What's your alternative? What's the answer?
	Well, first of all, I think that we should recognize that Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears, they're both statists, and so that results in a no-underwear lifestyle, and we can reinforce that point for people.
	And with that, we do have to go to a break.
	My name is Mark Stevens with JT and Stefan Molyneux.
	If you want to join us, the number is 512-646-1984.
	I'm sorry. I killed me.
	Actually, working from home is also a no underwear lifestyle, so I'm one to talk about it.
	You know, I think I've mentioned on the show before that I rarely do the show with pants on.
	We have homeopathic detox solutions for...
	See, that's a joke of context.
	I'm wearing shorts, but most people would start thinking...
	It's 115 degrees out.
	Why would anybody have pants on?
	What's the temperature over there, Steph?
	Uh, not too bad.
	It was really nice out today at 25, 26.
	I don't know what that is in your freaky fashion temperatures.
	Oh, stop. That's actually pretty hot for Celsius.
	Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's...
	I don't know the conversion exactly, but I know it's hot.
	I think I'd have to look it up.
	The kilos I have pretty good from weightlifting.
	I understand the kilos, but the Celsius is just throws.
	Oh, yeah. No, I used to know it a little bit more.
	I used to actually do some coding for US and metric imperial conversions, but Lord knows now.
	I just tuned out when you said that.
	I can't understand that stuff.
	Yeah. That was a joke.
	If you have to say it, it might not be.
	It's just possible. Empirically, that's all I'm saying, right?
	Okay. Yeah, I tell you.
	You know, I like the idea of actually, you know, because I have confronted people at church about these issues.
	And surprisingly, the result has always been very good.
	You mean the sort of violence against me kind of thing?
	Yeah. Yeah.
	You just lay it out.
	It helps that, and I'm not trying to sell you on the Book of Mormon, but it helps when you're dealing with someone who is LDS and Mormon because they're familiar with the Book of Mormon, and the Book of Mormon has some fantastic examples of voluntary societies.
	Oh, is that right? Oh, they have one where if you talk to someone who's LDS, they'll know what you're talking about, where they talk about King Benjamin, who is just a name only.
	He is explicit. There were no taxes, there were no prisons, and with no taxes and no prisons, okay, no taxes now, they were able to defeat an army several times.
	Oh, I can believe that.
	So it's very difficult for someone in the church who knows these things to then defend government.
	Right, right, right.
	You can quote scripture at them.
	Yeah, absolutely. You would expect that there would be a very emotional response, but so far, the way I've done it, it's worked out pretty well.
	It's encouraging. Alright, we're going to go back in a moment.
	This is Me The People Radio Network.
	This is Me The People Radio Network.
	Welcome back to the No State Project.
	I'm your host, Mark Stevens.
	This is the We the People Radio Network, WTPRN.com.
	Remember, sign up for the podcast if you haven't done so already.
	It's WTPRN.com.
	And video that we were just talking about, the grand illusion, the price of gas not going up.
	I want to thank everyone for subscribing and passing the video on and having it embedded.
	I want to thank Alex Jones.
	It took me a few weeks, but it was posted on Infowars.com.
	It got like 12,000 hits yesterday, which is fantastic.
	I do appreciate that. So if you haven't seen it, go check it out.
	It's on my homepage, AdventuresInLegalLand.com.
	And remember to subscribe to the videos.
	Welcome back, JT and Stefan Molyneux of FreeDomainRadio.com.
	Welcome back, guys. Thank you.
	Thank you, Mark. I want to get into, because I don't want everyone to think it's a dooming gloom.
	This is a dedicated, bringing about a voluntary society.
	I want to talk about some of the things that people can do.
	To help bring about a voluntary society.
	So one of the things I'm going to throw out that somebody can do, especially because dealing with the economy and how things are going, is to not be an employee anymore.
	Not to be a, whatever you want to call it, a legal employee or a statutorily defined employee, but not being an employee and actually working as a contractor through, let's say, like a business trust and avoiding.
	I mean, this is something that, look what it saves employees, employers rather.
	There's no FICA.
	There's no social security to match.
	So that's one thing.
	Absolutely.
	Pull your kids out of school, too.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, there was something you had sent me recently, Stefan, I don't know if you heard this yet, there's somebody in Germany who has been convicted of a crime of homeschooling, and the judge compared this guy who was convicted of homeschooling, compared him to a habitual drunk driver.
	I don't know, have you familiar with that story?
	Yeah, I actually sent you that.
	Right. So, Stefan, have you heard this?
	Ah, those Germans, they really want to make it easy for us with the stereotypes, don't they?
	You have broken the rules!
	Right? I mean, they're just not fighting it at all.
