capitalism

Reflections On Capitalism And The Morality Of It with Craig R. Smith

TWS 06 | Capitalism

 

Capitalism seems to have more bad than good reputation among people. Breaking down some reasons why it is misrepresented is Chairman of Swiss America Trading Corporation, Craig R. Smith. He gives his thoughts about capitalism and the relevance of money in a laissez-faire capitalist society. He talks about China, the government, and what they have been doing to the markets. Helping those who are still grappling with the monetary system, Craig defines sound money and why it is important. He also reflects about humanity, equality, and where we are headed in the next ten years with our current situation. Ultimately, amidst everything going on in politics, he reminds us how we, the people, are the government.

Listen to the podcast here:

Reflections On Capitalism And The Morality Of It with Craig R. Smith

TWS 06 | Capitalism

Money, Morality & the Machine: Smith’s Law in an Unethical, Over-Governed Age

We are going to be talking about money and our monetary system. I have an expert with me to help navigate this sometimes difficult to understand topic. My guest is Craig R. Smith. He’s the Chairman of Swiss America Trading Corporation. He has also written a number of books including Money, Morality & the Machine as well as Don’t Bank on It!: The Unsafe World of 21st Century Banking. Craig, thanks for taking the time. I’m excited about the conversation.

Patrick, it’s great to be with you.

Our focus or this theme that we have for the next several months is around the nature of capitalism, what it is and why it’s misrepresented sometimes. I would love to hear how you think about capitalism, but also the relevance of money in a Laissez-Faire Capitalist society?

Let’s talk about capitalism. Capitalism clearly historically is the one form of societal thinking that pulls people out of poverty. This is one thing that very few people are talking about. Perfect modern-day example of that is China. China is a communist nation. We tend to forget that they are red communists. If they have to starve ten million of their people to save their country, they will do that. They embrace capitalism. All of a sudden, 1.3 billion Chinese people have a pathway to get out of their poverty. When you look at capitalism and how it changes society, it changes a society because it eliminates poverty. It rewards merit. It rewards hard work. It rewards results. Unlike socialism, you don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to produce anything. You don’t have to play by rules. You are taken care of. Capitalism is by far the most superior form of societal cooperation than any other system out there. Take a capitalist like John Rockefeller. When he took over, kerosene was $0.85 a gallon. When he retired, kerosene was $0.10 a gallon. Did his capitalism help the average person or did it hurt the average person? I would argue it helped the average person.

TWS 06 | Capitalism

Don’t Bank On It!: The Unsafe World of 21st Century Banking

I love the examples you’re using because China is not considered necessarily a capitalist society, but yet as they’ve gravitated toward that, giving a little bit more freedom, a little bit more openness associated with the trade. It’s benefited so many people even though it’s not a full capitalist society, even small aspects of it make a difference. I would say it’s similar to the US. Correct me if I’m wrong, I don’t think there’s ever been a pure Laissez-Faire Capitalist society. Are you saying that any increase in those tenants ultimately is going to benefit everyone?

It’s no different than the principles of gravity, they work. You can argue against them but jump out of an airplane and see whether your argument holds water. The tenants of capitalism, when they are applied properly, work very efficiently because you have markets. Markets can remove excesses, can get the price right. Price discovery and markets give us the ability to grow. I can think of capitalism. I can go all the way back to people like JP Morgan. People think he’s a banker, or some of these guys that did the financing on things like electricity that ended up lighting America, that ended up heating our homes, that ended up allowing factories to run 24 hours, seven days a week. This is the thing we have to keep in mind. Capitalism takes natural resources in the form of steel, copper, so on and so forth. Combines it with human resources, labor along with technology and capital markets and creates a product, and that develops an economy. This is what we have to be careful about. Our government has gotten so big, the government doesn’t produce anything and yet they take $4 trillion a year out of the economy.

They’re also adding almost $1 trillion each year.

It’s ridiculous. Remember, I talked about markets. Markets are going to get this right pretty quick. We talk about the national debt and we talk about the trillion-dollar a year deficit that we have? People say, “They don’t matter. We were at $10 trillion, it didn’t matter. $15 trillion under Barack Obama, $20 trillion now under Donald Trump, $22 trillion. Why does it matter?” Deficits don’t matter until they matter. The day that they matter is a day too late.

Craig, first off, maybe define sound money. What does that mean? For those that don’t necessarily understand our monetary system. Talk about maybe the importance of sound money when it comes to having a very capitalist type of society.

Money in its nature has to have certain characteristics. Number one, money has to be divisible. In other words, you have $1, $10, $20, so on and so forth so you can make a change. Money has to be scarce. It has to have a store value. Our money is not scarce. As long as they’re growing trees, you can make more money. There’s no store value. If you put $1 away in 1900, that $1 now is only worth $0.2. It didn’t do a very good job as a store value. In America, we used to have a gold standard. When we were on the gold standard, our money remains sound. Matter of fact, there are many periods in the 1800 where the US dollar became stronger. You were able to buy more goods and services with your money. When Mr. Roosevelt decided to recall the gold in 1933, and subsequently Mr. Nixon closed the gold window on October 15th, 1971, we took all gold out of our money. We systematically started devaluing our money. That trend is not going to change. We are on a downward spiral to where one day the dollar, in my opinion, will be replaced with an alternate currency, probably maybe the Chinese or the Russians or maybe even the IMF will come out and issue a gold back currency.

To answer your question, sound money has to have something behind it. We don’t have anything behind our money anymore other than the full faith and credit of the United States government. Go look at $1. It says, “This is legal tender for all debts, public and private.” What does that mean? Your dollar is a debt instrument. It’s not money. Money, in order to be money, cannot be encumbered by something. All we use in our money system is an IOU that we pass on to somebody else. In other words, Patrick gives me an IOU and I go down to the grocery store and I use that IOU with somebody at the grocery store. It works very well as long as everybody recognizes that paper. If that grocer says, “I don’t recognize Patrick,” that I will use nothing. Patrick doesn’t have any money.

Price discovery and markets give us the ability to be able to grow. Click To Tweet

I think right there is where you hit something that I want to make sure that I understand correctly because you’re the expert here and has spoken to it for so long. I would say the relevance where you are making an exchange. Money in and of itself represents something. Inherently gold has tangible value. Paper doesn’t have tangible value. You look at the underlying premise of money is the whole mimic of exchange idea where your work, your labor, your goods, as you put it, how you take the resources of the world, the material of the world and combine it with the human mind, labor and production. It creates something of value to other people.

When a person exchanges that medium of exchange, your understanding that it’s worth a certain amount and them understanding that it’s worth a certain amount. The purpose of the actual exchange is that for the person that’s getting the money because they provided the value is now going to go out and do something else with it. The certainty that exists that it’s going to be worth the same amount when they go to exchange it is where the whole sound money idea breaks down. Is that an accurate logic?

It’s very much so. Money, when you think about it in its purest essence, is your labor that’s convertible into currency so you can buy goods and services. You go to work every day. You work 40 hours a week. You get a paycheck the other week. You’re able to take that labor and translate it into a tradable commodity. This is what we have to understand that if that’s the case, which it is. I have to work 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year to make $50,000. The Federal Reserve can push one button on a computer and create $50 million or $50 billion. What have they done to discount the value of my labor if they didn’t have to do anything to get $50 billion, but I had to work all year to get $50,000? That’s not fair.

Craig, these are the points that those that have studied this understand, but for those that don’t study this that this may be their first exposure. That right there what you said, is the heart and core of the issue, is that when you have a central power that has the authority to increase that amount of money that’s in circulation through whatever means, number one, it’s fake. There was no value produced for that. It dilutes and it essentially takes from those that did provide value. It’s everyone. It has been going on for a long time. It’s still that the overriding narrative is to continue to do this because it’s a good thing.

Governments by nature will never be satisfied. They always have to have more revenues. If the government was to move your tax rate, and I’m using a hypothetical here, from 32% to 80%, more than likely we probably have a revolution. Is that fair to say?

Absolutely.

If they leave your tax rate where it is and they devalue your currency, they can get the same effect. You don’t even realize this happened. In other words, if they hit you with an 80% tax, you would revolt. You wouldn’t pay for it. If they devalue your money every day and you have to use that money to survive, they are in essence taking more money from you in the form of depreciating the currency. They can’t tax you so they depreciate your currency. The Chinese are famous for this. They’re currency manipulators. This whole bit about our trade talks with China, it’s a joke because if tomorrow we cut a new deal and they don’t like the deal, they’ll play with their currencies and work it out through their currency. This is what the Federal Reserve has done. They’ve stolen from every American. Years ago, we did a study about it.

We can argue that there have been $100 trillion that’s been stolen from the American people since 1913 when we formed the Federal Reserve by what’s called financial repression, by paying people an interest rate that’s substantially lower than the rate of inflation. We’ve seen that happen and by using inflation as a form of taxation. I did a whole paper for the Congress years ago entitled the uses of inflation. I showed how back in the ‘50s, our Federal Reserve chairman wanted to do away with federal income tax. He said, “We don’t need a federal income tax. I’ll play with the currency and we’ll get our revenues through the currency.” Nobody talked about that. His name was Beardsley Ruml. If you read what he was proposing to the federal government, it will turn your hair.

Deficits don't matter until they matter; and the day that they matter is a day too late. Click To Tweet

The introduction I made where the wool is over our eyes is that this type of conversation is not prevalent. It is something that affects literally everybody every day. There are different ways to approach this. The common narrative is so strong that a central bank is a good thing. It’s the lender of last resort. It protects us. I look at it as very similar to how we perceive the government in general. I say we, I’m talking as a society, not me particularly. As a society, the government is there because if they weren’t there, then we wouldn’t have roads or if they weren’t there then people wouldn’t have jobs.

You know the fallacy of that because the reality is if you go back 150 years ago in America, we didn’t have a Leviathan government as we have. People weren’t dying in the streets from malnutrition or for lack of healthcare. We didn’t have any of that. We didn’t have welfare or social security or anything back in the 1800s. I didn’t see elderly people dying on the streets or anything. We have to keep in mind we’re pretty a benevolent nation. We take care of each other. The bigger issue is it’s important that we hit on this. I could never have this conversation I’m having with you on that national television show. I could never have it because they say, “You’re a conspiratorialist.” The facts are out there. You know them and I know them. All a person has to do is read and use a little common sense.

You draw the conclusion that this Federal Reserve is a very failed experiment. We should unravel the Federal Reserve. We should abolish it. We won’t because of the powers to be as I write about Money, Morality & the Machine realize that the money is more important to them than morality. Keeping the machine going and Washington, DC is more important than at all. As a direct result of that, we are not going to see things change. Short of us having a revolution. When I talk about revolution, I’m not talking about a 1776 revolution with guns. I’m talking about people revolting and going to the polls and saying, “We’ve had enough. We want a government that will work for us instead of working against us.”

It’s interesting to see how humanity operates that way where something bad has to happen in order for there to be a paradigm shift. The reason why you can’t have that conversation and it’s very difficult for anybody to have that conversation especially with opposing opinions in an intelligent way. There are so many layers behind it that it almost gets to the point where it’s not the same context. Therefore, you are so many layers above context that it’s “I’m right, you’re wrong” type of rational thing.

It becomes an ideology. You’re right. It’s an ideological argument.

The physical revolutions, I look at where we’re at in our society, I don’t know. I’m hoping that people start to wake up, but at the same time it’s most likely going to be through some pain where people wake up and step back and say, “We’re going to be in this government shut down when we went this long. Why do we need the Federal Reserve? Why do we need this?” Hopefully, people started waking up and asking more questions, better questions.

I said on national television the government doesn’t produce anything, so why are we worried about it hurting our GDP? The government spends money. We have to worry about if the government can’t process small business loans and small businesses can’t operate, and that would affect GDP. I get that. As far as I’m concerned, if Donald Trump wants to do something brazen, fire the 800,000 workers like Ronald Reagan did with the air traffic controllers. They’re non-essential employees anyway. Has your life been affected since they went on vacation? I say get rid of them. Let’s get rid of a million employees at the federal level and let’s reduce the size of government and who knows? Maybe we can even lower taxes ultimately. There’s a big flaw. I want to bring this up before we get too deep in the weeds. The flaw with the Federal Reserve is simple to explain to every single American. Watch this, Patrick and Craig, we moved to a desert island and we start a money system.

The 2008 crisis is not an exception. It's a rule. Click To Tweet

We get the local guys. We come up with dollars. We decide we’re going to use dollars. We lend out $1,000 to the locals at 5% interest. Now the locals owe us $1,000 principal and $50 interest. If you and I only printed $1,000, how can they pay us back? There’s not $1,050 out there. I have to create another $50. I lend that out. I need to borrow more and more. That’s the point. Every year you’ve heard the feds say our inflation target is 2%. They have to have inflation to survive. Let’s say it’s 2%. Every 50 years, you lose 100% on your investments. That’s not a very good deal. Nobody is talking about it in these terms. It’s flawed. It doesn’t work. That’s why you wonder why we’re talking about trillions now. Go back to the $1,050. We need to create $1,050 payback. We need to create $1,200 payback. Now you know why we’re at $100 trillion. Just so your readers know, if you were to spend $1 every second for the rest of your life, it would take you 32,000 years to spend $1 trillion. We owe $22 trillion of those?

Plus you add benefits or social programs, Medicare.

Our long-term liabilities are well in excess of $150 trillion.

I’m glad we started by getting into the morality of it because of a lot of the other episodes that have been done have talked about the morality behind things because I look at that being one of the foundational tenants that people don’t understand. I’ll bring up an example. I made the mistake of turning on the local news to see a Jazz game score on a snow report. On there was basically, there was this huge rally of people that all opened their businesses, opened gyms, the food bank opened up for the federal employees that didn’t have any work who are struggling financially.

I look at the nature of us and the nature of us wanting to help. There’s this confusion associated with central powers what it is and what relevance it has, whether it’s a good or a bad thing. I’m bringing up that people naturally want to do the right thing and do good for society. The government, in theory, I would say right now isn’t necessary. You look at how it continues to perpetuate and it strengthens the paradigm and makes it all the more difficult to get people to wake up. It’s inevitable because of how extreme the negative results and the outcomes have been. Right now it’s getting papered over until who knows when. It could be any type of event but when it goes, it’s going to go quick.

When it goes, you’re going to see the unraveling very quick. When people talk about a crisis or a meltdown or a recession, we’ve got to keep these in real terms. We went through the Great Depression in 1933. If you talked to anybody that lived during the Great Depression, they’re now in their 90s. They will refer to the Great Depression as the good old days. They don’t see it as negative. We went through recessions in America in the ‘60s and the ‘70s. We had the inflation crisis in ‘79, ‘80. Here’s my point. When we have meltdowns, people get rich and people get poor, but you don’t have people dying in the streets or lining up for food. It’s not how it works anymore.

I hear people calling for the market is going to melt down. You start thinking to yourself, “Is it going to be Mad Max at the grocery store? How am I going to feed my family?” No, it’s not going to be that way because there’s no benefit. I have one neighbor who half of his house is underground. I said, “Richard, what are you doing?” He said, “It’s when the bands of criminals come down the street.” I said, “Are you crazy?” We have a military. We have the police. This is the point. In run-ups in markets, people get rich, people get poor. Drops in markets, people get rich, people get poor. What we’re trying to do is wake up the American people and say, “We’re going to have more crises.” 2008 is not an exception. It’s a rule.

We have them every so many years in America. You need to be prepared for them so that you don’t panic. Think about if you didn’t panic in 2008, you’re already back to where you started and you’re way ahead of the game in stocks. We try and show people that if you have a diversified portfolio and that you have planned your future, you’re not going to have to worry about these ups and downs in the market. You’ll be able to sleep well at night and know that you have a game plan that’s protecting your financial future. That’s why I wrote the book, Money, Morality, & The Machine. That’s why the deal I cut with the publisher was for every one book we sell, we give a book away because we want to wake up the American people. They’ll call programs like yours to discuss these issues because the American people have the answers. We’re smart.

