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Sept. 6, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

19:57

2212 The Federal Reserve Pushes Us Over the Fiscal Cliff!

Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio, is interviewed by Kerry Lutz of the Financial Survival Network about the latest and greatest in political catastrophes.com

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	1490 WGCH, this is Kerry Lutz.
	You are listening to the Financial Survival Network.
	And if you're wondering, what are they going to do to you next?
	How are they going to cut the deficit?
	Do they really have a secret plan that's so secret they can't tell you about it?
	Well, Stefan Molyneux got some insights into the subject that'll help you figure out what's really going on in this election.
	Hey Stefan, how you doing?
	I'm great, Kerry.
	How you doing, my friend?
	Doing well, doing well.
	Didn't really talk to you or anything since Vegas, but here we are.
	It's three months later, I guess.
	Two, three months later?
	Three months later.
	And, boy, the more things change, the more they stay the same, huh?
	You know, it's interesting, because, of course, and thanks again for that great dinner, but we were in Vegas for Freedom Fest, and, of course, I've been going to these libertarian conventions since I was literally knee-high to a grasshopper.
	One of the things that was interesting, I don't know if you got this sense from the Freedom Fest participants, but I was chatting with people, I was hanging around the laissez-faire book club booth, and I was asking people, you know, how do you like it, and will you come back next year?
	At least half the people care is really fascinating.
	At least half the people said, oh, I don't know what the economy is going to be like next year.
	I don't know what the social situation is going to be like next year.
	So I'm not making any plans.
	And that's the first time I've heard that in about 30 years of going off and on to libertarian conventions.
	Do you feel that this imminence of catastrophe is really dawning on just the libertarian group?
	Is it anywhere out there?
	Do people get a sense of, you know, revelations, end times of the economic apocalypse?
	Or are people still marching blindfolded slowly towards that cliff edge?
	Jeez.
	You know, if anyone's going to be at the cutting edge of it and really understand what's going on, you would think it would be the libertarians.
	But on the other hand, the libertarians could be accused of being overly...
	I'm overly paranoid or overly concerned about the potential crash.
	I mean, as far as I'm concerned, until the crash occurs or it becomes extremely obvious that this implosion is going to take place, I'm just going to pretty much live my life and go about my business and hopefully be prepared well enough so that If it does happen, I'll have some contingency plans in place.
	But I do think that's interesting that the level of caution on the part of our libertarian brethren has really gone up that much.
	And these weren't like tinfoil hat people, you know, they weren't, you know, having full plastic bagfuls of conspiracy theory DVDs.
	These were, you know, sober, reliable professionals, usually in their mid-50s or mid-60s.
	So these were not fringe elements.
	This was very much mainstream.
	And of course, this was, you know, Rand Paul, Judge Napolitano, mainstream libertarian event.
	It really was just a sense of like, ooh, I don't know, I'm not making a whole lot of plans for next year.
	And...
	I thought it was interesting.
	It certainly has a few things that I've done.
	I think there may be some potential high food prices, maybe some interruptions in the food supply.
	I've got some food developing relationships with local farmers and stuff like that.
	I think those are useful things to do.
	Again, who knows, right?
	But there definitely is going to be a significant adjustment.
	More than half of Americans are dependent upon some sort of federal aid program for a significant portion, if not all, of their income.
	That is a very large dependent class on a very unstable system that simply cannot continue to mail out the checks, at least what they're worth, for the foreseeable future.
	And I think there will be quite a bit of excitement as this system readjusts itself, hopefully, you know, to something better and freer.
	Yeah, we can only hope for that.
	But, you know, history as a judge, there's not a lot of room for optimism.
	But, you know, what can you do here?
	You really have no choice.
	You got to move on.
	Prepare.
	I mean, we've even gotten a new sponsor, PrepareWise.com.
	Uh, dot com.
	And, uh, you know, mainly they found us, they said, uh, all your people, you know, we've gotten people, they're listening to your show and they're very concerned.
	So let us sponsor you.
	It's pretty remarkable what's taking place.