	I was going to say, guys, that part of the reason I was late, it was in a local town of New Alm, as you can guess from the name of the town.
	It was settled by Germans. We're good to go.
	German and British imperialism has always been driven by the desire for better food, and that's why peace in Europe has descended because a lot of ethnic restaurants have cropped up in these places so they don't have to go to other lands to get something decent to eat, and I think that's had a lot to do with it.
	I can totally see that in Germany and in other places as well.
	It is really tough for people to get out of the state school.
	Certainly, if we have kids in my family, homeschooling is going to be the way to go.
	I just – I would no more send my children to a state school than I would sign them up for a mining job at the age of six.
	It just isn't going to happen because I'm going to spend the whole time deprogramming them.
	It's going to take a whole lot longer for me to educate them if they go to a state school than if I just deal with it at home.
	And I don't want to gloss over this whole thing about English food.
	You have to tell me what the hell is blood pudding.
	You know, I wish that it was nicer than it sounded.
	I wish that I could give you something more positive and say that blood is actually, I don't know, ancient Norse for treacle and gold.
	But no, it's just another ugly thing that is something.
	But this is a country where baked beans are considered a vegetable, right?
	I mean, there is no sense and reason in British cooking other than, I guess, the teeth are so bad that anything that's soft is better.
	Yeah. What a great idea to boil everything.
	First-hand experience of this, Steph, because I've been to Canada many times fishing, Canada's gift to the world is gravy on fries.
	It's not something I ever conceived of before going to Canada, but I crave every time I do go to Canada.
	Oh, if you ever go to Quebec and you really want to shave off about six months of your lifespan but die with a smile on your face, have a little something called poutine, which is cheese curds and gravy on fries.
	You can actually feel your arteries hotening as you move it to your mouth.
	It's like replacing your arteries with pipe cleaners.
	But man, is it ever.
	It's good stuff. Yeah, well, that's like if you're in the Los Angeles area.
	Oh, I'm sorry. If you're in the Los Angeles area, you stop in the Carnies and get their chili fries.
	You can feel your arteries hardening there, too.
	But Jay Leno swears by him.
	Oh, yeah. It's like you don't even eat it.
	You just paste it directly on your gut.
	Oh, yeah. It's something.
	And, JT, I can't let you off the hook here because, you know, you guys...
	Up there, you know, you've got that blood sausage.
	Yeah, yeah. Blood sausage?
	I mean, could they make it more unappetizing in the name?
	It's exactly what it says.
	It's congealed animal blood compressed into a...
	And there's pork as well.
	Oh, gosh!
	What are you, top that off with a side of blood pudding?
	My goodness, that is...
	I mean, at least the Scots take their ungodly foods and give it a name that you don't understand.
	Like, they don't say sheep's intestines stuffed with evil.
	They say haggis, right?
	So it's different for the Scots.
	At least they'll confuse you with something that's relatively innocuous.
	Like, hey, I'm eating this.
	It's haggis. What is it? You know, whereas with blood pudding, it's like right up front.
	This is just evil. You might as well have, like, monkey brains in hell.
	Oh, yeah.
	Alright. But you know, at least it's brought to the market on a voluntary basis.
	You're not forced to eat that crap at this particular point in time.
	Correct. Masochism is a market force as well.
	That's all I can say.
	And that's what I think.
	Every time I go into this one store and there's a McDonald's in there, and I see these people, and I mean no offense, I really don't, but nine people out of the ten that are in this place are morbidly obese.
	And you would think that at some point in time they've got to turn around and see the other people that are in there eating with them.
	And there has to be a realization and like an enlightenment like, oh my god, is that what I look like?
	To me, that's enough to say, you know what?
	I really think I should take a look and re-examine my life here.
	But I want to get back to the serious issue.
	The homeschooling is a fantastic idea if you can do that.
	There's not many people, obviously, that want the violence.
	And that may be one of the messages with this whole thing with the You know, if you're not aware of this yet, you really need to be.
	As far as I'm aware, every attack from the IRS that the IRS has launched had its root in a paper trail.
	Right? It's the Padletail Society, yeah, of course.
	Yeah. If there's no paper trail, it typically isn't an attack because they have nothing to follow.
	So it's definitely something to consider.
	But what is something else that we can do to help bring about a voluntary society, to bring more freedom into the world?
	Well, the suggestion that I would make and I'm just – I pound this nail again because it's hard to sometimes get it through to people but I'll just mention it briefly.
	You know, go to the people in your life and only have those people in your life to the best of your ability as much as you can who are willing to relinquish the use of violence in the solution of problems.
