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July 13, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
56:53
The Biggest Scam In United States History | G. Edward Griffin and Stefan Molyneux
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Hi everybody, this is Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio, one of our very most...
popular fiat currency kind grandpas is back g edward griffin uh... we really appreciate you taking the time he is the author of the creature from jackal island it's it's in its fifth edition now uh... which to people who know about e-books is something that happens with trees he's a creature from jackal island a second look at the federal reserve he is the founder of freedom force international you can find him at reality zone dot com or freedom force international dot org and
That's a brainful of letters to remember, but we'll put the links on the podcast and the video notes right below.
So thanks, of course, Edward.
It's great to chat with you again.
Well, thank you, Stephan.
I've been looking forward to this.
All right.
A barrel full of new listeners since we last talked.
We've been gaining 500 to 1,000 a day for a while, so I'm sorry for those listeners who have been around for a long time, but for the new listeners who are being brought in by the European migrant crisis, the Donald Trump campaign and so on, They don't know quite as much about the Federal Reserve and its history and its ownership and its secret shareholding cabal and so on.
So I wonder if you could dip into your anecdotes of history and give us a brief introduction to the Federal Reserve and why people should care and why it matters.
Yeah, those are all good entry ways into the topic.
Let's start with the last one.
Why does it matter?
Who cares about the Federal Reserve, right?
It sounds like it's all about banking and monetary policy and boring things like that.
Actually, when I got into the topic, I thought it might be that way and I was very reluctant to do it but I wanted to do something on – I wanted to make a documentary on inflation And I had some kind of a vague idea that the Federal Reserve somehow was involved with it, so I thought I would check it out.
Well, to make a long story short, and as you very well know, Stephan, what I discovered was more like a mystery story rather than a textbook elocution of what I'm supposed to know about discount rates, for example.
It was a mystery.
In fact, actually it was a murder mystery.
It was at that level of I discovered who was guilty of committing the crime, who committed the murder, where they laid the bodies and what the cover stories were and it became intriguing and so it all started with that secrecy that you mentioned a moment ago that surrounded the founding of the Federal Reserve on an island
Believe it or not, an island off the coast of Georgia, and it was called Jekyll Island.
Well, that intrigued me, you know, and I thought, here's a handle.
You know, you're taking a topic like this, you've got to have a handle to attract attention.
So I thought, boy, if I'll call this the creature from Jekyll Island, and if it ever wound up in a bookstore window, and somebody was walking by and they were to see it, they'd think, oh boy, this is a A sequel to Jurassic Park or something like that.
So that was a kind of little trick in the title but actually the title has a great deal of significance because as I just said the Federal Reserve was created on Jekyll Island back in 1910.
But that's just the beginning of the mystery.
I'll come back to the mystery because we started off by saying, what is the Federal Reserve and why should people care?
We should care because the Federal Reserve is a cartel.
Let's use the word, the correct word.
It's not a government agency like most people think, like I thought originally.
It has some of the characteristics of a government agency.
In other words, it has the power of law behind it.
Because what these very clever bankers did back in 1913 when it was all passed into law is they took their cartel agreement and they figuratively erased the title across the top that said cartel agreement and they wrote in very carefully Federal Reserve Act.
And they took it to the idiots in Congress who thought it was somehow a measure to control the big powerful bankers.
They had no idea, most of them had no idea, the congressmen and senators, had no idea that this was actually written by the very banking interests that it was supposedly going to control.
And the fact that the legislation which was designed or offered to the American people as a way of the people through their elected representatives controlling the banking industry, which they were very suspicious about.
And if they had known that that legislation to control those big bad banks was actually written by the big bad banks, well, of course, it wouldn't have floated.
And of course, it wasn't their first kick at the can, right?
They had been struggling since the foundation of the republic to gain control of the currency and to have central banking.
Absolutely.
They had central banking several times and it's a very fascinating part of history that the Congress and the people of the country were fed up with it.
They saw the devastating effect it had on the economy and they got rid of it twice before.
Actually, three times before, if you want to consider what was in place at the time the Constitution was originally written.
We already had a central bank in place at that time, but wisely, in my view, they got rid of it.
And then the fourth time was the Federal Reserve System.
So anyway, here we have a cartel of banks.
Who got together and decided not to wait for legitimate legislation to be written by people who wanted true reform in banking.
They said to themselves, let's get in the front of this parade ourselves.
We will write the legislation to control our own industry.
And that was the reason for the secrecy.
And I don't know whether your new listeners would find this of great interest or not, I'll just summarize by saying that it was a highly secret meeting that took place.
In my view, I don't think many wars of history were ever plotted under conditions of greater secrecy than that.
I mean, they met together clandestinely in New Jersey in the evening for a night train.
They boarded on the private railroad car of Senator Nelson Aldridge, who was part of the They were told to arrive at the train station one by one, not to come together, not to be seen together, not to talk to newspaper reporters and all that.
And when they got on board the train in this private railroad car, they were instructed when they addressed each other not to use their last names, to use first names only in the privacy of this car.
I thought that was weird.
I began to question some of these stories.
But then it was confirmed later by the participants themselves who wrote about it in later years.
One of the fellows wrote, he said, the reason we did that is because we knew that the servants on board the train might talk.
