Sept. 26, 2009 - The Political Cesspool - James Edwards
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Welcome to the Political Cesspool, known worldwide as the South's foremost populous radio program.
And here to guide you through the murky waters of the Political Cesspool is your host, James Edwards.
All right, everybody, welcome back to the third and final hour of tonight's live broadcast of the award-winning Political Cesspool Radio Program, Saturday, September 26th.
That's the date we're here live.
We're red hot and rolling from our flagship station, AM 1380 WLRM Radio in Memphis, Tennessee.
We're going out to the various AM FM affiliates of the Liberty News Radio Network, including AM 1600 in St. Helens, Oregon, tuning in tonight for the first time.
Welcome aboard as our newest affiliate, carrying the great work of this radio program.
And if you're tuned in off of the AM FM dial, then you're probably tuned in on the internet at thepolitical cesspool.org or libertynewsradio.com.
You might even be tuned in over satellite.
There's a lot of ways to get us.
However, you're tuned in.
We're happy to have you with us.
And as advertised, and as we've been mentioning quite often over the course of the past two hours, we are now joined by our featured guest for the evening, a man whose book I'm very high on, a man making his encore appearance tonight, Tom Ball, author of Starving the Monkeys, an entrepreneurial horror.
Tom, welcome back to the show.
James, I appreciate it.
And thanks for inviting me back again.
We wouldn't miss it for the world.
In fact, I think it was far too long.
It took us far too long to invite you back, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
I encourage folks, if you're listening right now, and I'll remind you to do this again at the conclusion of the interview, where you will undoubtedly be much more inclined to do so, but check out the interview that we had with Tom a couple of weeks back.
I should have done the research myself, Tom, but you know what?
We can't do all the work for everyone.
Do you remember the day you were on with us?
Do you remember the exact date?
That was the 1st of August, and it was the third hour of that show.
There you go.
So first show of August, third hour.
Check it out in the archives.
You will certainly be impressed.
And, well, again, that's why we're having Tom Ball back on tonight.
Tom, just to get things started, if you don't mind, could you provide us with a brief synopsis of what we discussed during that first appearance, and then we'll move on to the topic of discussion tonight.
Sure.
As we talked about in that hour, the topic of this book is how to deal with all of the forces of the various collectives that are trying to destroy individualism and our classic American spirit.
And we can break down the enemies that we face in two major classes, and I call both of these groups monkeys.
The first group is the classic left-wing welfare monkey, the guy who just wants to get something for nothing and really doesn't want to contribute anything to society.
But I think the worst class of monkey is the suit monkey on the right, the guy who surfs regulations.
He depends on government regulations to either get his living or to keep you from competing with him.
One big example today of a suit monkey would be the banking industry.
Now, you know, we're having a big banking crisis these days.
And if you and I and some of my friends were able to get together and we were able to say, hey, we're going to make the James Edwards Bank and we're going to start loaning money to people who want to buy houses.
We could go out and we could compete with Chase or whoever.
We could offer a superior service and we could provide a great service to people who would then start using our bank instead of Chase.
But we're prevented from doing that by a whole bunch of regulations that just get in our way.
And so the people that depend on their living by keeping competition away from them, I call those the suit monkeys.
And earlier, you were blaming liberal white people for a lot of our problems.
And to me, it really lies in the lap of a lot of gutless, pandering conservatives who cave on each important issue that we face.
And to me, those guys are really, really the worst people.
Well, you know, you're certainly right about that topic.
It goes without saying.
The fact that our cowardice has been an enabling force in our own imprisonment.
Yeah, you know, maybe I label those people liberals.
I don't know.
But either way, they're both equally contemptible.
Right.
Well, I think one of the neat things about the way the world is going ahead, and I know it sounds kind of weird to say this neat, it almost sounds like a psychotic, is that we're headed towards a collapse, and it's hard to say what day that's going to be.
It's hard to say exactly what form that collapse is going to take.
But you can't keep spending money you don't have forever without there being some payback for that.
And you can't keep the free market down.
You can't keep suppressing the individual without there being some kind of catch-up for that.
And so I think there's going to be a collapse.
And then as long as we're able to orient ourselves correctly ahead of time, we ought to be able to take advantage of that and then use that energy of that collapse for our benefit to turn things around.
