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Max and 99 are here for another round of Omnibus. They hit headlines on Jared Kushner’s foreign entanglements, the screwworm outbreak threatening the beef supply, a tribute to revolutionary historian Gordon Wood, and a 77-year-old who lost his life savings to a gold coin scam. Then they tackle listener emails on stopping Musk’s grift and Bernie’s proposed AI wealth fund. They rank their Top 5 people who owe them a personal apology. Enjoy! Chapters Intro 00:00:20 Headlines: 00:29:13 Emails: 01:11:55 Top 5: 01:32:14 Memberships: 01:42:45 Outro: 01:43:09 Resources The Hill: Trump officials play Biden blame game as screwworm spreads Politico: A flesh-eating pest threatens Trump’s beef price hopes Mother Jones: They Went to Jared Business Insider: A 77-year-old lost $390,000 of his retirement savings after picking up a scam call. Now he wants to help others. WSWS: A Tribute to Gordon S. Wood, Historian of the American Revolution New York Times: Scott Pelley on the Bari Weiss Era and His Last Days at ‘60 Minutes’ Business Insider: Bari Weiss was supposed to ‘restore trust’ in CBS News. It’s eroding, says CNN’s Brian Stelter. New York Times: Bernie Sanders: A.I. Is a Public Resource. You Should Own Half of It. Book Love Stephen Kinzer: The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War UNFTR Resources Episode: F*ck Milton Friedman. Video: SpaceX IPO: What They’re Not Telling Retail Investors. Episode: Dear Rebekkkah Mercer. -- If you like #UNFTR, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify: unftr.com/rate and follow us on Facebook, Bluesky, and Instagram at @UNFTRpod. Visit us online at unftr.com. Become a member at unftr.com/memberships. Buy yourself some Unf*cking Coffee at shop.unftr.com. Visit our bookshop.org page at bookshop.org/shop/UNFTRpod to find the full UNFTR book list, and find book recommendations from our Unf*ckers at bookshop.org/lists/unf-cker-book-recommendations. Access the UNFTR Musicless feed by following the instructions at unftr.com/accessibility.Support the show: https://www.unftr.com/membershipsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The Capitalism and Freedom in the Twenty-First Century Podcast
Pete Klenow has spent his career tackling some of economics' biggest questions: Why do some countries grow rich while others remain poor? What drives long-run prosperity? And how can policy foster innovation and productivity? In this episode of Capitalism and Freedom in the 21st Century, Jon Hartley sits down with the Stanford economist to discuss Klenow's influential research on sticky prices, development accounting, economic growth, and the allocation of resources across firms and industries. The conversation explores how economists measure the sources of growth, why misallocation can hold back entire economies, and what Klenow's research reveals about productivity differences across countries such as China, India, and the United States. Hartley and Klenow also examine the evolution of macroeconomics, the role of monetary policy, and the potential impact of artificial intelligence on innovation, productivity, and future economic growth. Recorded on June 2, 2026. ABOUT THE SERIES Each episode of Capitalism and Freedom in the 21st Century, a video podcast series and the official podcast of the Hoover Economic Policy Working Group, focuses on getting into the weeds of economics, finance, and public policy on important current topics through one-on-one interviews. Host Jon Hartley asks guests about their main ideas and contributions to academic research and policy. The podcast is titled after Milton Friedman‘s famous 1962 bestselling book Capitalism and Freedom, which after 60 years, remains prescient from its focus on various topics which are now at the forefront of economic debates, such as monetary policy and inflation, fiscal policy, occupational licensing, education vouchers, income share agreements, the distribution of income, and negative income taxes, among many other topics. For more information about the podcast, or subscribe for the next episode, click here.
