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June 14, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
59:39
2407 How to Outrun the State!
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Hi, everybody.
It's Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
I have Robert Ian and Kerry Lutz on the show, and we are here to set your record straight, to free the world, to protect your money, and possibly if your girlfriends are attractive enough to take them out for some wine.
But we'll get to that part later in the show.
Thanks so much for taking the time, guys.
Great to be here, Stefan.
Thanks so much for having us.
Okay, so let's talk contemporary politics.
It seems that what seemed to be a sort of clear sunny road to the future, which was Obama's incestuous and positively wonderful relationship with the media seems to have taken a bit of a blow, mostly because the media around the world have been breaking news after news of these scandals.
And of course the Benghazi one, the IRS one, the NSA one.
I think it's worth talking about.
I don't normally delve too deep into contemporary politics just because there's not enough anarchist loofahs in the world to make me feel clean afterwards.
But I think this time I will make an exception because I think this stuff is really quite important.
This is potentially a turning point.
In people's relationship with the government.
Of course, people went in with, Congress has an approval rating of 6%, and Obama's numbers were declining significantly.
But it seems like this is just a whole flurry of Muhammad Ali-style one, two, three punches that really, I think, is going to leave the administration reeling.
And of course, if the precedent set in the 70s with Watergate or even 5% of those are applied, I think we could conceivably be facing some significant challenges to the presidency up to and including impeachment.
Because, you know, the basic argument that the government puts forward is that if you run a corporation and someone who reports to you does something illegal, then you are charged.
Like all they have to do is find you somewhere above the criminal in the org chart and you go down as hard as he does or she does.
And ignorance is no excuse and not knowing is no excuse.
You're just nailed either way.
And I think that this is kind of boomeranging a little bit back.
Now, normally, of course, the media would be shielding Obama like crazy.
But because the media has been targeted, and I think the media even feels for the Fox News guys who have been targeted simply for asking questions right around this North Korean, quote, secret stuff.
Asking questions and reporting them, which is, of course, what passes for journalism these days.
It used to be investigative, but that proved to be quite expensive and time-consuming.
So now they just ask the government stuff and print it as if it's news.
But if these guys get hit from that standpoint, they're going to hit back hard.
And, of course, we saw the remarkable vision.
I wasn't sure if I was dreaming or not of the New York Times saying that the Obama administration has lost all credibility.
And then they later tacked on on this issue, but, I mean, in general.
And so if the media turns and actually applies some relatively objective standards or acts 5 to 10 percent as if a Republican were in power, I think that there's going to be a significant shakeup in politics in America.
That's my thought, but what do you guys think about all of this stuff?
Stephan, I'm with you.
Financial Survival Network, I really don't talk about politics because to me it's like discussing the latest movie from Hollywood.
There's nothing real about it.
It's all orchestrated.
It's all set up to play on your passions, your emotions.
The only reason why politics is important is how it affects the individual in terms of diminished personal freedom, your ability to...
to earn income for your family to plan your future to do what you want to do as long as you're not injuring others doing it and all politics is just aimed at control if I sound a little cynical on it It's because I am.
And yet, everything you said is true that, you know, this wizard has come out from behind the curtain and all of a sudden, you know, like Robert, I don't want to speak for Robert, but we both, Robert and I agree that it's just been a fraudulent administration one after the other for so many years and yet half the people can't figure out that this one's fraudulent or that one's fraudulent.
Now, all of a sudden, there's almost a near-universal recognition, except for the most heavy Kool-Aid drinkers, that it's all fraudulent, it's all fake, and they don't care about you.
They want to take your freedom away, and the forces behind this are really dark and nefarious and really want to enslave humanity.
That's what I'm concerned about.
Well, and that is what's happening.
I mean, I think what we're seeing is that the pendulum has swung, and the pendulum hasn't had a lot of resistance through the first administration.
Now we're just into the beginning of a repeat of the same administration, and the free ride is over, basically.
It's going to be a real challenge.
People are waking up to this.
The fact that the IRS has been targeting groups, It really hits home to people who've ever had any challenges in that area.
So it strikes at the core of what people respond to.
But also I think people need to think that, at least on the IRS side, what is the IRS charged with coming up in another year?
They're going to be administering Obamacare, a national healthcare system.
So I would ask the question, is this really about targeting a handful of conservative groups?
Groups get targeted all the time.
We're just putting a spotlight on it now.
Or is this about derailing a larger effort or restructuring or reframing the debate about what's coming and who's actually going to have the harness or the helm of that power when it actually shifts?
I think this could be a prelude to a larger structural debate on how healthcare is going to be administered in the country.
I think that's important.
Certainly the IRS is welcoming, of course, the extension of its powers.
They are squids that like to feed on additional energy.
But I think what I would really love to see come out of this, one of the things that seems really hard to break in the general population of any modern Western democracy is any kind of belief in what politicians are saying.
You know, because people will report the stuff and debate it as if what the politicians saying has any relationship to reality whatsoever.
So you're seeing now that Obamacare is driving up the prices of insurance when, of course, it was promised to cut it.
You're seeing that the story about Benghazi, that it was a spontaneous demonstration that kind of went feral.
Based upon some idiot's YouTube video about Islam, all turned out to be lies that people were told to stand down, that security was cut even as risks were reported by the CIA to be escalating.
So all of that stuff is just lies.
Now Obama with the NSA thing where of course they're spying on Americans recording Credit card information, Skype chats, phone calls and so on, at least recording the duration and where they're going.
Who knows what's actually going on under the hood?
Of course, they denied this for many years and now Obama is saying he welcomes the debate.