Sometimes our intelligence gets stifled because I’ve thought oftentimes crises are a good thing at a large level, even at the individual level. As human beings are so resilient and when we’re put to the test is where we thrive and where we learn and we discover.

TWS 06 | Capitalism

Capitalism: When we’re put to the test is where we thrive, learn, and discover.

 

It normally takes a crisis for a major paradigm shift to occur. Is anybody going to tell me that we don’t need a paradigm shift in America? Have you watched the news? Have you watched Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or whatever her name is, talking about we want to eliminate billionaires? That would have been good. Let’s see, maybe we should not allow a John Rockefeller to be a billionaire. Nobody would have light or maybe Bill Gates, we shouldn’t let him be a billionaire. He’s revolutionized computers. This talk is crazy that we have coming out of Washington.

It’s done under the guise of morality that this is the right thing. People should be equal. Not understanding the nature of equality and what that means. It’s interesting. It goes to show that this pervasive message of what is moral, what is ethical, how things should be, and what the purpose of government is. It’s out of whack. There are strong voices on both sides. It’s become this right divisive fight. That’s why the truth I don’t think is discovered unless that fight gets magnified. There’s a crisis. Suddenly people wake up during that typically. It’s interesting. It’s a fascinating time to be around where you and I can talk about this. The message can be spread.

Craig, these are our opinions. This is how we see things. We’ve connected the dots in so many different areas. We’ve read similar books. You have a much more extensive education and background than I do. I look at our ability to communicate our ideas. That’s going to continue because there are principles of truth that are true. People feel that and when it’s applied to specific situations, that’s when wake up occurs. Right now, it’s a difficult time. It’s also exciting that you can start to see what’s going to happen in the future.

You hit something that strikes me. You’re right on the money. Truth is it doesn’t matter whether you believe it or not. It doesn’t change what the truth is. It’s like a lie. A lie has to keep changing in order for it to live because if it doesn’t keep changing, it will die. The truth is the same now as it was 10,000 years ago as it will be 10,000 years in the future. You said something about equality that is spot on. A very dear friend of mine, Mike Savage, you probably know him who has a national talk show. He has a saying that says, “You can have no equality without quality.” I want you to think that through. We can’t have equality in this country unless the people are quality people.

It normally takes a crisis for a major paradigm shift to occur. Click To Tweet

Look at the people who are calling people racist, are they quality people? I don’t think so. We’re looking for this equality on whose scale on some guy from Black Lives Matter, from Antifa, from the Tea Party. Whose perspective are we looking at here? This is the problem. We’ve lost our ability to be human with each other. I could argue it’s because of cell phones and all this stuff. We’ve lost our humanity. If we lose our humanity, De Tocqueville told us that the greatest strength we have as a nation is our humanity. I hate to sound negative. I feel very optimistic about the future of America. However, the next ten years I think we’re going to experience some very difficult times.

Craig, everything you said has been brilliant. I look at humanity and I’d also say that during times of crisis is where humanity shines too. You saw many examples, whether it’s natural disasters, how people come to the rescue. I think we’re driven that way. We have this instinct inside of us to do the right thing. There are exceptions because we all have an irrational side of us as well. Generally speaking in crisis, you have a lot of good that comes from that. It is so much divisiveness. I had a cool experience a couple years ago going to Hawaii with my kids. It was a Disney-type of resort that they have there. We were swimming. There were these guys like a gangster, tattoos they had. They were like human having discussions with me laughing. It’s one of those things where everybody has this humane side. We all in a sense will resonate or talk to one another even though there are so many differences. It’s powerful but typically, the environment is what creates so much divisiveness.

TWS 06 | Capitalism

Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

What you brought up is so important. We should elaborate on this. There’s a book out that I encourage you to go read. It’s called Tribe by Sebastian Junger. In the book, Sebastian Junger studied war-torn societies, England after the famous bombings in London, Kosovo, and Sarajevo. He found out something fascinating. He found out that after the crisis was over, the people wanted the crisis to come back because when the crisis was happening, neighbor was taking care of neighbor. Brother was taking care of sister. Mother was taking care of son. Everybody was taking care of each other. In London, they would go down to the air raids bonkers when those sirens would go off. After the war was over, what the English people did was they congregated down in the bomb shelters. They missed getting together. Here’s the point, do you remember how tight we were as a nation in 2001? Remember George Bush on that puddle, “The people that tore down these buildings, they’re going to hear from all of us soon.” I felt like an American.

I’ve got to tell you something. We’re going to have another crisis. We have threats all over the world. I’m not going to telling you militarily. I’m talking about financially. We got China. We got Russia. Don’t underestimate India by any stretch of the imagination. The European Union, they’re trying to hold themselves together right now. Keep in mind, the European Union collectively is a bigger economy than ours. Individually, they’re not. As a European Union, they are bigger than we are. We have a lot of threats that we need to be thinking about on a long-term basis that is existential to this nation. One of them I believe happens to be our money system because if you devalue our money system, how are we going to be able to fund anything to be able to protect our interests? I’m incredibly concerned about the future of money because money, as much as we hate to admit it, has the morality to it. I talk about this in my book. Every moral decision in America has a financial consequence and every financial decision in America has a moral consequence. We’re not thinking in those terms.

Adding to that, I’d also say that behind every transaction is the nature of a human being to provide value to one another and use their abilities, use what their unique at, and also the process of figuring out what is valuable to others. It’s one of those things where money also has a very individual aspect in addition to what you mentioned.

Sometimes people misinterpret money too. Think about the guy that’s got $5 million in the bank and he’s drinking himself to sleep every night. He doesn’t think he has any problems because he’s got money. I would argue his problems are worse than the guy that’s on the street who is a drunk, who knows he’s got trouble because he can’t mask it because he lives in a fancy house. This is where we are in society. Money is merely a tool. It gives us the ability to trade, to buy, to sell, to live our lives. It shouldn’t represent who we are. My checkbook should have nothing to do with the quality of human being that I am. The minute that it does, we’ve lost as a society. What do we need government for? If men be angels, we don’t have any need for the government. The reality is men aren’t angels. The reality is men do things very immoral. That’s why I was very disappointed in 2008 that none of the bankers or some of the people that created some of the problems like Mr. Mozilla didn’t have to pay a price for this. Think about what happened in 2008 and nobody was held accountable.

It was worse. They made all the mistakes but yet all of their problems were solved for them.

That’s why I think the average American is getting very discouraged. They’re saying there are two sets of rules. There are sets of rules for the power of powerful people. There’s a set of rules for Hillary Clinton and those people. There’s another set of rules for me. That’s why most people are discouraged right now. The good news is we still are the greatest nation in the world. We still have the greatest capital system in the world. What I’m hopeful for is that these politicians have overplayed their hands. What we saw in 2016 is the beginning of, for lack of better term, a new popular populism in America where the American people get involved. I was very happy that the House went to the Democrats. You’re going to say, “You’re a Republican conservative. How could you say that?” Do you want me to tell you why? Because the Republicans in the House didn’t deserve to hold on to the House because in 2016, what did Donald Trump come back to the White House with? The American people said, “Build a wall.” The American people said, “Did this.” He’s doing those things. Isn’t that what he’s supposed to do? Isn’t that what he run on? Isn’t that what he got elected on?

If we have more of that, then the people are going to say, “If you’re doing your job, we’ll reelect you. If you’re not doing your job, we’re going to throw you out.” That’s what they did to the Republicans. We have a very healthy democracy. When the Republicans didn’t do what they promise in 2016, 2017, 2018, the American people threw them out. Now you’ve got Democrats in there. If they screw up, hopefully the politicians realize that until we start promising and following up on fulfilling those promises, we don’t have a chance to govern. If we do that, we have a bright future ahead of us.

I find it interesting your last couple of statements because you’re right. It comes down to what we as people believe and understand the influence that we do have by electing certain officials. At the same time, we make election decisions in this case based on our belief system, based on what we know. I look at how we’ve been conditioned as a society to understand government, understand their purpose, and understand their nature. That impacts the way in which we vote, where we do vote because this person is going to create jobs, this person is going to do this and this person is going to do that. Maybe you can end with your opinion here, going to quality, the quality of a collective people right now I would say isn’t necessarily making decisions politically electing certain people for the right reasons. As we shift as a society and understand whether it’s the purpose of government or whether not wanting to be taken advantage of because we’re aware of what they’re doing and why it won’t work. That will be hopefully the shift that can create some influence politically where we want different results than we want right now, which would definitely shift power.

I hope you’re right. You’d like to think that the American people get it right every so often. The problem in Washington, DC, I wrote about this in the book, Money, Morality & the Machine, the whole concept of that book is it plays off of Dwight Eisenhower’s warning to us. Be aware of the military industrial complex. What we do is we show how that military industrial complex is a type and shadow of other things that are going on in our government. Here’s how it works. The Congress appropriates funds. They go to build bombs, tanks, so and so forth. We need that for our national defense.

We, the people, are the government. Click To Tweet

Defense contractors turn around and give donations back to the congressmen and get them reelected. We wonder why some of these guys are like Ted Kennedy in the Senate for 40 years because they have this incestuous relationship with not just the defense contractors but everybody that contracts with the federal government. Whoever is contracting with the federal government, I guarantee you is giving money to the political campaigns. That’s the problem. If we break that, then we’d get our government back. We have the best government that money can buy right now because our politicians are bought and paid for. Our politicians shouldn’t be bought and paid for. The only people they should be responsible for is the American people. That’s why I’m grateful that you’re doing shows like this. That’s why I’m grateful for hosts like you that are talking about these issues. I am convinced if we engage the American people in a dialogue, we will fix this problem. We, the people, are the government.

You’re absolutely spot on there. There’s a lot more going on. I think there was more podcast created in 2018 than ever before. They’re a lot smarter than I am because I’ve been doing this for over ten years, there’s a lot of success in most podcasts. That’s also a good thing because it’s helping spread certain messages. I hear more of it. Craig, thank you for what you’re doing. You clearly contributed trying to understand how our seemingly complex system works and what are the principles behind them, the morality behind it. Thank you for what you’ve done and continue to do. We’ll support you in every way possible. Why don’t you let the readers know the best ways to follow you, see what you’re up to when you speak on this national show live. If you want to talk about ways in which people can follow you, that would be awesome.

I’m a major contributor to Fox so you’ll see me on Fox Business or Fox News every week or so. The best way to stay in touch with us is through the website, SwissAmerica.com. The publisher was gracious enough for every one book we sell, we’re able to give a book away. I don’t know how big your audience is, but I’m sure, 50, 60, 70 books, if they call 1-800-289-2646 and mention that you were listening to the program or mention Patrick’s name, they will send you a complementary copy from the publisher of the book, Money, Morality & the Machine. No hidden charges. They don’t say, “It’s $5 postage.” Everything is free. You call that number, you put your name, address, phone number down and they will send you a complementary copy of the book. All we ask you to do is read it and then engage with somebody like Patrick. I don’t know if you take call-ins, but let’s talk about these issues. Let’s get a number of opinions out there because I’m convinced in a multitude of counselors, we will find wisdom. The best years of America could be ahead of us if we fix some of these stupid problems that are very fixable.

You see signs everywhere that people are getting more engaged, more aware, learning and there’s a lot of accountability associated with media these days. It hasn’t been there before. It continues to improve and ensure that the messages that are out there are sound. We’ll make sure your book and the links to it gets distributed on everywhere we post the podcast and in our social media channels as well, and articulate that offer.

It’s great being with you. I look forward to doing it again.

Likewise, Craig. Have a good one. Thanks for what you do.

 

Important Links:

About Craig R. Smith

TWS 06 | Capitalism

Craig R. Smith is Chairman of Swiss America Trading Corporation, a national investment firm specializing in U.S. gold and silver coins. Mr. Smith founded the company in 1982 out of a bedroom in his home with $50.00. It has since grown into one of the largest and most respected firms in the industry known for its dedication to consumer education and safety.

Mr. Smith is an expert in many forms of tangible assets including; oil, precious metals and U.S. numismatic (collectible) coins. He is a student of history and an author of nine books.

Mr. Smith is sought after by national media for his insights on breaking news because he instantly engages audiences with his common-sense analysis of major political and economic trends. Craig’s door is always open to the media. Over the past two decades, Mr. Smith has been interviewed on over 1,500 radio and TV programs. He has also been featured in various print publications. He is a former columnist for Worldnetdaily.com and writes economic columns for Swissamerica.com

To receive your complimentary copy of Craig’s book Money, Morality & The Machine, please call (800) 289-2646 and mention that you as a listener of The Wealth Standard Podcast!

 

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Capitalism And The Endless Quest For Freedom with Lawrence Reed

TWS 5 | Capitalism And Freedom

 

Alongside our basic need for shelter, food, and clothing, a person’s yearning for freedom and liberty has always been present no matter what era and time. Lawrence Reed, President of the Foundation for Economic Education, talks about freedom and capitalism. He believes that each individual that comes into this world has the right to do anything that’s peaceful. He recounts what brought him to this quest and perspective which was the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, and explains the philosophy of capitalism which he believes is the economic component of a free society. He also relates the importance of understanding freedom on different aspects of life and how everyone will benefit from it.

Listen to the podcast here:

Capitalism And The Endless Quest For Freedom with Lawrence Reed

You’re going to love my guest. One of the most brilliant minds out there in relation to freedom and liberty. He is the President of the Foundation for Economic Education and he is also the author of bestselling books. Those include Excuse Me, Professor: Challenging the Myths of Progressivism. He also has authored a number of pamphlets including the Great Myths of the Great Depression and his Real Heroes. My guest is Lawrence Reed. Larry, it’s great to have you on. Thank you so much for taking the time.

It’s my pleasure. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

You’re an incredible wealth of knowledge. I want to dive straight into a description. How you would describe to somebody your philosophical views of life and business, which is part of life too.

I’ve always been a little bit hesitant to assign a label because labels often are shorthand for things that may or may not be true. People jump to conclusions. I always try to stress to people that you should judge another person’s views by the value of their content, not by some label you or others may ascribe to them. If I had to put a label on my philosophy, I would be comfortable with classical liberal, that means liberal in the 19th-century sense or in the sense that Europeans use the term even now. I would also be comfortable with the term libertarian. The bottom line is that I believe that each individual comes into this world with the right to do anything that’s peaceful. By peaceful I mean as long as you do no harm to another, as long as you respect the life and the property and the contracts and the choices and the decisions of your fellow man, you commit no fraud or force or violence or deception, then the burden should be on those who think in some way you should be restricted. I think you then as a peaceful person who has the right to live your life as you see fit.

We’re going to get into what the commonly held description is of how life should be for the collective good. Before that, I would be intrigued to know what helped bring you to this perspective you have that you very eloquently defined.

We can delude ourselves into all kinds of fallacies or we can enlighten ourselves with the truth. Click To Tweet

For me, I can say was my parents because, in my mother’s case, she never had any political or economic or current events viewpoints. She was a very nice lady that had no inkling about these things and I respect her for that. My father had some good instincts. He was a small business owner and so he bristled at the thought that some distant government might tell him how to run his business. He was in some ways hostile to authoritarianism and very respectful of the individual. He planted some good instincts in me. The most jarring early episode in my life that proved to be pivotal in the development of my thinking was the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. I was only fourteen at that time. I had begun to be interested in current affairs and I was watching these people in Czechoslovakia increasingly move toward freedom. A new regime had come into power in the early part of 1968 and they were moving away from hardline communism, even talking about free elections.