Brendan Greeley is a veteran journalist from the Financial Times and current PhD student at Princeton studying monetary history. In Brendan's first appearance on the show, he discusses why he went for a PhD after being a journalist for 20 years, why the dollar's history goes far beyond America's founding, when America actually achieved a currency union, the untold origins of the dollar, how Herbert and Lou Hoover's date nights played a role in the history of the dollar, the crucial importance of Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz in understanding the dollar's history, the happy accident of Eurodollars, what the future of dollars looks like, and much more. Watch the full length video on our new YouTube Channel! Check out the transcript for this week's episode, now with links. Recorded on May 4th, 2026 Subscribe to David's Substack: Macroeconomic Policy Nexus Follow David on X: @DavidBeckworth Follow Brendan X: @BHGreeley Follow the show on X: @Macro_Musings Check out our Macro Musings merch! Timestamps 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:12 - Brendan's Career 00:06:27 - How Old Is the Dollar? 00:25:24 - Where Did the Dollar Start? 00:38:11 - The Modern Dollar 00:57:08 - Future of the Dollar 01:01:59 - Outro
Spouting Off with Karen Kataline Immigration, Western Civilization, Psychiatric Drugs, and Green Energy Karen Kataline Continues the Alan Nathan Show in Alan's Memory In this episode of The Alan Nathan Show / Alan Nathan All-Stars, host Karen Kataline opens by acknowledging the untimely passing of Alan Nathan and explaining that the show continues in his memory and honor. She notes that she and Alan had often done Mondays together and says it is an honor to help continue the program during this transitional period for the Main Street Radio Network. Throughout the episode, Karen frames the broadcast as part of a new chapter while preserving the spirit, name, and tradition of the Alan Nathan All-Stars. Immigration, Libertarianism, and Sanctuary Policies Karen's first guest is the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, identified in the transcript as Mark Krikorian or a similar spelling. They discuss immigration enforcement, libertarian arguments for open immigration, and the tension between open borders and a welfare state. Mark argues that libertarians once aligned more closely with conservatives on taxes, regulation, and the size of government, but now often align with the left on questions of sovereignty, borders, and immigration. He cites Milton Friedman's argument that open immigration and a welfare state cannot coexist and says that while social programs can be tightened, the welfare state is not simply going away. Chicago, ICE, and Local Non-Cooperation The discussion then turns to Chicago, Cook County, and Illinois, which Mark describes as sanctuary jurisdictions. He explains that ICE is not asking local police to conduct immigration checks in the street, but to hold criminal suspects who are already arrested and fingerprinted if they are deportable, so ICE can take custody. He argues that sanctuary policies release deportable offenders back into communities and says this especially harms immigrant neighborhoods. Karen and Mark also criticize Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, accusing them of interfering with immigration enforcement and downplaying violence in Chicago. Karen Reflects on Alan Nathan and the Show's Transition After the first interview and intervening ad segments, Karen returns to discuss the show's transition after Alan Nathan's death. She encourages listeners to hear the tribute program that aired over the weekend and recalls clips of Alan and his wife Jane from years earlier, describing their on-air chemistry as entertaining, lively, argumentative, and classic talk radio. Karen says it is a sad time for everyone at Main Street Radio Network, but emphasizes that the Alan Nathan Show and Alan Nathan All-Stars tradition will continue. James Hankins on The Golden Thread and Western Civilization Karen then welcomes James Hankins, described as a Harvard University historian and co-author of The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition. Hankins explains that the “golden thread” is a metaphor for the Western tradition, and that the book aims to recover the history of Western civilization from the ancient Greeks and Romans through the Middle Ages and into the modern world. He argues that this history has not been properly taught in schools or universities for decades, leaving people without a shared understanding of democracy, republics, communism, socialism, and the meaning of Western civic life. Communism, Democratic Socialism, and