On how we balance freedom with security and so on, after spending many years denying that it actually occurred and fighting tooth and nail getting any of this information out, now he suddenly welcomes the debate.
The IRS stuff, I mean, they're saying, well, it's just a couple of low-level employees in Cincinnati.
Now the paper trail is coming clear that it's leading all the way to the top and possibly even to Washington.
So my hope is that we can actually get the population To understand that they lie all the time.
That nothing they say has any relationship to any kind of truth whatsoever.
And these are the people we've put in charge.
People that we wouldn't even have park our freaking cars at a low-rent motel.
These are the people who are in charge of our entire economy, our children's future, their education, nuclear weapons, the entire currency, national debts, wars, invasions, the war on drugs, prisons.
These congenital social...
The psychopathic liars are the very people that we think are somehow worthy to be in charge of good people around the world.
I hope that we can at least get people to stop paying attention to what these talking Satan boxes are actually uttering.
Yeah, well, somebody said politics is Hollywood for the ugly.
And look, you've got to understand here that there's a much deeper battle going on.
I mean, giving the IRS responsibility for health care is just...
They weren't set up for it.
They don't know what they're doing.
They're too busy having million-dollar conferences and making Star Trek movies to be bothered about whether or not you need a transplant or something else.
But the forces, the really dark forces here that want to really strip away all civil rights, all human rights, and don't believe that you have these rights, that they're inalienable, but that rather they've been given to you by the government but that rather they've been given to you by the government This is what we're up against, and it's downright evil.
This is a Star Wars movie, good against evil here, and the more people that understand it, the better.
This isn't just your run-of-the-mill garden-variety scandal.
I mean, these are huge issues where the administration's been caught lying through their teeth And really, they can't go back, and yet it looks like the checks and balances are so weak now that they were well on their way to pulling it all off.
But now, we'll see.
Yeah, the checks and balances are certainly out of whack, and all the administrations tell untruths.
They all lie.
They tell different lies.
If we go back, we could look at untruths in the last administration, the Clinton administration.
I mean, if we go back to the prior Bush and then Reagan, I mean, we can go back a long time.
And we've got episodes here.
The lies have taken on much more of a high-tech approach now because we're using technology.
I mean, technology is at the root of this.
I mean, everything is recorded today.
I mean, they don't have people in the back room listening to phone calls.
I mean, it's all being recorded digitally.
Computers are scanning for certain words and phrases, and anytime something pops out that triggers a predetermined setup, it's printed out for somebody to actually, for a human at some level, to pay attention to and to decide, well, is this worth looking into or not?
We have...
You mentioned earlier that it's a big show, Carrie, and it really is.
Politics is a big all-star wrestling show.
It's fake.
These are distinctions without a difference.
Everybody talks about getting a third party in the United States.
Actually, what they're afraid of is a true second party, because with the exception of about half a dozen, maybe a dozen hot-button issues, pick your choice, guns, gays, you know, you go right down the list.
Take polarizing issues on both sides of the aisle.
I think we're good to go.
They're mortgaging our futures, our children's futures, our grandchildren's futures.
They're just allocating it to something different.
That's what we frame the debate around.
And the bottom line is they're robbing us.
They're diluting our currency.
I mean, currency's lost 97, 98% of its value since 1913.
I mean, we can keep splitting the difference for a while, but we're going to be getting down into small decimals now.
And the living standard is going to drop to match.
And we're at a point where living standards are about to drop, and there's not going to be a way out for a lot of people.
Even people with a small amount of gold, there's not going to be a way out for them.
You're going to have to have a lot of gold to have a way out.
Well, and I think the theater aspect as well.
I mean, gosh...
I mean, let's say there are terrorists out there who want to harm Americans.
Let's just go out on a limb.
I bet you they knew about this stuff a long time ago, right?
I mean, the antelope is always really carefully studying the lion, whereas, you know, the other animals who aren't eaten by lions don't really care.
So let's say that they put this NSA stuff in.
I know they put it in after the Patriot Act earlier this earlier last decade, I guess.
So all that's happened is the terrorists are now speaking in code.
I mean, it's as simple as that, right?
They now say, okay, well, here are the agreed-upon words which aren't going to flag the NSA stuff, which actually mean X or Y, and these are just delivered by mail, right?
So they just go to code, and so they're chasing something which doesn't even exist.
It's like the ridiculous airport security.
I mean...
The airport security that would have worked after 9-11 is the fact that anyone who tried to hijack a plane in America after 9-11 would have been torn apart by the passengers in about 90 seconds.
That's the actual security that would have worked.
Now, all this nonsense that happens on the ground where you take your belts and your shoes off and they frisk 90-year-old grandmothers, I mean, that's all nonsense.
There's nothing to solve it.
Let's say that they did find some great way to make Americans secure in the air, which would never happen, of course, but let's say they did.
All that happens is that they would then switch to something else.
You would not add to your safety and this delusion that somehow the government is going to add to your safety is just another one of these things.
It's so primal.
It's like, oh, I got scared by something at the night.
I'm going to run to mommy and daddy and make everything fine.
This idea that there's any kind of real protection going on and the idea that it's going to stop somewhere.
Where is that line in the sand where people are going to say, you know what, unless we do something, this stuff is just going to keep escalating and keep escalating.
There is no end point to this particular progression other than self-collapsing totalitarianism.
There is no point at which these people say, you know, I think we've got enough power.
I think we got enough money.
I don't think we need any more laws.
This is like an addiction.
An addiction runs its course unless there's some significant intervention.
And when it runs its course, unfortunately, the addict only takes himself down.
But, of course, we're all on this particular ship of state.