I was cheering them on because I instinctively thought this is great. They should be allowed to do these things. Then when the Soviets invaded, I remember watching that on television. I was outraged that for no reason other than to bring people under control, to push them around, to live their lives for them and to use force to get it done, you had these foreign powers invading their country and it moved me. Within days, I went to Pittsburgh on a bus from my home, which was at that time about 30 miles away to participate in a demonstration against the Soviet invasion. It was put on by a youth group that I joined. One of the first things they did with new members was they put them on the mailing list to receive materials from the foundation that I now run. My reading then deepened dramatically. I got into this from an anticommunist angle, but my philosophy has blossomed into a full-blown appreciation for human liberty across the board.

Before we get to that, as you look back on that pivotal experience, how would you define or describe that instinct that was compelling enough that you felt for people that didn’t speak English that lived across the world? They were pursuing freedom and were essentially invaded under the guise of being able to control and make their life better. What was that instinct? How would you describe that?

Probably an anti-authoritarianism that I inherited from my father. I remember in third grade, I would have been eight. He wanted to take me to Florida for a week to visit relatives in February. I was a student in the local public school in Western Pennsylvania and I mentioned to my teacher that we were going to Florida. She said, “He can’t do that. He can’t take you to Florida. I’m going to talk to the principal.” I went home thinking we’re not going to be able to go. I told my dad that and he said, “I’ll take care of it.” Sure enough, when the principal called, I heard my dad’s side of the conversation. He was generally a quiet shy guy, but he put his foot down on many occasions. I recall vividly him saying at one point to the principal on the phone, “He’s my son, we’re going to Florida. Don’t call here again,” and he hung up on him. He was my hero. Skepticism of authority, especially authority that had little more going for other than just guns, have always been with me from the earliest of ages. Then I saw those scenes in Prague in 1968. I know it touched me to see people who were not much older than me, students in 1968 being hosed down by water cannon and being arrested and rolled over with tanks. That deeply touched me.

I look at the degrees there because I would say most people would say that type of behavior and how individual liberties were being violated by the hose spraying. Most people would agree to that, but most people would not agree to the notion of you going to Florida during the winter as essentially the same idea. Where is the disconnect there? There are degrees, but how do you typically address that?

TWS 5 | Capitalism And Freedom

Capitalism And Freedom: You should judge another person’s views by the value of their content, not by some labels.

 

That’s rather ordinary and automatic for people to think that the two are not in any way connected. The more I came to understand and appreciate liberty, the more I realized that it’s a very precious and unique thing. Not many people in the history of the world have enjoyed it. Most who have had it have sooner or later lost it and not by one fell swoop by some dramatic radical invasion by another country. Most of them lost it by a steady and slow drip, erosion where they say, “In this area of life, we can trust the government to run our affairs.” Later it’s, “Now, we have to do this for us.” It’s the old slippery slope once you begin to abandon things like self-reliance, personal responsibility, and character taking charge of your life and trusting to politicians to do those things for you. The big question that every Socialist need to answer but never does is, “Where you got to draw the line? How are you going to stop that?” What about the next group that comes along and says, “I want something too” or “I need the government to give me this or that.” I became a much more appreciative of the slippery slope that societies have engaged and that have taken them from free societies to tyranny. Often, slowly enough that they didn’t realize it until it was too late.

Maybe talk if you would about when something like that is done where a person is impeded from doing something that they want. I would say, give something to somebody because they’re less fortunate than the other. What does that do to a person?

It means so much more to all concerned when people do good things like giving to those in need from the heart and by choice entirely voluntarily. So much more good is accomplished by that method than by beating it out of them or sending in the tanks if they don’t do it or taxing the life out of them. For the same reason that you don’t take a person to church on a Sunday morning at gunpoint and then pat yourself on the back later and say, “I made him religious.” It probably had the opposite effect. One of the most important observations about humans is that each of us is extraordinarily and completely unique. No two people who have ever lived have been precisely the same. For me, that screams freedom because you can’t be who you are. You can’t be fully human unless you have broad sway, as long as you don’t harm another, if you don’t have broad sway over how your life goes. If somebody else is telling you all those things, you’re not really living your life. Somebody else is living their life through you at the point of the gun. That’s so anti-human nature. It’s unthinkable.

One thing I’ve come to realize is there seems to be at least, I’m not going to speak absolutely, but there seems to be this natural curiosity that we have as human beings. Children have it at incredible levels. The stifling takes place sometimes when that curiosity is interrupted. I would say the interruption can be to the degree of being invaded by Russia, as far as pursuing things that you want to pursue. I would also say from a school perspective where the curriculum is dictated and essentially, I wouldn’t say forced, but highly coerced as far as what you should be studying, what you should be reading, what’s right, what’s wrong from an academic perspective. That’s how I see it. How does that relate to the importance of understanding freedom when it comes to taking the uniqueness of who we are and having the greatest experience that we can in life by pursuing curiosity and pursuing our desires?

You’re exactly right. You’re on to a very important point. Everyone develops in his or her own way at their own speed and interruptions in that through the use of force or dictation by someone outside. Especially if they’re remotely connected to you. It tends to send people down the wrong path. It tends to discourage their lust for knowledge. The most effective teachers are the ones who don’t just open up a kid’s skull and pour in the facts and figures. The most effective teachers are the ones who strike a match in the mind and the heart of a student. To ignite that lust for learning, to get the kids to appreciate the importance of learning and make them want to do it on their own by inspiring them. That’s the most effective way to teach, not to treat a kid as if he’s a robot that needs to be programmed at every turn. That runs counter to all that we know about human nature.

Labels are often our shorthand for things that may or may not be true. Click To Tweet

We could go to a completely different direction talking about academia and grades and what determines that you’re a smarter student. I won’t go there, but I do want to pivot to what we’ve chosen as a theme, which is Capitalism. All of these talking points that we have been discussing so far relate to that in a very peculiar way. Capitalism, to me at least, is a structure that can bring out incredible things from human beings. Maybe as it relates to your role with FEE and the discovery that you made of the principles of liberty and with your specialty in public policy, how do you view or have come to understand what Capitalism is and what its principles are?

Capitalism is the economic component of a free society and that’s pretty important. Nobody should say that economics has everything. Economics is the means by which we solve an awful lot of problems. It’s the means by which we feed and clothe and house people. It’s the means by which people’s lives materially can improve and put them in a position where they can do wonderful things, including helping those less fortunate. One of Capitalism’s greatest virtues of many is that it’s the one system that doesn’t require a mastermind or a central planner. Some guy in an ivory tower somewhere who says, “If I have enough cops that I can send out to tell people what to do, I can play in society.”

Capitalism is what happens when you leave people alone. You don’t have to tell them to do things like trade, invent, create, employ, or build. They do that as long as the incentives are there and they’re free to be themselves. We are naturally a creative being as human beings. That’s one of the greatest shortcomings of every other system. All the others, non-capitalist systems are contrivances. They are Rube Goldberg contraptions. They are individual humans pretending to be what they can’t possibly be and constructing stuff and then imposing it on other people. That is fraught with failure from the word go.

How would you associate that with the previous topics that we were mentioning in the general notion of liberty and specifically to your experience in school and how school dictates and how curiosity is the fire that can be ignited to create some of the most amazing learning? How do you associate that with Capitalism?

Capitalism by its very nature sparks and nurtures. It inflames in a positive way that natural human curiosity. Capitalism basically says, “If you have an idea that you want to try to put in place. You think it will meet a need or somebody will like what you do and give you money for it and therefore you can do better in the process. You’re free to do that, go to town.” It also says you can’t just do these things without regard to the desires of other people or you’ll flop. Capitalism says you can’t put a robot around you and a crown on your head and tell the peasants to cough it up. You have to produce things that they want and need. If you’re good at it, you’ll be rewarded for it. I don’t know why anybody wouldn’t want a system that is aimed at rewarding people who actually meet the needs and desires and wants of other people.

TWS 5 | Capitalism And Freedom

Capitalism And Freedom: Appreciate liberty. Not many people in the history of the world have enjoyed it, and most who have had it have sooner or later lost it.

 

I would say the statement you just made, a lot of people would say that they don’t deserve that. They have more than they need and therefore they should share that with others. What’s wrong with that argument if it’s for the better good of other people? If somebody figures out a way to create value and be successful based on the value they create for somebody else, because they’re so successful, they have too much and others don’t have enough. Therefore, they don’t need all that. Therefore, they should share with others.

The wealthiest among us who have got that way, not because of any special favors from the government. I’m very much opposed to that when it happens, but because of their efforts, their ingenuity, their investments being at the right place at the right time and meeting the needs of a lot of people, by definition, they got there through a life of service. They’ve created value. In every case, you’ll find the so-called super rich who have accomplished great things like that and had been rewarded for it. What society in effect pays them for having done that is a minuscule fraction of the wealth they’ve added to society. I don’t care that Bill Gates has $70 billion. He created hundreds of trillions of dollars in value that didn’t exist before. The last thing you want to do is to say to such people, “If you get to where you are so successful because you’ve done such a good job at serving others, we’re going to treat you like a villain.” Why would anybody want to do that? Except for some rotten motives like envy and covetousness that never end well.

No, it doesn’t, yet that’s a pervasive feeling that exists in society right now.

I tell people all the time, “For your own mental health, count your blessings. Don’t count the other guy’s. You’ll feel a lot better about life and you won’t be wasting time trying to run somebody else down.”

What came up when you were speaking a moment ago, it was a speech you gave a while ago about the wealth and about Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations. It wasn’t necessarily on The Wealth of Nations which most people define as the title of that book that was highly influential. You went into the actual true title of his second book. Would you maybe discuss that and what is the beginning of the title of the book? What relevance does that have to the actual title that most people subscribed to his book The Wealth of Nations?

If somebody else is telling you to do things, you're not really living your life. Somebody else is living their life through you. Click To Tweet

Most people know something about The Wealth of Nations, but most don’t know that that wasn’t the full title. This was Adam Smith’s second of only two books. The full title was An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. It’s significant to think about that because he didn’t entitle it An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Poverty of Nations. I’m pretty confident if he were here right now and we asked him, “Why didn’t you focus on poverty? That’s on everybody’s mind these days.” He would say, “Everybody knows what causes poverty. It’s what happens when you don’t do anything.” It’s what happens when the government stands in your way so that it penalizes people who create wealth and solve poverty. He was more interested in how do we go from a naturally poor society, which we all have been sooner if you go back far enough. How do you go from being a poor society to a rich one? That’s the problem we need to work out and encourage whatever it is that makes that happen.

Going from a poor society to a wealthy society, what do you say are the causes of that?

I think Adam Smith would say there are several components here. I’m not sure how he might rate their importance, but these are among the ones that he would list as most important. One is you’ve got to leave peaceful, productive people alone. You can’t stand in the way. You can’t vilify them. You can’t swipe their capital, otherwise, they’ll say, “Forget this. Why should I endure the risk and the hassle and the headaches if somebody else is going to take whatever it is I produce?” Don’t stand in the way of productive people like entrepreneurs. He would also say that self-interest is a powerful factor. I know that gets a bad rep in a lot of places. People say, “Self-interest, you mean you’re doing it for yourself. That sounds antisocial.” We all should do whatever we do for altruistic reasons just to help the other guy.

You look around the world and ask yourself, “How much of what actually gets done? How much of what’s produced that we benefit from derives from somebody’s charitable motive just to help somebody they don’t even know?” Not very much. That’s not denigrating the charitable impulse. I give to charities all the time, but I don’t underestimate the enormous benefit and power of self-interest that’s channeled into constructive, positive, wealth-creating directions by entrepreneurs and others in a free society. Think of everything you’re going to eat now. How much of that was produced because you said, “Jose, down there in Venezuela, where’s my coffee?” No, it’s because somebody said, “I can make a few bucks if I meet this need and create a new product and get it to the people who need it.” That’s a constructive and positive force. It’s one of the most powerful things for a higher standard of living, self-interest.

I wasn’t planning of talking about this, but he has his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. I haven’t studied this in a long time. I know that you’re more verse here. Would you maybe get into the moralities behind the principles of Capitalism? As I understood in that book and some of the main premises were that there is this natural driving self-interest for our personal well-being. Through that, we figured out ways to exchange with others and not just benefit ourselves but better the whole. Speak about the morality side of Capitalism and how those human tendencies to be self-interested work out in the favor of others.

TWS 5 | Capitalism And Freedom

Capitalism And Freedom: The most effective teachers are the ones who strike a match in the mind and the heart of a student to ignite that lust for learning.

 

That first book of Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Some Smith scholars argue and I think there’s a foundation for this, that maybe that was the more important of the two books. He laid out some of those moral foundations that later he draws out and shows the economic implications of in The Wealth of Nations. Smith was very curious about what motivates people. In particular, what motivates them to do something for other people instead of exclusively and entirely for themselves? When you look at those such things, you go down the path of realizing that people want to feel fulfilled.

If you talk to most entrepreneurs about what motivates them, you’ll find in fact, very few of them will say, “I just wanted to pile up lots of cash. I want to sit around and play with my pile of gold coins all day long.” No, that’s a byproduct of what they’re doing. What’s most fulfilling to most of them is the very idea of solving problems, interacting peacefully and productively with others. Deriving happiness from making them happy, finding common areas of interest and inventing and creating things that satisfy that lust of their curiosity. Those are far more motivating to people and Smith recognized this. Then the old caricature of the rich capitalists has the desire in one thing, just piling up cash.

That was a couple of hundred years ago, the mid-1700s to the late 1700s. Has human nature changed since then? Are those principles obsolete or do they still apply now?

I think they apply and I can’t see how human nature has changed. Remember, one of the key elements of human nature is that we are creatures of ideas. Our underlying nature may not change and I don’t think it has, but our ideas can change and ideas have real-world impact. We can delude ourselves into all kinds of fallacies or we can enlighten ourselves with the truth and with useful knowledge. At various times in history, people go down one rabbit trail or the other. I don’t think our nature has fundamentally changed, but our understanding of it or understanding of the world is too often colored by things like the political heat of the moment or a fad of the day. Those things don’t ultimately undermine our basic human nature.

That’s awesome. That’s an incredible way to explain it. Let’s end with the notion of failure. When it comes to a capitalistic society, there’s a failure that comes as a result of a person pursuing their curiosity, whether it’s entrepreneurship or business. You look at where the central powers of government have stepped in and thrown their weight around is that failure hurts people, failure is bad. In order to protect the collateral damage of failure, the government has to be involved because they’re the only ones that are going to look out for the best interest of the whole. How do you typically think through that type of logic that people use?

Capitalism is what happens when you leave people alone. Click To Tweet

I don’t know how anybody could look at the way the government operates now and say, “Somehow those guys can make up for our shortcomings.” That’s absurd. Some failures in life are inevitable and unavoidable and actually not necessarily bad. It depends more than anything else on how you react to it and what you learn from it. I don’t think we should look to any entity, Capitalism, Socialism, government, whatever, as the outfit that’s going to prevent failure. What we should be asking ourselves is what kind of system tends to minimize it, localize it, and maximize what we learned from it. That’s what we want. You don’t get that under a centrally planned top-down government-directed system because they fail all the time. They don’t have the internal incentives to ride in to ship to adjust because their concerns are elsewhere.

Their concerns are re-election, getting a bigger budget, not serving you so much as maintaining their own position and power. In Capitalism, when you fail at something because you didn’t control your costs or you didn’t meet a need that was out there, somebody else did it better than you. There’s a mechanism called profit and loss that immediately sends you a pretty powerful signal. It says right off the bat, “You need to get off this horse and get on another one.” That minimizes the waste of resources that redirects human energy. I’m grateful for a system we call Capitalism that tends to minimize failure and to maximize service which every entrepreneur is trying to do.

Failure is one of the most amazing things to attach to as far as opportunities are concerned. Now though, I look at how failure is a bad thing. I’ve had a number of employees and it’s been a very difficult thing over the years to unprogram or reprogram them to look at that making mistakes is a good thing if you handle it the right way. It’s one of the most incredible ways to learn and accelerate that learning. As you’ve spoken in the idea of what the government has done and how they’ve failed, I think most people agree with that, but because their mission is for the betterment of society, it somehow accepts it.