Historical Amnesia Karen connects the discussion to contemporary politics, warning against Marxism, communism, and democratic socialism. Hankins says many people who call themselves democratic socialists do not understand what the term means or how socialism has operated historically. He argues that adding the word “democratic” does not solve the deeper problem, because socialism has not historically favored democracy. Karen and Hankins agree that many public arguments suffer because people no longer share basic definitions or historical knowledge, especially about the distinction between a republic and a democracy. Dr. Toby Watson on Psychiatric Drugs and Violence Later, Karen interviews clinical psychologist Dr. Toby Watson, who says he has worked on research and testimony related to psychiatric medications, including SSRI antidepressants and black-box warning labels. Watson says his work involves outcome research on psychotropic medications and forensic cases where people with no history of violence commit violent or self-destructive acts after taking medication. Karen asks whether antidepressants and psychiatric medications may be contributing to violence, especially in the wake of Columbine-era discussions. Watson answers strongly that SSRIs can increase suicidal thoughts and behavior and says this is acknowledged in FDA black-box warnings. Akathisia, Political Motives, and Youth Medication Dr. Watson discusses akathisia, describing it as an inner agitation or restlessness that can make people feel as though they want to crawl out of their skin. He says it can occur with SSRIs and is even more common with antipsychotics. Karen asks whether suppression of this information may be about more than money, suggesting possible political motives. Watson agrees that politics can be involved and argues that children in poverty, especially those connected to Medicaid or Medicare systems, are disproportionately medicated at higher doses even when diagnosis and symptom severity are considered. He also references Anatomy of an Epidemic and argues that long-term psychiatric drug use can contribute to disability and general decline. Gender Ideology, Violence Profiles, and Dr. Watson's Cautions Karen and Watson also discuss social contagion, gender ideology, and political violence. Karen asks about the murder of Charlie Kirk and whether the alleged killer was on psychiatric medication. Watson says he has no direct knowledge and is not involved in that investigation, cautioning that too much misinformation is circulating to make a firm claim. However, he says the suspect fits a known profile for certain kinds of shooters and that, statistically, it would not surprise him if psychiatric medication were involved. Karen closes the short segment by inviting Watson back and directing listeners to his work online. Steve Goreham / Gorham on Green Energy and Rising Electricity Prices Karen closes the show with Steve Goreham or Steve Gorham, described as executive director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure. The conversation focuses on rising electricity prices, renewable energy policies, and what Karen calls the “green new scam.” Steve argues that expensive electricity increases are concentrated in blue states that have pursued aggressive green policies, naming California, Maine, New York, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. He contrasts those with states such as Georgia, Florida, Texas, and Missouri, which he says rely more on natural gas or coal and have seen smaller increases. AI, Data Centers, Pipelines, and Energy Reality Steve argues that green-energy policies are running into the reality of rising electricity demand, especially from artificial intelligence and data centers built by companies such as Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon. He says AI-related electricity demand requires constant 24-hour power and cannot be reliably supported by wind and solar alone. Karen and Steve also discuss the Keystone pipeline, New York pipeline politics, natural gas constraints in New England, offshore wind leverage, and the role of Trump administration energy policy. Steve closes by directing listeners to his book Green Breakdown and website. Closing the New Chapter of the Alan Nathan All-Stars Karen ends the show by saying the Alan Nathan All-Stars are heading into a new chapter, but with Alan Nathan still serving as the program's guiding star. The episode as a whole blends remembrance of Alan with Karen's political and cultural commentary, moving through immigration enforcement, Western civilization, psychiatric drugs, gender ideology, energy policy, and the future of American public debate.