So I just don't know what it is going to take to wake people up other than repeating the basic facts of reality as they're pointed out, that they lie all the time, that they make things up, that their predictions are always false, that everything costs It's ten times more and takes ten times longer that you can't believe a thing that these people say and as a consequence of not believing them, we should question the power structure that allows them to do what they do.
But that's really hard for people to do.
I don't know if it's propaganda in public schools.
I don't know if it's people that are just afraid to change the social situation or the social structure because, you know, a lot of times in history that goes pretty badly or if it's just, I don't know, there's something good on TV so let's forget about the world.
I don't know exactly but I really sort of get the sense that we used to be a lot tougher As a culture than we are now.
You don't have to pick up on that rant.
I'm picking up on it.
I'm just digesting it.
But that's one of the reasons why we're doing the Liberty Mastermind is trying to find people who've had enough and who can articulate and hopefully lead others because...
You know, a movement or a general rejection of a government kind of begins and fits and starts.
It becomes an idea, and then the idea, regardless of how many emails get intercepted and how many telephone conversations are recorded, you know, I just read tonight they're taking a picture of the post office of the front and back of every envelope That goes through the post office now.
So where does it end?
But once people have had enough of it and they just refuse to accept the system, accept its legitimacy, then you have a possibility at least of something happening because in this poll-driven,
media-centric world, these guys are always looking at their numbers and And once those numbers drop low enough and their longevity in office is threatened, you know, perhaps they'll do something.
It's hard to envision the U.S. as a society where, you know, a totalitarian state where the government just rules without any accountability at all.
But, you know, it looks like we're heading towards it, but are we too late?
You know, will they...
You know, you can see now it looks like everything's collapsing.
It's a perfect time for a false flag event to reassert their legitimacy.
Don't be surprised.
You know, it could happen.
There's just a shooting today in California.
So that's what the Liberty Mastermind Symposium is about, is really getting like-minded people together and then putting together plans on how you deal with this from an individual standpoint, from a group consensus, from a community.
community and from a world, you know?
Yeah.
Oh, let's make sure people know where to go to get that information about the Liberty Mastermind.
I was hoping to be there.
Unfortunately, I can't travel at the moment.
So with the websites and how people can sign up?
Sure.
It's libertymastermind.us and all the speakers are listed there.
We've got quite a collection.
Just thought leaders from the whole spectrum of alternative media are going to be there, talking about the economy, personal survival preparation, what to do economically, you know, really how to look at things socially.
And these are individuals that have extremely large followings in their niches on the internet, in their publications.
And it's funny when you get a group of 15 or so individuals together who have such large audiences, all of a sudden you've got a really big audience that you're talking to.
And I mean, in my view, this kind of media really is the future.
I mean, this is, I mean, you've been doing it, Stefan, it's what, 2004?
Is that right?
2005?
A little later, I think 2006, 2007 is when I first began publishing.
But yeah, it's been a while now.
Okay.
Yeah.
That's right.
So one of the things I was thinking about is I've really been thinking about this sort of weakening of Western culture.
We used to be pretty tough.
We had that Viking-Nordic-Irish thing going on and we could bring down a woolly mammoth with a stern gaze.
It sort of feels like in the past.
I had a lot of wars, which was pretty negative, but we did fight a lot for freedom.
I mean, of course, the American Revolution happened over a couple of percentage points of taxes and now they're looking forward in time.
It's like, "What did we do all that for?
You people crazy?
You effectively have an 80 or 90 percent tax if you count the debt and you're still not doing anything." And I think the difference is that we've become hostages almost horizontally.
So if you're against government spending now, then you're against that which funds old people's retirement.
You're against that which funds people's healthcare.
You're against that which funds people's kids' education and so on.
I think that's kind of different from revolutions in the past.
There are so many people who've become dependent on the state, who've been co-opted into the existing system, and who have a tough time, of course, surviving Without it.
That to be anti-state is almost to be anti-fellow citizen.
It's not almost.
I mean, in a very legitimate way.
And I just wonder if that's how we've been so neutered in that we no longer are skeptical of power, that we are no longer resistant to massive expansions of government power, how we just seem to drug ourselves in these cocoons of distraction.
You know, media or video games or movies or whatever.
I don't know.
Casual sex.
It's been a while since I've been single, but I'm guessing it's something like that.
I mean...
I can't imagine how we were able to take down the Nazis and not oppose the IRS. I mean, the Nazis were a pretty scary bunch.
They're a pretty nasty group.
And we just seem to have lost, I don't know, some kind of essential fiber or pride or sense of protection for our children or the future.
It just seems like we're very much going down a chute to a slaughterhouse without even so much as a moo.
Yeah, I was thinking about that very topic yesterday, in fact.
My father was a pilot in World War II. I mean, he was pretty much a tough guy, but not really outwardly tough.
And I was thinking that one time he was on an airfield someplace in India, and some guys started shooting at him and all these...
They're like kids.
In their 20s, they pull out their guns and they start shooting back and eventually they kill the guy.
And then they go on with their lives.
And I've never had anything like that occur in my life.
It's been a very kind of cushy, comfortable existence, even the times when I haven't had a lot of money.
When that's happened, you get soft.
And until you're willing to wake up, just like in The Matrix, and see that there are these wires hooked up to your brain and they're sucking all your energy out to support a really corrupt and evil system, until you get to that point...
You know, you're just kind of going along unaware and, you know, and then when you become aware of it, it's just like in the movie, you can't necessarily make other people become aware because everybody awakens at their own pace, if at all, and all you could do is kind of add a little impetus to it, which is what we're trying to do here with the Liberty Mastermind Symposium.