	I think the gun sales in the US, if you saw the Smith& Wesson chart, it looked like the money supply chart.
	The gun supply is going up there with the money supply, and who knows, maybe ammunition will become the next US currency, and the value will be based on the caliber of the ammunition.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And I mean, the statistics continue to surprise me.
	Of course, there seems to be this large media blackout because all they're concerned about is analyzing syllables and soundbites from the empty talking suits of political heads.
	But I was just reading some of these statistics.
	I mean, it's really astounding.
	So the average...
	The median net worth of all families in the U.S. declined from $126,000 in 2007 to $77,000 in 2010.
	I mean, that is a smoking crater.
	And in particular, middle class dropped from $129,000 to $93,000.
	And of course, a lot of that is loss in value of...
	Home values, home equity, and so on.
	But I mean, it's just astounding.
	And, you know, I was reading this article about how youth unemployment is also on the increase because so many elderly people, because their CDs are paying 2%, they're, you know, having huge declines in their income.
	They're going to work at McDonald's, pushing out the younger people and so on.
	There really is just a, it's been truly astounding.
	I don't know anyone who guessed how bad it was going to be.
	Doug Casey was pretty much on the money when he entitled this whole thing that we're going through, The Greater Depression.
	But more importantly, Stefan, we have to work with solutions.
	The problems, I think, are becoming more obvious by the day.
	If you drive a car down a street, if you work and you see less people in your office, people you know losing their jobs, losing their homes, so what's the solution for these people?
	How do they come up with a strategy so that you can retain what you work for, so that you can stop the banksters from taking what little you have left, and you can have some hope for the future?
	Well, you know, maybe you can answer this for me because I've been mulling this over for quite some time and I can't come to an answer.
	You know, I mean, I think that we're addicted to coercion, to laws, to state power, to the endless interference of the free market that benefits the rent seekers at the harm of the general population.
	I think we have all the classic signs of an addiction to any dangerous substance.
	Political power is perhaps the most dangerous.
	But normally in an addiction, When people begin to lose their houses, when does the guy stop doing cocaine?
	Well, he loses his house, he loses his job, and so on, and his net wealth gets cut in half.
	How much pain are people going to have to go through before they will start questioning the way things are, the way things are done?
	I hope it's not a lot more, but somehow I just wonder, what is the point at which we hit bottom?
	And start to really question our choices.
	Well, you use the addiction, the addict analogy, and I think that what usually works with addicts is they wind up in the gutter and then they find religion.
	You know, just as an analogy, not religion per se, but religion in terms of truth.
	But here, people, if they see what's happening, Look, everybody in the world can cut 10% off of their monthly expenditures, right?
	Agree?
	Everybody can do that.
	If you spend money, you can spend 10% less, whether it's brown bagging your lunch, driving less, uh, Taking the bus, walking, whatever it is, bike riding, where possible.
	Everybody can cut 10%, and then they can use that 10% to go buy precious metals and to stock up on some food as well, right?
	I mean, how much does it really cost to stock up on food?
	$1,000 will buy you a month and a half supply at least, or you could go to PrepareWise.
	I bought 180 meals, and they're not like garbage.
	Like a lot of them, Stefan, they taste decent.
	200-something dollars.
	I have 180 meals.
	So I'm ready here.
	And then I'm stocking up on grains and a lot of things that aren't worth a lot of money now in the type of collapse we're talking about where there's supply disruptions, not only of these staples, but let's talk about alcohol, tobacco, and other addictive substances.
	As well as ammo in the type of collapse that we're envisioning where it isn't a full-scale societal collapse but a partial distribution collapse where maybe there's trucks driving grain around but you can't get anything else.
	Those things that are cheap now will be worth their weights in gold and you just have to stock up on it now.
	So there's a lot of things that you can do.
	You can be buying a roll of dimes every week, right?
	Sorry, a roll of what?
	A roll of pre-1965 US dimes.
	Oh right, the silver ones with silver in them.
	Silver, real dimes.
	Right, right.
	So you could be buying them for, I don't know what the price is right now, I think it's about $25 a roll or something like that, or $50 a roll.
	I can't remember.