Now, speaking of that collapse, Tom, and let's face it, none of us wants to believe that there will be an impending doom or absolute collapse of the American experiment.
But let's face it, the way things are going could very well happen, and it might happen much sooner than any of us want.
Or would expect, I should say.
We're having you on tonight to focus on some solutions, but you can't focus on the solution without identifying and diagnosing the problem.
Now, and speaking of collapses, we saw on a small scale just perhaps what we can expect during bigger problems through the Katrina incident.
And you have some very profound thoughts about Katrina.
What did we learn from that?
Well, I think if we look at Katrina as a laboratory experiment and what happens with a collapse, I think that we see that in the media, you saw a lot of people running around with their hands out saying, oh, save me, save me, help me, help me.
And those are the people who traditionally depend on the government for everything.
Now, the other thing that we did not see is all the people who had prepared themselves that didn't need any help at all.
And another interesting side effect of Katrina that was a useful experiment for us is a lot of the law enforcement, well, maybe I shouldn't say a lot, but some, there's certainly stories of where law enforcement either cut and run or in some cases even joined looters.
So now imagine what happens if we have a nationwide crisis.
We could have 100, 300, 1,000 Katrina essentially, you know, not hurricanes and flooding for each of them, but a similar effect if, for example, food doesn't start showing up on the shelves.
All of those simultaneous crises where we were able to throw the resources of a nation at one crisis and sort of solve it, simultaneous multiple crises will pretty much render traditional authority and law and order obsolete.
And I think it's at that point that there's some opportunities arise that wouldn't otherwise be available to us.
We just have to know what happens then.
Well, and like you said, it could very well happen, and it's something that we ought to be prepared for.
And again, that's what we're talking about tonight with you, Tom.
And everything that we are talking with you about tonight, the ideas that we're addressing are elaborated upon in your book.
And we're going to give certainly ample contact information about that.
But I want to ask you this, not switching gears so much because there's just so much we could talk about on any given subject.
But let's go ahead.
And I know we're about to go to our first break of the evening.
And we want to focus the last 45 minutes on solutions.
The reason I wanted to have you on for the full hour tonight was to give a basic synopsis of some of the things we discussed last week during the opening segment and then focus everything else on things that are more proactive.
You're mentioning hypothetical crisis, a food shortage, an attack on this nation that is manifested in multiple cities.
What can we do before this crisis or whatever crisis occurs to prepare ourselves?
How can we be proactive in protecting our family and our assets?
Well, I think the first thing we have to understand is where does value actually come from?
A lot of people think that value in the world comes from their job.
That's not really true.
Where value comes from and what's going to see us through an economic crisis, an economic downturn, a major collapse, or even the rebuilding after a collapse, the thing that will see us through is understanding how you get value and how you provide value.
And it really boils down to one simple equation, and that is how much do you improve the quality of life of someone else?
And it's your knowledge and your skills and your ability to work that allows you to provide that quality of life that someone else is then willing to exchange to you for something of value to you.
So how could the average listener of this program apply themselves in their daily routines to become more self-sufficient and self-reliant?
The thing that they need to do is, and it really depends on where you are today.
If you are a business owner or you are an employee of a small business or if you are unemployed, there's different strategies you'll take on day one that will all kind of lead in the same direction.
And I think breaking the employee mindset and instead thinking of yourself as an independent contractor who's just going out into the world and deciding, okay, James needs some service from me.
I'm going to do the best I can to make him successful because if I make you successful, you're going to help make me successful.
But the employee mindset is, in too many cases, and this has been fostered by our system, is that you've got to get the man.
You've got to take what you can out of the system as an employee.
You've got to get what benefits you can, and he owes me.
All of those things have been fostered by the collective, and it really is anti-American to think that way.
And it really needs to change into a, I'm a contractor, I'm an individual who's going to run around and provide value to somebody else.
And there's some things we can talk about in the next 45 minutes or so that will lead in that direction a little bit better.
Well, listen, folks, as Tom said, we've still got a couple, three segments with him, and we're going to make every minute count.
We've got some great questions.
I'm sure he's got some great answers.
And we're going to be talking about it with Tom Ball, author of Starving the Monkeys, an entrepreneurial horror.