Trump on a $250 bill? Bill Burr on CEO pay? New York seizing "neglected" buildings? It's Dumb Bleep of the Week, and the government is once again solving problems it helped create. In this episode of Good Morning Liberty, Nate and Chuck break down Zohran Mamdani's housing plan, rent control, public housing, Bill Burr's wage rant, CEO compensation, SpaceX "USA" chant outrage, Trump's proposed $250 bill, Ted Cruz bragging about $3.99 gas, Thomas Massie's loss, and chaos from the Libertarian Party National Convention. This is a libertarian breakdown of bad incentives, bad policy, political worship, and the endless cycle of politicians blaming everyone except the state. Chapters: 00:00 Good Morning Liberty 00:45 Dumb Bleep of the Week setup 01:45 Thomas Massie loss and black-pilled politics 04:15 Mamdani's plan to go after landlords 09:15 Milton Friedman on rent control and public housing 12:45 Bill Burr's wage and CEO pay rant 18:15 The one-armed traffic stop 22:45 SpaceX, USA chants, and fake outrage 27:30 Canada MAID gets mentioned and skipped 28:45 Trump's face on a $250 bill 33:45 Ted Cruz and $3.99 gas 35:00 Israel lobby fight and Massie campaign money 37:30 Libertarian Party National Convention chaos 52:30 Final Dumb Bleep vote and winner Watch All Episodes: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi78svKlBr_8o0dDOX8DxO_Wwxu6WYhhA Watch Host Favorites: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi78svKlBr__Zu40RL7mWxCuOOe54zgy2 Join the Fed Haters Club @ joingml.com All links @ gml.bio.link Subscribe, like, comment, and share. Follow on your favorite podcast app and leave a rating or review.
The Capitalism and Freedom in the Twenty-First Century Podcast
Jon Hartley and Sebastian Edwards discuss Edward's time at the University of Chicago as a PhD student in the time of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School, Chile's market reforms and the Chicago Boys (documented in Sebastian's most recent book, The Chile Project: The Story of the Chicago Boys and the Downfall of Neoliberalism), Javier Milei and Argentina's prospects of reversal, renewed hope for Venezuela, and whether economic freedom and market reforms have returned. Recorded on May 7, 2026. ABOUT THE SERIES Each episode of Capitalism and Freedom in the 21st Century, a video podcast series and the official podcast of the Hoover Economic Policy Working Group, focuses on getting into the weeds of economics, finance, and public policy on important current topics through one-on-one interviews. Host Jon Hartley asks guests about their main ideas and contributions to academic research and policy. The podcast is titled after Milton Friedman‘s famous 1962 bestselling book Capitalism and Freedom, which after 60 years, remains prescient from its focus on various topics which are now at the forefront of economic debates, such as monetary policy and inflation, fiscal policy, occupational licensing, education vouchers, income share agreements, the distribution of income, and negative income taxes, among many other topics. For more information about the podcast, or subscribe for the next episode, click here.
Frédéric Samama est auteur de L'énigme de l'inaction climatique et pionnier de la finance verte et alors que nous vivons un de ces épisodes de canicule aujourd'hui, il m'a semblé essentiel d'essayer de comprendre pourquoi nous savons depuis 70 ans et nous ne faisons rien. En 2009, il a monté le premier centre de recherche mondial sur la finance et le climat, lancé les premiers indices low carbone et créé la première coalition d'investisseurs à la COP21. Et pourtant, son livre ne parle pas de finance. Il parle de cerveau, d'histoire, de philosophie et d'une question qui l'obsède depuis cinq ans : pourquoi, sur un problème que tout le monde connaît, que l'on a créé, et qui nous menace en tant qu'espèce, on n'arrive pas à bouger ?Dans cet épisode, nous parlons de neurosciences cognitives, d'inférence bayésienne, de moments fromages dans l'histoire de l'humanité, et du lien entre capitalisme, néolibéralisme et perte de nos réflexes moraux. J'ai questionné Frédéric sur l'overview effect des astronautes, sur Lévinas et la philosophie du visage, sur Jean Cavaillès et la résistance, et sur ce que tout ça dit de notre capacité à réinventer