	I'm sorry.
	But if a roll was $10, I don't think there were $100 in there, you can be buying $10 worth of pre-65 dimes a week.
	or a few of them a month.
	And then guess what?
	You've, you've done some preparation.
	You're ready.
	I won't get into the arming yourself and army family.
	There's people who know a lot more about that itself.
	And then to mention probably not a bad idea to be doing it, but in the meantime, it hasn't collapsed.
	We got the Ben Bernanke coming out today.
	Is he going to push the QE to infinity switch?
	Are they carrying the monetary football?
	Are they carrying the nuclear football?
	What does that mean for you, right?
	Well, I think that it seems likely that they're going to release it.
	I think people say, well, why haven't they done it already?
	I think they're waiting because they know it's going to give a short cocaine-to-the-eyeball jolt to the economy, which they want to do, I guess, right before the election to continue with the existing power structure.
	And so I think that they're going to put this in.
	There's going to be a short-term jolt to the economy when all this money comes flooding in, particularly, of course, to those who are closest to power, right?
	The money is most concentrated in its value, the new money.
	And those closest to power, and it harms those furthest away from power when their fixed income inflation hits.
	So I think that they're going to put this money out there.
	It's going to give a boost to the economy.
	Everyone's going to say, oh, look, green shoots returning the corner.
	I mean, people seem to have this just fundamental inability to process basic numbers.
	I don't know if it comes from the kind of high-quality education that's currently on strike in Chicago.
	But things are not the same as they were before.
	The debt is too high.
	The amount of regulations, hundreds of thousands of new regulations every year, these are all job killers.
	the rise of cheap labor in India and China.
	Who could have expected that 10 or 15 years ago, that these people would be sucking jobs out of the overregulated, hyper-governmental controlled economy of the West?
	So too much has changed.
	The quality of education has gone down.
	There are too many single families.
	Too many people depended on government.
	This is not just like in the past.
	Oh, in the 1980 recession, they added 2.5 million jobs in the six months following the end of the recession.
	It's nothing like that anymore.
	The momentum of the Industrial Revolution is spent.
	The government is five to seven times bigger than it was 30 years ago.
	These all have fundamental and powerful effects.
	And in a country where 40% of Americans think that the sun goes around the earth, asking them to understand the vagaries of Austrian economics may just be a bit of an overstretch.
	You think, huh?
	I do.
	I do.
	I do think.
	We have been dumbed down in this country, make no mistake about it.
	The more I look at it, the more I believe that this is a deliberate act.
	It was a calculated plan to accomplish exactly what it has.
	And we're all paying the price for that now, whether it's The fact that they have to make iPhones in China because they can't find enough engineers in the US. You've read all about it.
	And the fact is, people hopefully are getting more educated now, although not within the schoolhouse, on the internet because the final analysis is the great equalizer.
	It's the Guttenberg Press brought to the 21st century.
	It's, you know, the internet is such a power of light and darkness situation.
	Of course, I think that the collapse would have happened long ago without computers.
	Computers, of course, have just had so much economic productivity.
	They've been like that magic machine in Atlas Shrugged that was supposed to convert air into electricity.
	I mean, that's what's allowed the looters to continue for another generation.
	And of course, it's given a huge amount of power.
	To the government, the power to monitor the power to tax rates and in detail that would have been impossible without computers to track everybody's financial transactions and so on.
	So they have a real dark side in the service of the Sith Lords.
	They are very powerful.
	But they also have this incredible ability To transmit information that never would have in a million years made it into the mainstream media and give people access to astounding facts and arguments and perspectives that never would have access to at the click of a button.
	So I feel it's like the race between the dark horse and the light horse.
	Who is going to jump over the fence of the future first?
	I don't know.
	It seems kind of neck and neck at the moment, but I hope that we can leverage the power of the internet to bring a lot more illumination because it seems like a bit of a dark net landing on us sometimes.
	Yeah, well, once that genie is out of the bottle, or the toothpaste is out of the tube, you can't put it back in.
	And you never know what is going to start somebody thinking.