When the political cesspool continues on the Liberty News Radio Network right after this, jump in the Political Cess Pool with James and the Game.
Call us tonight at 1-866-986-6397.
And here's the host of the Political Cess Pool, James Edwards.
Welcome back to the show, everyone.
We're talking with Tom Ball, author of the book Starving the Monkeys.
That is a book which I literally am holding in my right hand right now.
I'm shaking it in my hand as I said here.
It's radio, not television, so I sort of have to commentate what I'm doing, but I'm holding it in my hand.
It's a book that I want everybody listening to this program to have because it really makes you think about ways we can better ourselves and perhaps be useful in times of a crisis.
It does that in much more, of course.
But, you know, Tom, that's one of the things you talk about.
We really need to change the way we think about certain matters.
One of the things you wrote is that we need to store up on knowledge and skills needed to rebuild civilization if and when a very serious calamity afflicts the United States.
And I want to read directly from something you wrote earlier.
And it says this: We must take action in ways that destroy the power of the collectives while preserving ourselves and our family.
For example, getting in shootout with gun grabbers simply gets you killed for nothing.
But those who would be willing to get in a shootout are exactly those people who we are going to need later.
Let's talk about something you addressed specifically in your book, Tom.
You talk about an alternative view of gun control.
Explain that.
Well, I'm glad you brought that up because that kind of ties into what you were talking about earlier with the bullet shortage and bullets being the new gold.
And there's no question that it's going to be important to have some amount of firearms and ammunition.
And even if you have thousands of rounds of ammunition, statistically speaking, you're not going to be able to survive enough gunfights to burn up a thousand rounds of ammunition.
Right, right.
Sooner or later, one of those bullets coming at you is going to have your name on it.
That's right.
But what they are useful for is trade goods.
So from that point of view, it's a great idea to store up on those things.
But I call this the cold, dead hands approach.
That's just a wasteful thing to try to think of, you know, okay, when the guy's coming to my house, he's going to grab my guns.
You know, the government agent.
To me, the best strategy is let him have it.
Because then you survive to fight the real fight.
Because at some point, this collapse that we've been talking about will happen.
And when that day arrives, there's going to be an entirely different set of opportunities that will be staring us in the face.
And if you've been shot and turned into a media spectacle, that's not going to do you any good.
And you'll hear a lot of right-wing pundits saying, don't take action, don't take action, it'll destroy the Republic.
Well, that's just nonsense.
The reason you should not take action is, like I say in the book, we're going to need you later.
And when it comes down to it, you're talking about how you've been trained with a pistol since before you were 10 years old.
Well, how many bullets do you need?
How many guns do you need?
Certainly, you really only need one, and then you're able to get as much as you want.
Yeah, I got to admit, you know, I get excited when I read a guy has 25 guns with a thousand rounds for each type because, you know, he's obviously somebody that's probably philosophically somewhere, somewhere close to us.
But, you know, practically speaking, Tom, perhaps you're right.
Although I got to admit, your theory is pretty intriguing here.
If we give away our guns to the agents when they come, I see what you're saying there.
It does us no good to go down in a show of defiance at a time when they're going to be able to pick us off one by one.
We need to wait for the time, if it should ever come, where we all coalesce and come together as a unit as a movable force and we're doing something in great numbers.
I see what you're saying there, but if we get away our guns, how do we get guns to fight with when the day does arise?
Put yourself in the position of a gun grabber.
Whatever Acorn subsidiary is going to get sent out to collect guns, who knows what it's going to be?
Are they going to get all of them?
If you give up 25 guns, how did they know you don't have a 26?
Yeah, that's true.
I guess you could bury it like a squirrel or something.
Right.
I mean, you know, so as long as you have some ability, or as long as are they going to grab all the pipes?
Are they going to grab all the dump trucks?
I mean, at some point, human ingenuity and the innate American spirit will put a weapon in your hands when it's needed.
And there's also going to be the issue in a major crisis.
Each law enforcement official also represents a potential deserter or ally or even a source of material.
So, you know, let's say there's National Guard troops from Georgia stationed in Tennessee or Idaho and Idaho National Guard and Oklahoma.