nos représentations du monde face à l'urgence climatique.Citations marquantes"Sur un problème où tout le monde est au courant, qu'on a créé, et qui nous menace en tant qu'espèce — pourquoi diable, on n'arrive pas à se mettre en mouvement ?" (0:29:00)"Le capitalisme, c'est comment tu fais vivre des gens ensemble en dehors de règles morales et religieuses. Et maintenant qu'on fait face à un défi moral, qui est le défi du climat, on ne sait plus faire." (0:19:30)"Face à l'enjeu moral, c'est l'action qui doit prévaloir — et pas la réflexion de est-ce qu'on est optimiste, négatif, et ainsi de suite." (1:06:44)"On a voulu détendre le lien social. En cas de problème, il n'y a plus personne, et donc il n'y a plus de devoir — on ne demande que des droits." (0:26:30)"Le climat, ce n'est plus seulement la plus grosse menace. C'est aussi la plus belle opportunité de réapprendre à vivre ensemble, nous, les 8 milliards de personnes sur Terre." (1:12:00)Big Ideas1. Notre cerveau construit des modèles à partir de signaux — et s'y enferme L'inférence bayésienne selon Stanislas Dehaene : le cerveau observe des signaux et fabrique des lois du monde. Agassi qui lit le service de Becker, le bébé qui comprend la gravité, le rat dans le labyrinthe — tous fonctionnent pareil. Le problème : une fois le modèle établi, on arrête de le mettre à jour. On entre en surconfiance. C'est exactement ce qui se passe avec le climat : on sait, mais on ne change pas de modèle. (0:02:37)2. L'histoire humaine s'est organisée autour de "moments fromages" — et le climat en exige un nouveau Deux grandes ruptures : l'agriculture et la science moderne (accès aux ressources naturelles), puis le néolibéralisme (accès aux ressources humaines mondiales). À chaque fois, l'humanité a réorganisé ses représentations. Le climat est la première fois qu'on nous demande de limiter l'accès aux ressources — un défi sans précédent pour des cerveaux conditionnés à l'expansion. (0:07:43)3. Le capitalisme a délibérément mis la morale hors jeu Au XVIIe siècle, la grande question était : comment faire vivre des gens ensemble sans passer par la morale ou la religion, qui créent des guerres ? La réponse : l'intérêt personnel. Adam Smith, Montesquieu, Hirschman ont construit un système où l'égoïsme profite à la société. Ça a marché. Mais le climat est un problème moral (les plus faibles meurent en premier) — et on n'a plus les réflexes pour ça. (0:14:55)4. L'overview effect comme signal de bascule possible Les astronautes dans l'espace deviennent poètes. Ils voient la planète fragile, belle, vivante. Frédéric propose ces trois perceptions comme signal capable de réécrire nos représentations. La fragilité déclenche la responsabilité (Lévinas). La beauté prépare à la morale (Kant). Le vivant nous réintègre dans la nature après des siècles d'extraction. Pas un programme politique — une hypothèse sur comment les cerveaux humains peuvent changer. (0:39:00)5. Face à un enjeu moral, la question n'est plus l'espoir — c'est l'action Jean Cavaillès, philosophe-mathématicien résistant, incarne la réponse. En mai 1941, zéro espoir objectif. Et pourtant il agit — parce que face à un enjeu moral, la question n'est plus "quelle est la probabilité ?" mais "quelle est mon obligation ?". C'est la même logique que d'appeler les pompiers pour quelqu'un qui fait une crise cardiaque dont on sait qu'elle sera fatale. On agit. Pas parce qu'on espère, mais parce qu'on doit. (1:04:06)Questions poséesQu'est-ce que l'anecdote d'Agassi et Becker révèle sur le fonctionnement du cerveau humain ?Quels sont les grands "moments fromages" de l'histoire de l'humanité, et où en sommes-nous aujourd'hui ?Comment définirais-tu le capitalisme à son origine — et en quoi diffère-t-il du néolibéralisme ?Pourquoi le néolibéralisme a-t-il dissous le lien social, et quelles en sont les conséquences concrètes ?Sur un problème aussi connu et aussi grave que le climat, pourquoi l'humanité n'arrive-t-elle pas à se mettre en mouvement ?Qu'est-ce que l'inférence bayésienne nous apprend sur notre incapacité à mettre à jour nos modèles face au climat ?Qu'est-ce que les astronautes et l'overview effect peuvent nous apprendre sur comment changer nos représentations collectives ?Comment Lévinas et Kant peuvent-ils nous aider à