And if they knew who we were and after the trip was over they spoke to their family or friends and the word leaked out that these particular individuals were there, why it could have, you know, defeated the mission completely.
So a lot of secrecy went on and the reason for it is quite Logical, quite reasonable, and that is because these bankers did not want the world to know that they were the ones that were creating the Federal Reserve Act.
Well, so why is this important?
Well, just think about it.
What is a cartel?
Well, a cartel is kind of a shared monopoly, isn't it?
It's a monopoly over an industry but it's shared by more than one company, the competitors it seems like or prior competitors.
Certainly that was the case in banking.
We had some giant banking houses out there, international banking firms, Kuhn Loeb and Company and J.P.
Morgan and the Rockefeller Banking Dynasty and they were all fighting each other, trying to dominate the financial markets of the world.
There was blood all over the battlefield in London and Paris and New York.
And they decided, hey guys, we're not going to knock each other out of the ring here.
Why don't we just get together and we'll put on a little gentle fight for public consumption.
They like to think that we're competing but quietly and secretly, we will get together and form a cartel and not compete anymore.
And we'll fix interest rates.
We'll regulate our own industry.
We'll make sure that strong competitors don't come into the ring.
We're in.
Nobody else gets in now, anyway, no big ones.
So they wanted to control it.
So when you think about that, here we have our monetary system.
We have a situation in which the government of the United States was fooled or purchased, if you wish to be more cynical, was purchased into transferring the right to create the nation's money to a group of private banks.
And that's really what happened.
The United States had the authority to issue its own currency, its own money, which most countries do.
It's considered to be one of the definitions of sovereignty.
A nation creates its own money.
It operates its own military.
Okay?
Those two things prop up a nation.
And here we have a situation in which the Congress of the United States gave away the power to create its own money to a group of private banks, a cartel of banks.
And nobody, even to this day very few people know, That's exactly what happened.
Our money is not issued by the United States Treasury.
It's issued by the Federal Reserve System.
And once you understand that the Federal Reserve System is nothing more or less than a cartel of banks, this should be a pretty shocking situation.
And if you wonder why, here, fast forward 100 years later, you wonder why Every time the banks get into trouble, there's a fast session and the congressmen raise their hands and they vote this, this and billions of dollars go where?
To the banks.
Why is that?
Well, it's because it's designed to operate that way.
They always say that they're trying to raise this money, bail out the banks to save the nation or to keep the economy from going bust.
But you know, where does the money go?
Follow the money as they say.
It goes to the banks.
Even the third world countries that are getting bailed out.
We're sending money down to Mexico now, or we're sending it to Argentina, or we're sending it somewhere to help those poor countries.
It used to be, we'd say, to help them fight communism.
Now we say to help them fight terrorism.
And we're sending the money.
And what happens to the money?
Follow the money.
Well, it comes back to the New York banks.
Because these countries owe money to the banks and they haven't been able to pay their interest payments and so Congress votes the money and interesting the way that works because the Federal Reserve actually creates the money.
Congress says yes go ahead and then the Federal Reserve creates the money and then gives it to the Congress and then the Congress sends it to the third world country and the third world country writes the check and pays the banks for the interest payment that they're behind on and it comes back to the banks.
So once you understand That the whole system is rigged to do exactly that, to legally plunder the American people and transfer money through the banking, I mean through the government and into the banking system and prop them up so they can do whatever they want to, then you finally begin to understand what in the heck is really going on in the world today.
So that's why it matters is because the American people and to a large extent people all around the world now are being legally plundered by this system.
It struck me when you were talking about murder, that's a great introduction, and it struck me that when you murder a man, you've committed a terrible crime, but at least your victim's troubles are over.
When you murder money, Your victim's troubles are just beginning and will continue to escalate.
And there's an old saying from Adam Smith that people of a particular segment of the economy, manufacturers or whatever, they almost never get together without the result being some collusion against the interests of the general public.
And I think we can see that here.
And in the free market it's tough to keep a cartel going because, you know, you get a bunch of oil companies who are all going to raise the price of oil.
The first person to break ranks, the first company to break ranks Scoops up half the marketplace and makes a killing.
So without the – people have always been trying to form cartels but because the economic – they're unenforceable because they're not legal contracts.
And so the first company to break ranks cleans up and that's why they always dissolve.
But when cartels – and I'm thinking of like East India Company mercantilism throughout the empire as well.
When cartels can gain the power of the state then they can finally achieve this nirvana for them and hell for the public of being able to set rates and set prices and set advantages with no one being really able to break ranks and that combination of the desire for cartel or rent-seeking or unjust profits plus the power of the state I think is one of the
One of the great mysteries that once we begin to penetrate into the Federal Reserve, we can see, and it's not a problem of the free market, it's a problem of state power and the granting of monopoly.
Exactly, Stephan.
And I'm so glad you're preaching that sermon, because the world definitely needs to hear it.
That's the myth of monopoly capitalism.
A true capitalist system, if it's defined in terms of a free market, Not in terms of monopoly capitalism, and you get into all these definitions, but the classic definition of capitalism.
Monopolies really cannot, as you just said, they cannot last very long.
And not only do the members of the cartel break rank, but there's always some new kid in the block coming along, and he's got a better way.
And all of a sudden, here comes a company completely out of the woodwork, and within a few years, they're a serious competitor.