	And that means obviously they don't use violence themselves, but that they relinquish their abstract support of violence through patriotism, through a support of the state and so on.
	I mean how many of us would want to have a wife beater as a friend?
	But of course the state does far more evil on a universal level overseas, domestically through prisons and so on.
	So I think it's a matter of confronting people with the ethical choices in life that you can support violence by being a statist or you can be in my life.
	But you can't be both because that's evil.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And that makes homeschooling look easy, right?
	Well, I had mentioned you all there, Stefan, and I'm very happy that recently the people that I've spoken with at church...
	I've been very open to the message and want to hear more.
	As I had someone say to me, you know, just last week, he says, man, Mark, you're the libertarian.
	You've got to explain these, you know, the gas price problem with me.
	You've got to explain to me what's going on.
	So it's very encouraging. We'll talk about that when we get back from a break.
	We'll be back in just a second. I am Dr.
	Buhl-Bahn. Yeah, do you need any better example of the free market?
	See, that's what the free market will give you as opposed to what statism gives you.
	FDR, George Bush.
	Now, there are some fine military marches that you get from governments.
	Some of the Chinese-Russian band marching music is the stuff you want to march pit to.
	So, I see what you're saying, but there could be an argument to be made for the ugly martial music too.
	Well, that is true.
	And welcome back to the show, Steph.
	And just for that, I'm going to let you – JT let me – he sent me something.
	And welcome back to the show, JT. He sent me something that vitamin C may be actually illegal now there in Canada.
	So, damn! Vitamin C is illegal in Canada?
	Oh, I get it. Let's try to make it illegal.
	Actually, sorry. Give him the kicker mark.
	I just wanted to point out, sorry, it's not the vitamin C that's illegal, actually.
	Canada's just made the letter C illegal, so you'll have to refer to it as anida.
	Aha! I don't know any more information than what you sent me, JT. I haven't tried to verify any of it, but they want only MDs to prescribe it.
	Yeah, anyway, sorry, Mara. Please go on.
	I can't use it either. Well, before we went to the break, I'm talking about things that we can do to help bring about a volunteer society.
	And the idea that you have within your own social circle is great.
	It's kind of the way someone like Jim Davies, who we've done shows together with, has suggested with his online Freedom Academy.
	And something that we're doing here locally, and my church is doing it, It's a preparedness, what do you call it, not a conference, but it's like a series of workshops and seminars that we're doing.
	And I'll be there. So one of the things I'll be talking about, of course, is getting your assets off the dollar, of course, as much as you can.
	And something that my church always pushes for big time is a year's supply of food.
	So this is something that I think is important, is making sure the people in your area that you know have at least a three-month supply of food.
	And JT, you've mentioned you use the Berkey water filter, right?
	Absolutely. I've tested it with some of the most questionable sources possible, and it's incredible.
	Of course, I measure before I drink it, but yeah.
	Anything from street bottle water to toilet water.
	And it comes out cleaner than your so-called steady tap water.
	Well, let me ask this, Stefan.
	Do they fluoridate in the area that you're in, in Canada?
	I believe they do. There was someone, I know fairly recent, within the last five years, that was with, I guess, the Canadian equivalent to the Board of Health or the FDA that had actually documented evidence that showed that the fluoride was a carcinogen, among other things, and should be taken out.
	I can't remember his name for the life of me.
	I don't know if you're familiar with that.
	I guess not. I probably should have.
	I didn't expect it to come up, so that's why I don't have the research on there.
	But apparently a lot of people have come out, some former officials, people who were advocates of fluoride, and now finally starting to use some of their brain and saying what a danger that stuff is.
	Does the Perky water filter, I don't want to do a commercial for it, but does something like that remove fluoride?
	It does. Yes, it does.
	Oh, wow. Wow.
	Another good reason to have it.
	Wow, I didn't know that.
	Fluoride is minor compared to some of the stuff that does get rid of it, but it's incredible.
	I mean, you can take tap water and put food coloring it, say.
	Run it through a Birkin, it comes out clear.
	Wow. That's incredible, yeah.
	Well, I think it's important that people do have a supply of water and at least a three-month supply of food because, I mean, not that they may not, you know, that's definitely going to be a total economic collapse.
	It probably isn't going to be.
	It's going to get pretty bad. But it is going to get to where, you know, shipping, at least temporarily, may be shut down in a lot of areas.
	But we have a few minutes left.
	I have a call. We have John in Missouri.
	John, welcome to the No State Project.
	Oh, hey, Mark. How you doing?
	Doing good. We only have a few minutes left.
	We've got to be quick. We're talking about bringing a voluntary society to people.
	I really like the idea that Stefan talks about with the CRO system and monetary and voluntary protection.