At some point, these kids that are just trying to get back home, they're not going to be happy that their family is going to be messed with.
They're just going to hit the road.
And they're going to take their weapons, their ammunition with them.
So there's not going to be an ability to have 100% tight control on these things.
And as a former Marine, I can say that I really don't need a lot of guns and ammo to be able to.
Make your point, so to speak.
Make your point, so to speak.
I read you on that, my friend.
I'm bouncing around here, Tom, a little bit because there truly is so much information of value and substance in your book.
Every time I get prepared to move on to the next topic, I see that I skipped something in my notes that I wanted you specifically to talk about because it is important.
And this sort of hastened back.
We were talking about Katrina at the top of the hour.
And then we're going to move on back to where we were about solutions and what we should do in time of despair, so on and so forth.
But now, I know that you have strong personal beliefs in charity, and I want to give you the opportunity to expound upon that.
But first, I want to revisit something we said back in August on the show because it was a quote that stuck out, I think, both in my mind and yours.
I was mentioning the fact that the Greeks had an excellent observation from antiquity which said, all things in moderation, nothing in excess.
Even virtues when carried to the extreme can be obviously detrimental to us.
And you write that the key when it comes to charity, and obviously in time of great need and despair, calamity, you're talking about an attack, you're talking about multiple cities in chaos.
The key is to go out and be philanthropic, to be heroic, as we are taught that's the way we ought to be.
But the key, you write, Tom, is not to be suckered into the heroics on the behalf of people who have destroyed everything of value.
Please elaborate on your charitable leanings, so to speak.
Well, I think charity has been totally misused, totally misstated.
And just because someone is applying to you as destitute doesn't necessarily mean that you have to find them worthy of your charity.
If someone has destroyed every opportunity that's been presented to them in life, that's one set of circumstances.
If someone's been subject to forces of nature or the banks have shut down banking or whatever, and there's just a family who needs your help, okay, let's say a family of mom, dad, kids shows up at my door and is hungry and they need a meal.
Well, one approach would be just say, okay, sit down, we'll fix you a meal, and then send them on their way.
To me, the better approach and the approach that I would want someone to take if I was destitute and I was hoping to get charity from someone, if it was me, I would show up at the door and I'd say, I can't pay you, but is there something around here you need fixed?
And my wife can help you in the kitchen fix the meal, and my kids can go out and take care of the chickens.
I'm going to think of a way that even if I'm destitute, if I have nothing of value at all anymore, it's all been stripped away.
I'm going to think of a way that I can use my skills and my knowledge to improve the life of the person that I'm trying to get charity from.
Almost a classic agrarian approach.
That's right.
It's almost a barter type of system because hardly anybody who is going to need charity in that kind of crisis situation is going to lack the ability to provide value somehow.
I mean, everybody, a farmer is going to need a fence fixed.
He's going to need somebody to take care of the animals.
He's going to need somebody to grease the tractor.
And, you know, somebody who spent their entire life working at a computer in a city, dude, at least learn how to, you know, maintain a tractor or learn something of value that's a basic skill that you can hopefully show up at someone's house and say, hey, I can do this thing for you.
And, you know, that's how I want you to, you know, that's how I want to pay you for this meal.
Because I don't want to just get one meal.
I would like to get months of meals.
And as long as me and my family can provide value to that guy, he's going to be perfectly happy to give it back.
Now, you see, ladies and gentlemen, we got to go to break, but this is the kind of advice and practical wisdom that you ought to be getting.
Right after these messages.
You ought to be getting from radio shows such as ours.
And that's why we're having Tom Baugh on.
And he goes into such great detail in his book.
We've got to take a time out.
We're going to pick up where we're leaving off right after this on the show and express your opinion in the political cesspool.
Call us toll-free at 1-866-986-6397.
We got to get out of this place.
My friends, welcome back to the show.
We cover so much on this program.
There's just really no issue that we're afraid to tackle.
But in doing so, I think even we're susceptible at times to taking our eye off of that of what's most important.
And truly, what we're talking about tonight with Tom Ball, he's the author of the book Starving the Monkeys.
Everything we've been elaborating on is elaborated on in much greater detail in his book.
And I think it's just a great manual that you should all have.
