Mark and Rose here.
Welcome to Stages and Ruins Everything,
something that we hope will be an ongoing series.
And the first episode of Stages and Ruins Everything
is about finances.
So let's dive right into that.
Picture this, you live in a happy, mostly free society
and you want a sandwich and you look in your pocket
and you have some money enough to buy a sandwich
and you know where there's a sandwich shop.
And it's even open, yay, mutually beneficial
voluntary trade, here we come.
However, there's no such thing as an actually perfect world
and in the vicinity of the sandwich shop,
there lives an unscrupulous thief
who doesn't respect property ownership
and isn't above using force or fraud
to try to deprive you of what is rightfully yours.
How might he do this?
Well, he might sneak up behind you
as you're headed to the sandwich shop
and collaborate you over the head
with a large stuffed pangolin.
And then while you're writhing around on the ground,
he grabs your money and runs away.
Straightforward, simple, obvious way
for thieving poop head to rudely deprive you
of what is rightfully yours.
Now, as anybody watching my channel already knows,
if such thuggery is formalized and legalized
and usually doesn't involve stuffed pangolins,
then it's called taxation.
We all know this, we're all familiar with that.
You might get robbed while you're trying to shop
and then it's called a sales tax.
You might get robbed while you're earning money
in the first place and then it's called an income tax.
You might get robbed just if you're buying certain things
from certain people or in certain places
in which case it would be excise taxes or tariffs.
Yes, tariffs or taxes, duh.
But it's all just immoral thugs taking money from you.
It's wrong, but the theft is pretty direct, clear,
simple to understand.
We're all familiar with all of that.
I don't have to explain to people on this channel
that taxation is theft.
Okay, but now let's rewind.
Let's start over.
This time you head to the store with your money.
There's no thief in sight
and you make it to the sandwich shop
and you buy a sandwich and you take the sandwich home
and you eat the sandwich.
Yay, there was no theft, right?
Congratulations.
Now, I know a bunch of you are already thinking,
oh, it's about monetary policy
and the Federal Reserve.
I'm not getting into that entire thing
in the discussion today.
The fabricating money out of thin air and the Fed
and their banks loaning out money they don't have,
thus causing inflation, that is its own discussion.
It is a massive fraud and a massive theft.
Most of you are probably already aware of it.
If you're not, go read Creature from Jekyll Island,
G. Edward Griffin's book and then become aware of it.
But I don't want to breeze over that.
I don't want to downplay the scope
of that monumental scam because it is massively huge.
It's a huge way that almost everyone,
anybody using dollars is having their buying power stolen
from them and stealing their savings while it sits there
if their savings is measured in dollars.
Value's going down.
So it's an enormous evil,
but that particular fraud and theft
isn't the focus of today's rambling.
So I just wanted to say we're not doing that one today.
Instead, for today's discussion,
I want to look at a number of financial things
through the lens of something that I will call
what might have been.
Because if you just look at the straight-up theft,
it's very obvious.
I mean, we use the example of the thief knocking you out
with a large stuffed pangolin,
then he runs off with your money.
Obviously, what might have been,
if that hadn't happened is you might still have your money
and you can go buy a sandwich.
But the way thieves behave, especially government thieves,
can have a zillion other effects
on what might have been that aren't so obvious
and that most people don't even think about.
We see the theft.
You can look at your paycheck.
Oh, they stole this much.
But when you go to buy stuff,
most people have no idea all the ways
in which you got robbed even when you didn't get robbed,
even when you can look at your money
and spend your money and get a thing
and think, okay, that time I didn't get robbed.
Yeah, you did.
So let's consider the scenario
where you didn't get robbed directly by the thief
and you went to buy a sandwich
and you got the sandwich so you didn't get robbed, right?
Imagine that you find out later.
You didn't know this when you went and bought your sandwich
that the thief has been going to the shop owner
and extorting him on a regular basis,
saying, if you don't give me a percentage
of what you make here, I'm gonna break your kneecaps.
So the owner has to raise prices to make up for that.
Maybe he would have sold that sandwich to you for six bucks
and happily so and made a profit
but extortionist comes along and says,
you have to give me this much.
And the shop owner, even if he's nice
and likes you and wants to have low prices,
he says, well, if he's stealing this much,
I have to raise prices or I don't make any money
and I go out of business.
So now he's selling it to you for $8.
All you know when you walk in the store
is you see the price, that's what it is.
You have money, you decide whether to buy it or not.
You have no reason to know what went into that price
being that price.
You might have no reason to think anything's wrong.
Just, oh, he made a sandwich and I'm buying it
and you don't know what it would have cost
if not for the thuggery that was inflicted on him.
So in that scenario, basically,
the thief indirectly stole $2 from you
because the shop owner passed on the theft to you
because he had to to stay in business.
So the $6 sandwich is now an $8 sandwich,
but when you buy that, you don't know that.
And I'm not even talking about attacks
on the sandwich itself, that's a different thing.
I'm talking about, he got robbed
and to make up for that he had to raise his prices
but you can go further back.
So to aspects that maybe the shop owner
doesn't even know about.
So you have a sandwich, just a simple sandwich
but has a number of ingredients in it.
All the way along the supply chain,
lettuce, cheese, ham, bread, whatever,
all the way along the supply chain,
if that thief or any number of other thieves
are robbing people along the way
and the shop owner, when he buys lettuce and ham
and cheese and bread, all he knows is the price tag.
So if every step of the way a thug is,
or a bunch of different thugs are stealing a chunk
of what's being made, by the time it gets to you
and you buy the sandwich, half the price
of the damn sandwich may be to make up
for all the theft that's not just of the shop owner
but all the ingredients that went into it,
all of a hundred other things.
So half of what you're paying for is the theft,
is making up for the theft.
So when you buy it, you are indirectly being robbed
by the state or by private thugs
in this hypothetical example, but you don't even see that.
And most people are completely oblivious to that
and don't know what's happening at all.
They just think, I guess this is what just sandwich costs.
But it isn't even just direct theft to you
or the shop owner or the people who supply him
with the ingredients, it gets worse than that.
Let's say that shop owner buys bread from a certain source.
And that certain source is a brother of the thief.
And somebody else says, oh, I can make bread too
and starts to open his own shop.
And the thief goes, no, if I let you compete
with my brother, my brother makes less money.
So I burn down your shop or I beat you up
and I chase you away.
So the shop owner has to keep buying bread for my brother.
He might have got bread at a better deal from this new guy,
but I'm gonna make sure that new guy is never in business.
So once again, if you are oblivious
to what might have been, which is another bread shop,
also producing stuff, you may have no idea.
And the shop owner that you bought it from
may have no idea that, oh, he could have gotten
cheaper bread somewhere that was just as good
if not for some thuggery, he didn't even know happened.
It didn't happen in front of him.
He didn't know it happened at all,
but that still resulted in him having to pay more for bread
and you having to pay more for the sandwich.
So we're gonna do a bit of a tangent here.
We'll get back to our thief.
Something that mostly just economists think about
is eliminated possibilities,
things that relate to what might have been.
If you only look at what did happen,
like you're studying economics,
you're seeing who buys what where,
and you're viewing trade and production and all that,
just by what actually happened,
you will have nowhere near
an actual understanding of economics.
It's only when you take into account
what would have happened
if certain other things were different
that you have any prayer of understanding economics.
Because otherwise you get this very narrow, stupid,
ignoring everything that came before viewpoint,
which a lot of government economists do all the time.