So I guess I'm Digressing a little, but what you're saying is so true.
what we used to do, all the great projects that used to happen in the Western world, well, now China's doing them because, you know, they've got the intestinal fortitude and they're willing to, like, break some eggs to make an omelet.
And, you know, the rest of the Western world more or less is just willing to buy fake eggs at the supermarket so they don't have to break them open themselves.
What do you think, Robert?
Well, yeah.
I mean it's – I just think we're at a point politically – I'm just going to parallel off of something we were talking about a little earlier because this all seems to be woven together.
We're talking about politics.
We're talking about how people have changed and are accepting more of a collectivist mindset as opposed to an individual's mindset.
I think with these scandals and things, I really do think the pendulum has swung.
I'm hoping it's going to wake people up and maybe they'll move back.
It's like two steps forward, one step back.
I think we've taken three or four steps forward now.
If we can take one, maybe two steps back, we'll be in a better position.
But This incrementalism towards a more collectivist mindset is, I think, it's very harmful.
You know, we talk about how people get indoctrinated in schools.
The school systems really changed probably back in the 80s.
I mean, more and more mandates came down.
Schools were forced to teach certain curriculum.
In order to get and keep their federal funding.
And this goes on today.
It's very institutionalized.
And this wasn't just a short-term plan.
I mean, we've actually changed a whole generation of individuals to really want to participate in, again, just more of a collectivist ideal.
And unfortunately, that doesn't exist.
At the end of the day, it really comes down to the individual because at the end of the day, nobody's going to come and help you.
You've got to be there for yourself.
And we're almost disarming people intellectually.
We're disarming them from a skill set point of view in terms of being able to...
I mean, what happens when things go bump in the night?
How do you handle things?
I mean, we're not doing our young people any favors today.
We've got our own class warfare going on in the United States.
Since the economic collapse of 2008, We've got people in their 50s and early 60s that have lost all their retirement.
They cannot afford to retire.
The golden years have turned into 10, and they're going to have to work as long as they can actually keep a job.
Well, we've got people in their 20s who've gone to college now.
They're getting out with $40,000, $50,000, $80,000, $100,000 debts, and they're actually competing now.
We've got this internal struggle going on in our workforce.
We've got this slow conflict and resentment building up between the generations.
The tea kettle hasn't blown off all the steam yet, but it's there.
You can start to hear it whistling.
And these are real structural things we're going to have to deal with within our economy.
I mean, it's very dangerous.
I mean, if you look at young people, if they get into a financial bind, what are the kinds of debts you can't discharge in a bankruptcy?
Well, guess what?
College debt is one of them.
I mean, you get out, you're an economic slave, literally.
You start out with a $50,000 noose around your neck in this kind of an economy, and it's a real challenge for people.
And debt is the real killer.
It goes back to what I was saying with the political parties being distinctions without a difference.
There's about those dozen hot-button issues that the media spends all its time on, but they both print money that doesn't exist, and they mortgage our future away from us.
I mean, this has been going on since I was a kid.
It's just reached epic proportions right now.
And we...
This is what we have to awaken people to.
We have to awaken people to the idea that they really do have some power.
There's that old motivational story.
They go to the circus and they see the big elephant giving little children rides.
No chains on it, no nothing.
And people say...
Couldn't the elephant just stomp everybody and run loose and tear down the tent?
It sure could.
How did the elephant get that way?
Well, when it was little, they put a chain on it, it screamed, it pulled, and after months and years, the elephant just gave up.
And then they took the chain off, and the elephant went through the rest of its life thinking that chain was still there.
And that's exactly where our mindset is in this country and around the world today.
We believe the chain is there.
And I think what people are so desperate to prevent people from figuring out is that they really still do have the power.
And if they realize one day that that chain isn't there and they exert their individualism against this more collectivist ideal, I think we could see the pendulum start to swing rapidly in the other direction and maybe begin to balance things out.
But we've got a couple of political, two, three political administrations.
We've got a lot of things to undo from Obama back through Bush, back through Clinton.
I mean, these things get enacted and then all of a sudden we forget about them.
And that's the challenge.
We don't need any more laws in this country.
We should stop making laws.
Liability, there's enough laws to deal with liability, crimes, etc.
We don't need more laws.
When we send people to Congress, we should actually send them there and they get brownie points and kudos and high polling numbers for actually taking laws off the books and simplifying the system.
But again, its complexity is its protection, but it doesn't protect the individual.
Yeah, that's for sure.
Alright, so I'd like to get to some of the solutions.
I know that you guys have put a lot of thought into how to protect yourself.
I want to get to that.
One question I'd like to ask first, and I was thinking about this, Robert, when you were talking, and Kerry, you were talking about sort of the good versus the evil, and I'm down with that.
I mean, I wish it could be a whole lot nicer than it is, but I think it is going to come down to sort of a good versus evil, Manichaean kind of battle.
But the question is, and this is something libertarians and even anarchists have a tough time with, and I know I do struggle with it, and I've got sort of some vague answers, but I wanted to get you guys thought of that.
So, who are we fighting?
I mean, who is the bad guy in this situation?
Okay, is it the politicians?
Well, the politicians are just trying to buy votes from the voters.
As you said, they watch the polls, and if voters wanted something, they'd probably head that way.
Is it the media?
Well, you know, it's the old Paul Simon song, I don't believe what I read in the papers, they're just having to capture my dime.
Oh, boy, back in the day when you'd get a paper for a dime, huh?
So, is it the media?
Well, the media will print what people want to read.
Is it the schoolteachers?