Well, the old timers don't like that either.
That's why in every case I have observed, every case you see a monopoly or a cartel in existence, it has always sought the support of government to make it legal and to become the enforcement arm of the cartel.
Quite right.
One of the founding Arguments of the revolutionaries in the late 18th century in America was taxation without representation.
And I've always been struck by the idea that one of the great problems, of course, of central banking is it substitutes debt for taxation.
In other words, it provides politicians the ability to give free money to people because the debt is down the road.
They can provide benefits without directly raising taxes.
And this creates huge distortions in the political system because if the government says, hey here's $1,000 and then they have to tax you $1,500 to give you the $1,000 people go, hey wait that's not really a very good deal now is it?
But if they can borrow the $1,000 what they're providing is taxation without representation to the next generation.
And I think that's done a huge amount to corrupt politics in America.
Absolutely.
And when I think of that phrase, taxation without representation, it triggers a lot of things in my mind.
Today we have kind of the opposite, don't we?
We have representation without taxation, which is worse.
And then there's another thing that comes to mind with that phrase is that even taxation without representation Wouldn't be so bad if the concept of the proper function of the state were clearly defined so that the state's legitimate purpose was just merely to defend the life, liberty and property of its citizens.
But where we get into trouble is where we have this democratic winner-take-all mentality.
The idea that if we can just somehow muster 51% of the vote, That means the winner can do whatever the winner wants to do.
And it's just too bad you happen to be in that 49% sucker because now we've got you, you know?
And it's this mentality that has gripped the world and it's in that kind of a framework that we worry about representation.
If we knew that the whole function of the state was simply to defend us and not to be aggressive in any way and not to become the great leader, the great organizer, the great distributor and educator and all of those things, Well then, you know, representation doesn't become very important because the state is not going to harm you very much anyway.
Problem is, of course, that those systems never last unless there's a watchdog group of some kind, the guardians.
You know, somebody in society has got to take on the responsibility of making sure that such a system not only is created but that it is maintained.
And that is another issue, but still, it's possible and it's encouraging to me to know that we do have answers.
We don't have to give up our hands in despair.
There are answers out there.
The state-limiting superheroes seem to be in relatively short supply throughout history, but of course we all do our part to see what we can get.
Now, of course, I don't think it's an accident that after the creation of the Federal Reserve, just a couple of years later, or at least after the plotting to the creation of the Federal Reserve, we get the income tax.
And I wonder if you could help people understand, because the income tax is, it's like gravity.
Like, I mean, if you've just been born after, I guess, 1913 or whatever, I guess most of us have but it's just like well of course there's income tax but the fact is that still for the majority of the American political history there was no such thing and of course it was a temporary measure and there's nothing more permanent than a temporary government.
Temporary government programs are like temporary tattoos that get carved into your bone marrow or something, but what is the relationship between central banking and the income tax?
Well, I'd rather talk about the nature of the income tax and then we can see the comparison and the relationship.
The income tax is not what it appears to be.
Let's start with that.
Well, what does that mean?
Well, it appears to be a means of providing revenue to operate the government.
But it's not that.
And we know it's not that because the people that created it told us so.
I've forgotten the fellow's name right now.
I have it in my book.
You might remember it.
But he was the head of one of the branches of the Federal Reserve System and it was after World War II and he had written a scholarly article in a banking journal.
advocating automatic or mandatory withholding of income tax from people's paychecks.
And this was a new idea at that time and he's the fellow that advanced the idea and the concept.
And he explained that now he said this is not, as we all know, that the purpose of the income tax is not to raise revenue.
And of course my eyes were popping out of my head.
I knew that but here's a guy saying so who actually is the head of the parade.
And he said it's obviously not that because he said now with modern banking structures and he was referring to the Federal Reserve System, he said now we have the ability to create all the money we need.
We don't have to tax anybody.
We just create it.
So this is wonderful.
It's a wonderful invention and it's the way it's going to be in the future so we don't really need taxes everybody for revenue but we do need taxes he said for redistribution of wealth and to engineer society and he didn't say it in these words but it was clear he was implying we need taxes to have exemption so we can Reward our friends and punish our enemies.
To restructure society.
And there you have it.
That's the only reason we have an income tax.
And just imagine how little control the ruling parties would have if there were no income tax.
Because everybody complies with the rules that come out of Washington because of the flow of tax money and the flow of tax exemptions.
That is the mechanism, those are the levers, one of the most powerful levers they have over us and people buckle under it.
They would probably fight to the death if that kind of control were being enforced by bayonets and bullets.
But the fact that it's being enforced by economic measures and the flow of money and credits and taxes, it's subtle, you don't know who the enemy is and people just buckle under.
Yeah, and the idea that we could have a political system where people argue ideas rather than the bribocracy that seems to be going on at the moment.
It would be tough, I think, without the sort of government monopoly control or the granting of the government monopoly of control to the Federal Reserve and the capacity to create money and the lack of competition.
You can't sort of go and start transacting things in Bitcoin because the government doesn't really like that too too much.
The idea that we'd have a political discussion based upon ideas rather than, I wish a political favor for my friends and I wish political punishment for my enemies, I mean, it seems almost a utopian dream at this point.
Yeah, it is.
It is a utopian dream for the collectivists.