This is the practical advice that at the end of the day, when push comes to shove and politics is we're beyond politics, is what I'm trying to say.
When the day comes that we're beyond politics, all of the not all of the issues, but a lot of the topics that we cover on this program really aren't going to mount to hill of beans.
But the topics that are discussed in this book, Starving the Monkeys, is going to be the kind of stuff you need to know.
And that's why we're having Tom Baugh on again tonight.
And Tom, a lot of the stuff we're discussing with you so far this evening centers around a hypothetical collapse of the American system here and what we can do to prepare ourselves, what knowledge and skills we might need to have to make it in such a world.
And certainly we would all hope that it would never come to that.
But if it does, it's better to be prepared.
Let's just say that.
Now, if we wanted to avoid this hypothetical impending disaster altogether, let's just say, okay, well, yeah, it's good to be prepared.
It's good to have knowledge and skills, be a craftsman, be a barterer, but I'd just rather not go through all that.
Let's just take steps now to avoid an impending disaster altogether.
Tom, you think there's anything that can still be done to realize that dream?
No, I don't think so.
I think there is going to be a period before a collapse where you're still going to have to figure out a way to eat, still figure out a way to pay your property taxes so your land doesn't get seized, etc.
Too much damage has already been done to our economy.
I'm here in rural Georgia, and all around me, there are farmers who are dismantling buildings on their farms because the property taxes on them are too high.
And wild guess, what do farmers use buildings for?
Well, they probably use them to make food, keep the animals in or store materials in.
And they're taking them apart and basically giving them away because they just can't afford to keep paying the property taxes.
And when you start dismantling farms and when you start having small businesses going under and facing bankruptcy for things that are totally out of their control, it used to be someone went into bankruptcy.
It was a disgrace because they messed up.
Now people are going in bankruptcy for no reason that they had any control whatsoever over.
Some suit monkey off in New York or Washington caused it.
And there's a permanent loss of confidence in banks.
Liquidity is essential to have a thriving economy.
Our cash for clunkers program basically took however many quarter million perfectly good engine blocks and pumps and radiators and shipped them over to China as scrap.
But despite all this, there's still some things we can do in the short term.
And the first guy I'd like to talk to about that is the guy who runs his own small business and what his strategy should be.
Now, I've run my own small business for about 15 years.
I'm a consultant.
I've helped people with all kinds of different projects.
And the thing that I've learned is the most important thing that every small businessman needs to seriously consider doing right now, and that is to fire every single employee he has today.
And stop seeing employees as dependents you've got to take care of.
Because that urge is a tool of the compliance, a tool of compliance of the collective to make you a victim of whatever tax compliance policies or employee fairness kind of policies.
So anybody who's run their small business knows that one of their biggest regulatory costs is the cost of complying with the taxes, the cost of handling all the payroll.
Some people outsource that to payroll services, but you still got to pay somebody every week or every two weeks.
If you had no employees, you could pay yourself once a quarter and still be good to go.
Now, that doesn't mean you can't have people helping you.
So out of all those employees you fire, you've picked the ones that you really, really need, really count on, that do a good job for you.
And you help those guys turn around and become incorporated themselves as their own small businesses.
And then you hire them back not as employees, but as contractors.
Very interesting.
Very interesting.
Continue on because, you know, I can relate to this.
Well, a lot of this legislation that we're seeing coming down to Pike, like the healthcare thing, healthcare, that's going to that.
We nobody knows the details of what's that in that, other than a few people that that wrote it.
But one thing's for sure, whatever comes out of Washington penalizes the small business, and it penalizes you first of all by using your employees as a weapon against you.
So you get rid of those people as employees, you hire the good ones back as contractors, and I'm going to talk in a minute about what that that employee former employee contractor does.
But the the great effectiveness of this strategy is that it's the same monkey suit that the lobbyists and congressmen use for their own protection.
You know that a lot of the tax code, whatever it is, whatever the tax code is today, you can rest assured That there are holes in it that are set up specifically for congressmen to have their own little shelter, personal corporations that keeps them and their family from having to pay taxes.
Now, that doesn't mean you're going to be able to find all of those loopholes, but there will always be protection if you wear the suit of a suit monkey.