Well, you could argue, okay, so maybe it's a little bit more of the schoolteachers, but everybody's so pro-public education that they're just riding that wave of popularity.
They're just sanctified human beings, despite however much harm they do to the...
To the kids?
Obviously it's not the kids' fault.
So who is it exactly who is our enemy?
Who are we fighting?
Because I think that's one of the things.
World War II, the guy in the other side of the trench with the spiked helmet, he's your enemy, go get him.
But I feel a little bit like we sort of run around throwing airy curses in the air and not finding exactly who it is that we're fighting.
So I have a couple of thoughts about it, but who is the enemy?
Who are we actually fighting in this process?
Since I said it was good versus evil, I would say it's the individualists against the statists.
And however the statists line up, whether it's a conspiracy, whether it's banking cartels, whether it's politicians, anyone that advances the existence of the state to the detriment of the individual, and really at this point for every advance anyone that advances the existence of the state to the detriment of the individual, and really at this point That's the enemy.
And all of the stuff you're hearing, all of the scandals, everything else, it's all about statism.
And I'm not an anarchist.
I think you need some type of minimal structure to run things, but the structure shouldn't become the overarching concern of everybody in a society.
The structure should be there to facilitate...
All of us to be the best that we can as individuals.
The United States, when it was founded, was like, hey, pursuit of happiness.
Not anything else, not allegiance to your king, but you have the right to pursue your happiness.
And that's what the statists are turning back, whether it's smoking a damn cigarette in front of a Starbucks because you like to smoke.
Now, yes, you understand eventually it's going to kill you, but you enjoy it.
It's your choice, your decision as a human being.
But then you have Nanny Bloomberg come in and say, no, not only shouldn't you smoke that cigarette, but you shouldn't be drinking that double gulp cigarette.
Double gulp sugary beverage.
And by the way, cut down on your salt intake and your fat intake and also make sure you ride bikes because we have too many cars in the city and this guy is a statist.
He knows better.
And, you know, statism comes in a lot of different flavors, Stefan.
Let's face it.
I mean, you know, and it could be so well-intended and so well-intentioned, and yet it really winds up having the opposite effect of destroying freedom, destroying your rights.
So you have to find a way that you can avoid all that in your own life.
And it ain't easy because it's becoming more and more pervasive by the day.
No, it's always struck me that the government is also keen on protecting citizens, so you'd think they'd never stop wars, right?
I think pretty much an IED is a little bit more hazardous to you than a slightly too large pop.
But anyway, I won't get off on that rant.
Robert, I wanted to get your thoughts.
Who are we fighting?
Who can we put the crosshairs on metaphorically?
Well, actually, I think I agree with what Kerry said, and I'll take it a step further.
I don't know if it's necessarily a who.
The who's are really the symptoms.
I think it's really a point of view.
It's a philosophy.
It's the computer programming that has kind of run freely through society and pushed us in this direction.
And I think it's really about We're recapturing that point of view that is, again, more on the individual side as opposed to the groups or the state side because, you know, everyone talks about minorities.
The smallest minority in the world is the individual.
Any group or government or state or anything is already set up to oppose the smallest and the most important minority of all.
And if anything is done to impact the individual or to tread or to harm the individual, those are the things we have to look at.
It's not the state or the national government or certain groups.
All of those, to me, are secondary to the individual.
So it's really about getting our point of view, our philosophy back on track and really having people focus on self-reliance.
But in order to do that, we have to have an economic system.
We have to have a fiscal system that will allow the emergence of that kind of entrepreneurship again.
It's stifled.
It's suffocated right now.
Because of the way the monetary system is set up.
We can't just isolate one thing and say, if we fix this, the system is done.
I mean, we basically need to hit the reset button.
And it's going to be painful.
Everybody's wanted to avoid the pain.
I mean, you go back to 91 when we had the financial.
We should have had a financial collapse in 1991.
Then we pushed it off.
We printed money for dot-coms.
Then we had a bust in 2000.
Then we had a major one in 08, but nothing close to what it ever should have been.
I mean, we need to hit the reset button, and unfortunately, we're the ones alive right now.
Everybody's trying to push it off and hoping that they'll outlive it.
Well, the judgment day is upon us, and we can only push that forward, I don't think, too much longer.
I think everybody here, everybody listening is going to have a lot of lifestyle adjustments to make if they haven't made them already.
And the old idea of how we lived and the consumerism and, you know, I consume therefore I exist, that kind of a mentality I think is coming to a screeching halt.
And I think people's values just by default will get realigned and hopefully their philosophy and point of view will come back to, I think, what really matters.
And I'm just hoping that that will have an impact on the overall system and people's relationship to it.
Yeah, people have this weird idea that, you know, Americans have lost 40% of their wealth since 08.
But that's nonsense because the wealth was purely illusory to begin with.
That's like me putting on an Afro wig and then saying I lost my hair when I took it off.
Well, it wasn't there to begin with.
It's all made up monopoly nonsense.
If I'm on stilts and I'm like 10 feet tall and I take my stilts break, I'm like, oh my god, I've lost so much height.
It's like, no, no, this was just nonsense to begin with.
It's all a balloon and you don't run out of money that was all made up nonsense to begin with.
I mean, just my sort of brief answer, I agree with Kerry that the status of the answer, I think, is sort of the enemy.
But I guess...
I'd go a little bit further from what you were saying, though, in that there is no such thing as a disembodied ideology.
It's contained within people's minds, words, and actions, so it does manifest itself in the individual.
I have a lot of patience for people who have never really got the coercive nature of our existing system.
They don't really know where money comes from.
They don't really think about it.
They've got other things to do with their life, and it's the sort of irrational ignorance that so many economists have talked about.