And that's why we have it.
That's why the number of rules and regulations and administrative decisions on the income tax are so voluminous.
When you think about it, why do we have how many books or how many thousands of pages of rules and regulations to administer the income tax?
Thousands upon thousands.
Nobody's ever read them.
Nobody understands them.
You have a building full of accountants and lawyers and they don't understand it either.
Why do we have that?
It's because every one of those pages, every one of those paragraphs, every one of those sentences Are in there as a loophole for a friend of the ruling class, or a loophole to punish an enemy of the ruling class.
It's all about inequality.
It's all about power.
Well, and of course it's all about giving the IRS the capacity to shred people's lives pretty much at will, because there's nobody who could possibly claim to be in perfect compliance with an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of contradictory laws.
Absolutely.
Not only the IRS, but all the other laws thrown into that.
Yes, we're all guilty.
Absolutely guilty of some heinous crime.
Right.
Now, the relationship between the control of currency and the, it seems to me, quite necessary resulting control of interest rates is something that a lot of people have trouble with.
And, of course, people see interest rates.
We all make decisions based on interest rates every day.
But the degree of government control over interest rates and the fact that it seems to be pretty necessary once you get fiat currency, control of the interest rate seems pretty necessary.
I wonder if you could help people understand those kind of dominoes.
Yes, I have trouble myself even though I understand the mechanism.
Sometimes I wonder at the mentality that is being applied to the mechanism because it doesn't seem to make sense but usually if you dig deep enough, you find out that it's serving the bank's interest in some way.
First of all, the interest rates really are determined by the Fed, not by the government.
But still, the Fed is very sensitive to the government's needs because let's face it, that is a partnership we're dealing with here.
Political scientists and the monetary scientists, they work together.
There's kind of a revolving door in many cases.
Sometimes they're on one side and sometimes they're on the other.
But we do have these two interests that must be served.
The banks have to serve their interests and of course they can't ignore completely the political needs of the support they get from Congress.
So the interest rates as I see it at least, Stephan, is primarily a means of helping the government float its debt.
I mean let's face it now, the federal government lives entirely on debt.
It used to be, when I first became aware of this, that most of the debt, the bonds and the treasury notes and so forth, were being snapped up by, willingly snapped up by individuals, by corporations, institutions, other governments, other central banks even, because they figured that it was a good investment, that Uncle Sam was going to strangle the citizens of America to death if necessary to pay back those interest rates, and they knew that was a good bet.
But then of late, and let me go back, when I first became aware of this, I think that the amount of debt that the government was issuing was picked up by the Federal Reserve only to the extent of about seven percent.
It was amazing.
I thought it was more than that but it was only about seven.
Today, it's more like 98, almost 100 percent.
Nobody wants to buy U.S.
government debt anymore because they know it's on that slippery slope down to oblivion.
That's because they can count.
They can count.
When your debt is way bigger than your entire GDP and half of your GDP is transfer payments to people dependent on the state and the military, welfare, warfare, industrial complex, it's not that hard to figure out that it can never be repaid.
It can never be repaid, exactly.
And so, yeah, the word is out.
And so what's happening now is that the Federal Reserve is picking up all of the debt, which means that the money supply is expanding much more rapidly than it ever did before.
Previously, when the government expanded the debt, the money supply didn't expand that much because it was being picked up by people that had money already in their savings accounts.
So they were taking existing money and giving it to the government for the debt.
Now that doesn't happen.
Newly created money is what's being used to give to the government to buy the debt.
And so that means that inflation is incredibly out of control.
And as you've said, it will never be repaid.
There's no possible way for it.
But the point is that I'm gradually leading up to is I think that the reason for interest rates traditionally has always been to make it easy for the government to push its bonds and notes onto the public, onto buyers.
That's all.
Simple as that.
And to keep that money supply relatively under control so they could boast and say, well, we only have a 3% inflation rate or something like that, when now that's no longer possible.
And the fact that the money supply is expanding so rapidly and yet our inflation rate is not keeping pace is a great mystery to many people.
To me, it's not so much of a mystery.
I think that there are two elements involved.
First of all, the inflation rate, the official numbers that are being told are not true.
The true inflation rate – this is Washington calling here to give me the latest figures.
That's right.
It's the red phone.
Do you need to answer it and change it to your cape?
I'm sorry.
I should have unplugged that.
No, that's fine.
That's fine.
So, yeah, I think the numbers that are coming out of Washington are totally fictitious, but that's only a small part of the deception.
The real thing is what they like to call the Euro dollars.
The world still is functioning on Federal Reserve notes.
Most countries have, or many countries I should say, have currencies that are much more worthless even than the Federal Reserve notes.
And in a country like Zimbabwe for example, it's impossible to engage in any reasonable economic transaction in Zimbabwean dollars.
It's just impossible.
So if you want to buy a house or operate a business or buy a car or anything, you have to use Federal Reserve notes, American dollars.
And this is true all around the world.
So no matter how many of these phony monopoly paper dollars that are being created by the Federal Reserve, It seems like the world has an insatiable appetite for them because they need it to run their own currencies.
But that game too is coming to an end and I'm sure everybody can see that.
Stephan, as you said, people can count and all you have to do is just look at the charts and just look at that hockey stick, that vertical climb on the number of dollars that are being pushed into the world economy and you can see that this is absolutely unsustainable.