For example, some of you I'm sure have heard
of the broken window fallacy.
I don't know that anybody's actually argued it
because it's so stupid, but it's sort of an example.
If somebody says, oh, let's use our shop owner,
sandwich shop owner, and some idiot kid ran by
through a rock, threw his window, smashed, broke his window.
Now, says the government economist,
you might think that's a bad thing
because he has a broken window,
but wait, because this window company over here
now has an opportunity to make some money
by making a new window for the shop owner.
Isn't that great?
Like that's the economy that's buying and spending.
That's, you know, the whole ridiculous spin they do.
And most normal people who don't think about these things
may not be able to say why that's stupid.
They may sort of instinctively know that has to be stupid.
It can't be good for society to just randomly break stuff.
Even if it means some people will have jobs
like fixing it or making new stuff
that can't be the case.
And of course, in that case,
the obvious what might have been
is if the shop owner didn't have to spend his money
to get a new window,
he could have spent his money on other things
because he went from having a window to having a window.
He had to spend money just to get back
to where he already was fixing broken window.
Yeah, the people who fixed windows
made some money off of it.
It was a net gain for them,
but the breaking and the fixing was a net nothing
for the shop owner was a net loss
because he spent money just to get back
to where he already was.
And there's a hundred different ways to look at that.
I could use the example of welfare,
but to offend people and use the example
of people in the military.
If all those people whose job it is
to roam around the world and act as violent thugs
for the US ruling class,
if they all got fired together,
they were just banning the military, you're all fired.
You don't get paid to be mindless thugs anymore.
They might have to be productive.
If they want to get paid,
they might have to like do something,
produce something of value
that somebody wants to pay for.
So you may get those however many thousands
of almost several million,
I think if you take it all the military up.
How much production would have happened
if those people weren't being paid
to be thugs of the state?
And then as another example,
there's the issue of cutting off the lower rungs
of the economic ladder,
which is something that if it happens
and people don't know what would have been,
because they don't have a parallel universe to look at,
they're just like, I don't know, I don't understand this.
Minimum wage is a fine example.
There are a huge number of unskilled people
or it can be somebody in the country
who doesn't speak the language
or it can be young people,
it can be young unskilled people, whatever,
who say, well, I don't really have any skills,
don't really know what I'm doing,
but I can do some basic stuff.
And if shop owner wants to pay me a few bucks
to like sweep up at the end of the day,
take the trash out,
do a few dumb little things that I can handle,
okay, that way this person with almost no skills
can be productive
and can get a little bit of money.
Like value is produced in the world
by him doing something.
Then along comes the minimum wage
and says, no shop owner,
you're not allowed to pay that kid to do that.
So that value never happened.
The what might have been of that kid
being actually useful, that's out the window.
And he also didn't get paid
and so he's not spending anything at the other end.
Same thing with child labor laws.
Now it's one thing like enslaving kids
against their will and stuff,
but I'll use my own example.
I don't even know what the child labor laws
were back when I was young, 8,000 years ago,
but on weekends when I was 10, 12, whatever,
I would do odd jobs for various people,
like for an ant of mine and I would weed
and I would mow the lawn
and I would fix falling apart rock walls
and all sorts of stuff.
And I would get paid
that may or may not have been illegal.
I'm not sure.
I am sure that nobody would have cared either way,
but I produced value because I got paid to
because either those laws weren't in place
or they were being completely ignored.
But if I was stopped from doing that,
there's nothing to see.
You don't see a lack of something that didn't happen.
And so most people never think about
the what might have been routine.
They just look at the thing
of what actually happened, who spent what,
and then they think they have a view of economics
and no, they don't at all.
And of course there's eight million aspects of regulations
and licenses and fees that interferes
with the production of simpler, cheaper products.
We're talking about food or vehicles
or housing or whatever.
And I'm gonna get into the specifics
of a couple of them later on.
If you look at the example of the gross,
dangerous tent cities that appear
in a lot of major cities,
that is a direct result of limiting possibilities
of government saying you're not allowed
to do a cheaper version of this or this or that.
And I know this personally
because I've done exactly the work
that would be involved that if not for government,
I could very easily build very inexpensive housing
for lots of people.
But I'm not allowed to.
Doesn't mean I wouldn't if I could get away with it,
but I'm not allowed to.
And it's stuff I know how to do myself.
And I could make a profit doing it,
even selling very simplified housing
to people who have almost no money
because the actual cost of producing that stuff,
if you're keeping it really simple
and not trying to abide by this billion page rule book
is almost nothing.
It would be really easy.
But so most people don't think
about the production side at all.
The fact that there's this thing called supply side economics
always makes me chuckle.
That's just economics.
If you don't have supply side, you don't have anything.
But the fact that there's a phrase describing basically
people who understand that is just amazing to me.
The source of wealth and prosperity isn't money.
Money is the measuring unit.
And to some of you, this is gonna be obvious,
but to most of the world, they've never thought about it.
So I use ridiculous examples like,
let's say you're on a desert islands,
just sand, there's no fresh water,
there's no shade, there's no food,
but you have a million dollars.
Are you rich?
No, you're impoverished, you're gonna die
on your pile of money because there's nothing to buy.
Your money isn't worth anything
if nobody will trade you anything for it
and you have no food and you have no shelter
and you're gonna die horribly
in your pile of a million dollars.
Obviously the money itself isn't the prosperity.
But there are other examples
that are a little bit more involved
that most people would have to think about for a second.
For example, we wanna boost the economy.
When we wanna stimulate the economy,
so what we're gonna do is we're gonna take a million people.
We're gonna stand in a big circle,
million people make a giant circle in the middle of someplace
and here's what we're gonna do.
Each person is gonna buy the shoes
of the guy next to him for a thousand dollars.
So I buy his shoes for a thousand dollars,
he buys my shoes for a thousand dollars,
you go all the way around the whole ring.
Thinking of the buying and spending involved.
I mean, what a brilliant way to stimulate the economy.
Like just talking about a million people.
So that's a billion dollars of spending
and a billion dollars of income
because I got a thousand bucks from the guy
who bought my shoes and then I spent a thousand bucks
to buy that guy's shoes.
Well, hopefully you see where this is going.
What's the end result?
Everybody didn't gain, didn't lose
because they got a thousand and they spent a thousand.
So it's just, you can picture it as a thousand dollars
went around in a giant circle.
The outcome is lots of people
have the wrong size shoes now
because the shoes move.
Did it produce any wealth?
No.
Is that gonna stimulate the economy?
All that spending and all that buying,
that's gotta help.
No, it doesn't because zero actual value was produced
and the fact that government economists
don't even talk about this stuff.
I don't know if they're so dumb, they don't understand it
or they know full well, they're just spewing state as BS
to make their political master sound good
but it's just a demonstration that no,
income and spending in and of itself
is absolutely worthless.
If nobody's producing anything of any value
and of course in my million person loop scenario
what would actually happen is government would say
we're sticking a 6% sales tax.
So every step of the way, we want 60 bucks from you.
So what happened is money went around a big circle,
nothing was produced and the government got $60 million
stealing it from people who produced nothing
and got nothing.
That would be the actual outcome
but most people don't think about these things at all
because this falls into the realm of
the what might have been thing of like,
wait a minute, that doesn't do anything
if you think about it.
So look at what things negatively affect
the production of actual value,
stuff that people want, stuff that people
like can use for stuff, not the currency
because by itself that isn't anything.