It's like, why would you bother studying?
It's not going to change.
It doesn't really matter.
So for me, it's sort of like if you're in the South, you know, in the 1950s or whatever, and you come across some guy who thinks that lynching is just sitting someone down and giving them a stern talking to.
And he's like, well, you know, okay, I do that with my friends sometimes if we have disagreements, so I think lynching is fine.
And that's all he's ever been taught.
That's all he knows.
And then, you know, what you do is you sit him down and you say, listen, I have to give you a stern talking to about how lynching is not a stern talking to.
And he's showing pictures in movies of, you know, the beatings and the dragging behind the trucks and the hangings and so on.
Now he actually understands what lynching is and it's at that moment where he gains his moral autonomy.
That is the moment of unplugging from the matrix, right?
Where you show people what it really is.
And when you talk about the state and how laws are enacted and how democracy works and the nature of taxation and so on, the initiation of force that is the essence of statism, then you're showing people, hey, what you were taught was lynching?
Eh, it's not really lynching.
This is the reality.
It's not a stone talking to.
It's guys getting dragged behind trucks.
At that moment, you know, the light is on and light and dark come into somebody's soul.
Before, it was all just kind of muddied and gray and murky and propagandized.
And I think that the people who turn the lights on in people's minds are the people who are, in a sense, I hate to say making enemies because it sounds like you're making enemies out of former friends, but you're pointing out to people the reality of the system that they live under, that they're ground under.
And I think at that moment they become either an ally or an enemy.
And it can take a little while.
It can be a slow process as people sort of reorient themselves.
But, you know, after a couple of months at least, you have to know where people lie once they have the facts.
So I think that certainly the ideology is wretched.
But I would say most people are not responsible for all of the lies that they were forced, literally forced to imbibe as children, forced to go to school, your parents are forced to pay for it, it's all government run.
I don't hold people responsible for a state of inevitable ignorance after propaganda.
It's like saying to someone in Stalinist Russia in 1950, you're bad for being a communist!
You know, he's raised by communists.
He's taught communism is the best.
He's told that America is, you know, evil where they eat their children and all that kind of stuff.
So when he's in a state of propaganda, you know, he's not responsible.
But once you get people the facts, I think, and that's why people resist facts so much because facts give you moral clarity and moral clarity divides the world into light and dark and people don't want that.
I can understand why.
Anyway, so that's my sort of thoughts about it.
But let's talk to some of the – now that we've paralyzed people with despair and hopelessness and doom – Let's see if we can put a few high-voltage possibilities through their brains of what to do and how to prepare, because I know that's something that you guys are real experts at.
Well, for instance, you're raising kids, and you've got this whole American dream thing going on.
You want them to go to college, and that may or may not be where they should wind up.
So setting the expectation for your kid to automatically go to college And probably if like 86% of all the kids going, they're going to incur substantial debt to accomplish that degree, maybe that's an area where you need to think outside the box.
Maybe you send your kid...
Outside the country where post-secondary education is far less costly, maybe they go to a community college.
Just one example.
We've got this guy, Aaron Clary.
He's written a number of books.
He wrote a book called Enjoy the Decline, where he He's kind of basically, it's tongue-in-cheek.
I liken him to the next up-and-coming PJ O'Rourke, where he just says, you know, if you go work, basically, trying to get up the corporate ladder and all that, you're a chump because they're just going to take all your money anyway.
Don't save for retirement.
Because they're in the process of confiscating it.
And why should you make yourself miserable now, saving for retirement, when they're going to take that money anyway?
Enjoy it.
I mean, some of it's a little absurdist, and I don't buy into it, but what it does is makes you question through very effective use of humor exactly what the heck you're doing, making yourself miserable commuting to the city every day, spending an hour and a half on the train, or In traffic.
And he's a great example.
We have Elijah Johnson.
I think he's 17 years old now.
He's been producing YouTube videos talking about the corrupt monetary policy and really mobilizing people his age who are the future low-information voters of tomorrow.
Or you got David Morgan who's been a sound money advocate and champion for close to 40 years and knows more about how that silver comes to your vault, how it gets in your pocket than just about anybody else I've ever met.
And Martin Armstrong, a guy who lost his freedom for blowing the whistle on what was the predecessor of hyper or hypo-hypothecation.
And, you know, these people, like, you would think somebody like him who really...
He lost everything, including his freedom for many years.
You'd think he'd be bitter, and yet he shows you that it doesn't do you any good to be bitter.
You just go on with your life and don't let them get to you.
Don't let the bastards get you down, effectively.
Robert's got stories, too.
To some extent, Robert and I both try to practice what we preach as much as we can.
Well, there's nobody that hasn't been hurt by what's happened economically, politically, their families.
Everybody listening to this has one or more people that has really probably suffered badly in the last five years based on what's happened economically.
But we were talking about college, tuition, those kinds of things.
I think that you're talking about solutions.
If I were a young person thinking about going to college, before I actually did that, this is what I would do.
If I had an idea that I wanted to be an attorney, for example, I would pick someone out I thought was a success, someone I might like to become.
I'd find out what their RAC rate was and I'd have either myself or my folks hire them for one or two hours.
And I'd go in and I'd sit there with a list of questions and I'd say, so tell me what you do when you get up in the morning.
Do you have this kind of recognition you thought you were really going to have?
Do you feel you've earned the place in life you dreamed about when you went to school?
What would you do differently if you had it to do all over again today going into this profession?
Would you go into it or would you go into something else?
And pick two or three or four professionals or ideas that you think you want to go incur fifty or a hundred thousand dollars in debt for and go have those conversations.