So, where it's going, of course, we know in general where it's going, but we don't know specifically, and we certainly don't know the timing.
In general, it's going belly up.
The dollar is going to be rejected totally by the world as a reserve currency.
It's coming.
When it'll hit, I don't know.
But, you know, I'm a pretty old guy.
And I'm pretty sure it's going to be in my lifetime.
That's optimistic.
We'll do some cardio before the end just to make sure we can see the fulfillment of these youthful anticipations.
And it's funny because interest rates is one of these things that, because it's controlled by government, again people just don't really care that much about it, but interest rates of course are fantastic signals for entrepreneurs, right?
Because when people are saving a lot of money, Then that means that they're deferring their spending, right?
They save a bunch of money, you know, I'm saving up to buy a house.
So your money's not in circulation, sitting in the bank or whatever, or under your mattress.
You can go buy a house.
And of course, when people are saving a lot of money, it means there's lots of money available to lend.
And that means that the price of money, which is what interest is, will go down because you have an excess supply.
So when the interest rates go down, that's a signal to entrepreneurs, of course, that there's Spending that's being deferred, so now's the time, you know, borrow the money, upgrade your plant, because, you know, build a bunch of houses, because people are really getting ready, they're like the bow pulling, it's going to go off, and of course now, and then of course when people start spending a lot of money, then there's less money available to lend, so interest rates go up, which slows down capital investment and so on.
All of these incredibly fine-tuned signals have just, I mean, people have just taken hammers to this sort of Swarovski crystal indicators that the free market provides for free.
You know, I mean, the interest rates is one of these, like prices, one of these great pieces of information provided to entrepreneurs at no cost to themselves.
You have to buy something to know how much it's worth.
And the degree of economic misallocation, which is, you know, a pretty banal term for people may end up starving, you know, but the degree of economic misallocation by governments taking over currency first and then smashing the long-term and short-term signals for entrepreneurs through the but the degree of economic misallocation by governments taking over currency first and then Again, it's hard.
You know, I've been an entrepreneur, I guess, 20 years or more now.
And it's really hard for most people to understand how difficult it is to be an entrepreneur when you literally have no idea what's going on, you know, in an age of regime uncertainty which was hitherto largely unknown in sort of the post-industrial West, but I think it's kind of like a banana state republic randomness these days.
Well, everything you say is right on target in my view, Stephan.
Yeah, the malfunctioning of the free market, Malfunctioning is a benign term too, isn't it?
I mean, the free market is dead, let's face it.
It's like saying there's a malfunctioning in my life support system.
My phone won't boot up.
Yeah, nothing is working the way it should and we've evolved into a system in which excellence is not determined by production or even honesty.
It is not determined, success is not determined by the ability to serve society, to provide more goods and services at a lower price.
It's determined by one thing only and that's your political influence.
The degree to which you can go to a legislative assembly and influence the legislators to pass laws that favor you and your enterprise and give you an advantage over your competitors.
And the price for that, of course, is passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices for the goods and services and a lot less choice.
So there you have it.
That's the world that we live in.
And I see all these poor souls out there in the streets demonstrating against capitalism, you know.
We want more government controls because look at what these big bad capitalist banks have done.
They don't realize that they're just calling for more of the same drug that's killing the system.
And they don't realize that we haven't had true capitalism here for over 50 years, you know.
It's sad.
I mean, certainly since when Nixon took the U.S. off the last remnants of the gold standard in 71, because it was really tough to have a welfare state and run the war in Vietnam at the same time and bribe all the countries around the world to do whatever you wanted in the sort of economic dollar imperialism that's characterized the post-Second World War U.S. because it was really tough to have a welfare state The war in Vietnam at the same time and bribe all the countries around the world to do whatever you wanted in this sort of economic dollar imperialism that's characterized the post Second World War U.S.
foreign policy.
It has been a long time and it's really tragic but it's kind of inevitable because you know as a lot of libertarian thinkers have pointed out once you gave government control over education, then it really was just a matter of time until everybody viewed the government as their savior and the free market as their potential enemy.
Because once you educate children outside of the free market, the free market is no longer something that can be consistently advocated within that paradigm.
And I think this is another reason why.
You know, I was in government schools for over a decade and I never learned anything I mean, I don't know if the teachers don't know or it's just it's not productive for them to communicate it or I don't know, maybe their parents are bankers of the kids and they get upset.
I mean, but I think that level of propaganda, both focusing on the inconsequential and avoiding communicating the consequential, it seems almost a natural result of this kind of takeover.
Yes, I think there is both a natural and an unnatural element there.
I think there is a natural tendency that the further away you get away, the further you get away from basic principles, the less stress there is on your ability to survive, the less you lose, I mean the more you lose your ability to survive.
And so that's a natural thing.
We see that happening in the decay of civilizations over and over again.
They struggle, they grow, they prosper and then the generations pass and the kids come along and they don't know what it was like and first thing you know they slump back down into decay and some more aggressive power comes along and wipes them out and they're going on a cycle.
But enough about Europe.
Enough about Europe.
That will never happen to us, will it?
But then that's the natural cycle.
But now we have this unnatural cycle where people are actually engineering this because they see that the process of what we would call decay is actually a process of great benefit to them, the ruling class.