If you put on that mask and act like the suit monkey in your business life, and you act like the welfare monkey in your personal life, and you're diligent about how you keep your taxes tracked, you'll get the benefits of both of those worlds.
Now, let's switch gear to the employee for a little bit.
Why is it in that employee's benefit to come back as a contractor?
First of all, that guy who's doing a good job for you, you help him get set up as his own small business.
Now, boom, he gets all of those advantages that you would get.
So, he gets to deduct his business expenses.
He gets to deduct, you know, I'm not a tax accountant or consultant or tax lawyer, so you've got to look into this yourself.
So, just take what I'm saying here for entertainment value.
But you get to deduct a certain portion of your meals, you get to deduct mileage to your different job sites, you get to deduct a certain amount for your vehicle.
All of those things that would not be deductible as an employee suddenly now become deductible because he's a business now.
I think a lot of this falls under the guise of a sole proprietorship.
Well, I would disagree there because a lot of people immediately think sole proprietorship, and the reason they think that is because the taxes are easy to do.
But unfortunately, a lot of the good deductions come out of getting incorporated.
And there's a lot of other resources you can look at that go down in that direction.
All right, so you're saying basically a sole proprietorship might be easier in terms of understanding the tax code, but there's more, if you take the time to learn it, more benefits from becoming incorporated.
That's exactly right.
Okay.
Because the tax code, I believe, is specifically set up, A, to protect the congressman's friends and family, and the lobbyists, same thing.
But it's also set up to keep you and me from getting into that goodie basket.
And one of the ways they keep us out of that goodie basket is putting up this wall of tax compliance for being a corporation.
That's why I keep advising people that no matter what you do, if you're a truck driver, if you're a welder, whatever you do, you've got to get smart about computers.
You've got to learn how to use spreadsheets.
And the reason you've got to do that is you've got to be able to handle your own taxes.
Because if you can do that, you've taken the worst chain that they put around your neck that keeps you a slave to someone else.
And so you've got to get smart about doing taxes.
You've got to learn how to use computers so you can do this.
Now, as soon as that former employee becomes his own business, he no longer depends on you for every dime he makes.
So you may not have a full year's work for him laid out.
And instead of stressing out as a small business owner, gee, I got these three guys who are doing really good work for me, but I can't commit to all of them every day of the week for the next year, you don't have to worry about that anymore.
You can say, hey, I'm going to need you next week.
I'm not going to need you the week after that.
During that other week, if he's his own business, he can go and work for somebody else for a while.
And it gives all of you together, working together, coordinating with each other, the flexibility to make the most benefit for everyone.
Folks, we're trying to help you out here.
We're trying to give you ideas, or at least Tom is.
I'm basically just here learning along with the rest of the audience for this hour.
But this is some practical stuff that perhaps you haven't considered.
Now, I don't know if it's going to be able to be implemented in the lives of each and every listener of the program tonight, but there's a lot of you who are listening to this where perhaps the suggestions of Tom Ball are very applicable.
And if you want to learn more about it, we've got time for one more segment, but I want to go ahead before we go come into this next break.
Tom, what's your website?
The website for the book is www.starvingthemonkeys, M-O-N-K-E-Y-S at the end, dot com.
And another thing I want to mention before the break is earlier you were talking about writing a book.
Well, as it turns out, we've got this publishing company we started called Starve Monkey Press.
Any of your listeners out there who have an idea for a book that's about self-reliance topics like we've been talking about, get to our website, let us know about it, and we can talk to you about publishing a book for you.
Well, there you go, folks.
And we've got more with Tom Ball right after this.
But take down those websites while we go to break.
Check them out while we're in break.
We'll be back in just a moment.
We've got to get out of the space.
If it's the last thing we ever do, we got to get out of the space.
Welcome back to get on the political cesspool.
Call us on James's Dime, toll-free, at 1-866-986-6397.
And here's the host of the Political Cesspool, James Edwards.
I got to be honest with you.
Tonight's time spent with Tom Ball has gone by faster than the first two hours combined.
And I had a lot of fun in those first two hours.
Just so much information to cover with this man.
He is the author of the book, Starving the Monkeys, an Entrepreneurial Horror.
We encourage you to go to the website.
He mentioned just a moment ago, starvingthemonkeys.com.