Because that's either going to propel you aggressively in that direction or let you make course corrections, or you may decide to do something completely differently.
But I think one of the biggest mistakes people make is they get in, they're led right along, they follow along, they're in so far, they're in so deep financially, and it's hard to make a course correction at that point.
But we've got to think proactively and And learn from people who have been where we want to go and ask a lot more questions.
Asking questions is probably the single biggest important survival skill that people can adopt.
Yeah, and don't assume that you need a piece of paper to follow your dreams.
I mean, obviously, to be a doctor, to be a lawyer, you have to run through the status hurdles.
But let's say you want to be a lawyer because you want to help people mediate disputes.
Well, you can become a mediator for much cheaper.
In fact, you could just hang out your shingle as a mediator.
I don't even think it's a licensed term.
There's things that you can do to help people resolve disputes that don't involve the court system that you can have pretty much the same skills to do that.
I mean, the two major areas where I have really focused my energies is I used to be a software Was I trained in entrepreneurship?
No.
Was I trained in software?
No.
I mean, I got my first computer when I was 11 and took it apart and put it back together and figured out how they all worked and programming forever.
So those were things.
I didn't have a computer science degree.
I didn't have an MBA. I did a lot of sales and marketing.
I didn't have sales training.
I just would read and would learn and would go and observe people who were really good at what they do and absorb the lessons, take them to lunch, ask them questions.
You can...
Pursue passions on the job.
People who have a lot of skill are usually very happy to share their knowledge.
I've had countless conversations with people starting podcasts and all that to try and help them get started and all that.
I'm happy to help people.
It's not like we're running out of people to talk to in the world.
Don't assume that you have to go and get the piece of paper.
In fact, the people who will only hire you based on a piece of paper are probably not people that you want to be working for.
I just really wanted to point that out.
If you want to be a teacher, you can teach people on the internet.
You can set up services where you just tutor people and so on.
People are only going to care how good you are.
I don't really care about a piece of paper.
Even to be a reporter or whatever, you don't actually need the piece of paper.
Question that.
Going for the piece of paper is a way of deferring the anxiety of actually going out and doing things in the world.
I would really suggest to people, nobody trained me on how to interview people, nobody trained me on how to do an internet philosophy show.
There was no such thing really before.
Don't assume that all of these things need to be taught to you or that you need to be branded with that very expensive brand just to make it out of the paddock.
It's really not the case for a lot of things.
Always look for alternatives to the piece of paper, which actually gets you out there, gets you learning from smart people.
Also, you'll never learn as productively as when your own money is on the line.
I mean, boy, when I first started We all went heavily into debt, personal debt.
We all signed things to get the business up and running.
Boy, you're really motivated to be good at business when you're significantly in debt getting a business started.
Put a little firework up your butt and you'll be surprised at how much you can learn when you're freaking out a lot.
You know, panic is the best university.
So I sort of wanted to point that out because we kind of put on this conveyor belt.
And, you know, think of Bill Gates.
Microsoft doesn't work because he didn't have a computer science degree or Steve Jobs or any of these guys.
I mean, you know, seize the fish.
And wait, no, that's not it.
Carp the fish.
Anyway, it's something like that.
So, yeah, so that fish apparently is really important.
I just wanted to point out.
Seize the fish.
Well, that's one thing on Financial Survival Network that we talk about a lot is entrepreneurialism, sales.
You know, sales is one of the top five income-producing professions, and yet it's something that you cannot get a degree for from any college in the world.
And it is a profession, and it's something you could do without going to college.
Some of the best salespeople I know Everything in life also comes down to sales.
No matter what you're doing, you're selling something.
You're selling yourself.
You're selling your work.
You're selling your experience.
Whether you're getting a job or starting a company, it doesn't matter.
And your point of this degree mentality that somehow you go and you get a worthless degree.
And that was another thing Aaron Clary started.
I don't know if you guys are aware, but June is worthless degree awareness month.
So Aaron started.
Yeah.
Actually, June is the perfect month because it's when all the arts graduates try to find work.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Worthless degree awareness month every June, June 1st.
And so many of them are worthless.
I went to college, but I was working the whole time I went.
I went to law school.
They teach you how to do everything but actually practice law.
And then your learning starts when you get out of school.
If you go to college with that mindset, it's a lot different than most kids who graduate and think, okay, I've learned everything I need to know.
That's it.
And then they go into this acquisitive mode and it really doesn't work.
So these are the types of things that we hope to convey at the conference, allowing you, because it all comes down to you, the individual, to create your own roadmap for staying free.
It's having a rich, worthwhile life and existence and adding meaning to the people that you come into contact with, that you connect with.
It's all about connections.
I mean, look at us.
If we were to draw a triangle between the three of us now, we're probably...
It's a 6,000-mile triangle.
Here we are.
Maybe we're being monitored by the NSA, but the three of us are having a meaningful conversation, discussion about issues that are really, really cut to the core that you will never see discussed on the mainstream media, and you really won't even hear in most college philosophy courses.
For that matter.
And it's really where do you derive your meaning in life?
And what really is it?
What are you doing?
How are you making a difference?
And you don't have to be saving the manatees.
They seem to be doing okay on their own.
I saw one the other day down here in Florida.
He seemed to be all right.
Nobody was taking care of him.
And that's not what it's about.
And, you know, I think the technology has freed us up to follow those passions and pursuits in life.
And I know all three of us are doing it, that you've never had that opportunity in the history of the world to really follow a passion and not wind up cutting off your ear or, you know, doing weird things like artists do.
You know, artists and musicians were the only ones that ever followed their passions or for the most part, you know, other offbeat types.