I find it curious right now with the government shut down. I was watching the news. There was a segment on there about how gyms were opening up to federal employees that wanted to go work out. There were food banks that were opening up their doors. There was so much charitable drive to help those that were in need because of the government shutdown and they didn’t have a paycheck. I find it interesting how people perceive government’s doing and how incredibly strong that perspective is. It made me concerned to an extent. How have you looked at what’s going on right now in the current environment and associated that with some of the stuff we’ve been talking about?

Every time I hear someone say, “We have to rely on the government for this to help those people.” I always like to say, “You’re selling yourself short.” What you’re saying is that the politicians are the ones with compassion. The rest of us dummies don’t have that. We somehow have the wisdom to select the right people because they have more compassion than we do, but we don’t have that kind of compassion. I think that is so ridiculous. It’s absurd. It’s childish. We should look around and rejoice and all the good things that people are voluntarily doing to help other people. They’re doing it in spite of the fact that the government is swiping a quarter or more of what they earn. It’s amazing how much charity there is after the government takes its cut. Don’t sell yourself short.

TWS 5 | Capitalism And Freedom

Capitalism And Freedom: Some failure in life is inevitable and unavoidable and actually not necessarily bad. It depends more than anything else on how you react to it and what you learn from it.

 

This has been amazing. I hope you enjoyed the conversation. This has been incredible. I’ve enjoyed everything you’ve said.

Thank you. You have great questions. You drew it out of me and I sure appreciate that.

It’s one thing that you and I have. I have a similar background where I didn’t have very politically-involved parents. They had strong opinions one way or the other about commerce. They were both teachers. I just had the curiosity about how things work and how people behave. I came across a lot of your material in 2005, 2006. It gave me that same feeling and I didn’t necessarily have the same experience as you did with seeing how a person’s liberty was taken at a larger scale with the Czech Republic and Russia. I start to look at myself and I start to look at what I was taught and what drives me and what drives other people and the environment associated with the healthiest grooming of a human being where they can pursue what they want in happiness and joy. It’s not something that can be dictated or force. It has to be chosen. Oftentimes, people gravitate toward this easy way of doing things. I’m not sure if that’s the purpose of life.

I looked at the incredible experience I’ve had learning from you and learning from others who understand the principles of liberty at such a deep level and how much of an impact it would have on the average individual. Let alone the society, but just the average individual where they recognize in themselves that there is something special and that they can do incredible things with their life. It’s inspiring and your website is incredible. You have so much information on there, more than can be consumed in probably ten lifetimes.

I’ve spread the word in regard to FEE and other organizations that are similar. I commend you and applaud you for all the effort you put into spreading this. I know it’s not easy and I know that these are not widely held beliefs and understood beliefs. The way in which you do it is incredible because it feels genuine and eloquent and you do it with such a great demeanor. Thank you for all the work you’ve done and keep it up and continue to charge forward and try to get more people that understand this.

You made my day. Thanks so much for the very kind words. You seem like a guy who would be great fun to have lunch with. I’ll look you up and I’ll let you know when I come out your way next. Meantime, holler anytime if I can be of any help and let us know when this goes online and we’ll be happy to help promote it on the website and on social media.

Thank you again. I really appreciate it.

It’s my pleasure. Thanks, Patrick. I really appreciate it.

Important Links:

About Lawrence Reed

TWS 5 | Capitalism And Freedom

Since 2008, Lawrence W. Reed has been President of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE.org) in Atlanta, Georgia. Previously, he served for 21 years as President of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan and taught economics at Northwood University. He is the author of hundreds of articles in periodicals around the world and seven books, the most recent of which are Real Heroes: Inspiring True Stories of Courage, Character and Conviction and Excuse Me, Professor: Challenging the Myths of Progressivism. His travels as a historian, lecturer, economist, and journalist have taken him to 83 countries on six continents.

 

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The Philosophy And Principles of Capitalism with Yaron Brook

TWS 3 | Capitalism

 

With all the talks, debates and different perception about capitalism, consulting an expert can best take us to in-depth understanding of the concept. Yaron Brook, an internationally sought-after speaker, writer, activist and objectivist, walks us through his strong belief in the philosophy and principles and how capitalism should be attached to individual rights and freedom. He explains how we can flourish through capitalism. He also shares how a book handed to him has started his lifelong journey and reinforcement of capitalism started.

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The Philosophy And Principles of Capitalism with Yaron Brook

TWS 3 | Capitalism

Equal Is Unfair: America’s Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality

I hope you are enjoying the first couple of episodes revolving around the topic of capitalism. I have the foremost living expert on capitalism, Yaron Brook. Yaron is an Israeli-American entrepreneur, writer and activist. He is an objectivist, which we’re going to most likely talk about and what that means. He also is the current Chairman of the Board of the Ayn Rand Institute. He also is the Cofounder of BH Equity Research and is the author of several books including called Equal Is Unfair: America’s Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality. Yaron, thank you for joining us. Welcome to the show.

It’s great to be here. I’m looking forward to this.

I find your background fascinating in how you came to understand what you do and why you have such a strong belief in your philosophy and your principals. Would you mind taking a moment and informing the audience of what is your background? How did you come to understand objectivism as well as capitalism? I would say a very strong opinion if those that are in our audience have listened to you or watched you before.

If they haven’t, there are tons of videos. Google my name and you’ll find a ton of content. I was born and raised in Israel in the period of time when pretty much everybody was a socialist. It was a thing to be. The Labor Party in Israel had won every single election until 1977. You were never exposed to any ideas other than the ideas of socialism. In 1977 as it happens, I was sixteen years old. I was getting together with a friend of mine. We were talking and he was spouting these free market capitalist ideas and I looked at him and I said, “Where are you getting this nonsense from? What happened to you?” He said, “You got to read this book,” and he handed me a copy of Atlas Shrugged. I read a lot in those days and I dove right into it and it blew my mind. It completely shook my world. It challenged everything I believed in from the fundamental beliefs I had about ethics, purpose of life, happiness, morality, politics, economics and about everything. I argued with the book. I didn’t want to believe it. I threw it against the wall. I yelled at Ayn Rand, she wasn’t there.

By the end of the book, I was convinced. It completely made sense to me. It was completely logical. I thought I completely understood it. I was still quite ignorant and I didn’t know it, but I got into basics. It was the beginning of a lifelong journey of discovering Ayn Rand’s philosophy, the philosophy of objectivism and her view of capitalism, how capitalism fits into that. I ultimately became a finance professor but my interest is more on the politics and economics. It’s all grounded in this view of morality, which is key to understanding her philosophy and understanding capitalism. I’ve studied her philosophy. I’ve studied economics. I’ve studied the great capitalist economists. The more I study, the more I’m convinced that the revolution that went through my mind at age sixteen was a true one and the rest of the world needs to catch up. What are they waiting for?

Capitalism is about freedom of the individual to pursue his values as he sees fit without anybody intervening. Click To Tweet

It’s interesting that your perspective continues to be reinforced it sounds by doing debates, by debating the opposite principles. You experienced it in your childhood growing up, but also you continually challenged both sides of the argument, which is profound and continues to reinforce it. How would you come to understand capitalism? When you acknowledged that word and when you look at its relevance in society and in life what is it that is most compelling and most profound?

Capitalism is about freedom. It’s about the freedom of the individual to pursue his values as he sees fit without anybody intervening where the role of the government is to protect that freedom. The founders called it individual rights. John Locke called it individual rights and they were right. These are the individual rights by the freedoms of action. Freedom of action is the pursuit of values necessary for your survival, the rational values that you need. Capitalism at the end of the day is a socioeconomic system, political system in which the government does nothing but protect individual rights, primarily property rights where all property is privately owned.

The government has complete separation of state from economics. Pure capitalism is where the government has no economic role. There is no treasury secretary. There are no regular agencies. There’s no Federal Reserve. There is no role for government. When we get together, what we decide, how we decide to exchange, what we decide to change, how we decide to produce and how we deploy our resources is completely left to individuals. As long as I am not committing fraud, as long as I’m not punching in the face, as long as I’m not committing a crime, as long as I’m not violating your rights, the government has no business intervening in the transaction between us.

The primary argument I want you to address now and this is the primary argument that we all see in society is that mankind isn’t going to do the right thing. They’re going to exploit people. They’re going to cheat. They’re going to steal. They’re inherently evil. Looking at capitalism, doesn’t that accentuate or magnify those flaws of humankind?

Let’s assume all men are evil, they’re scheming and they’re going to screw each other. Let’s take a small group of men, call them saints and have them control everything. The bureaucrats, the politicians, we know that they’re saints. We know our politicians. Even on its own terms, it’s insane. The fact is that there’s nothing to suggest in history that this is indeed the case. Look at us now. Since the invention of capitalism about 250 years ago, since the founding of this country, which is about the same time as capitalism comes together, not an accident that the two happened at about the same time. Since then, life expectancy has more than doubled. We’re wealthier beyond the most fantastic dreams of anybody living 250, 300 years ago.

Nobody could have imagined an iPhone and the fact that we’d be videoconferencing right now. All the tools that are available to us, they barely could imagine. I don’t think they imagined automobiles, flying machines that turned out to be nothing like the jets we have now. If you look at what human beings are capable of doing, of when they’re left free they produce, of how much benevolence and help and cooperation. Think about capitalism. People think about capitalism and think about competition and cutthroat competition. The fact is that 99% of capitalism is about cooperation. It’s about me hiring you and that’s a cooperative effort.

It’s about even competitors. Do you know that Apple uses Samsung product in its iPhone even though it competes with Samsung? Some of the components in the iPhone are made by Samsung. Even as they’re competing, they are cooperating. Collaboration and cooperation is the essential characteristic of capitalism. You see that on a massive scale and versus every other regime. Look at Venezuela, socialism. Theft, cheating, backstabbing, manipulating and people say, “This is socialism,” it’s really a kleptocracy. That’s exactly what socialism is. It is a kleptocracy. Every single regime that’s not capitalist, even in America, I would argue that our politicians are more corrupt now than they were 150 years ago when we were freer. I would argue that people generally in the culture are less honest. People generally in the culture will cut more corners because the government is intervening more.

Pure capitalism is where the government has no economic role. Click To Tweet

I think it’s exactly the opposite, the freer you allow people to be. People are neither good nor bad, but people have it within them to be good. When the right incentives are provided, when they’re left free, when they can benefit or when they can reap the rewards of their own action, they tend to be good. When you try to control them, when you put mother governments on their shoulder to try to tell them what they can and cannot do, they work at corners. They will cheat. I truly believe people are born neither good nor bad, but goodness is a potential in all of us. Capitalism brings out the best in people, the innovation, the hard work, the striving to improve their lives and the value creation that benefits all of our neighbors and everybody around us.

As you debate the opposite opinion because I believe there’s a clear distinction of how humans behave within an environment that’s free. An environment that has laissez-faire, hands-off and one that is centrally planned and influenced to take care of the well-being of all. What is it about the idea of freedom that drives so much disdain amongst people, especially in our quickly changing liberal perspective on things?

I hate to give them the compliment of calling them liberals. Liberals used to be a good word. What drives it is that capitalism demands something of all of us. It demands the best of us. It demands personal responsibility, but not just personal responsibility in the way a lot of conservatives deem it in a shallow sense. Personal responsibility goes deep down on all of our choices. It demands that we pursue a life worth living. Capitalism implies a particular moral code. It implies a moral code of self-interest. Capitalism basically says, “You’re on your own. Go and make the best of your life. Nobody’s going to be responsible for you. Nobody’s going to take care of you. You need to take care of yourself.” It basically encourages that so we reward success. We penalize failure. We reward accomplishment. We encourage and promote and allow for self-interest.

We all know what our mothers taught us about self-interest, about egoism or about even selfishness. Bad things, bad people are selfish. Bad people are self-interested but is that really the case? When Steve Jobs pursued self-interest in making the iPhone and he’s clearly pursuing his interest, trying to make a lot of money and building a product he loves. Is that a bad thing? Is that hurtful to anybody else? No. When great scientists pursue with passion the discoveries they make, that’s not about sacrificing for the world. They’re doing it because they love doing it. They do it to satisfy themselves. Capitalism is about satisfying our own rational values or our own rational needs. As such, it goes against the moral code that almost everybody teaches. This is why on the right among conservatives and among people on the right, they have such a hard time defending capitalism particularly as an absolute. “We need a little bit of capitalism,” they’ll tell us. No, we need capitalism. We need complete absolute capitalism because they’re uncomfortable with the idea of self-interest. They are uncomfortable with the idea of defending and promoting egoism.

TWS 3 | Capitalism

Capitalism: The fact is that 99% of capitalism is about cooperation.

 

We have been taught since we were this big that what’s good is to be selfless. What’s good is to sacrifice. What’s noble is to think of others first. This is what blew me away in Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand asks a simple question, “Why is your happiness less important than other people’s happiness? Why isn’t your happiness the most important thing to you?” If you understand how you get happiness, it doesn’t come by exploiting other people. It comes by creating values, but why is your life less important than other people’s life? Why should you live for the other rather than live for yourself? To me, the real essence of capitalism is the morality of self-interest and that’s what the left but also the right, find disdainful. Why the left condemns capitalism and why the right, for the most part, cannot defend it or defend it so poorly.

These ideas are old ideas. I haven’t revisited this in a while in detail, but Adam Smith before he wrote The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments, he talked about how we’re driven as a human being where we do have this self-interest. I wouldn’t say it starts with making sure that we stay alive. We feed ourselves, we clothe our self and we fit into society. Then it gets to the point where we’re driven to make a contribution and do things and ultimately by pursuing that, you provide for the well-being of others as a result. The intention of the left, I would say, by forcing people to give up money or to do this so that they can distribute to everyone. Ultimately, the best thing for everyone comes about by a person pursuing that self-interest. What are your thoughts around that?

This is why Ayn Rand is such a revolutionary because she fundamentally disagrees with that of Smith in this sense. Adam Smith correctly observed in The Wealth of Nations and in The Theory of Moral Sentiments that the baker doesn’t bake the bread for you. He baked the bread for himself. He likes baking bread. More importantly in the context of the baker, he’s trying to make a living. He’s trying to feed his family. He’s trying to feed himself. He’s motivated by self-interest. Adam Smith says, “Self-interest is not good. It’s not a model trait. It’s not a virtue. We tolerate it because if you add up the self-interest of all these people, you get a better social outcome.”

Ayn Rand says, “I don’t care about the social outcome. What I care about is your right as an individual to pursue your happiness, your self-interest. I care about the baker as the baker, not what he does to other people but the baker. I want the baker to be able to be happy.” For the baker to be able to be happy, he must be free. Free to make his own choices. Free to have his own ideas. Free to bake whatever bread he wants to make, whether it fits into the regulatory regime or not. As long as his customers want it and as long as it doesn’t hurt them, he commits fraud or he’s putting poison in the bread. He should be able to be free to make his bed as he sees fit and pays employees as much as he wants because I care about the baker.

People are neither born good nor bad; goodness is a potential in all of us. Click To Tweet

It turns out that if you leave people free to pursue their self-interest, the society, if you can even define that term, is better off. Everybody who’s willing to work, everybody’s willing to produce is better off. That is not the reason to defend capitalism. The reason to defend capitalism is in the sense that the founders wrote in the Declaration of Independence. You have an inalienable right to pursue your own happiness. Not society’s, your own. The only political-economic social system that leaves individuals free to pursue their own happiness is capitalism. To me, that’s the moral foundation. It’s about the individual and it works because when you leave people free, they take care of their own property. That’s why capitalism also produces the cleanest environment because private property is clean. It’s a public property that’s polluted.