Eat some currency on a desert island until you die
you'll find out the money isn't the value
and if society, whatever group you're looking at
or the whole planet isn't producing stuff of value
you're doomed no matter what's happening
with money flying around in circles
because if people aren't producing housing
there isn't housing if they're not producing food
or harvesting it or whatever there isn't food.
So we did the example of the thug
eliminating the sandwich guy's competition
or the competition for where he buys bread, sorry.
So we don't get to see
there would have been another guy making more bread
which means there would have been more bread.
More people could have had bread
but because Thug made sure that guy
was burned out of his business or chased him away
or whatever so that shop owner has to buy
from his brother making bread
you don't see the loss in production
from the thuggery that made the other shop not exist
and you can't see a shop that doesn't exist
because it doesn't exist
and the number of things that don't exist
because of government regulation and taxes
and everything under the sun
that would have been producing value
is just astronomical but you don't see that
so people who don't understand that
never think about the what might have been routine
have zero understanding of economics
and zero understanding of how much the state
really screws things up
because they don't know what would have been.
Another example is government interfering
with cheap labor
and there's this weird thing that like
ah how dare there be cheap labor
and unions by way of government
have by way of government power
have historically done a lot to try
to stomp on the little guy
make sure he can't get a job
whether you're talking about immigrants
or people who aren't in their union
or whatever else
so you picture like a pipe fitters union
or something a bunch of plumbers whatever
and they have their union
they go to government and say
we think it's dangerous to let anybody
who isn't licensed by you
Mr. government to do plumbing
it's dangerous to let them do plumbing
so we should make rules and regulations
and have zoning crap and stuff
that only people in our union
I mean only people licensed by you to be plumbers
can do stuff
so what you don't see is all the people
who maybe they've been an apprentice
for a plumber and they know what they're doing
they are absolutely skilled and competent
but because they don't have the piece of paper
and they don't have permission
as a ruling class
they don't get to do that
so you don't get to see the 80 gazillion customers
they would have had who
A. saved money
by paying for somebody who's less expensive
and B. had that value produced
of their plumbing is fixed
instead that little guy
doesn't get to fix anybody's plumbing
so all that plumbing isn't fixed
and they all have to pay more money
for the union thugs
and again I already talked about
how the minimum wage does this
where it's stomping out the competition
and when you don't see the competition
doing anything
you don't realize the amount of productivity
you just killed
people actually producing value
that didn't happen
because of government regulation
and I mean people complaining
are the immigrants are coming
and taking our georbs
hey what does that mean
it means that guy
would have done what you're doing
and he would have charged less
and they have to bring in this
stupid nationalist BS
to make anybody think
there's something horrible about that
if you're capable of doing a job
and that capable
guys capable of doing a job
and that person wants the job done
and you charge twice what he does
assuming you're both competent
know what you're doing
in what way is it better for society
for you to like chase away
the cheaper guy with a gun
or have government chase away
the cheaper guy with a gun
all you did was cost the customer more
and stop the cheaper guy
from producing anything of value
so the only people that
that crap benefits
is the people
incapable of actually competing
in a actually voluntary market
nothing close to a voluntary market
but the people incapable of competing
they're the only ones that helps
it hurts all the people
who would have done the same job
at a lower price
and it hurts all of the customers
of both
because now there's just customers
of the expensive guys
and they all have to pay more
because state violence
did away with what might have been
which is a bunch of people
doing the same job for a lot less money
and therefore costing the customers
a whole lot less money
but if it didn't happen
and you don't see it
most people are completely oblivious
of how that works
and therefore they're completely oblivious
to economics
and then welfare
the example of welfare
now obviously there's the stolen loot thing
of hey how come I'm working
and they stole my money
and gave it to that guy
now he has my money
like I could have had my money
and invested or spent it
or whatever on myself
the theft and stolen loot angle
is kind of obvious
but beyond that
there's another step
if government is paying millions of people
to not be productive
what does that do to the overall economy
it isn't just
hey you got some stolen loot
it's you literally got paid
to produce no value
and if we catch you
producing value
well we're gonna stop giving you welfare
the fact that it's
openly a punishment
for being useful
so welfare isn't just stolen loot
it's paying people to be
lazy and useless
and punishing them
if they try to be useful
and if you have again
a simple analogy
illustrates the point
let's say you have a population of a country
and 90% of them are on welfare
sitting around oh we need
where's government
where's our handout
so you have 10%
trying to produce enough of value
food, shelter, housing
whatever else
to take care of all 100% of the population
well one
they're going to be working their butts off
and two
the whole country is going to be really damn poor
compared to what it would have been
if you had 100% of people
actually doing productive stuff
actually doing useful things
producing goods and services
that other people want to pay for
so it isn't just the theft
it's you're literally paying people
to be worthless economically speaking
and people don't get
how ridiculously prosperous
any society the U.S. or anywhere else
would have been
if you didn't have government
throwing money
at people to do nothing
or to be in the military
or whatever else
things that people wouldn't want
to voluntarily pay for
because they don't really value them
so we're leaving behind our little thief
example
because now we're getting into things
that only government can do
mainly about not being allowed
to produce alternatives
so let's move from our little hypothetical
oversimplified shop owner guy
to buying a sandwich in the real world
where there's a thousand factors
like I like to simple it down
so people can think in simple terms
now I'm not going to try to cover all the factors
because that would be exceedingly boring
and also impossible to try to cover them all
but I'm going to mention a few things
just to try to get people's brains
focused on the the whole thing
of what might have been
and how many options get demolished
by government
and so we don't see the results of them
like the cost of legally selling food
is astronomical
I'm sure you've heard of the lemonade stands
being shut down by cops
I'm sure you've seen the videos of cops
government says you're not allowed to make
lemonade really
like that's too complicated
for us peasants to make
without government pieces of paper
saying we're allowed to
so all the kids
well you would have had lemonade
on this night hot day
if you wanted to come buy some lemonade
and now you don't
but you don't see it there
you don't see the stand there
you don't notice a lack of it
unless you saw it being taken down
you just
you don't see that option
because government made it
not happen
well back to the shit sandwich maker guy
let's look at one factor
tiny little factor
which is the truck
that brings the lettuce
few hundred miles from wherever it's grown
to the sandwich shop
so the guy can put it in sandwiches
just the delivery of just the lettuce
how many ways
if we're just looking at that tiny little speck
how many ways is government violence
making that more expensive
well the guy who bought the truck
probably paid sales tax on the truck
give government some money
for the privilege of having a truck
that they didn't make
so he has to charge a little bit more
to bring the lettuce
to the sandwich guy
because he paid sales tax
and then of course the taxes
the excise taxes on fuel
state, federal, there's piles
of
gas taxes that most people
are oblivious about
that's going to increase the cost
it takes for him to go from here to there
so he could have charged a little bit less
to bring the lettuce to the store
than he had to because of government
the income tax paid
by the driver who does that
he might have been able to do that
for a lower price if he didn't know
that government was going to steal
a chunk of it
well to feed my family I'm not doing this job
for this many dollars
because government is going to steal that
I need this many dollars to feed my family