It wasn't really possible in the industrial age up until very recently for an average person to say, I have a passion that I'm going to follow.
And now you can do it.
So, you know, a lot of the survival, a lot of the freedom is, hey, when you're pursuing your passion, Whether you want to be an actress in New York, so you'll submit yourself to all sorts of indignities, waiting tables, and whatever you have to do to achieve your passion.
But now ordinary folks like us...
Can do this, you know, whether it's radio or whatever it is.
And it's just so important.
And that's a major step to your personal freedom because, you know, when you've got this passion, nobody really can enslave your mind.
Yeah.
I mean, it's true.
I mean, gold and everything else is great, but at the end of the day, an investment in yourself always produces the best return.
And it's not just learning one thing.
I mean, having as many skill sets in your toolbox is critical for long-term survival and being able to adapt and change.
And that's just the essence, the bottom line.
There's an elevated threat level to our liberty right now on so many fronts.
And, I mean, what we're trying to accomplish with the Liberty Mastermind is really, with the 15 speakers we've got coming, we want to define problems and frame solutions.
And that's really what this diverse skill set of people are going to be doing.
Fifteen speakers in one day and three panel discussions, it's structured like a rapid-fire I mean, you have to...
Seminars, live seminars and things, sometimes they can drone on, but we've structured this like a live Twitter feed.
Everybody's speaking for 20 minutes.
There's three panel discussions for 40.
There's lunch, two breaks.
And when you look at the schedule, I mean, you're just getting bombarded with information and actually being able to press the flesh with people.
And it's, you know, people...
Sometimes people remember a portion of what they hear, they remember even more of what they see, but when they really cement knowledge is when they actually participate in it.
And that's the real advantage to coming to an event like the Liberty Mastermind.
Fantastic.
Alright, well listen, let's just make sure we get the website out.
Again, I'm sorry I can't be there, but make sure we get the website out and get some more people to come and attend it.
I think it's going to be great.
Again, I'm sorry, not so much I'd like to come and talk, but I really wanted to come and meet and hear.
So a couple of the names that people are going to see when they come and also the website and other information that's necessary.
I don't think we've even mentioned the date.
That's bad.
Well, it's libertymastermind.us and the date is June 28th, 29th.
28th, there's a dinner where we'll all be basically breaking bread together.
And then on the 29th, we've got like...
Like Robert said, 15 guests.
I'll let Robert go down the list because I don't have the best memory.
I just know we have an unbelievable list of guests and it's not like when you go to one of these super conferences and there's hundreds of guests and you have to choose which one to go to.
You're going to see everybody there that you've been reading their stuff on the internet for years already.
And watching their YouTubes, and maybe we'll have you do a special kind of presentation, do a YouTube stuff, and so you'll be there in spirit, you know, even though you can't be there physically, which everybody understands.
That sounds great.
So, Robert, let's have some names.
Oh, well, we've got Martin Armstrong, armstroneconomics.com.
Obviously, Kerry Lutz with financialsurvivalnetwork.com.
We've got me, Robert Ian, conquerchange.com.
Chris Dwayne, don't tread on me, or don't tread on...
It's got a bunch of dashes.
Yeah, it's got a lot of dashes.
You'll find it.
David Morgan.
We have Bill Murphy from the Gold Antitrust Action Committee.
Jeff Berwick from the Dollar Vigilante.
We've got Andy Hoffman from Miles Franklin.
John Rubino from dollarcollapse.com.
We've got Michael Krieger from libertyblitzkrieg.com.
We've got, let's see, Jay Taylor from miningstocks.com.
Elijah Johnson from, what's the new website, Kerry?
Is it financeandliberty.com?
I don't remember, but he's the 17-year-old.
He's smarter than Ben Bernanke.
Yeah, he's been coined as smarter than Ben Bernanke.
I gave him that.
Yeah, it's true, actually.
But Jay Taylor, Elijah, we've got Mickey Fulp, the mercenary geologist.
Aaron Clary, Captain Capitalism.
Let's see, we've got Gary Gibson from Dollar Vigilante.
We've got Jerry Robinson from ftmdaily.com.
We've got Lindsey Hall.
He's not even on the site yet, yeah.
Yeah, he will be tonight from rmbgroup.com.
We've got a couple more and a couple more surprises.
Every one of these individuals, like we said, have a huge audience of their own.
And putting them together, it's going to be a very intimate event, a lot of critical mass.
And don't worry, we're already looking at doing another one, Stefan.
So even though you'll be at this one in spirit, I think we'll plan for the next one to actually have you there because it's...
The response has just been overwhelming.
And I think people want to come to a first event like this because it will be smaller and it will be more intimate as these events always are the first time you do them.
And you're going to have that opportunity.
But when an event like this after the second, third, or fourth time grows into hundreds of people or 500 or more, it becomes less personal.
And it's always at the beginning with events like this when you've got a smaller group where you actually really create those connections, networks, and memories really that are going to last really for a lifetime because you don't get this kind of personal attention at any other conference.
Well, I think that's obviously very, very true.
And I'll put all of this information in the low bar under the video and on the podcast feed.
Of course, I thank you guys.
I know in the business world I did some conferences.
It's a monstrous thing to pull together.
So I really appreciate what you guys are doing.
And I think those who are going to get the great information from the conference will be especially grateful.
I certainly would love to bungee in electronically.
But thank you so much for the time.
It is always a mind-expanding time to chat with you guys, and I hope we can do it again soon.
So thanks so much, and I guess I'll be talking to you later in June.
Sounds great.
Thank you.
Best of health.
Take care, guys.
Okay.
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