When the wall came down in Berlin, what we discovered was the filthiest place on the planet was communist East Europe because everything was public property and nobody cared. Everything dumped their garbage in the public space. When you have your own private property, we take care of it. You take care of yourself. In order to make a living, you have to produce values that other people want and therefore you are helping them. When I buy an iPhone for $1,000, my life is better for that. My iPhone is worth much more than $1,000, tens of thousands of dollars if this enhances my life. I’m willing to give up $1,000 because my life is better off by doing so.

Think about that. Every transaction we go through every day when we buy groceries, when we go to a restaurant, when we buy iPhones, or when we consume electricity. Whatever it is that we do, we are benefiting more than what we’re paying. Otherwise, we wouldn’t do it. Capitalism is a system through trade, through the win-win relationships that trade creates. Capitalism is a system that everybody is constantly better off through it as long as you’re working and producing something and earning something. It’s a win-win relationship. Because I’m selfish, because I want to produce, because I want to have a better life, I’m making everybody else’s life better as well because I have to trade with them. That’s the beauty of capitalism and that’s the beauty of this morality, the small defense of capitalism.

You had gone down and talked about this notion of happiness and achievement. You talked about how people pursue achievement. Achievement gives them a notion of self-worth or confidence and that happiness. Would you define happiness in another way or is it in line with that sequence?

TWS 3 | Capitalism

Capitalism: The reason to defend capitalism is, in a sense, that the founders wrote in the Declaration of Independence.

 

Happiness is the sense you get about life that comes from achieving your goals and achieving your values, as long as those values are rational. I don’t think somebody who has irrational values can be happy. If your value is to bring about socialism, you’re not going to be happy. You’re going to be miserable because the existential reality of those values is going to be detrimental to your life. The values have to be rational, pro-life values. Happiness comes from achieving those values. Ayn Rand defined happiness as a state of non-contradictory joy. You have this positive sense about the world and nothing is contradicting it. Nothing is fighting it. The world is good. It doesn’t mean you don’t have problems. It doesn’t mean you can’t be sad. It doesn’t mean tragedies don’t happen to you and you could be depressed for a while.

Overall, your attitude towards your life, your standing order in terms of life is life is good. I achieve stuff I can. I can make my goals. I can achieve my values. People sitting at home, for example, one of the great tragedies of the welfare state is that it basically prevents people who receive welfare from ever being happy. It robs them of opportunity to be happy because without work at whatever level you are capable of, without the challenge, without building, creating or making something. Whatever level you can do it, I don’t think you can be happy. You have to be able to achieve values. If you’re sitting at home playing video games and collecting a welfare check, that’s out the window for you. To me, the welfare state is immoral to a large extent because of that.

I’ve thought about that a lot. I thought about with people and what they achieve. Oftentimes, it comes as a result of hardship and error or mistakes in certain areas and their ability to overcome that and learn and achieve because of it. I don’t think there’s anything that can replace that. I look at a free society and how that allows for those opportunities. It does allow people to understand what they’re capable of. I’m not sure if there’s another way to do that. I don’t think there is.

At the end of the day, you go down to freedom. You have to have the freedom to try. You have to have the freedom to experiment. You have to have the freedom to fail, but you also have to have the freedom to succeed and to benefit from that success that so that everything else is motivated. That’s what capitalism provides. Capitalism is the system that leaves you free to do all those things. That’s how you get great innovation. People try stuff out. They come up with crazy ideas. Everybody around them I’m sure said, “That’s nuts. You’re insane. Nobody can do that,” and then they go do it.

Capitalism basically says you're on your own. Click To Tweet

Sometimes those crazy ideas turn out to be crazy and they fail. Sometimes and maybe less frequently, they turned out to be brilliant and they turn out to be what changes the world. The socialism you don’t have there, socialism under any political system where the state is involved. You basically have to get permission in order to innovate. If you take any great idea in human history and you put it in front of the committee, it’s going to fail. Is Earth going around the sun or is the sun going around the Earth? The committee of the Catholic Church decided, “The sun goes around the Earth. Galileo, you’re all wrong.” They shut him up and they imprisoned him or they put him on house arrest so he could not articulate this fallacy. In a free society, Galileo is out there, “I made this incredible discovery,” and speed at which science would have developed after that would have been so much faster. We would be so much richer now. Everything got slowed down because the committee couldn’t decide if this was a good idea or a bad idea. I always ask my audiences, “Imagine if this was designed by a government committee. What would this look like?” You don’t need to even get the answer. You know what’s going on inside of people’s heads. They can see some monstrous machine that’s too big and doesn’t work and is a disaster. Steve Jobs didn’t need to get permission. He didn’t ask anybody. He just did it.

It’s stifling and it’s interesting what’s going on in our country with the government shutdown and 800,000 people not working.

I would love to see the Federal government fire 800,000 people. We as a country would be richer. We as a country would be safer. We as a country would be far more capitalist and far more innovative if we got rid of these bureaucrats. My only concern about the government shutdown is these people are going to get back pay. I would like to see them fired. I would like to see the government shrink by 80%. You could probably get rid of 80% of government officials. Keep the military. Keep a few policemen. Get rid of everybody else. What do we need them for? They only constrain our lives. They only hinder our lives. They don’t add anything to it.

Have you been to CES before in Vegas?

TWS 3 | Capitalism

Capitalism: Happiness is the sense that you get about life that comes from achieving your goals and achieving your values, as long as those values are rational.

 

I read about it all the time. It sounds like a great time.

It’s this whole topic. You experience the results of this topic. I was in line doing a demo for the self-driving cars and I was talking to the head analyst at Intel who is creating the technological framework for that. The biggest impediment was the government. It was approving this and approving this. It’s one of those things where it can stifle innovation at that level, but it also stifles it at the lower levels primarily the welfare state. How we’re robbing individuals of an awesome experience to figure out their life and to figure out how to overcome challenges and problems and get employment. There’s so much in a human’s mind and their ability to create and prosper. It’s robbed from them over and over again. It becomes a habit and it destroys human life. I would consider one of the biggest tragedies of our day and age.

It robs us from the productive capacity and it robs them from their productive capacity and it robs us from their ideas. Just because they are on welfare, it doesn’t mean that with the right incentives, if they wouldn’t be the next innovator, the next entrepreneur or the next somebody who created something important. We robbed them when they’re children. Think about the other great tragedy. Under capitalism, education would be private, and education would be competitive. Education would have to be good. Otherwise, I wouldn’t send my kids there. Now, we have an educational system through and through. Particularly, if you’re poor we have an awful educational system that cripples these kids. It doesn’t give them the tools, it cripples them. This is socialism in practice. We have socialism in education. What is the result? Worse than mediocrity, it’s pathetic awful.

Imagine if education was competitive. If entrepreneurs instead of thinking of the next app for the iPhone thought about the next educational product, the next school that they could create, the next chain of schools that they could build where they would drive prices down and drive quality up. Imagine if we saw billboards with, “If your son is inclined towards math, our school is great. Your son or daughter likes to paint, our school is great for you.” They compete on those things and they market and advertise them. That would be a capitalist world. That would be a worthwhile world. What we’re taking is sheer human potential and destroying it by grinding it through a government educational system. I won’t even send a letter through the post. I’d rather use UPS and FedEx. Why would I send my kid to the equivalent of the post office, which is what government education is?

Happiness should not come from exploiting other people. Click To Tweet

In 2018, we focused on John Locke’s life, liberty and property and what those principles were. One of the guests wrote the book, Free To Learn, his name is Peter Gray. He talks about the Sudbury School System and how kids are creative. They’re naturally curious about life and he robbed them of that experience by shoving curriculum down their throat.

Competition is we discover which educational system is best. There will be competition and parents might disagree and there might be all kinds of schools. We would all have different preferences and some would be more successful than others. It would be innovative and we would go through the market process of discovery which educational system was best, just like in any other field. We figure out what’s best through competitive markets. The fact that we denied this of our kids and we denied this of our society and our culture is tragic.

We could probably go on and on because there’s so much to talk about because there’s so much application to human life and our experience on Earth. Let’s end with this. As you’ve researched this and debated this and thought about this to the nth degree, what would you say are the most compelling reasons at an individual level to embrace the principles of capitalism?

The most compelling reason is that you value your own life. You want to be free. You want to have opportunities. You want to pursue your own dreams. You want to be happy. It’s difficult to be happy under socialism, certainly under communism or fascism or statism of any form. The most compelling reason to want capitalism is to want to live. It’s to want to go out there and produce, create, build and make stuff. It’s not even about the money. Although money is nice and money comes with all that creation, but it’s about the sheer fun and enjoyment of pursuing something that you love doing and doing something that you love doing. Making a difference in your own life and challenging yourself and setting ambitious goals and achieving those goals.

TWS 3 | Capitalism

Capitalism: One of the great tragedies of the welfare state is that it basically prevents people who receive welfare from ever being happy.

 

It’s living. Capitalism is the only system that allows you to do that fully. One of the great tragedies in America unfortunately is we think of America now as capitalist. We’re not. We’re this mixed economy with some capitalism still, some freedom and a lot of regulation and control and fascist, socialist structures imposed on us. If we could only get rid of that and we could get richer, get happier, flourish in dimensions we can’t even imagine. Everything becomes better with freedom. The odds get better. Our spiritual life gets better. Our material life suddenly gets better.

Yaron, this has been a fascinating discussion. If you Google your name, there’s a lot of stuff out there. Why don’t you cover the best ways to follow you? Best ways to learn about the Ayn Rand Institute and learn more about capitalism.

First, I recommend everybody to read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand’s books. They’re American classics. Everybody should be reading them anyway. Go pick up a copy and they’re available in every format known to man. No excuses. A lot of people are listening to them these days. Download it on Audible and take a road trip. You can find about Ayn Rand in AynRand.org. There’s a ton of content, a ton of material there. If you want to study objectivism deeper, there are lots of videos, audios and podcasts and many years’ worth of content that’s available. Some of it is Ayn Rand herself, some who are leading philosophical students who know her ideas and study them. To follow me, there are a number of ways. The easiest is probably going to YouTube and to subscribe to my YouTube channel. There are thousands of videos up on YouTube of mine and I’m constantly producing more. I do a video show at least once a week, usually three, four times a week. There’s a ton of content being produced constantly. You can do the regular follow me on Twitter and follow me on Facebook. I do have a website, YaronBrookShow.com.

The only political economic social system that leaves individuals free to pursue their own happiness is capitalism. Click To Tweet

As far as your books are concerned, they’re all available on Amazon or on your website?

They’re all available on Amazon. They’re all available in every format that is available. I have three books. One is called Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand’s Ideas Can End Big Government, the second one is Equal Is Unfair and the third one In Pursuit Of Wealth: The Moral Case For Finance. It’s a book about the financial industry and why it’s a noble, productive and virtuous model industry. That will shock a few people. As a companion to that, I do on YouTube a talk called The Morality of Finance.

Yaron, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you for your time. Everyone out there, hopefully this has struck a few chords and got you to think about capitalism, the principles of capitalism and the principles of freedom at a deeper level.

Thanks, Patrick.

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About Yaron Brook

TWS 3 | Capitalism

Yaron Brook is chairman of the board of the Ayn Rand Institute. He wears many hats at the institute and travels extensively as ARI’s spokesman.

Brook can be heard weekly on The Yaron Brook Show, which airs live on the BlogTalkRadio podcast. He is also a frequent guest on national radio and television programs.

An internationally sought-after speaker and debater, Brook also pens works that make one think. As co-author, with Don Watkins, of the national best-seller Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand’s Ideas Can End Big Government, Brook and Watkins argue that the answer to our current economic woes lies not in “trickle-down government” but in Rand’s inspiring philosophy of capitalism and self-interest. Last year, Brook and Watkins released a new book, Equal Is Unfair: America’s Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality, a book that shows the real key to making America a freer, fairer, more prosperous nation is to protect and celebrate the pursuit of success―not pull down the high fliers in the name of equality. Brook is also contributing author to Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea, Winning the Unwinnable War: America’s Self-Crippled Response to Islamic Totalitarianism and Big Tent: The Story of the Conservative Revolution — As Told by the Thinkers and Doers Who Made It Happen. He was a columnist at Forbes.com, and his articles have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Investor’s Business Daily and many other publications.

Brook was born and raised in Israel. He served as a first sergeant in Israeli military intelligence and earned a BSc in civil engineering from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel. In 1987 he moved to the United States where he received his MBA and PhD in finance from the University of Texas at Austin; he became an American citizen in 2003. For seven years he was an award-winning finance professor at Santa Clara University, and in 1998 he cofounded BH Equity Research, a private equity and hedge fund manager, of which he is managing founder and director.

Brook serves on the boards of the Ayn Rand Institute, the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism and CEHE (Center for Excellence in Higher Education), and he is a member of the Association of Private Enterprise Education and the Mont Pelerin Society.

 

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Capitalism: Its Fundamental Truth And Moral Dimensions with Jason Rink

TWS 2 | Capitalism

 

Capitalism is one of those esoteric terms in a sense that most people know but don’t understand what it means. Kicking off the year by doing a deep dive into this concept is Jason Rink, award-winning producer and director of documentary films, an author, a marketer, and a self-proclaimed capitalist. Jason talks about capitalism and how it relates to us individually. He also shares how he has come to believe its relevance and the magic it holds when understood properly. Toppling down some perspectives, Jason addresses some of the misconceptions that keep people from having rational conversations with each other about it. He gets down into the entire market economy together with money, trade, and survival as he bakes the fundamental truth and moral dimensions about capitalism that people have to realize.

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Capitalism: Its Fundamental Truth And Moral Dimensions with Jason Rink

This is one of our first episodes for season one 2019 where we are focused on the theme of capitalism. I decided to have one of my good friends, Jason Rink, to join me for this first guest episode. The reason why I brought Jason on is him and I have interacted and I consider him as an individual who understands the philosophy of capitalism better than most. He is a nonbiased party so there’s no institute behind his title or a book behind his title. He represented the concept of capitalism as far as this philosophy is concerned. All the different activities of his professional life in such a manner that this is going to be an invigorating conversation. Jason, you do so many different things. It’s hard to keep track of you sometimes but why don’t you introduce yourself?

First, I just want to thank you for having me on. I’m super stoked to have this conversation with you. I’m honored because your show has been around for so long. You’ve had so many different guests on it, people that I respect. You were telling me about some of the other people coming on this season and I’m like, “I’m surrounded by some giants.” I’m humbled to be a part of this. Part of my career, I was in commercial banking for years. When the bailout started happening in 2007 and 2008 and the financial crisis started to visit upon the US economy, I was working at Chase Bank in the Equipment Finance Division and in Business Banking. It was along that period of time I got introduced to Ron Paul.

I was not a political person at the time, but Ron Paul had some ideas that resonated with me personally. As I started looking into what he had to say about the Federal Reserve and started to say about Austrian economics, I started to get interested in these ideas. At the same time, I found myself here in the belly of the beast. As things started to go south during that 2008 crisis, I started to see, “Some of these things Ron Paul’s talking about are happening all around me.” I felt conflicted as well because here I am working for the Federal Reserve at the big banks. It was during that season of time that I started to dive deep into Austrian economics and monetary policy and some light reading on the side. That set me off on a course of being personally interested in these ideas.

Fast forward, I have a video production company. I’ve worked with a lot of free market-oriented think tanks and organizations because I support what they’re doing. I have done some work in the infinite banking realm with Nelson Nash. At the same time, I do a lot of work with some big brands like Toyota, Mazda and Aston Martin. I’m out in the world. I’m a business owner and I’m a capitalist. I’m out there creating jobs and generating income for my family. I’m applying the principles that I believe about free-market capitalism, sound money, and being smart with how I invest in preserving my capital and all of that. I’m doing it out in real life. It’s the lab for all the ideas that I’ve embraced.