so I have to only do the job
for this many dollars knowing
the government is going to steal that
which means it's going to cost you more
to have me take my truck
and deliver lettuce to the shop owner guy
and then the license
and fees of being a commercial driver
imagine
the cost of delivery
without that
some guy who lives a couple hundred miles away
and goes okay I don't really have that many skills
but
I have an inverter
that can make my truck have an outlet
in the back and I have a refrigerator
that I can put in the back of my truck
might be a little sketchy
but I can fit pretty much lettuce in that
you can make pretty many sandwiches out of that
so if I'm not
paying income taxes and I don't have a fee
and I don't have a license
and let's say I
got the truck without paying sales tax
not sure how he did that
if he could do
all that stuff
and didn't need government approval
and he tells shop owner you know I can bring you
the same lettuce from the same place
and charge you way less
shop owner goes okay cool
shop owner can lower his prices
except that doesn't happen because
government violence made sure it didn't happen
and that guy with the truck
therefore doesn't produce that value
and that's
that's just the delivery of the lettuce
in a sandwich there's an infinite number
of these factors in every
aspect of every product you buy
everywhere
and people don't get that that's cumulative
that adds up
so the price of almost everything you buy
a huge portion of that
you're just paying
for what might have been
but isn't because of government
coercion
and it becomes literally impossible to
fully calculate what that actually would mean
now
I'm going to throw an example that I have personal
experience of I mentioned earlier
cheap housing oh what are we going to do about
the homelessness problem
abolish government
I guarantee
that will fix the problem entirely and completely
and I know that from personal experience
if
I wanted to
build
a thing somebody's like
I'm down on my luck I mean
if somebody's totally bonkers it's a
different thing in a number of homeless people
have serious mental issues but if someone's
just I'm down on my luck and I can't
afford a place to live and you know I have
some skill they can do some jobs
I can build a very simple place for
someone to live let's say
8x8
so it's just one little room has a door
window
it's plywood we'll have insulation
and drywall and stuff
we'll use a little battery LED lights that last
for a zillion years you have a little propane
heater so no plumbing no electricity
like I could build that myself
for under a thousand dollars
so this person who's like well it's either
live on the street I can't afford this or
okay I can build you a house
and not charging you a thousand dollars
month like a thousand dollars once and then
you have a thing on a property
and of course doesn't have
to be that simple okay okay I'll do
three rooms and we'll have
solar power and we have minimal
electric like not heavy appliances
and stuff we can do lighting and stuff we can
put a composting toilet in there
instead of having to poop in a bucket or something
and we can do that for
five grand or something
anybody you know buying a house
for five thousand dollars no
well why not
government
anybody who's built anything
like an addition or anything
you don't have to build a whole house just anything
is going to be
somewhat aware of building codes and just how
ridiculously complex
they are like here's the UN
approved building code I forget what
that there's a
letters and numbers that here's the
the uniform code of blah blah blah
80 trillion pages long
that you have to do all these
things to build
a house and the vast majority
of them have nothing to do with actual
safety
and because like
my house that had no plumbing and no electric
like there's not going to be
a problem there now but we require
you to have electric and plumbing and all these things
and this gigantic
list of all the things you have to do specifically
for that that we're going to pretend are for safety
even if you just didn't do them
now I have a personal
example that I experienced
myself
I built an addition on the back
of my parents house many years ago took
ages I actually have another
book called parasites on parade
which is about dealing
with the local parasites getting
in the way of this but
so existing house
the addition was as big as the existing
house was so it was basically doubling the house
giant concrete slab
and then a steel structure
steel siding and then inside that
stud walls to build a house
and plumbing and electric we got all the
permits and jumped through all those hoops
and went through all that ridiculousness
but the example I want to bring up
is in the foundation
normally you have the
concrete footing and then you have a
cinder block wall this is in Pennsylvania so
there's a frost line that
actually exists you have to go down a certain amount
cinder block wall that'll usually go down
like four feet to footings and then
there that's that you build on top of that
except
they said oh well we put in the government
formulas they said your wall
has to go down 12 feet
like that's underneath
the basement of the existing
house like
we're not having an abasement in the
addition it's just a slab
well the formula say you
have to do it the fact
the thing that made this most amazing
is that the inspector
and the architect
and the engineer
and the people pouring the footing
who do this professionally
all of them said
this is ridiculous overkill
this is stupid idiotic
waste you don't need to go 12 feet underground
for this this is dumb well but
there's a formula about the height and this
and that and putting the formula on government
says you have to so literally everybody
involved including the government inspector
said this is overkill and unnecessary
but you have to do it
even the people in government admit you have to do
it even though it's dumb and unnecessary
so we had to pay
way more to have them
dig down 12 stinking feet
to put this massive wall in
to then bury over it
which created zero value
little four foot wall
or whatever it would have been
does exactly what needed to be done
so it was us having to pay
I forget how many thousand more dollars
which slowed down
the project some more
how much we had to pay just to put it
completely unnecessary wall in
that everybody agreed was completely unnecessary
and produced no
value it didn't increase
anything it didn't make anything better
and
so and that you know I'm sure
a zillion of you have your own stories about that
and then there's the issue of occupancy
permit that this all rests on
you're not allowed to live
in a thing even a thing on your own property
without the permission of government
and for something
to be a residence
the requirements for that
are just insanely complicated
again you're not allowed
to live in super cheap housing so little
basic thing that I just described
you're not allowed to live in that it doesn't have plumbing
it doesn't have electric so
he's gonna like sleep in the gutter
because you're not allowed to live in this little box
that's at least insulated
and heated and stuff really
yeah and it has to have this
the required electrical the required plumbing
and when you make it
so that the talk about chopping
off the bottom rungs of the ladder
you're just making it so a place
to live cannot be
inexpensive because it has to
you know fulfill
all these stupid requirements
so the 80 bazillion cheap
easy houses that
might have been
if not for government violence
they just don't exist and you don't see them
and then there's the people who actually did the tiny
house thing and government showed up
and shut them down you have to knock them down
because they're whining
about zoning and whatever else
and so
you know for my personal experience
yes I can personally build stuff that people
could easily live in way less
expensively than anybody else
and I'm certainly not the only one there are 80 gazillion
people who could be doing this and could
be adding this value to the world
but we're not on tail because
of government and because of coercion
but people just think well the cost
of housing is
so high okay let me list
for you all the reasons the cost of housing is
so high government
literally that's all
because if you were allowed
to buy a piece of land and if the
government wasn't stealing a bunch and just
build a little thing to live in
you might build a really simple thing and go
well that's what I have right now
but if I work my butt off and have a job
then we can add to it and expand to it
and make it something less pathetic
and the end result
of all the government coercion
is like the tent cities
where they're still illegal
they still get barged into and chased out
and stuff
and there are a million other examples
I'm just going to mention them and breeze over them
um
because you could go into the details of every
one of these for hours on end and I don't
want to do that and you don't want me to do that
medical care is a huge one
because government licenses that
sort of things because you have the FDA
and the CDC
and the AMA is one of the biggest donors
politically to make sure
they don't have competition