	Becoming a thinking human being rather than a conditioned blob that just responds to I think that, you know, you look at certain things like the rebirth of the Second Amendment in the United States in so many states,
	other than the state that I live in, in New York, and somebody at Freedom Fest said, you know, when somebody gets a carry permit, they buy a gun, it changes them because they realize, hey, you know, I have At least some possibility of protecting myself.
	I don't just have to rely on the government to ensure my and my family's personal safety.
	And when you look at things like that, You know, there is some reason for hope, but certainly what we're seeing now is definitely there's a cloud on the horizon.
	But the best way, I think, and you'll agree, is to protect yourself is pick up some gold and silver, pick up those provisions, those vital medications, so that way if the trucks stop running for a while, you're prepared.
	Yeah, and I also want to mention as well that a lot of people...
	I don't know.
	This is an old thesis from Albert Nock from a book I'm currently reading for Laissez-faire books called Our Enemy of the State.
	He talks about the degree to which state power takes over and dissolves social power.
	Social power like charities and communities and so on.
	I really strongly urge people that if state power is going to change fundamentally, it's either going to get bigger or it's going to get smaller.
	I'm hoping like heck it's going to get smaller.
	We're all pushing to try and get that boulder of the state going down.
	I hope it's going to get a lot smaller.
	But as it gets smaller, it's really important, strongly urge your listeners and my listeners to reach out within your community.
	Get to know your neighbors.
	Help people out.
	Help them put up a fence.
	Get to know people.
	Because when the power of the state begins to diminish, if it gets bigger, then you're going to need your neighbors' positive vibes so that they don't report you for some godforsaken who knows what, right?
	But if it gets smaller, you're really going to need a community around you.
	So I really strongly urge people, you know, guns and gold and goodies, I think those are all important things to look into.
	But don't neglect the social aspect, the community aspect of what we'll need around us to help forward this stream.
	Yeah, I mean, you're 100% correct.
	Going local, supporting your local businesses and your neighbors, whether you need to or not, is in your own self-interest because in the long run, Washington isn't going to take care of you.
	Ottawa is not going to take care of you.
	They're going to have so many other problems that...
	And there's only so much federal resources to go around.
	So in the final analysis, it's up to you.
	Connect with your neighbors.
	Connect with your community.
	Reconnect.
	Because something we've all done with the internet and media and everything else is entertainment no longer takes place in the community.
	Maybe you go to a movie, but...
	There isn't a lot of interaction between neighborhoods, between neighbors, not like there used to be, and that is a dark side of modern life that we all need to be thinking about reconnecting with each other and We're rebuilding relationships, both in the family, the home, the neighborhood, the street that you live on, and your community.
	You do that, and you'll be so much further ahead.
	Tighter communities will come through this whole thing much better than loose, unconnected communities.
	Stefan, we've got to get going now to find you.
	Oh, yeah.
	FreeDomainRadio.com.
	I just think we just passed 45 million downloads.
	Biggest philosophy show in the world.
	I hope people will drop by.
	And for my listeners, you're at FinancialSurvivalNetwork.com.
	All right.
	Hey, well, Stefan, it's always a pleasure.
	We'll talk to you again soon.
	You on the conference circuit at all?
	Are we going to run into you anyplace?
	Well, I'm going to be the Master of Ceremonies at Libertopia.
	I'm going to be speaking in Toronto November 21st.
	Third at Freedom Fest North and there's a couple others that I can't think of right now.
	I'll be speaking at an end at the Fed rally remotely in Philly.
	And so, yeah, a couple of speeches coming up and then, you know, libertarians tend to hibernate for the winter for the most part and then I'll be back around in the spring.
	Yeah, especially this winter.
	I'm going down to Florida.
	I'm staying there, moving the studio there for the winter, and we'll see from there.
	Fantastic.
	Always a pleasure, Stefan.
	You be well.
	Thanks, Gary.
	Take care.
	Bye.
	I'll get this posted probably in a couple hours.
	If you got it done faster, shoot it over to me, and I'll talk to you soon.
	I'm all on it.
	Thanks, Gary.
	Take care.
	Be well.

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