repenser notre rapport au problème climatique ?Qui était Jean Cavaillès, et pourquoi son histoire est-elle une réponse au problème de l'inaction ?Si le signal qui change nos représentations n'est pas encore arrivé, qu'est-ce qui pourrait en tenir lieu à l'échelle de nos sociétés ?Références citéesPersonnes et penseursStanislas Dehaene — chaire de sciences cognitives, Collège de France (0:04:00)André Agassi / Boris Becker — anecdote du service et de la langue (0:02:37)Max Weber — thèse sur la naissance du capitalisme (0:13:00)Albert Hirschman — économiste, auteur sur l'origine du capitalisme (0:13:00)Marcel Enaf — sur le commerce pré-capitaliste (0:17:29)Machiavel, Spinoza, Galilée, Montesquieu, Adam Smith — généalogie du capitalisme (0:15:25)Milton Friedman — article dans le New York Times sur le néolibéralisme (0:19:54)Emmanuel Lévinas — philosophe lituanien, "le visage d'autrui" et l'éthique (0:42:44)Emmanuel Kant — la beauté, le désintérêt et la morale (0:44:30)Michel Serres — "on mesure l'ampleur d'un problème à la durée qu'il a mise à se former" (0:33:34)Robin Dunbar — nombre de 150, limite de coordination des groupes humains (0:34:22)Hannah Arendt et Karl Polanyi — fascisme comme réaction au libéralisme du XIXe siècle (1:07:50)Henri Bergson — envoyé aux États-Unis pour convaincre Wilson d'entrer en guerre (0:53:43)Président Wilson — discours d'entrée en guerre au nom de valeurs morales, 1917 (0:54:30)Jean Cavaillès — philosophe-mathématicien résistant, fusillé (1:02:11)Raymond Aron — "Si Jean Cavaillès avait vécu, j'aurais dit moins de bêtises" (1:04:06)Pierre Brossolette, Jean Moulin — résistants évoqués en parallèle (1:05:00)Concepts et événementsInférence bayésienne — mécanisme cognitif de construction de modèles (0:47:50)Overview effect — phénomène de bascule perceptuelle chez les astronautes (0:39:30)Théorie des "moments fromages" — concept central du livre (0:07:43)Bulle des tulipes — première crise financière spéculative, XVIIe siècle (0:50:23)COP21 — coalition d'investisseurs créée par Frédéric (0:27:33)Passage à l'an 2000 (bug Y2K) — contre-exemple de mobilisation rapide (0:30:00)Protocole de Montréal / couche d'ozone — résolu en 18 mois (0:51:43)Timestamps clés00:00 Introduction — Et si on se réjouissait à nouveau du futur ? Gregory présente Frédéric Semama, pionnier de la finance verte et auteur de L'énigme de l'inaction climatique. 02:37 L'anecdote Agassi / Becker Comment Agassi a découvert le code du service de Becker en s'asseyant dans la foule — et ce que ça révèle sur le cerveau humain. 04:00 Comment le cerveau construit ses modèles du monde Stanislas Dehaene au Collège de France : inférence bayésienne, le bébé, le rat dans le labyrinthe. 07:43 Les "moments fromages" de l'histoire humaine Agriculture, science moderne, néolibéralisme : trois grandes ruptures où l'humanité a réorganisé ses représentations pour accéder à de nouvelles ressources. 13:00 L'origine du capitalisme — bien au-delà de l'argent Comment le capitalisme est né comme solution à la guerre de religion : faire vivre des gens ensemble sans morale ni religion. 20:56 Tout le monde veut un village mais personne ne veut être villageois La concierge qui sauve Frédéric pendant le Covid — et le choc quand il essaie de la remercier avec des cadeaux. 27:00 Pourquoi on n'agit pas sur le climat Trois raisons structurelles : c'est la première limite à l'accès aux ressources, il n'y a pas de signal à hauteur du problème, et nos modèles sont inadaptés. 36:22 La bulle sociétale — on peut savoir et continuer quand même De la bulle internet à la bulle des tulipes : le mécanisme d'enfermement conscient à l'échelle d'une planète. 39:00 L'overview effect — les astronautes comme piste de bascule Fragile, belle, vivante : les trois perceptions que les astronautes rapportent de l'espace — et ce qu'elles activent dans le cerveau. 42:44 Lévinas : le visage d'autrui comme début de l'éthique Quand voir la fragilité de l'autre nous oblige à agir au-delà de notre instinct de conservation. 52:07 La couche d'ozone vs le climat En 18 mois, tous les pays du monde se sont mis d'accord. Qu'est-ce qui est fondamentalement différent avec le climat ? 53:43 Bergson à la Maison-Blanche La France envoie le philosophe Henri Bergson convaincre Wilson d'entrer en guerre. Il réussit. Ce que ça dit du pouvoir des valeurs morales en politique. 