um so the number of people
who could do simple I mean there's tons
of people who are like veterinarians
who they know how to set a bone
they know how to do a bunch of basic stuff
but they're not allowed to do that for people
without a special piece of paper
that's going to cost a bunch and you have to
jump through a bunch of hoops
and so all that production
of simpler medical things that doesn't
happen because
government is just
it's something most people don't think about
car manufacturers making vehicles
like a cheap vehicle
is
15,000
what are they what's sort of the low end
of a new vehicle
used to I think Saturn a billion
years ago when I got one
the only new car bought my entire
life I think it was like 12 something
wow only $12,000
it would be less than half that
if there wasn't this big
laundry list of unnecessary
crap that you have to put into a
car to call it a car
and the you know
people who make minibikes can tell you that
well it's the
lawn mower engine attached to a little thing
yeah maybe don't go on the highway with that
but if the goal
is actually making cheap
transportation it would be really
easy for there to be way cheaper
stuff and
of course what government's going to say
and what they're going to convince other people
what about safety concerns
there'll be dangerous exploding vehicles
in the healthcare people's heads will fall off
and never mind that the licensed
ones are like the leading cause
of death in the country
safety concerns it won't be safe if you don't
have government regulating everything
which is just patently ridiculous like people
want to know that what they get is safe
they used to be a thing they might still exist
probably not
called underwriters laboratories
UL listing
where people would make an appliance and would send
them one and go here's our thing and they go okay
we're an independent company we're going to test it
see if we can find things that might be unsafe
if we find something we write back
and say yeah you're plugged back here
if you grind back and forth it might
whatever you need to do something about that
we're not giving it our stamp of approval
until you do that okay we'll fix that
or they say yep we tested the hell out of it's good
Bunk has the UL listing
little UL logo on it
that you all people will recognize
you whipper staffers might not know
what I'm talking about that was all private
because people
sears and you know
all the people
making and selling
appliances know that their
customers are like okay but is this thing safe
and if UL listing
says yep we went to the trouble
to make sure it's safe now you have
consumer reports
you have a zillion different magazines
about cars about everything under the sun
where we test these things to see what we think
about them and give these
unbiased reviews we don't take ads and stuff
because then we're going to be biased
and stuff because people want to know if they're safe
they want to know if the products good and
at this point I mean Yelp reviews
are more reliable
safety measure than government
regulations are because people want things
safe now when people
are poor they care less about that
just give me a shelter so I'm not getting
snowed on tonight please
and as they get more
prosperous if government is out of the way
they can care more and more about
safety and about the environment
oh I want to buy the tuna fish
that doesn't kill dolphins
yeah okay well if you're starving to death
that's probably not your top concern
the prosperity that government
prevents
allows people to care about all those
make sure it's super safe and it's super nice
it's nice the environment and whatever other
things that people care about
but if they don't happen and people
don't understand what
things would have been without the
government interference then people
have no grasp on how economics
works because most
people just think well the price of a
car a sandwich or whatever
that's just how things are that's just
natural this whatever this price tag
is that's just the natural
outcome of people trading
and producing and stuff and no it
isn't the vast majority of it
is a direct or
an indirect result of government
interfering every step of the way and
they have no idea what things would cost
without all of that
state interference
and I'll throw in a couple more examples
um before I wrap things
up here cost of living
I mean I remember when I was younger
and I was like wait a minute
so over here it's really expensive
live groceries are expensive
right over here 100 miles away
everything's way less expensive
so I mean one example
is Arizona and Mexico which I've seen
I've been down in Mexico and things cost
a tiny fraction of what they cost here
and I remember when I was younger thinking
well wait a minute
what if a guy had a truck
and he walks into the Walmart
where the cost
of living is really low and buys a bunch of stuff
and then drives it over here
and sells it to those people
for way less than they'd have to pay
at the Walmart over there why didn't he just do that
good question the answer
is because you're not allowed to because government
most of the cost
of living is a result of government interference
because otherwise you would just
do that
somebody would say well I have a truck
I can drive that stuff over
to there and sell it for cheaper than they're selling
it right now and that sort of thing
would level itself out
if not
for the state interference
um
and I already mentioned that the cheap
immigrant labor
that hurts
like government
preventing that hurts everybody
except the people who offer a
worse deal the people who would do the job
at a worse price they're the only ones
who benefit from government stomping
on the cheap immigrant labor
like those people would have been
productive and they would have gotten a paycheck
and all their customers would have paid less
and if they wanted to pay more
for the other guy because they thought he was more skilled
because they wanted to support Merica
you can do that too
unless government comes along
and tells you you have to do that
so
I do want to make a quick mention
of what could be called
positive distortions because it's very easy
ah
well maybe for most people it isn't
but it's easier to
see how theft and government
coercion and prohibitions get in the way
of economics and warp things
weirdly there are ways
that government warps things and hurts
the economy by spending money
too by handing out the stolen loot
to other people
and I already mentioned the example
of welfare if you're paying a bunch of people to not
be productive the overall
wealth of society is going down
because you gave away
the stolen loot the theft
was also destructive but the giving
away is destructive and there's
a number of ways that happens it isn't just welfare
of individuals
it's corporate welfare
it's subsidizing some businesses
to make their prices
lower than they would naturally be
because government gave them a bunch of stolen loot
which kills their competition
it's like hey how come you have the advantage
if you get a bunch of
stolen loot and we can't compete
so now we're out of business and then oh now the prices
go back up and now there's a government
approved monopoly
that happened not by way of thuggery
and theft well I mean there was the theft
that happened before the handout but by
handing out money and distorting
the market that way
and having non-productive
people having buying power
by welfare check
by paying people in the military
by corporate handouts
makes things cost more
for everybody like the example I said
where if 90% of some country
is on welfare and they're out
there buying things
well these are the ones producing all the stuff
the cost for these people
is going to go up
because the supply of things is low
but the demand is huge because all these people
who got free money want to go buy stuff
without producing anything of value
so when all the other people
go out to buy stuff hey why are the prices
so high because all those people
were given stolen loot to be able to buy stuff
and it's things that most people
just never think about
and
and then there's a bunch of government
programs that are
have the exact same effect of welfare
they're basically the make work programs
you've probably heard of the bridge
to nowhere they can happen more than once
but at least once they literally built a bridge
that didn't go anywhere there was a road
and a bridge and there's not a road on the other side
there's still not a road on the other side
so they spent tons of money employing
these people while it isn't that good
stimulating the economy no because
they produced zero value
nobody's driving across that bridge
there's a bridge there it's of no use
to anybody so you
could have just paid them to sit on their butts
would have had the same result
which is making everybody
less prosperous and making their
V be less value
and again it's something that
oh again I'm about to hand it off to you
and then I will yes I know
I know let me do it
I can't do a bathroom break I'm in the middle of this
you didn't read this yes I did
yes I did yes I did
let me finish and hand it to you and I will deal with
and then people the whole
full employment thing of
we're gonna pay everybody to carry