That’s what’s going to be cool about this conversation. It is to talk about what you’re doing and the drive behind it that has to do with anything. Capitalism is one of those esoteric terms in a sense that most people know but don’t understand what it means. They don’t notice what it means as it relates to them individually. I met you during this same period of time at FreedomFest down in Las Vegas, which is put on by Mark Skousen. You at the time were part of the production team at the Tenth Amendment Center.

You can't take care of other people unless you take care of yourself first. Click To Tweet

It was 2012 because I had made a movie called Nullification with Tom Woods and Michael Bolden of the Tenth Amendment Center. It was all about the Tenth Amendment and the idea that the States have the right to push back against federal legislation that’s unconstitutional. It’s a controversial idea. That was the first feature-length documentary I ever made. I was at FreedomFest. My film was there and that’s when you and I had got connected first.

I was there at the little film festival that they do as part of the conference and I saw you there. It was that next winter in 2013 where we were at an industry event. I was walking along and I saw you. You had a very distinct glasses and you had a Tony Stark goatee. I was like, “You’re that guy.” That’s when we hit it off and then I saw you again at FreedomFest and from there, we’ve kept in contact. You’re part of the Prosperity Economics Movement that I work with. What links us is the ideas that we’re going to be discussing. That’s our backstory and this is where I want to go with the conversation.

From a very general standpoint, I wanted to talk about how you understand capitalism, why you’ve come to certain conclusions about its relevance, and how magical it is if properly understood. Address some of the misconceptions that are out there. It’s a misconception where people don’t understand it or have this idea about it but it’s a third in line behind religion and politics as far as discussion points. People feel so strongly about it where their emotions take over that belief and you can’t have a rational conversation with anybody about it. That’s how strong this topic is penetrating into the language and vernacular of the United States. I want to get into this confused sense of morality as why there’s this big Bernie push as well as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez push. Why is it so appealing but why it’s the same drive as just the pure sense of capitalism? It’s not that there is a tall order to this conversation.

Let’s see if we could solve this thing and get both sides together hand-in-hand.

How do you understand capitalism and what’s the story behind that?

TWS 2 | Capitalism

Capitalism: When we look at human beings and society, we all fundamentally have to find a way to survive and to provide for ourselves and for our families.

 

The word capitalism, people bring with certain understandings or ideas about the word. You can’t throw the word out there by itself. If you throw the word Trump out there, you’re going to get some polarized opinions. If you throw the word Jesus out there, you’re going to get polarized defendants and then all of a sudden there’s this other word, capitalism, and it’s almost as big of a grenade in a conversation. Digging back into my own understanding, I don’t think I ever had a negative perspective personally on capitalism. I was neutral on the idea.

When I started to dig into learning more about money and government, I started to recognize that a way to define capitalism that worked for me is I started to see it as the market or voluntary exchange. When I say the market, I’m even thinking at its smallest sense. When you go into a farmer’s market in a city where you’ve got all of these different entrepreneurs selling their goods: the vegetables, charcoal, toothpaste, candles and soap or whatever it is. The farmer’s market is the purest form of trade. I don’t think there’s anybody out there who looks at a farmer’s market and they’re like, “That’s an evil capitalist thing.” It is because this idea of the marketplace where people come together as buyers and sellers of their own free will voluntarily exchanging goods and services. That seems very normal. That resonates with this all at a human level. That is what I see as the fundamental truth that’s baked into the idea of capitalism.

There are so many different examples that we can cite but I want to reverse engineer the whole idea of a farmer’s market or a market in general where people come to exchange their goods and services. This comes down to the drive there. What’s the initiating drive for someone to go to a farmer’s market?

When we look at human beings and society, we all fundamentally have to find a way to survive and to provide for ourselves and for our families. The fundamental drive here is how am I going to generate the things that I need to live? When you go to that fundamental level, there are a couple of different ways we can do it. The primary way is for me to go out and try to gather together all of the different things that I need to survive, my food, my water, my shelter, all of those things and create them by myself through my own work and through my own hands. What you see is the way that this is developed throughout society logically when you look at how this all comes together. As people gather together in society, it turns out that some people are better at certain things and other things. We find ways to become more efficient. We find ways to become more effective at creating certain things and not other things.

What we do is we start to specialize in making certain things then we trade to other people for things that they create. This whole market economy or the flourishing of certain people specializing in certain skills and products and other people and then finding a way to exchange those things in the marketplace, that coming to life is a function of just trying to find the most efficient way to survive and to care for ourselves and to generate some leisure. Baked within this whole market thing are concepts of money, trade, survival, craftsmanship, and all of these things. That’s where it comes to life. The farmer’s market is the outgrowth of that development. It’s the development of social technology. If you think about what the marketplace is, it is a social technology. It’s something that makes it easier for us to survive on this planet.

We are much more likely to survive individually if we gathered together with others. Click To Tweet

If you look at the word that keeps coming to mind, what initiates is people want something. What is it that they want? I’m not even asking them what they want, it’s why do they want it? All human beings we are wired. This is going to sound not politically correct, but we’re wired to do what’s best in the best interest of ourselves. This is the nature of it. The politically correct thing which people look at morality is that we have a stewardship to take care of other people. That’s true to an extent. At the same time, you can’t take care of other people unless you take care of yourself first. The first thing is that the initiating drive is self-interest. It’s you as an individual because people are driven to survive but as you go up through the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, it’s not the needs of a society, it’s the personal needs. Those are personal needs which start with physiological then they go to safety then to relationships. They go to self-esteem and to self-actualization. These are all personal needs that we are self-interested in. People are out there, they wake up in the morning and they’re the center of attention.

Even us gathering together in tribes, in groups or in societies is about self-preservation. What we find is that we are much more likely to survive individually if we gathered together with others to help us navigate the world that we’re in and nature. Even this idea of getting together with other people, that’s a self-interested drive that drives us there.

Going through the Hierarchy of Needs, it’s physiological. You need to eat, have some shelter and then you need some safety. What’s after that is relationships. Start with intimate relationships and then going to the communal type of relationships. Other people are a part of our makeup. It starts with us. It starts with our drive and everybody is this way. Everybody’s wired this way. What’s also fascinating is that we all are wired slightly different as to what we think is our best interests. That aligns with unique strengths, unique abilities, talents and so forth. The purest sense of capitalism is what provides us with the opportunity to go out there uninhibited and pursue what is best for us. It’s not like the capitalism word is in the Bible or the ancient scripts. This word came about right as the birth of our modern era toward the Scottish Enlightenment and around the Adam Smith period of time. Also, the Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels who wrote The Communist Manifesto. This is where the idea of capitalism started to be demonized. Also, you have some of the purest writings as far as societal morality with a lot of the Scottish Enlightenment.

Those thinkers gave birth to this idea of what happens to humanity if there is this structure in place in which people can take who they are, what they’re best at and operate for their self-interest. The end result is what provides people what’s best for them, the most selfish thing possible has to be able to provide the best thing for somebody else first. That’s where the confusion is where people are naturally self-interested. We want preservation, we seek all of these needs that I went through. What you pointed out is that as we have a community, most people are self-interested and get what they want. Other people are involved in that process. They’re benefited just as much as the initial individual with they’re trying to meet their self-interest.

TWS 2 | Capitalism

The Communist Manifesto

We’re self-interested, we’re moving through the world in a way where we are looking after our own interests. However, it turns out that the best route to that is to find how we can create the most value for others in this marketplace. It’s an interesting design. For me, it’s a spiritual concept because I’m like, “This is incredible.” It’s this irony that like, “Here we are breathing out CO2 which is like poison. By the way, there are these things called plants that suck it in and then they generate this oxygen thing out of it. By the way, that’s what we need.” This whole market economy that’s based on, “How can I best serve other people that are going to bring the greatest amount of good back to myself?” It’s a paradox on one hand and on the other hand, it’s like, “Society in humanity has been engineered to function in this way.”

Once you start to see it that way, it becomes a beautiful thing. The Bernie Sanders of the world, they’re not out there railing against the farmer’s market to be clear. They’re railing against a more “complicated form of capitalism.” As our society has changed as it seems, it’s gotten much more complicated. In reality, the same fundamental principle is still at play. There are some new factors that have been introduced. Now we’ve got to navigate around in this marketplace in order for us to achieve those two basic goals and provide the most value to provide the greatest good for ourselves.

I’m going to go to a couple of principals then move to that point. This is where the most confusion exists in regard to the conflict of morality. Adam Smith is most known for his book, The Wealth of Nations. His first book is The Theory of Moral Sentiments. This is where he breaks down that people have a natural drive to understand and be moral. He calls it the impartial observer where there’s this angel on our shoulder when we’re tempted to do something that may be immoral. We think and we ask ourselves. It’s as if we have this observer on our shoulders looking at us and we’re caught in between, “Do I make this decision to do something dishonest or do I be honest and do the right thing?” How do we know it’s the right thing? There’s no board that says, “This is the right thing to do.” It’s like we have that wiring inside of us and then we have this compelling force to do the right thing that he calls the impartial observer.

Most people demonize capitalism because it exploits others where it takes advantage of others where a person benefits by making others worse. That’s where the biggest disconnect. The true nature of a capitalist is going out there, taking a risk and doing it because it meets some level of self-interest but other people have to benefit more so than the person that is creating whatever that goods and services in the first place. When you inhibit that, you inhibit human nature. You look at what stagnation occurs when you don’t allow a person to think and when you don’t allow them to figure things out.

When a person has removed from them the opportunity to figure things out, to survive and to figure out their life, it is one of the greatest harms cause on an individual. It is done all over the place with the banner of doing it as morality and as the right thing to do. The right thing to do is to give this person food and housing. Give them a structure and safety net. That’s not what makes us thrive, even though this confused sense for morality puts us in this where it makes sense. We need to give to them so that it helps them. Giving hand out, safety nets, food and whatever the case may be is where the biggest prevention of where human beings thrive. Maybe we gravitate toward that because you brought up this idea of what capitalism has become, which is more corporatism. Is that capitalism?

The further you go, the more there is the to unpack sometimes. On the one hand, we’ve got this idea at play where people don’t always act morally. People’s self-interest can be directed into a way that generates some negative results in culture and society. This has been a problem that’s been with us for a long time. There’s this balancing act where people left to their own devices will just run roughshod over everybody. If you can be powerful, you can dominate others and you can take advantage of others then, of course, you will. There is this other force at play and it’s from that, that this whole moral argument comes up. How do we best act together as a society and ensure that certain people are taken care of and other people aren’t taking advantage of others? It’s in that context that these discussions about government and the outgrowth of government end up being things like corporatism. Whether or not the government can serve as an impartial entity that can help take care of certain people or certain things. As we start peeling the layers of the onion, there’s all different social dynamics here.

The purest sense of capitalism is what provides us with the opportunity to go out there uninhibited and pursue what is best for us. Click To Tweet

One of the books I found most helpful in navigating this whole terrain was The Law by Bastiat. What was so useful about that book and why it’s one of the most important pieces of philosophical writing that I’ve come across is because it forces us to look at this idea of whether or not we, as individuals, can carry out certain actions as moral actions and whether we can delegate the immoral actions to another entity to carry them out on our behalf. When we start talking about this whole idea of morality and whether or not capitalism’s moral or whether or not we’re going to go about taking care of the needs of the less fortunate and things, you’ve got to wrestle with this idea. It’s because most people won’t look at carrying out theft or violence against another individual as a moral idea.

If I were to be violent against you to take something that’s yours and give it to somebody else, as a society we don’t see that as a moral good. Yet there is something that takes place when we take that same activity through a process of democracy or voting. We put it into this thing called government. It is run by people which are populated by flawed individuals. We’re worried about taking advantage of other people and being self-interested in running roughshod and then we just create this thing called a government. It’s supposed to become a neutral good entity that can then carry out what is the same thing, theft, and violence against others.

Somehow there’s a magic that occurs in that process that makes that moral. That feels a little bit of a rabbit trail but what I’m pointing to is this idea that we have a lot of people with different ideas about what government is and what force and violence is. Also, what the role of government is. When we start getting into these ideas about capitalism and the government gets involved in all these things, we start getting into a question about morality. We have some people on the side of the moral argument that says, “We can’t trust people and businesses to be moral. We can only trust the government. People are people and businesses are groups of people and governments are just groups of people.”

We’ve got the same problems all throughout that. What I hear going on in our society around this discussion of capitalism is that it’s more a discussion about who is moral, what institutions are moral, and what institutions have the incentives to be most moral. When we get into that discussion with this dance of me being self-interested yet having to serve and provide the most value in good for my fellow man, that’s accountability and an incentive structure that’s built into capitalism that generates the best out of me. What I see over here in this design of government is that that same accountability doesn’t exist because the government is based on a force. It’s extracting resources from this area and moving them over to this area, which is fundamentally an immoral activity.

TWS 2 | Capitalism

The Wealth of Nations

You said it was a rabbit trail and I followed every piece. This is the crux of it. In the end, we all have to have an agreement that we as human beings, we’re all here trying to figure out the same thing. We all have flaws and we all make mistakes. The idea is do you try to create a system in which mistakes aren’t possible? That’s where the government goes and that’s where stagnation can be proven time and time again. Do you allow individuals to make those mistakes and then have the structure of the environment in which they’re making a mistake done in a way where the rights of others are as protected as possible?

The system now is very difficult to get away with doing something immoral, especially in a business sense. It’s being done quite often whether it’s hacking or cybersecurity issues or certain fraudulent businesses. Those don’t last very long and are weeded out very quickly because of how we’ve been able to share information. There’s a restaurant that I liked going through on the way into work and also going home instead of Chick-fil-A or other fast food type of restaurant if I have to get something on the fly. It’s like a health food store. I went in there and the Department of Health was in there doing their inspection.

It’s one of those things where it’s like, “If this place served in a dirty way and people got sick from it, they’re going to be out of business.” You have Google, you have Yelp and the word is going to spread quickly. It’s one of those things where the government is trying to play this role of the moral authority saying, “This is good and this is bad. You have to do what we say because we’re protecting people.” I would say, “I get that. It is a good intention but is there a better way to do it where you’re not taking away the rights of others?” I see the intentions of the government in that authority, but I also see the intention of individuals and special organizations. It comes down to what is the best structure to make the most amount of progress and create the most happiness and prosperity possible for humanity?

Maybe there was a time in which there needed to be certain government or some oversight or some protection or whatever. I’ll grant that to somebody. The question is whether or not anything’s changed. What is interesting is when you point to the things such as Yelp where there’s a mechanism for us to govern ourselves. When you think about what hierarchical government emerged out of it was because it was looked to solve some deficiencies in governing ourselves and holding ourselves accountable. I just want to look at how much has changed. You look at something that’s happening with Uber. The normalization of getting into cars with strangers to get rides, which is bizarre. I took an Uber in Uruguay. Years ago, I never would have thought of getting into a foreign country into a stranger’s vehicle, but the mechanism exists now that I can have total comfort in doing that. It’s brought the costs of transportation down. It has granted access to transportation to people who didn’t previously have it. It’s granted opportunities for employment to people who didn’t previously have it. It’s brought together all of these different things and it’s provided a solution. What’s interesting is who’s angry about it.

Who’s the moral authority?

It’s two-fold. On one hand, there is a company called Uber that’s got some things that they’ve developed. There’s also a function that empowers me as the rider and the driver to rate each other about that experience. There are a series of different checks on what’s happening within it. It’s not been put together by the government. The only thing that I’m seeing that’s top down in it is the company and they can only carry out the function if they’ve got the margins to do it.

The further you go, the more there is the to unpack. Click To Tweet

The moral element too is that if Uber wasn’t doing the right thing, they’d be out of business but they’re also providing a service. The reason why you were comfortable with it is that of the internal makeup of the feedback system, of that feedback loop. If you are in Uruguay and all drivers have one star, are you going to get a ride or are you going to go in a taxi or are you going to walk? There’s a built-in impartial observer that is saying, “You have to do the right thing. You’re not going to kidnap Jason and take $100 out of his wallet because the cost of doing that is so much more. What you gain from it is so much less than what you would gain by doing the right thing.”