They would like to see the old system, what we call the old capitalist system, the free enterprise system.
They would like to see that decay.
Because that'll throw us back, as it is now doing, to a sort of a feudalist system in which we have the clearly recognized ruling class and everybody else is supposed to be happy to serve that class.
That's where we're headed if we're not there already.
I'll keep it brief because you're the expert here.
But I want to get your thoughts on this argument.
There's an old perspective that says there's really only two rules that you need in society.
Number one, don't initiate force against people, don't initiate violence against people.
Number two, Keep your word, you know, if you write it down and keep your contracts and all that.
Now that's not a lot.
I know that four guys and a dog can get that system up and running for the most part.
And the spontaneous self-organization of the free market is antithetical to this sort of pyramid control structure that a lot of the sociopathic, sadistic control freaks in the planet want to have a whip to rule over people.
And the free market is their natural enemy because the free market and its spontaneous self-organization removes the need for the bureaucratic control class because things work on their own and nobody's in control of it.
And the fact that nobody's in control of it is exactly why it works, going back to the Mises argument about price and calculation and socialism.
And so if you have a system where it's like, okay, don't initiate force and keep your word.
Okay, those are two commandments.
You know, we've even gone down from Moses.
And if you have spontaneous self-organization within society, then you don't need all of this overhead of the bureaucratic class.
But they've kind of adapted to the existing system.
I can't imagine that your average, I don't know, The guy who's in the bureaucratic system in the Department of Education is going to have a huge amount to offer a lean and mean private corporation.
So their entire economic success at the moment and what they've adapted to is focused on continuing and expanding this command and control system because the spontaneous self-organization leaves them redundant.
I mean there's no point really having them.
They'd have to adapt and I don't really think that they want to.
No, they don't want to.
And, you know, I put myself occasionally, I put myself in the mental position of these people and I think, what would it be like, what would have happened, what could have happened to me in my development that might have changed my direction?
And it's not hard to imagine.
You know, it's the old carrot and the stick, you know.
As a kid, you're coming up and you say, well, you look around and you say, who is succeeding?
I want to be like that person.
Who is driving around in the big cars?
Who's got the big house, you know?
Who's the person that's on stage?
Who's the person people look up to and admire?
And so forth.
I want to be like that person.
So we have role models.
And if we pick the wrong role model, if we don't understand The things that you've been talking about, Stephen, I can see how a lot of young people would be sort of attracted to go into that avenue.
It reminds me of that cartoon, a little kid is talking to his dad, dad's reading the newspaper, and the kid is sort of standing next to the chair, and the dad says, oh, so you've decided to go into organized crime?
Hmm.
And then he says, is it public or private sector?
Just for the younger listeners who don't know, a newspaper is an iPad made out of wood, just for people who don't know.
Now let's talk about, I mean we touched on inflation but I sort of wanted to circle back on it because to me inflation is one of the big really in-your-face problems that comes out of this mercantilist fiat currency system.
Because when I think about it, I call it the supercharged stock market, which is all this money crashing around like a tsunami in a fish tank trying to find the next five minutes worth of profit.
And that's because there's way too much money in the stock market.
Most people don't want to be in the stock market.
They recognize that you really should know what you're doing.
But you have to go into the stock market because the government's inflationary policies are eating away at your money.
It's like there's a smoking, burning smell coming from under your mattress and that's your dollar bills self-combusting into nothingness.
And so people end up charging into the stock market just to try and avoid the effects of inflation and people don't remember.
Um, what it was like, neither do I, but people don't remember what it was like when not only did your money have stable value when it was gold backed, um, and you could, uh, you know, a thousand dollars now would be, would be able to buy exactly the same amount in 10 years, give or take, right?
And your money might even increase in value.
You know, throw it into a savings account and the bank just lends it out to people doing pretty safe stuff.
You get a couple of points out of that.
And the degree to which economic activity is distorted by people trying to escape these sort of brain-dead, zombie, cash-eating, inflationary policies, I think, is kind of hard for people to understand.
I mean, in a sense, the housing crash, not only driven by access money but also people are like well I've gotta buy something that increases in value because if I just keep my money it's gonna decrease in value and how much economic activity is being driven by people attempting to escape the predation of inflation I think it's hard to overestimate.
It is.
It's impossible to come up with a number in my mind at least.
And everything you say, Stephan, is right spits bad as far as I'm concerned.
And it points to me one of the frightening and significant shifts in how people relate to money that's going on right before our very eyes.
And I think you mentioned it at the beginning of the program or someone did recently.
We're going into this cashless society and why is that?
What's the difference between bailout and bail-in?
You come to the realization that there's no place to put money anymore to save money unless you're going to go to the traditional definition of money.
Money meaning merely a medium of exchange, and that could include gold or silver, a medium of exchange.
If you include that, then you could still have a place, one place left to put money that will not be deteriorating in its purchasing power, and it will last, as long as the pirates allow you to have it.
You know, they will probably say, hey, we can't allow this last escape door.
We're going to brick up this door and they'll pass all kinds of draconian laws and they know you're being unpatriotic.
Oh, you mean like they grab your gold and you're stealing from the bankers?
Oh, you're stealing from the people or you're creating economic havoc.