Starvingthemonkeys.com, spelled just like it sounds.
And then while you're serving the web, don't forget to go to their sister site, starvemonkeypress.com.
Tom, we were talking and trying to encourage people who might be small business owners or employees of small business owners how they can help themselves.
You gave some very practical advice.
Folks, you should check it out.
But what about the guy who lost his job?
Not everybody is employed by a small business owner.
Not everyone is a small business owner.
What about the guy whose job was outsourced to China or his plant closed?
What happens to him?
Or a small businessman whose company went under?
Well, you know, that guy is in the same position as the guy who used to be the employee that turned into a small business owner all of his own.
It's even more important for the guy who's unemployed to take that step of getting incorporated.
And just like the guy who is the former employee, there's many advantages to that.
And one is nobody really ever asks a company, in many cases, for their resume.
So if you've been out of work for a couple of years and you start your own corporation and say, hey, I'm doing this service now, that helps hide a lot of that collective nonsense that says that you're of no value if you haven't had a real job working for somebody for your whole life.
And it also lets you take a couple of little jobs and instead of saying, okay, I've got to take this one job that puts me to work all week.
Well, maybe I'm going to go do something two days for this guy, a day for that guy, two days for this other guy.
It gets a lot of little jobs that put food on the table and it gives you a chance to prove what you're worth.
And that's really what it boils down to.
You need the opportunities to show how much value you can provide to somebody else.
And that whole employee mindset, the whole model of you have to have a job, sets you up as the loser there because you don't get to say, Mr. Farmer, I'm going to come help you with what you need done around your farm for the next week and I'm going to prove to you what I'm worth and you don't have to pay me a dime.
Now, if you showed up and you said, I want you to hire me to do that, the fair labor laws prevent him from saying okay.
Why?
Because he's got to pay you minimum wage.
He's got to get workers' comp on you.
He's got to comply with all kinds of different regulations that make it more worthwhile for him to just say, no, no, don't bother me to go away.
But if you show up as your own business, he doesn't have to deal with any of that stuff.
You do.
And that's one of the bits of value that you bring to the table: Mr. Farmer, I'm going to help you with some stuff.
And you don't have to deal with the risk and the paperwork of helping me show you what a good job I can do for you.
And so many people who are unemployed, this is a perfect opportunity for them to change their life, change the way that they look at how they earn a living.
And because there's so many people that are out of work right now, so many people that are losing their jobs, we've got the highest unemployment rate that any of us have seen in a long time.
This is a great time to walk up and say, I can do stuff for you.
And it's no stigma to be out of work now.
There's no shame in that.
And it really can get back to the basics of I am going to help you be successful.
And in return, you pay me.
And that's really what the economy is supposed to be about.
It's not supposed to be about health benefits and job security, which there never has been any.
It's about what can you do to make your client successful.
And that's an important word, the client.
You don't want to see the guy who's writing your check as your boss.
You want to see him as your client.
And you want to make your client successful because they're going to bring you more work.
The more good stuff you give them in terms of quality of life and happiness and not having to deal with trauma, all of those things that you can do improves their quality of life.
And they're going to keep paying for that.
You just got to have the opportunity to let them see what you're capable of.
Even the word unemployed is destructive to the spirit.
You really need to start thinking of yourself as a small businessman.
Well, you know, Tom, and I include myself when I say this, it seems as though many of us all too often get sucked into the hysterical and fanatical political debates of the day, and we just take our eye off of that, which is most important.
And this is obviously, I mean, being able to provide for yourself and your family and being a good steward of the resources available to you.
This is the stuff that's most important in life.
This is the very basic, most primitive survival skills that we should all be very well versed in.
And I fear most people out there listening, myself included, perhaps we're not where we should be.
But these are the kinds of ideas that your book tackles.
Now, we've spent the last, I don't know, 15, 20 minutes talking about jobs, small business, clients, so on and so forth.
But this is hardly the only tenet or ethos of your book.
Your book is a book that encompasses a great number of ideas.
And in the time left, and we don't have much of it, kind of give us a breakdown of some of the other tenets of your book that people need to know.
They need to know, and they need to be applying them in their lives.
Well, we've really hit the essential, and then it's just a bunch of applications of those things.