rocks around in circles because then everybody
has paycheck and everybody's getting paid and everybody
has employment does that produce any value
no to make everybody
more poor yeah
and then I
have to throw in a mention of war of course
where you're not just paying people to be
useless you're paying people
to blow things up
and demolish stuff and demolish trade
and kill people and annihilate property
and I shouldn't have
to explain why that is not
good for the prosperity
of humanity
so it's easy
for people to view things on a tiny scale
in a tiny time window
where you look at the money you have in your
hand and what you're buying with it
and not being aware of what might
have been
and have no idea what things could have been
if not for that
but now
I'm gonna hand things over to Amanda
if I can retrieve her
and then she can
hand you over to Lisa after that
because now it's time to instead of just
whining about all the ways in which government is horribly destructive
and all the ways it makes
us poor look at a few ways
to maybe try to be less
poor
and for that I will hand you to Amanda
I must go retrieve her
so this is the
intermission time y'all if you need to use
the restroom
it's a good time to do that
this is the tech guy speaking
from beyond the veil
we had some great
questions come in so anybody who tags at
Larkin Rose I'm monitoring the questions
I'm building out a list of all those questions
and so just if you have any questions
go ahead and drop them in the chat and we'll go from there
so with that I will turn you
over to Amanda
hey everyone
alright now the case is done
so
I wanted to just mention that
one of the things that I like to focus on
when it comes to the state
is practical
ways we make our lives better
so the state ruins everything
via finances but
there are so many ways
in which now that enough of us
are awake and enough of us
know about this thing
that you know now there's rising
market opportunities for
just all this innovation to try
to come around and figure out ok how can we
sort of
brace ourselves against this or
maintain our
growing finances and wealth and keep it out
of the state's hands and actually
have some sense of security about
like where our finances might be
going in the future because we can
know that we're hanging on to what we have
and
in the practical sense a lot of us
can't just
if we have like a business or we're trying to grow a business
we don't have the
opportunities right in front of us or the resources
yet to say alright I want to just
say F you to the IRS or F you to
the state and hide all our
money somewhere and put it all in crypto
that might not be realistic
but we don't want our money to go to
funding bombing kids and we
don't want you know our lives
to be more messed up and for them to have access to
our wealth so what do we do
and this is why I wanted to
really bring in case and also
the wealth battle
team and have Lisa come on and talk about
this because what they're
doing and the whole point of what they're doing is
how do we fortify
our finances and our future wealth
and you know keep our little nest egg
a thing that is safe and growing and
protected and without having
to be like
because that's the whole problem right is
there's this giant ten thousand some odd word
plus tax code that almost nobody
really understands
how to stay in compliance with because it's
bogus to begin with right
but let's say you want to keep as much of your money out of
government hands and you need to know
that you know if the IRS comes like
peeking or whatever
you can pass
as in it'll look fine to them even though
you are keeping all of your money
you're doing it in a way that they can't
grab it you know so
this is why I want to bring wealth battle on
because what they're doing and
what Lisa has built and case and
has built what they have access to is
a whole set of
that legal resources
where it's like I want to keep my money I want to
keep my nest egg and I want to actually know in
a world with AI and weird uncertainties
that I can
be in a space where
I can have the Leviathan
potentially looking right at me
and maybe they can come at me and they can try to breathe
down my neck and it's not going to do any good
because I have these things that
they can't touch that they can't
mess with and maybe even by their own rules
that they can't touch it I look fine to them
so with that little intro
I'm going to bring Lisa on and have her
talk to you guys about some things that
can be done and some options
that are out there.
All right well
with all that sandwich talk
and a lack of lemonade stands are
likely thirsty so
let's imagine a town with
one well and everyone in that
town drinks from it and surprisingly
it's managed centrally
and for years it works the water's
clean it's reliable it's predictable
but over time more
water starts getting pulled out
than the well naturally refills
and it's not all at once
it happens slowly
so at first no one notices
the buckets they still come up full
but then the water level drops
and people are concerned
and they're told you know what the well's fine
don't worry about it but here's the question
do you spend your life arguing
about how the well is managed
or do you build your own well
seeing the problem
isn't the same as solving it
so responsibility
would build the well
so for those of you I haven't met
I'm Lisa Manfredi with wealth battle
I build financial structures for families
and business owners who don't want
their future tied to fragile systems
now the problem
isn't just bad people
it's a system that rewards bad decisions
so when the same institution
can spend money
and they can create money
and they can change the rules around money
the problems aren't surprising
they're actually predictable
and most of you already know that
but the real question is
whether your financial life reflects that knowledge
so if those in power
can spend without restraint
they will
and if they can create money
to cover that spending
they're going to
and if they can change the rules during a crisis
of course they will
and that's not a motion
it's just incentives
and history
shows the same pattern again and again
that's pressure
there's pressure
there's money creation
then rule changes
then of course there's a loss of trust
destroyed savings
this is different centuries
but it's the same pattern
so let's look at what the pattern
did to ordinary families
Germany
1920s
political instability
printing money was easier than cutting spending
so at first
it looked manageable
the bills got paid
the system kept functioning
but then the money supply expanded faster
than production
and prices rose
then they rose faster
then they rose daily
and workers were paid twice a day
so that they could spend wages before they became worthless
savings built over
decades disappeared in months
and the middle class wasn't wiped out
because they were reckless
they were wiped out because
the money that they trusted stopped working
they did what they were told to do
they saved, they worked, they planned
and the unit of account dissolved
beneath them
the ones who thought
they were safe because they were responsible
they were often hit the hardest
but we don't need
hyperinflation for rules to change
let's come home and look
the United States in 1933
the country was in the Great Depression
banks were failing
confidence was low
private ownership
of monetary gold was made illegal
and compliance
wasn't optional
so citizens turned in their gold
and then the dollar was devalued
so once again
the rules changed overnight
and when those in power to find money
they can redefine money
if the definition changed once
why assume it can't change again
and for a while there was still a leash
the dollar was still tied to gold
and that made it harder to print endlessly
but leashes make spending harder
and leashes don't survive pressure
1971
the gold window closed
and from that moment on
the dollar was backed by confidence
and government power
not convertibility
the constraint was removed
flexibility increased
and that flexibility made it easier
to manage short term crises
it also made it easier
to expand credit
so debt grew
the money supply grew
asset prices inflated
and purchasing power eroded
quietly
not dramatically
slowly
if your financial plan
assumes permanent stability
and a system built on expansion
that's not a strategy
that's an assumption
when constraint disappears
someone absorbs the risk
sometimes it's inflation
sometimes it's debt
sometimes it's confidence
and sometimes
it's depositors
Cyprus
2013
banks were in trouble
instead of a traditional bailout
depositors were bailed in
money sitting in bank accounts
was used to recapitalize the banks
so people woke up
and they logged into their accounts
and the numbers were smaller
and it wasn't because they spent it
it's not because they invested badly
it's because the rules changed
they thought their money was theirs
until it wasn't
when your savings
sit inside a centralized system
in a crisis
the system protects itself first
you just don't notice it
until it's gone
now this isn't about panic
it's about exposure
but if you logged into your accounts tomorrow
and the rules had changed
would your life change?