You touched another aspect of this moral dimension, which is competition. Uber’s had a little bit of a rocky road because their CEO has run into some allegations about sexism in the workplace and some other things. Those may or may not be true or whatever. I don’t know the details but what I do know is that he was removed or stepped down as CEO. Lyft, on the other hand, started picking up a whole lot of more share in the marketplace. Here’s this other company that holds the whole thing accountable. They see an opportunity where like, “We can be better. We can be better people. We can run this company different.” That is not something you have to hold government accountable frankly.

You don’t because there’s no competition.

At the heart of capitalism is this other thing that’s brutal and it’s called competition. It is a force of nature. It eats the company’s and people’s lunches. It’s a force of moral good to make sure that the greatest value for the greatest number of people in the way that the market demands it.

TWS 2 | Capitalism

The Law

There’s such a strong presence of what humanity is capable of but there are so much wisdom and potential in our minds. The issues and the challenges that exist now, whether it’s healthcare or nutrition, you can start to list all the different calamities that are out there. If there’s a problem, you would assume that there is a solution but in order to accomplish that solution, another person has to come up with that. The structure to best do that has always been the incentive a person has to do what’s best for themselves by first doing and figuring out a way to be of value to somebody else. The more of that exists and the quicker, we’re not only going to solve the existing problems that we have. There’s going to be more overall prosperity but here’s the deal. What did we solve in regard to problems? You solve the problem of people dying when they’re 35 or 40 years old and you created industrialism where you started to have more progress in society but there are other problems that occurred despite that. Those problems were solved and then there were more problems once those problems were solved and so on and so forth.

It’s always going to be part of the human experience. There are always going to be difficulties. There are always going to be challenges because we’re humans and we have that side of us. At the same time, the ultimate solution to that is right up in the mind of an individual. It’s the ideas they come up with and the incentive that they have to bring those ideas to the marketplace. When you inhibit and stifle that incentive, that is where the system breaks down. I’ll cite one example and then we can get into the other side which is the confused sense of morality. One of the examples I saw is when Facebook was put on trial. They went to Congress and had to explain to Congress certain elements of how Facebook worked. For better or for worse, has Facebook done some stuff they shouldn’t have done? Yes. They’ve done a tremendous amount of good. That wasn’t celebrated.

The good that they did as far as connecting the world wasn’t celebrated. What they were able to do as far as connecting families and connecting businesses and creating community accountability, that wasn’t celebrated. It was, “You’re taking people’s data and you’re taking private things,” which granted, that’s something that they did. The lack of understanding of what Facebook does was so surprising to me in the questioning. It was going back and forth of Zuckerberg not explaining what the whole privacy issue was about but having to explain what his business was. It just shows the complete disconnect of those type of individuals in that they’re not coming up with solutions. They are playing the role of God telling people what they should and shouldn’t do coming from a fallible place. That’s the idea of this morality. Is it moral for one infallible person to tell another to do or for an infallible person to figure out ways in which to provide value for others?

When we look into the different areas where most people are going to say that capitalism has failed or where we’re experiencing the negative impact of capitalism, when you start looking into most of the sectors that are being discussed, they tend to be the sectors that are most heavily regulated or that government has created the strongest cartels. You start getting into this whole other dimension of things that people don’t talk about which is this idea called regulatory capture. This idea that government or a body that oversees something, there’s an incentive to then capture that governing body and influence it for your own purposes.

This is one of the things that we saw when the mortgage crisis started to unfold. It turned out that the entities that were supposed to be rating the different bonds were paid off. They’re receiving fees from the people they’re supposed to be overseeing and that creates some other outcomes. In America, it’s been a long time since we haven’t been the richest nation on the planet, at least on paper. I don’t know what the P&L looks like. When you go to places where people have been living on under $1 a day and you start looking into the transformation and the human flourishing. The access to opportunity and capital that is happening in places where people had been living on under $1 a day and now those people and nations are rising over the last years.

The data shows that it has everything to do with the loosening and the expansion of opportunities that we’re defining as capitalism marketplace, being able to voluntarily exchange. In most of those places, it’s been the forces of government or cartels or the destruction of the value of the money that’s been making that prosperity be nothing but a dream. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, they can talk about how bad we have it here in America and how bad capitalism is and something needs to be done because of the 1%. Everybody having that conversation in the United States is in the global 1% and always has been. It’s only because we’re so rich and prosperous and the fact that capitalism and human ingenuity can outperform and out create the forces that try to keep it at bay. We have the luxury to even talk about these ideas while the rest of the world is trying to figure out how to get out of those first couples of stages of the hierarchy of needs.

Life is always going to be challenging because we're humans. Click To Tweet

Why are the emotions so high than when it comes to these ideas? Why do yelling and screaming and emotional tirades seems you can’t have a rational conversation? Why are they so high?

Part of it is because they’re as good as it is. There is a problem and I do believe that there is an unlevel playing field in America and people see it. Some people are feeling that maybe in some areas it is more difficult to become wealthy to achieve the American dream and all of these things. Most people are not informed and they’re not educated. Most people are busy trying to work their jobs, care for their families and get a little bit of leisure time on the weekends. They’re not diving into Mises, Hayek, Bastiat and Adam Smith.

When the capitalism label is placed on the most visible people in organizations that are the richest in the nation, the label is misapplied. Most of the richest in America have taken advantage of regulatory capture in ways that aren’t necessarily good. People see that but they don’t see how it’s happened. The capitalism labels misapplied. It’s used by people in the media who have an agenda to try to demonize it and who wants to empower the government for certain other things. It’s an uneducated population in my estimation that doesn’t know the difference. That’s where the emotions get high because some people are struggling and envy is at play.

There’s nothing easier than us to look at somebody who’s got something we don’t have and for us to think that they’re doing something to get it. At the same time, there are things at play that have shifted the playing field away from the average person and the middle-class individual that needs to be addressed. It doesn’t need to be addressed to redistribution through government because that’s where the problem originates. People don’t want to look there. It’s easier to look at the corporate boogeyman than it is to look at the ballot box or it is to look at democracy, which we hold in such high regard.

The danger of this topic is you can go in so many different directions. I want to recap what you said and make a few comments. I want to pivot some influential things. You’ve already mentioned The Law by Frederic Bastiat and have some influential whether it’s books, people, podcasts that help you understand some of these principles. You’ve come to have a belief in a perspective of things that are atypical. You talked about playing field and also where things seem unfair and I look at the opportunity and also what people have. The opportunities that people have now are a lot more even than they’ve been in the past because of what people have access to.

TWS 2 | Capitalism

Capitalism: The more personal the problems we have as a society are, the more local the governance and the policies are.

 

I was watching something where this guy, he wasn’t a trained chemist or physicist. He spent years doing it, he discovered how to extract sugar from plants that would replace the sugar that we have but also would create biofuel. He spent years doing it and came up with it and felt so strongly about it. It took him a number of years to get very prominent people on his board. Here’s a guy who didn’t graduate from MIT or didn’t graduate from Harvard and get an MBA or have a doctor or PhD behind his name. He went out and figured things out and used the resources that were available to him and created something amazing. They’re saying it’s going to revolutionize just food, fuel and emissions. My point is people are all wired differently. If we agree to that, not everybody’s going to have the same life. Why would you want the same life? It’s all different. I see some of the things that come from us being in this communication-rich society where we see others, we see their life, and we see what they have. We see the things that they do and there’s envy there. The thing is there’s never going to be equality when it comes to what people have. The equality is always going to be in the environment in a sense, but people are all different. How you’re wired to bring value to the marketplace isn’t who you are right now but it’s who you develop yourself into.

This guy spent years doing it. He just didn’t wake up one morning and suddenly he’s going to become a billionaire. There was so much that went into that. The development of his passion and skills and strengths, his drive to go out there and create an organization and create community and hire people, there was so much effort behind that to provide value in the marketplace. That’s where I would say there’s this use of equality where the rich have all of this and you don’t, and you’re entitled to that. They shouldn’t have that, you should have that. This goes to politicians and people playing God that they’re not fallible and they’re going to come to figure out the best way to distribute all the different resources. It’s such a toxic thing where you lob humanity in a sense and that goes on because it is occurring. Money is taken from people involuntarily and distributed to different programs, which in a sense looks so inhumane. Why wouldn’t we give them food stamps or why wouldn’t we provide housing for them? I agree that there are certain circumstances but at the same time, people are wired to figure life out. They’re not wired to have things done for them where they just sit in their house and do nothing.

There are exceptions for this. The best thing that’s happened for me is being on the brink of poverty, being on the brink of bankruptcy. Being on the brink of not being able to feed my family. If everything was taken care of for me, I would never have learned anywhere near the lessons that I’ve learned. This is where we all have to as far as capitalism understand how powerful it is. We all have to understand that we’re all fallible. We all have to understand that there’s no such thing as perfect in this life. This doesn’t exist and it’s never going to exist in government’s and it’s never going to exist with pure capitalism.

At the same time, what is the most humane thing to do and what is the fairest? The fairest is to protect people from their natural rights, the life, liberty and property but at that same time, the problems are not on the shoulders of government to figure out. Problems in the purest sense when it comes to capitalism are for individuals to operate in a system where their mind works. They can come up with ideas and there’s friction in that process. Look at what we have seen in humanity over the last 50 years or even the last ten years and how much that’s improved our lives. It all originated from an idea in a person’s head and them acting on that idea. There are these principles of capitalism wired into our society but at the same time, there’s a big force against it which is trying to rob some of those liberties. That was how I looked at some of the things that you said. You have some of the final comments and words and then talk about some of the more inspirational things that have helped you understand this perspective that you have and we both share.

I saw an article where it was like, “Fidel Castro’s grandson’s Instagram feed was felt like leaked.” He’s on yachts and hanging out with babes and he’s living in Europe. What’s been generally true is that in societies where these more collectivist, socialist type of economic policies have taken root, there’s almost always a class of people who sit on top of that system. They live exactly like the people that were being demonized in order to get that system put together. We’ve got a lot of examples we can look around at in the world with what’s going on in Venezuela, Cuba, or whatever. We’ve got the ability to see what’s happening in other places. I just hope that we can see and look at the lessons of other countries and other times and use that to discern where we should go as a society.

There's nothing easier than looking at somebody who's got something we don't have and think that they're doing something to get it. Click To Tweet

It brings us full circle back to the film I made, Nullification. When we start getting into these issues, Nullification was very much about this idea of federalism. The more personal the problems we have as a society are, the more local the governance and the more localized the policies are. We should wrestle through those problems instead of looking to establish one-size-fits-all legislation and policies to go over 330 million people in one country. In that whole process, as more and more power has been sucked up to Washington DC, we’ve lost a lot of community and humanity in our own cities, neighborhoods and towns.

The front porch communities of old don’t exist much anymore. We don’t know our neighbors, and this is all related to the idea of how we are designed to be our brother’s keeper. It is for us to take care of one another and to look after one another from a voluntary sense and not only through capitalism. Capitalism is the way but there is something in us that we are wired to care for those in our tribe. I see a lot of what’s going on as a result of a breakdown in that. I see the tribalism that’s happening on the national political level and the ugly politics. All of that comes back to remind me that ultimately we are responsible for our own humanity. We’re responsible for the way in which we carry ourselves and demonstrate the moral code that we would like to see demonstrated by others. It’s the most fundamental idea.

I’m on the board of an organization called the Libertarian Christian Institute. We have a podcast as well and we’ve had 100 episodes. Part of what’s driven us as an organization and me to be a part of it is because we want to talk about the ideas of capitalism from a very moral Jesus-centered perspective. When I think about what’s influenced me, I am very influenced by the Bible in the treatment of money and in the treatment of capitalism. The word doesn’t appear but a lot of principles of capitalism are very evident. If you had Larry Reed on, he could say about that. The book that he puts out, Was Jesus a Socialist? is a great little book to read on this idea.

The other things that have impacted me are talking with other entrepreneurs. As I become an entrepreneur, as I’ve seen what that takes, I’m a believer that not everybody is designed to be an entrepreneur. We’re all wired differently. I’ve talked to more and more entrepreneurs and learned more about who’s out in the world creating businesses. I echo your sentiment that there’s never been more opportunity and I also believe that the more entrepreneurs you’ve talked to, the more you can see them as true heroes. Entrepreneurs are creating value, they’re creating jobs and new ideas that as a society and as a world, we are solving all of the problems together for one another. That’s what’s inspiring me to spend time looking at, reading about and talking to other entrepreneurs. Also, the people who are capitalists that are out in the world to see what they’re up to and the problems that they’re solving in society.

TWS 2 | Capitalism

The Theory of Moral Sentiments

One of the things that you said that resonated is echoed from The Theory of Moral Sentiments, that original work by Adam Smith where people are driven. That’s this innate thing that we have to take care of one another. However, doing it involuntarily, being forced to take care of somebody else, you don’t have that same drive and it goes to Christianity where are the two greatest commandments. Those commandments of loving, it’s loving others but also loving others as we love ourselves. It incorporates the idea of understanding ourselves and our role in society and humanity. Capitalism is not this high-level thing that’s associated with a society or a country. It’s very individual and if you understand what those principles are, it could give you a different perspective on what you do on a day-to-day basis. Understand your relationship with yourself but also understand your relationship with others and how others help you but how you could potentially help others.

From a group side of things or a bigger picture, understanding these principles and then aligning yourself with other individuals does help our community and our society adhere to them on a higher level more so than there exists now. People are not reading, they’re not thinking, they’re not having conversations around these types of macro topics. It’s around the very superficial thing that allows the creeping in of the ideas of being forced to be moral. It’s that Robin Hood mentality where you rob from the haves to give to the have nots because they don’t have, and we should take care of them. We won’t go down that rabbit trail, but I’ll give you the final word.

Patrick, I’m going to take an opportunity to plug you a little bit. One thing that needs to be true is people need to take responsibility for their own financial autonomy. People need to surround themselves by other people who can help them to become more autonomous and more in control of their own financial future, destiny and access to the capital that they need to be able to fulfill on whatever the dream, the idea or the mission is that they’ve got out there. At the heart of all of what we’re talking about, I would see it as very immoral for me to ever throw up an obstacle in the way of somebody else trying to fulfill on what they believe their mission, purpose and calling is in this world.

It turns out that often that has to do with the work that we do in the world because we’re wired for service. The work that you’re doing in the Prosperity Economics Movement, the work that you’re doing through Paradigm Life, I see that as something that empowers and grants people the tools. Not only the tools of knowledge but real financial tools to be able to achieve those things and to become an entrepreneur, to become a steward of the resources they have. Whether it is to give, to solve the world’s problems through entrepreneurship or whatever it is, they can be the captain of their own destiny. That’s all I got to say. I enjoy the time we can speak together. I wish you the best.

Thank you. We’ve known each other for several years and you have some incredible creative talents and you’ve been able to own it. You were doing a little freelance stuff here and there when we first met but mostly working for others. You’ve taken the entrepreneurial calling that has been inside you for a long time and you owned it. You took some risks and went out there and you’ve been incredibly successful. If anyone wants some video or marketing work done, Jason’s your man. It’s JasonRink.com and they can follow you in your social media where you’re very active. Jason, you’re the man. Thanks a ton for being on and having this cool conversation with me.

Thanks.

Make sure you stick with us because we have some more scintillating information and conversation about capitalism. Take care.

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About Jason Rink

TWS 2 | CapitalismJason Rink is an award-winning producer and director of documentary films, an author, a marketer, and a self-proclaimed Capitalist. Prior to starting his own company, he spent 10 years in commercial banking, and four years as a producer and director at Emergent Order, a creative agency in Austin, Texas. Jason has worked with Academy Award-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss, Congressman Ron Paul, Senator Rand Paul, and brands such as Aston Martin, the Charles Koch Institute, and Mercer.