You're the one that's responsible for all of this because you see you're hoarding and you're taking money out of circulation and so forth.
They'll have some very good stories to tell about why you're the culprit rather than the victim.
But anyway, aside from that, people have – they can't put their money anyplace that's secure anymore.
Now that the bailout or the bail-in process is being definitely prepared for us, We know that probably the next round of bank failures, even in the United States, quite likely are going to be a bail-in, which means that the banks will simply confiscate a substantial portion of the deposits that everybody has in the banks.
But once this word gets out, people will want to take their money out of the banks.
Well, that's a stupid thing to do, isn't it?
Why don't you just want to leave it in the bank so they can steal it from you?
So they want to make that impossible.
That's what's really behind this cashless society.
They do not want you to be able to take it out of the banks.
So you have to be exposed to this legalized plunder.
It's as simple as that.
For people who think this is outlandish, I mean, this is not prediction, this is history.
Not only has it happened many times in history where people have been limited in what they can take out of the bank.
It happened recently in Greece.
In Malta, didn't they take a certain percentage of people's savings just right out of their currency in the bank?
I mean, this is not outlandish.
This has already been happening in recent memory, particularly in Europe.
Absolutely.
In Cyprus I guess it was up to 50% of the deposits of many depositors.
So it's a serious situation and you can be sure the people in Cyprus are not interested in keeping their money in the banks and that's one of the problems they've had there ever since then.
So when we hear the These meetings, like the recent meeting of the 20 largest countries, had a big conference on economic policy and everybody knew about the fact that they gathered together but nobody reported on what they decided.
Well, that's complicated for a lot of reporters.
It's not a sex tape so it's very difficult for them to delve into the math.
And what they decided is that they're going to – they've approved of the bail-in process.
They said this works.
This is fine.
This is the model for the future and they approved of the cashless society.
Those two have to go together.
So, it's already, you know, it's in the works and all you have to do is just open your eyes and see what's coming.
So, what do you do about it?
Well, you have to get off the track.
If you see the train coming down the track and you stand there looking at it and say, gee, I wonder what I'm supposed to do, it's, well, I hate to be cruel about it, but maybe that's the process of natural selection eliminating the human population of its idiots.
There is an old saying about the Jews in Germany in the 1930s that the pessimistic Jews ended up relatively safe in America but the optimistic Jews ended up in the concentration camps and so You know, I think optimism and pessimism are largely ad hominems or praiseworthy things.
I think we just have to be realistic and the best predictor of future behavior in individuals and in governments is relevant past behavior.
And when governments run out of money, they don't sit there and say, well, you know, gotta tell you boys, it was a fun ride.
Man, we had these people fools and I guess we got to fess up now that it's all been a kind of own your They're not going to do that.
They're going to do everything that they can to keep and escalate their control over you and your finances because, you know, I've made this argument many times.
You're not a citizen.
You're tax livestock.
I mean, all you are is an asset.
You're an entry in a ledger.
And they no more care about taking away your freedoms and your money than a farmer cares about taking milk or meat from a cow.
You are just a utility to them.
They don't view you as sovereign consciousness and people with a soul or people with a real human identity.
You're just livestock.
And for the cows to say, what, that guy?
Yeah, he's interested in your optimum production only.
He gives us food.
I mean, he loves us.
It's like, nope, he just does that so he can get the milk and meat from you.
Yeah, and he's interested in the optimum production only.
Right.
And he's also very careful about building those fences so you can't get out.
Well, that's a great analogy, Stefano.
I've always admired your ability to condense it down to something that people can understand.
A little shocking the first time you hear it, but then you have to start shaking your head and say, yep, he's got it right.
That's the way it is.
It's funny to see how in sort of current presidential elections, it used to be that just people that Like Ron Paul, you know, would talk about the Fed and would talk about ending the IRS or entering income tax.
And, of course, he was considered to be like the crazy uncle you occasionally bring down from the attic for the entertainment of the children.
But it seems that the work that you've been doing for many decades is starting to hit mainstream American political discussions.
Not on the left, of course.
I scarcely want to imagine that because you can't take away the cheddar they use to buy votes, but on the right at least it does seem like Ted Cruz is talking about eliminating the IRS and people talk about, you know, the kind of flat taxes or tax gradients you can fill out on the back of a postcard, which is, I don't know, Instagram with trees.
I'd have to translate everything to the younger audience, but do you think that this is going to continue to be part of the American political discourse?
Well, yes, I do.
I think it's – your discussion of the right is something that stuck with me a little bit.
It didn't fit right.
I don't really see that the rhetoric that comes out of the candidates for office of people who are in their – let's say the Republican camp.
They like to present themselves as being opposites of the left.
But you know, when you really peel off that Republican name or get under those words like conservative and liberal and look underneath those monikers, you find that there's very little difference really in the political philosophy of all of the candidates out there.
It's very discouraging, but the word is we have to be realistic, remember?
Not pessimistic or optimistic, but realistic.
And so if we are realistic we have to be very skeptical about the speeches that we hear From the candidates on either side of the political spectrum.
Because in my view, I see the left and the right as pretty much just opposite wings on the same ugly bird.
And the bird is called collectivism.
And all of the major candidates for either political party are in total agreement in the underlying philosophy of collectivism.
And until we recognize that I don't think we can make an intelligent choice because we don't have one to make.