1:00:14 Je ne cherche pas à avoir de l'espoir Frédéric explique pourquoi la question n'est pas l'espoir — avec mai 1941 comme exemple. 1:02:11 Jean Cavaillès — le héros oublié de la résistance Fils de militaire, philosophe-mathématicien, major de Normale Sup tout seul. Et résistant. Fusillé dans une fosse commune. 1:06:29 La crise cardiaque et l'obligation morale "La probabilité que tu survives est nulle. Et pourtant, tu vas tout faire pour me sauver." Ce que ça dit du rapport entre morale et action. 1:14:54 La solution concrète : recommencer à regarder le vivant Pourquoi enseigner la vie des animaux et des plantes à l'école changerait plus de choses que n'importe quelle taxe carbone. Suggestion d'autres épisodes à écouter : #286 Le cynisme politique face à l'urgence climatique? avec Fabrice Nicolino (https://audmns.com/SHnNoJp) #292 Les enjeux de la géopolitique climatique avec David Djaiz (https://audmns.com/BoZGVQa) #178 Les technologies vont-elles nous permettre de faire face au défi climatique? avec Philippe Bihouix (https://audmns.com/ktZSlzb)Hébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
How Government Dependency Destroys Freedom: America is being conditioned to believe dependency is compassion and success is selfish. In this episode, Professor Nicholas Giordano exposes how government growth, fraud, and victimhood politics are eroding self-reliance, capitalism, and the American spirit. From the Vance fraud task force uncovering massive abuse in taxpayer-funded programs to New York City's fiscal collapse and California's homelessness disaster, this episode breaks down how bloated bureaucracies fail repeatedly while demanding more money and more power. The conversation explores the dangerous connection between economic dependency and political control using the ideas of Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell, while explaining why capitalism, personal responsibility, and self-governance remain essential to preserving liberty. What You'll Learn: How government dependency weakens freedom and expands political control Why fraud, waste, and abuse are actively protected by the political class What Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell understood about economic freedom How failed government programs continue growing despite terrible results Why rebuilding self-reliance and accountability is essential to saving the republic
The fiat money system has survived the Great Inflation, the global financial crisis, and a pandemic. But can it survive digital currencies?Bitcoin and the blockchain solved a genuine problem in computer science: how to stop people spending the same money twice. Forty years of successful inflation control means central bank money is stable; that is the stability in stablecoins, attempting to solve the volatility problem. What's next? What if the unit of account itself were indexed to consumer prices? Digitalisation might finally make that approach viable at scale. Price stability, by design.Will we still need cash? Maybe not now, But if you never use it, it may not be there if the blackout comes.The research behind this episode:Stracca, Livio. 2025. Redefining the Monetary Standard in the Digital Age: Digital Innovations and the Future of Monetary Policy. Springer Nature.To cite this episode:Phillips, Tim, and Livio Stracca. 2026. "Redefining the monetary standard." VoxTalks Economics (podcast). Assign this as extra listening. The citation above is formatted and ready for a reading list or VLE.About the guestLivio Stracca is Deputy Director General for International and European Relations at the European Central Bank, where he has worked for more than two decades. His research spans monetary economics, international finance, and the implications of digitalisation for central banking, with extensive work on exchange rates, capital flows, and the architecture of the international monetary system. Research cited in this episodeThe double-spend problem. The fundamental challenge in any decentralised digital payment system: how to prevent a participant from spending the same unit of money twice when there is no trusted central authority to verify transactions. Bitcoin's 2008 white paper