not your opinions
not your emotions but your actual life
that's the difference between awareness
and structure
because this isn't just about inflation
it's about trust
when money changes unexpectedly
trust weakens
when rules shift during crisis
trust weakens
and when savings can be reclassified
trust weakens
and when trust weakens people change
they shorten their horizon
they think in months
instead of years
they consume instead of build
they protect instead of produce
they speculate instead of plan
and civilization runs on trust
money is stored trust
when money becomes political
trust becomes fragile
and when trust becomes fragile
people stop building long term
and when people stop building long term
someone else decides the future
that's not abstract, that's personal
you already know the system is unstable
but awareness feels responsible
it isn't
positioning is
you can't control what they do
but you can control how exposed you are
wealth battle is where we design
your financial structure
so it doesn't collapse when the rules shift
it's not theory
it's structure
that means eliminated fragility
destroying unproductive debt
building liquidity that survives
tightening cycles
owning productive assets
that generate real value
structuring wealth
so it supports your family long term
designing redundancy into your financial life
you can't eliminate systemic risk
but you can reduce your dependence on it
so ask yourself
if the rules change tomorrow
does your plan break
and if it does fix it
don't wait until the rules change
so if you're serious about
redesigning your position
text well
like going to the water well
WELL
and your name
to 833
675
2755
so text well in your name
to 833
675
2755
and we'll connect with you personally
and start mapping your exposure
responsibility isn't
loud it's built
so build that next well
don't wait
Larkin's back
yes
I am back
thank you very much for that Lisa
and I believe
Casey threatened to
go through questions and whatever
and we can both
be up here
based on who's going to throw stuff at us
or we can just
shut up and run away
no I have a bunch of questions that I queued up
through the duration of it
so the first one's not a question
I told Spooky Scary Anarchist
great name that I will relay this
he says and I quote Larkin you are a Chad
that's a good thing
I don't know if you know this
that's a good thing Larkin
let's hope I don't become a hanging Chad
okay we'll start with a fun one
and then we'll get into more
technical as we go
so 23 Skeet To Who
says who will make
sorry 23 Skeet To Who
says who will make the sandwiches
if we take the state out of it all
back to your original one I think that one's directed towards Larkin
the people who already do
and a bunch of people
who don't because they didn't jump through all the
government hoops
it's funny that people are so
like if there's
something they haven't seen again if it's
what might have been but they don't see it
they're almost
automatically scared of it
like well I've only ever known government
to build the road so if they don't
and people have seen normal people
build sandwiches so
most people aren't actually scared of that
I'm sure he's being flippant because normal
people can make sandwiches
but
because government
forces monopolies on so many things
and people don't spend
time thinking about what might have been
then they're scared of anything
and I often use the example of the Soviet Union
it's like oh we've been waiting in line
for hours for a piece of moldy bread
it's like
we shouldn't have government do this
well if government didn't do it who would give us
moldy bread
and it's only when you can see an alternative
and go oh so the rest of the world
doesn't need moldy bread and they don't have government
doing it okay so it really is possible
but people are scared of the unknown
and scared of what they haven't seen
and that's one of the reasons government
make sure you don't see it
by stomping down on it and
ruling out competition in a thousand different
ways so you can't just see
now I have a running joke because I have made a
road it's just a gravel road
but on a property
a friend of mine
so now the answer who will build the roads me
I will build the roads
cool
I'm gonna throw this one in and let
y'all decide who wants to step on this
grenade
action not awareness right
what can we do to prevent the government from
stealing our money when we first
start a job I'm mainly referring
to the HR person sticking to the
W2 or W4 form in front
of us so this sounds like a US based question
who wants to take that stab at that first
there's a lot of
it's one of those things
where almost every business their first
priority is staying in business
and they're scared to do
anything that looks out of line to them
like I know people and I'm not even gonna get into
the whole legal side of is this
right and is it not well if I file exempt
and they're not supposed to withhold
and the IRS lies about that stuff
and cheese on this the thing is because
businesses want to stay
in business if they're
above board meaning they allow themselves
to be robbed and kicked around
they are usually
gonna be resistant to that sort of thing
and to me
I I hate say I mean
I understand why it happens but I hate seeing people
sort of turned against the people
they work for as if they're the enemy
when they're just well I asked
the IRS and they said I have to withhold and I
don't know and then getting mad at
them for not doing it
so sadly my answer
is I don't know a magic way that's gonna make
your employer not
help the people to rob you because
that's what they do and that's what they think they're supposed
to do and that's what they think they have to do
to stay in business 99%
of the time
and that's I mean it's
a long run thing but that's why it
it has to be a changing
of what people believe until there are a bunch of employers
to say I'm not even reporting
I'm not gonna withhold anything we're
gonna do everything under the table
but until we're at that
point it's like
the focus of the
employee fighting
with the employer is kind of this sad
spectacle that doesn't usually go well unless
you happen to have an employer is open
to the discussion
sadly it's not the most encouraging
answer right
Lisa do you want to throw anything into that before I move
on to the next one
I will say on your W-4 you can
deal with some federal exemptions
you have dependents or you have
actual exemptions you can put dollar amounts
in this works really well if you're
making a lot of money if you have
large tax liabilities to the
government and you participate in some
strategy for tax exemption
tax mitigation
but otherwise
yes what Larkin said
there's a there's a tag on that I just saw
from say what six seven six eight
actually I'll say that in just a second
Renato bacteria five five six yes this is
live yes we are live right now
so say what six seven six
eight says what about 1099
which may change y'alls vibe
as its self employment income
as the overlords say anybody want to throw
in anything on that any ideas or strats
we should be proclaiming
from the mountaintop here
well 1099 has that the benefit
of you have to rob yourself
because other people aren't robbing you
for this state
but if it's
1099 and reported to the feds
they still know about it
it makes it you don't have to deal with
the withholding
so it's at least there's the potential
to get robbed
less if you do all the deductions
in that way or you just
don't report it I do want to throw in
this
Lisa and wealth battle
is a lot about playing
inside the rules made
up by psychopaths to
maintain your own wealth and prosperity
and all that this doesn't mean
you're a bad person if you disobey
it just means it's kind of risky to disobey
and so there's
really two whole fields to this
one is what can I get away with
and not get robbed by the mafia
and what are ways that I can behave
right in front of the mafia
and have them steal less of what I
have and they're two very different
things
even though they both come up
in conversation constantly
so the whole thing of doing things under the table
and don't have things reported and just
I'm not giving you anything it's a completely
different realm from are
their ways to set up your things
so that even if the thugs look
they go okay that's fine
and but
I just wanted to make it clear that
being able to do things
within the rules so you don't get robbed
which I don't condemn anybody for
doesn't mean you approve of the rules
and think they're okay it just means you don't want to get robbed
as much
yeah and with
1099 Len Larkin said
you're you're holding on to your money
so what are you doing with that
money so instead of every single paycheck
them deducting it automatically and you're
missing out there's
what would have been with that money
like there's opportunity costs and now you're holding on to it
what are you doing with that
money until you absolutely have to
pay it that would be a big deal so things
like where are you now are you budgeting
how are you managing that money
and then what are you doing on the tax
side to mitigate those taxes and pay the
least amount possible at the very last moment
all right I think that was a fabulous
little answer let's see
Chris Jance
this is a long one Chris Jansen
the dev Chris Jansen dev
sorry man 5808
Q what action steps do
you recommend for the listeners
in day to day life to help bring the change
that we need
um I
I don't
know which which conversation
that was about ultimately people
not believing they have an obligation
to go along with any of this crap
collapses the whole thing
in the short term in the meantime
doing things like what wealth battle covers
to try to avoid being robbed
within the rules of
the robbers
like that there's
there's always
this balance and I
very loudly suggest that other
people not choose the balance where I
did there's the balance between
okay how much risk do you want
to incur to try
to do something else that isn't about
security and you know
financial stability and how much do you
want to like take care of your family
and make sure you provide for your future
and there's sort of a tradeoff
in a lot of ways and when I literally
invited the feds to prosecute me
that was very much on the side of yeah
I'm doing something that nobody else should do
this is not how you remain safe