Surviving a crisis, for example.
How are you going to survive a crisis?
You're going to survive a crisis with exactly the same mindset that makes you a successful small business.
I'm going to show up to Farmer Brown's house, and instead of saying, I'm going to help you fix your fence, I'm going to say, I'm going to help you defend your farm against all the looters.
And I'm going to do a great job at that.
And then after a crisis, when we want to rebuild, and again, this is talked about in the book, how do we rebuild?
Well, first of all, we have to protect property rights.
We have to understand that the idea of a man owning property, that actually does mean something.
And it's important for civilization itself.
And there's a lot of fundamental principles of civilization that we seem to have forgotten that we've had the luxury of ignoring because we had so much prosperity for so long.
And I go into a lot of detail about where that prosperity comes from, how regulations pop up, and essentially a cultural war between the producers who tend to be individualists, the producers of the world versus the people who just consume and loot.
And there's just so much in that book.
It's 400 pages just chock full of pretty much the same theme, though, which is you have to figure out ways that you can help other people because there's a lot of guys, like you're talking about, that just have the guns.
Okay, but then what?
At some point, you have to have a shoe.
At some point, you have to, you know, you've got to have plumbing.
You've got to have running water.
These things aren't just necessities, and you can only rough it for so long.
At some point, we are going to have to put civilization back together and we have to understand how civilization works, not how we've been taught that it works with a government regulating everything and employers providing jobs.
No, it really boils down to I am going to do what I can to help you, not in a socialistic fashion, but because I'm selfish.
I want you to pay me as much as possible for my time.
And the best way to encourage you to do that is do as good a job for you as I can.
Well, Tom, let me say this: we have had a lot of authors on this show, God knows, over the course of the last five years, and we have promoted a great number of very solid books, scholarly works, intellectual works, books that truly every American should have on their shelves.
But, you know, these are books that are advocating a political line.
The information might be 100% accurate and correct, and it's stuff that you need to know.
But, folks, I think most of you understand, if you're a regular listener of this show, you agree with me on who the good guys are and who the bad guys are, so to speak.
So, any book that we recommend along those lines are basically just reinforcing ideas that you've already subscribed to.
This is the book that we all need to have, that we all need to have, if we're going to make it through that which may be coming.
Now, the book is Starving the Monkeys.
The author is Tom Ball.
You've heard him for the last hour on this program.
Visit his website for more information.
You just can't, you know, I'm not on CNN here.
We're not hosting a television program where I can put his website up in the caption.
You can jot it down and write it down.
I got to repeat, repeat, repeat.
That's the way radio works.
Starvingthemonkeys.com.
Starvingthemonkeys.com.
Read it.
Read about it on the website.
Buy the book.
You'll need it.
This is something that you need to have to help safeguard the interests of your families and protect them if and when calamity strikes.
And in about two minutes, the two minutes we have left, Tom, I got to give him one more endorsement.
If they're not sold on the book yet, perhaps this will lead them to buy it, if not, at least pique their curiosity a little bit more.
Glenn Beck wouldn't let you advertise this book on his show.
Is that right?
That's right.
Well, on his website.
I've heard Glenn Beck say over and over and over, oh, please tell me how I'm wrong.
If I'm wrong about this, if I'm not seeing something, tell me.
And I'm like, okay, I've got a book here that will tell you.
And all I wanted to do was advertise on his website.
We went to Premier Radio, who controls that media, and we said, hey, we want to run an ad.
Everything was going fine until they realized, oh, goodness, this guy is disagreeing with Glenn Beck.
And then this brick wall came down.
Boom.
We're not going to let you pay for advertising.
But you'll notice, if you watch his show, WhiteHouse.gov promotes healthcare.
Well, there you go.
The hypocrisy knows no bounds.
Listen, Tom, we're out of time.
I love you, brother.
Thank you for coming on.
And, folks, if you want to know why Glenn Beck wouldn't let him advertise, go to starvingthemonkeys.com.
Buy the book.
Buy the book.
Tom, thank you, my friend.
Everybody else, we'll see you next week.
Live life the way we do without retreat, surrender, or apology.
God bless you.
To learn more about us or to make a donation to keep this program on the air, go to www.thepoliticalsupool.org.