We have no candidates, really, that represent a constructive opposite to collectivism.
So, our goal, I think, is not to worry so much about who you're going to vote for because you're not going to win by voting for a candidate that has been pre-selected by people who do not have your best interest in mind, you know?
It's like a rigged football game where both teams are owned by the same owner, and he doesn't care which one wins.
He's going to come out like gangbusters no matter what.
But anyway, so anyway, that's my little rant about the political arena today.
And until the time comes that we have convinced a large number of people out there that there is something called collectivism, We have to put those words back into the vocabulary.
Collectivism versus individualism.
Once we get enough people recognizing that collectivism is our enemy, and it's not communism, it's not fascism, it's not Republicans or Democrats or left or right, it's collectivism.
And only then do I think we have a chance to really start rebuilding the system and restoring all of the things that we are lamenting that we have lost.
It starts in the hearts and in the minds of the American people.
And that's our job.
And if you could give, I think for a lot of the audience, particularly the younger set, for them the word collectivism probably refers to a hoarding disorder.
I collect too many things.
Can you give people the ABCs of what it is that you mean by collectivism as the foundation of that which needs to be fought?
Well, first of all, yes, I'd love to do that.
It's one of my favorite topics and I know it is yours too.
But it's hard to condense down, but I suppose I have identified nine different significant traits, principles that are totally opposite to each other.
On the one side the collectivists believe one thing and on the other side individuals believe the opposite.
And I've identified over the years nine different categories that this is true.
And we don't have time to go into all of them, but I would think perhaps the most fundamental and most descriptive of them is the question of which is more important in society, the individual or the group?
That's really the heart of the issue.
Collectivists believe that the group is more important than the individual, and that the individual must be sacrificed, if necessary, for the greater good of the greater number.
That's what I was taught in school.
And I thought at the time it was a grand idea.
After all, isn't that the basis of democracy, you know?
The greater good of the greater number, 51% wins everything and so forth.
But then in later years I began to question and finally it dawned on me, Stephan, that this is complete baloney.
First of all, there is no such thing as a group.
You cannot see a group.
You cannot touch a group.
You can see individuals, lots of them, we call that a group.
We can touch individuals.
And if we touch a lot of them, you say, I've touched a group.
But it's like the word forest.
There is no such thing as forest.
There are only trees.
They're the only things that are real.
And the word forest is a word to describe an abstraction.
that's held in the mind.
It's a mathematical concept.
It's not real.
It's intellectual.
And so when we say that something that is only an abstraction, is not real, has more rights, or is supreme to something that is real, we've made a huge intellectual mistake, because we've set in motion a condition in which individuals can step forward and say, I represent the group.
I am the leader of the group.
And our party or our little oligarchy represent the group, you know, like the Communist Party or something like that.
And therefore we speak for the group and what we say is for the group's best interest.
And this is the foundation of all of the collectivist malarkey out there that, you know, the group must survive and the individual must support the group.
Okay, there's the starting point.
You know, take the idea of A lynch mob, for example.
Now there's a perfect example of democracy.
There's really only one dissenting vote.
And he's running pretty fast.
And he's running like hell.
But you know, if you really believe that majority should rule, and that's the end of the discussion, you have to be pretty much in favor of lynch mobs.
But naturally, once you go there, you say, wait a minute, what about the individual?
Doesn't the individual have any rights?
And of course, now we're into a serious discussion that leads only to one place, which is that the individual is the element that is the foundation of society.
And the greater good for the greater number is actually achieved By defending the individual against the passion and greed of the group.
That's the foundation of every free society.
And so there's a good start, all right.
There are many more issues like that.
But once a person gets past those labels and peels the labels off and starts looking at the element of the ideology itself, I have run into very few people, even dyed-in-the-wool leftists, that don't come out the other side saying, I guess I'm an individualist all this time and I didn't even know it.
I would just add one more thing if I may.
We have a lot of material on this on our website.
You mentioned it earlier.
Anybody that wants to explore this, and I hope that's many, please come to freedomforceinternational.org and you're going to find a lot of information on this topic there.
All right.
Well, listen, maybe we can do another show about the Nine Principles because I, like you, think that collectivism, you know, when I was younger I read Atlas Shrugged and at the time it seemed like science fiction and then it seemed like current events and now it seems like archaeology.
It's so past where it should have been.
But thanks so much for your time.
It's always a great pleasure to chat.
I wanted to remind people, RealityZone.com and, as he mentioned, Freedomforceinternational.org.
Again, the links will be below.
Go and peruse this stuff.
It's really, really great stuff.
And it gives you clarity within your own mind, but I think most importantly as well, it gives you the ammunition and the sort of synthesized arguments that you can easily bring to provoke thought in others.
Because, you know, a goal as thinkers is not to tell other people what to think, but using the old Socratic question method, provoke thought.
Because we don't want any more conformity in the world.
There's no such thing as conformity to the truth.
There is only such thing as conformity to fear and when we pursue the truth we can only do that by enabling people to think clearly for themselves.
There's lots of material on your websites to help with that so I strongly urge people to go and check it out.
It's always a great pleasure and I'm sure we'll talk again soon and have yourself a wonderful week.
Thank you Stephan and same to you.
I'm looking forward to the next time.
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