 

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The Fundamental Principles Of Life, Liberty And Property

TWS 1 | 2018 Wrap-Up

 

Life isn’t perfect, and it’s never going to be. We’re all human beings and we’re fallible. At the same time, we have so much capability, and where we thrive is typically where things are the most disruptive. In this 2018 wrap-up episode, take a look back at the fundamental principles of progress and prosperity, namely, life, liberty, and property that led to why we have experienced so much prosperity in our day and age. Notable guests like Garrett Gunderson, Jaireck Robbins, Peter Gray, Connor Boyack, George Gilder, James Arthur Ray, Angela Duckworth, Jonas Sachs, Mike Cobb have graced the show to add value, share important resources, and help you understand what your goal is. As 2019 kicks off, Patrick’s vision is for you to understand the principles of capitalism and how it relates to you at an individual level so that you can achieve the goals and ambitions that you have. Join us for another year of high-impact discussion about capitalism, not just from Patrick but from other people that are authors, organization presidents, and intellectuals.

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The Fundamental Principles Of Life, Liberty And Property

The 2018 Wrap-Up

We are going to be officially wrapping up the final season of 2018, actually all the three seasons of 2018. Introducing the new season and the theme that we’re going to be using. I think you are going to love it. First off, happy new year to everyone. I hope you guys had an amazing holiday. I wanted to kick everything off with a story. First, I believe that as human beings, we have some incredible things that we’re capable of. At the same time, we have these subconscious habits that rule our lives. It’s the majority of our thinking, the majority of our behavior. If you look at the limitations that we often have that prevents us from getting to the next level, whether it’s in our career, whether it’s in relationships and so forth, it’s because of some preconditioned habit.

This is a funny story about my family. We spent Christmas with my wife’s family. They drove up and they hadn’t had Christmas together in years. Then on the 26th, we went over to Denver where my brother lives and his family. We drove from Salt Lake to Denver and it was a pretty long drive. It was awesome. The kids get along well. We didn’t have any issues or the drama, but on the way back is where we had some drama. My wife for better and for worse got my four-year-old son in the habit of if he had to go to the bathroom on some of these long trips, and we’ve driven him to California before and to Arizona. Instead of stopping every half an hour or an hour, she’ll have him pee in a cup. The condition was that if you have to go to the bathroom typically in a long trip, he would pee in a cup or pee in a bottle and throw it away when we got to our stop. We were coming back from Denver. It was on New Year’s Day and Synthia, my wife, was on the passenger seat and she was sleeping. My two older girls, Hannah and Meghan, were sleeping too. I had my headphones on. I was listening to information about this upcoming 2019 season.

Before I knew it there was this screeching scream that disrupted me. It got everybody awake. What had happened is Jack, my four-year-old, had realized that everyone was asleep, and I was on my earphones and couldn’t hear him. He had to go to the bathroom. His habit was to find a cup. He found a cup and he essentially started peeing in the cup. I had hit a bump and he accidentally dropped the cup and couldn’t stop peeing and peed all over Hannah, my fourteen-year-old. The hysterical screams did not come from Jack. They came from Hannah who unfortunately had her sleep disrupted and Jack was sitting there frozen. It was one of those traumatic events for him most likely that the habit is broken. At the same time, Hannah, obviously I had to pull over and calm her down a little bit because she was pretty hysterical.

We're meant to produce. We're meant to create value for as long as possible, not stopping at some point in the future. Click To Tweet

The Fundamental Principles

Anyway, this is a funny story relating to the principle of habit. The reason why I’m bringing that up is that all of the previous year, the idea was to talk about some of the fundamental principles that led to why we have experienced so much prosperity in our day and age. What we experienced on a daily basis, they were dreams. They weren’t even dreams. It’s something that people 100 years ago couldn’t even conceptualize. If you look at the roots of how that occurs, what principles that progress and prosperity is based on; life, liberty and property, is the reason why I wanted to bring that to the surface so that you would understand those foundational principles. They applied as much to the future as they did to the past. I would say even more so to the future. The idea was, as far as life, liberty and property, is to bring it down to the individual level.

We had guests like Garrett Gunderson was on there. We talked about The Law of Success In Sixteen Lessons which was an instrumental book for me, understanding a lot of these principles and what’s possible for a human being. What would it be possible for me? We had Jairek Robbins on there who is one of the most inspirational guys that I know, younger guys. He has some incredible things to say about what we’re capable of and also what holds us back and practical things that we can do to overcome our limiting beliefs and some of those habits and subconscious behavior that we all have. We talked to Peter Gray who was a BC professor. He specializes in education for children and had a completely different view than the typical view of our education system right now, which has more flaws than we can discuss on multiple podcasts. That was a fascinating discussion with him. We had John Rampton on there, who’s a serial entrepreneur that I know. We had the Founder of UGG boots, Brian Smith.

Liberty

TWS 1 | 2018 Wrap-Up

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: A Financial Strategy to Reignite the American Dream

We kick off with liberty, which is the second principle. Life is the first principle. Liberty is the second principle, with Connor Boyack who is the President of the Libertas Institute. The idea of liberty as we framed it in an individual level is the pursuit of financial freedom, the pursuit of freedom as an individual. Not the financial notion of retirement, which is to stop working, to stop producing. This is where a lot of the companies that I spend the majority of my time do is educate people that the typical financial planning model is principally flawed because it’s getting people to defer life until some future date. At that point in time, instead of being dependent on an employer, now you’re dependent on market performance and a financial advisor in Wall Street to help you with your income throughout retirement. It’s one of those things where I’ve seen it to be destructive to what is capable of a human being. If they would realize that the notion of retirement is not in alignment with our human nature. We’re meant to produce. We’re meant to create value for as long as possible, not stopping at some point in the future.

Plus, if you look at longevity and the amazing innovation associated with healthcare, we’re going to be living longer. The idea of saving 5% to 10% of your income for 30 years and then living off of that for 30 years, the math doesn’t make sense. Market performance has shown that it’s not capable of providing the returns that will allow you to do that. We went through the second season and talked into great detail about how to achieve financial freedom. That was around the time where my book was released, which was the first one I’d ever written. It took me a couple of years to do it. It’s Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: A Financial Strategy to Reignite the American Dream. Thank you so much for all those who provided tons of feedback and bought the book. It took a long time but I’m grateful that it came out and did emphasize a lot of the philosophy that you, longtime audience, had been hearing, but put it in a more organized, condensed fashion. That was in the summer.

We finished off the year with interviews with George Gilder who is an investor and an author and is a lot older in age, but his experience shows the cyclical nature of how things work and what is on the horizon. That was a fascinating conversation with George. Then James Arthur Ray, if you guys are familiar with him. He had a fall from grace in a sense a number of years ago and went to prison but is one of the most profound types of speakers on personal development. It was awesome to hear his story and all that he went through during those times and how he got back on track and what he’s focused on now. Then we had Angela Duckworth who’s the author of Grit. She has the second or third most-watched TED Talk of all time, it’s behind Simon Sinek. That was an awesome conversation. She’s a psychologist and has a lot of training in human behavior and how we behave and how we act.

Then we had Jonah Sachs who wrote Winning the Story Wars and he has another book called Unsafe Thinking, which is targeting how disruptive the employment industry is and how people are not taking risks. It’s a fascinating idea. Then finally, Mike Cobb, I’ve known him for a number of years. The coincidence was he had wrote an article talking about John Locke’s life, liberty and property and how that pertained to the real estate investment industry globally. It was fascinating to have a discussion with him, which was the second to last episode of 2018. Then we ended with David Neagle, who is instrumental in creating the personal development space and industry.

Maximize who you are, your human life value assets, which are the assets that are the most valuable to other people. Click To Tweet

It was an awesome season. I benefited personally because I got to talk all the time about these three foundational principles of our well-being, of what we’re all after and the foundational things. If they’re there, if they’re focused on, then essentially they could be maximized whether it’s life, use your best asset, figuring out ways to invest in yourself and be of more value to other people which will bring more money. The best investment you could ever make is to maximize that. The idea is to achieve this profession or career where you’re doing what you love that gets you out of bed in the morning but also is in an environment where it’s conducive to how you operate that gives you that fulfillment and achievement. Most people aren’t focused on that. They’re focused on sacrificing now for the benefit of tomorrow and differing life now. Rationally, it doesn’t make sense if you think about it. Figuring out how to leverage what’s going on in the US now and in the world, where we’re becoming this online society.

Property

There are opportunities to provide value to other people in so many thousands of different respects. Being able to pursue how to maximize who you are, what we consider your human life value assets, which are the assets that are most valuable to other people. They’re different for all human beings. Then also discovering your human life value liabilities, which is the stuff that you’re not good at, that people typically put up with instead of finding others that could provide that service and value better than you. That’s the idea of creating financial statement around who you are, your human life value assets, what you’re best at, your talents, abilities, strengths and your human life value of liabilities, which is the stuff you’re not good at, delegating that and maximizing the assets. That’s going to create this notion of freedom. Then finally property, which is the physical world. I’ve talked about this for years on the show. Putting it into the context of what John Locke talked about. This was during a time where there wasn’t much difference between that time and the zero AD, as we came into this new era. People rode around on horses and buggies and they ate in a very similar fashion, they had similar clothes.

John Locke had discovered right through his mentors and thinking and going to school. He discovered some principles that ultimately influenced the Scottish enlightenment, with David Hume and Adam Smith, which ultimately influenced the creation of the United States in our foundational documents, The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution. Getting into the property helped me identify that when you have the principle, the right of life and celebrating that as well as liberty, your freedoms, that property, the resources of the world can be used and aligned with those two other principles. Let me give you some examples. Back then with John Locke, how he understood property wasn’t just a piece of land. It was the material world. Look at what humankind has created with first understanding their mind and the value of that asset. Then looking at the world around them and using those resources to create value for others.

TWS 1 | 2018 Wrap-Up

2018 Wrap-Up: Capitalism, according to Ayn Rand, is the ideal structure so that humankind can progress at the maximum level possible.

 

The abundance that we live in right now is hard to fathom if you take a step out of the here and now. We have incredible technology for communication. We have incredible technology to leverage people around the world and their strengths to form a business. You have transportation technology, healthcare, technology, all things that are allowing human beings not to have to be afraid of surviving which has been a fear of society for a long time. We don’t have to even think about that anymore. The idea then and how the world was then and how it is now and associating our progress with all of that was valuable to me because I started to look at the world in a multitude of contexts. How much we’ve benefited from these simple ideas.

Hopefully, you got some value out of it as well. Maybe some of you had gone into reading some of John Locke’s texts. His treatises of government as well as some of the other books by some of those that were revolutionary in the ideas that help spawn the United States formation. I hope you’ve got tons of value out of that. I certainly did, and it’s led into a new theme for this year, which is I believe a taboo word or concept or idea that fits right alongside politics and religion. This is the word, capitalism. That’s going to be our theme for 2019. What it is? What it isn’t? Why it’s so reviled but also so celebrated? The structure of capitalism is the embodiment of what we talked about in 2018. Understanding it from a macro level, a group or a global level, as well as an individual level, is what my goal is.

Capitalism

My vision is for you to understand the principles of capitalism and how profound of a system it is and how it relates to you at an individual level so that you can achieve the goals and ambitions that you have. I always benefit from seeing, not conflict, but when there are very widespread opinions where you have at one end of the spectrum an opinion and then another. Both are very strong but on both sides of the spectrum. This is definitely capitalism. It’s been blamed for all sorts of atrocities, let alone the 2008, 2009 great recession. It’s been blamed for the exploitation of children.

Life isn't perfect; it's never going to be. Click To Tweet

Ayn Rand, who I came to understand in 2005 and 2006, celebrates it as the ideal structure so that humankind can progress at the maximum level possible. Her strong opinions versus the other side of the spectrum are evident in society now. As you guys learn about capitalism, not just from me, but from some of the people who are authors, organization presidents and other intellectuals. They’re going to be guests. You’re going to learn a ton of what it is, what it isn’t and how it relates to not only the macro side of the world but also at an individual level for you specifically. Some of the guests that we have, Yaron Brook from Ayn Rand Institute. We have Lawrence Reed from the Foundation for Economic Education. We have Joel Skousen, Connor is going to be on as well. G. Edward Griffin who wrote The Creature from Jekyll Island is on there. My buddy, Jason Rink, is going to be on there. There are going to be some incredible guests and some incredible dialogue associated with capitalism. You’ll definitely see where I stand as far as the philosophical point of view and what I’m doing about it. Organizations I support, how I analyze investments and how I analyze businesses and opportunities as well as my own business and own investments. It’s going to be beneficial to you too.

I have a bunch of other notes as far as some of the ways in which I view capitalism and view how important it is to me. I’m going to leave that for the season. I’m going to talk about one more thing. If you guys want to start to follow along with this theory. I would recommend that you pick up Ayn Rand’s book which is Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. Milton Friedman also has an incredible book called Capitalism and Freedom. If you haven’t read Atlas Shrugged, maybe we’ll do a season on that one of these days. That’s a profound book that is very misunderstood as far as what the messages are and aren’t. If you want to pick up some literature and dive into this topic, then I definitely think that those books will give you a good idea of what some of these principles are and how they apply to the modern world.

I’ll leave it at that. If you have any comments, make sure you’re emailing us at Podcast@ParadigmLife.net or Hello@TheWealthStandard.com. We’re going to do something different. We’re going to keep doing these seasons. The seasons are primarily based on philosophy. In 2018, it was life, liberty and property. That’s what we’re going to continue to do this year with the main podcast, but on Fridays, we’re going to do something called Financial Fridays. I’ve been accumulating some interviews that I’ve done with specific financial strategy. We’ll have investment strategy on there. We’ll have specific investments, not typical mainstream investments like a mutual fund or a stock. We’re going to use more of the alternative investments that are out there. There are a number of people that I’ve interviewed and we’re going to play those. We’re going to kick it off with how I look at investment, which is from a hierarchical standpoint as far as tearing the different types of investments and how do you categorize them. That will be the first episode. I have some people I invest with as well as those who have participated in the Cash Flow Wealth Summit, which is a virtual event that we put on every year.

TWS 1 | 2018 Wrap-Up

2018 Wrap-Up: As human beings, we have so much capability, and where we thrive is typically where things are the most disruptive.

 

That’s going to be on every Friday, fifteen to twenty minutes, sometimes 30 minutes. I tend to want to do some short episodes. I love talking. I love conversations with people, especially stimulating conversations. Sometimes those will bleed over from 15 to 20 to 30 minutes. We’re going to try to keep them shorter, but they’re all focused around practical financial strategy. That’s it. Hopefully, you had a great end to 2018. I hope you’re ready to crash it in 2019. I look at what’s going on with the government shut down. I look at a lot of signals that are showing me that there is major disruption on the horizon. I don’t think what we’ve experienced over the last couple of months with market volatility is anything. I think that’s a blip on the radar. I believe that we’re going to have an incredible five to ten years of disruption from a technology standpoint, from an education standpoint, from a tax standpoint.

It’s going to be awesome. It’s going to be hurtful for others and painful for others, but I believe that there are going to be some tremendous opportunities that arise because of it. That’s awesome for you. It’s awesome for me because that’s what it’s about. Life isn’t perfect, it’s never going to be perfect. We’re all human beings and we’re fallible. At the same time, we have so much capability. Where we thrive is typically where things are the most disruptive. Thank you for your support. Thank you for allowing me to do this. Feedback is always appreciated as far as questions or things that we can address or other elements to add that you think would be valuable. Make sure you reach out to us. If you haven’t given us a review on iTunes, that helps. It gets the word out. Apple has these algorithms that did help rank and improve the listenership based on the success of the podcast. If you like what you’re hearing, definitely give us a good rating. That would mean a tremendous amount. That’s it. We’ll talk to you next time.

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