	How cheap it is to defend a country rather than be an empirical, offensive nation.
	I think bringing up points like that is a really good way to sell people on it, because people will see how to benefit from that over the system we have now, and maybe that would be quicker in bringing the change.
	I think it's a fantastic idea.
	I've written and said for years to write into your contracts binding mediation clauses that you cannot go to the courts.
	From what I've known, I've done that.
	And I've even had IRS agents recognize it.
	Not that that typically means anything, but, you know, for government officials, you know, because that's where it all hinges.
	So that is an excellent point.
	Well, let me ask you, since, you know, you're teaching people, you know, you're aware of these things, what do you say to somebody who says, yeah, John, those are all good, but what about the roads?
	How are the roads going to get built and paid for?
	Well, I think you brought up a great point in your book.
	If we didn't have government around, are we going to assume that people wouldn't build them anyway?
	I mean, if anything, it would be better, because it would be more of a voluntary contract to build these roads, and the people would be happier doing their jobs and better quality work, as opposed to the forced tax and the people who would just get those jobs just for easy money or whatever their motivations be now, but certainly not to keep the roads in the manner they do.
	It's always been better on the other side of the argument over what we currently have now.
	It's a huge step forward in the debate for us to be asked how anarchism will work.
	That's really new. Before, at least when I started, you couldn't even get people to understand that the government might have anything wrong with it.
	I mean, so that debate has been won.
	And then all you would hear is, well, without a government, we'd be bad extras in some early 80s Mel Gibson movie, riding around with exploding motorcycles and stuff like that.
	And that cliche has gone by the wayside.
	Now we're actually at the point.
	Relatively quickly. It's a quarter century.
	We're at the point where people are saying, okay, tell me how it might work.
	And this is why I'm writing a trilogy on anarchy.
	The first book is Practical Anarchy.
	This is not a plug because they're all free.
	So you can just go pick them up from the website in audiobook or PDF format.
	I wrote the first book called Practical Anarchy, which is how anarchy works in our life as it is, right?
	And we have anarchy in the dating system.
	We have anarchy in job hunting.
	There's no central authority that orders us around.
	So it's pointing out how much in life works.
	The price system is an example of anarchy.
	Heck, democracy is an example of anarchy as I talk about it in the book.
	And so we have lots of examples of functioning anarchy around.
	And that book, Everyday Anarchy, is at freedomainradio.com forward slash free.
	And the second book in the series, I've just finished it up.
	It's in its third draft.
	It's called practical anarchy where I provide a methodology and tons of examples of how anarchy is going to solve problems that people find hard to solve conceptually in a state of society.
	So, I mean, it's a massive step forward in the debate.
	I think it's always important to look back and see how far we've come.
	Rather than, as we often do, look forward and see how far we still have to go.
	But the internet, of course, has just made this all so much more accelerated.
	I mean, I got 300,000 media views last month from Free Domain Radio.
	I mean, how could that be possible without the technology that we have?
	And it is that technology and the communication of information that is really accelerating this debate.
	And I think we can be very hopeful and positive about it all.
	Well, yeah, I agree. And if you watched, and I can't plug this enough, the PBS series with James Burr, Connections, and the one he did, The Day the Universe Changed.
	Every time that there was a new technology, such as books, and to get information out, the rate of change in society just went off the charts.
	Now with the internet, it's absolutely incredible.
	Like I've mentioned before, we've spoken before, the internet, I believe, is going to be very instrumental in the undoing of governments as we know them.
	Which is why they have to make it a boogeyman as fast as possible so they can control it.
	They're working pretty hard at that.
	Well, I hope it is too late.
	I'll just throw this out.
	You know, you keep in mind that the partnership that these telecommunication companies have, they just were granted immunity for the spying, and over 40 lawsuits now are going to be dismissed because they deprived the courts of jurisdiction.
	Well, something to keep in mind, unfortunately.
	But John, I do appreciate the call.
	John in Missouri. My name is Mark Stevens.
	This is the No State Project for June 21st, 2008.
	I want to thank JT for coming on, joining me, and also Safar Mullen, who is freedomainradio.com.
	I do appreciate it, guys. Thanks, Mark.
	Have a great month. Thanks, appreciate it, Stefan.
	And as always, everybody, government, of course, is nothing more than a group of men and women providing a service at the barrel of a gun, a service they never have to provide.
	And if they were interested in protecting your life, liberty, and property, then damn it, they wouldn't be the first ones looking to take it.
	I want to thank everyone for tuning in.
	Until next week, Lahaim.
	Thanks, Mark.
	Thank you.
	Thanks a lot. Thanks, guys.

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