but I have to do it for other reasons
that I'm not even gonna get into right now
um but
to me there's the mindset of the people
when the people stop thinking like slaves that's
the end of the empire in the
meantime if people
at least have more practical ways
to try to get robbed less
and deal with each other on a basis that doesn't
have government tentacles in everything
um
that still has value to it
especially when you're talking about trying to get
voluntarious
and anarchist to be more
prosperous
and not constantly be broke
um and I know that's a big thing for
casein is because it's really frustrating
to see the principal people who believe
in freedom usually having kind
of crappy finances
myself included
and lots of liars and scumbags
having piles and piles of money so the practical
side of trying to help
the people who believe in freedom
even in the short run
have more prosperity
to do stuff with
is also very important for now
while we're waiting around to topple
the state entirely
and I would say be more resilient
like have more control
on a day to day basis
the more productive you can be
um the more you can generate
the stronger position you're in
and the stronger position you're in the more options you have
I mean that's just the reality of it
the wealthy are not paying a lot in taxes
they're not participating in these things
because there's more available to them
when they have capital to play the game
so I'd say be more productive
cool the chat is lit up
two things so I'll throw this in
and I think this will be more directed towards you Lisa
the chat is basically saying
like y'all are turned around
you need to define your terms appropriately around currency
and money and I know that
that's something that we're not going into
super deep right now but maybe we can throw in a little bit of that Lisa
but then also there's a question
from TSA
Tech
writing at Lisa
do you know much about taxes for short term traders
this is going to get into a specific legal advice
does it make sense to start an LLC
to trade inside of
this seems very poignant for you
I'll turn it to you first
so yes
currency and money is different
there's a very general broad conversation
to get concepts across not to define the terms
because I feel like we've done that on many occasions
unlike Larkin reference
read the creature from Jackal Island
read some of Mike Maloney's books
so yeah we're talking about fiat currency
essentially in most of this conversation
in terms of specific
questions like that
that is not something that is
we're going to answer online because it's a very
specific question with a lot of details
that we probably need to get into
but we're happy to talk to you if you want to text us
just shoot us a message
I put the number on the screen
at the bottom y'all
so if you have a question you can text well to that number
and then after this chat Lisa
can respond to you directly
and take that conversation
wherever it needs to
so that's kind of fun
let's see here
who else
ah yes okay so this one's
ah yes
here is a fun question
from S.Nover
or S.Nover studios 1 2 3
hey Larkin what about wars
being good for the economy
this was asked around the time of the broken window fallacy
so I'll turn it over to Larkin
yeah if I wasn't in a rush
at the end there because our cat got out
he didn't
our indoor cat got out I had to go retrieve
him while Amanda was in here
because I was mentioning how war is destructive
yeah the ridiculous myth
that war is good for the economy
like when government has the
ability to pull strings
and throw a bunch of money into circulation
and stuff
people who don't grasp even just basic
cause and effects like
people use the word economics and then it sounds
like some half-falutin
complicated thing it's just human behavior
and cause and effect
and yeah it can get complicated at times
but anybody who actually believes
that blowing a bunch of shit up
enriches humanity
like you get an F
without even needing an explanation you already
get an F in basic economics
and if you disagree
I suggest you blow up your own house
and think how rich you'll be as there is
it's just so patently stupid
and it is absolutely something that government
and government
economists talk about oh I really
boost the economy
no it's thinking doesn't but if you play
weird games that have an effect
so that people go well right now
these things seem to be good
and they don't understand how
that's a temporary show
then they're gonna fall for that
but yeah just at an instinctive level
how can anybody actually
think that blowing up a bunch of property
makes people richer like
apply that to your own life
you think that's gonna blow up all your stuff
see if you're richer
it's just pathetic
yeah I loved what
who was that
Jesser P wrote good for the military
industrial complex like yeah
good for them
not good for me not good for you
Lisa did you want to add anything to that
before we move on to the next one
nope again
okay got it
let's see
this one's directly to Larkin
CA to UT
16 writes Larkin how about a
Jones Plantation sequel where
Samuel like characters figure out how to
get others to agree with them and
rebel and they overthrow Mr.
Smith
a happy ending
I'm gonna say a thing
it won't actually be a Jones Plantations
sequel someday I hope to
have the money to make my novel
the iron web into
a movie and I'm not gonna elaborate
down that to spoil anything about the
novel that's all I'm gonna say
but I'm saying it in response to that
question
wonderful actually there was there was another comment
that I didn't put in this that was like the iron web is
a great and well written
novel and should be adapted to a movie
so I don't know who wrote that
but it was there you of course you agree
of course you agree
let's see
oh shucks
let's see
I'm looking through other messages man
the chat is just
it's a lot there's a lot here y'all
yeah it is my
and also it's gonna be chaos
is this your first live Larkin is this
is this us twisting your arm into the first live stream
effort it might be
live Facebook I don't think I've ever done a live
YouTube I have saved at least
four comments saying Larkin needs to go live
more often just to twist your arm
further later
yeah
yeah you should you should
Zoe
Sullivan 3 1 1 2 says yeah this
definitely needs to be a series about how
status and ruins everything hitting different topics so that's
kind of fun
yeah I mean unless anybody else has any
other burning questions tag
at Larkin rose so it sticks out on my
screen otherwise it's just buried in there
other than that I mean I'll turn it over to
Larkin and Lisa for
any final thoughts
go from there so y'all have fun
can throw it to Lisa first if she has any
closing comments
just in talking about this I think the thing that
stood out to me is just what can we do
right like what
what would give us some power back like
what would have us feel productive and
and have some responsibility in
our lives and so I think these conversations are
important but I think taking actions really important
so if you don't know what to do or you don't know
even if you're on a ground
that's strong enough to do something just
reach out and we're happy to talk about it
and get you to the next place the next
step for you
that's all it's all I got
Larkin lots of people
often comment on the fact that I
I keep things very simple there's a
million things I don't get into there's a million
like detailed conspiracies
that are actually real that I don't even
talk about because the factual
side of things matters to me less than
people actually wanting freedom
economics is one I go back
and forth on because understanding
basic economics is a good
way to be way less scared
of the state and way less
scared of the idea of a stateless society
because when people go how
will the roads be built that tells me
they haven't thought about economics they don't
understand how it works now like it's
not tax collectors and congressmen
out there building a road like you can see
the people doing it now
like those people will
build a road it just won't be
with stolen loot and so
it's economics is a big
thing and of course the the whole
Australian school of economics is
80 million books about it I don't usually
get into detail because they usually just focus
on the the philosophical
stuff but it's absolutely
the case sort of overall
but also in your personal
life more of what wealth battle deals
with that the more you understand
what the hell is going on the less scared
you are both
of a free society and of a state of
society the more the more predictable
it can be as a result
of you kind of knowing what the hell is going on
at least I think
it's worth learning a bunch about
you know economics
and then specifically the sort of tactics
they they talk about to try
to get robbed less
and be more long-term prosperous
but I think it's
important for people to
again people are afraid of the
unknown and the fewer things are
unknown to you the less
afraid you're going to be
because the government constantly feeds
off of that so it's
there's a ton to talk about in economics
I
was a huge fan of Walter Williams
I shook his hand once before he passed away
he was sometimes filled in
for Rush Limbaugh who was
drastic improvement over Rush
because economics doesn't have to be this
weird complicated
magical thing
unless you listen to government economists
it's just about human nature
and the more people understand it
the less susceptible
they are to government fear mongering
and BS
so yeah learn more
it's never a bad thing to learn more
and with that
I'll mention I'll do the shameless plug here
this live stream will remain up
until the video is edited and posted on
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so if you want to view this recording later
go to TheRoseChannel.com
help support Larkin's work because the dude gives away
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for the gratis on the house
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so that's kind of fun
but other than that thanks so much for coming to
like the first YouTube live we've ever done on
TheLarkinRoseChannel ever
and we'll see you down the road
take care everybody and have a good day
good evening good morning and good night
wherever you are in the world
yee ha
yes had to sneak one of those in now didn't ya
didn't ya