offered an innovative solution by making the transaction ledger public, cumulative, and computationally expensive to rewrite. The trade-off is that transparency sacrifices privacy; every transaction is visible to all participants in the network.The blockchain. A distributed ledger in which transactions are grouped into sequential blocks, each cryptographically linked to the one before. Reversing any transaction requires rewriting every subsequent block, which demands enormous computational effort. This design solves the double-spend problem in a decentralised network but makes the system slow and costly to operate at scale.The payment trilemma. A framework discussed in the episode and in Stracca's book: any digital payment system can optimise for at most two of three properties simultaneously (universal access, security against fraudulent transactions, and privacy). Cash is the only instrument that escapes the trilemma; digital systems must accept a trade-off among the three, and the choice is often made implicitly by the designer of the system rather than through democratic deliberation.Hayek, Friedrich A. 1976. Denationalisation of Money. London: Institute of Economic Affairs. The classic argument for currency competition: let currencies compete freely and the one providing the most stable prices will win. Economists, including Milton Friedman, largely rejected the proposal on the grounds that money exhibits strong network externalities; the more people use a currency, the more attractive it becomes to the next user, producing a natural tendency towards monopoly. A formal modern revisitation, finding similar conclusions, is Fernández-Villaverde, Jesús, and Daniel Sanches. 2019. "Can Currency Competition Work?" Journal of Political Economy 127 (3): 1017 to 1058.Irving Fisher's compensated dollar. A proposal published in Fisher, Irving. 1913. "A Compensated Dollar." Quarterly Journal of Economics 27 (2): 213–235 (the same year the Federal Reserve was created). Fisher argued for a dollar whose purchasing power was held constant by adjusting its gold content in line with prices. The mechanical details of his proposal are no longer relevant, but its animating idea (indexing the unit of account to a price level) has gained new plausibility in a digital context.The Unidad de Fomento. Chile's inflation-indexed unit of account, in operation since 1967 and updated daily against the consumer price index. It is used widely in long-term contracts, including mortgages, and functions as a security that can be traded. Stracca cites it as evidence that an indexed monetary standard is operationally feasible, and as a prototype for what a digital equivalent might look like at larger scale.The Great Moderation. The period of low and stable inflation in advanced economies running roughly from the mid-1980s until the inflation episode of 2021 to 2023. Economists attribute it to improved monetary policy frameworks, particularly central bank independence, inflation targeting, and (crucially, in Stracca's account) the introduction of interest on reserves, which gave central banks precise control over the short-term interest rate without draining liquidity. Stracca treats the Great Moderation as the benchmark against which any proposed reform of the monetary standard must be judged.Programmable money. A form of digital money in which payment is conditional on an independently verifiable event, potentially confirmed by a machine rather than a human intermediary. Example: a payment that executes automatically when a delivery is confirmed by a sensor. Decentralised ledgers make such conditional payments technically straightforward; traditional banking systems can approximate them but with far greater friction. Stracca notes significant enthusiasm for programmable money but also real scepticism about whether the benefits outweigh the complexity in practice.More VoxTalks Economics episodesStablecoins and Global Imbalances, Gilles Moëc explains why we can think of stablecoins as a radical macroeconomic experiment that has arrived at exactly the moment the US external position is showing signs of stress.Can blockchain decentralise money, contracts, and finance? Bruno Biais on blockchain's potential, its flaws, and its future.Do stablecoins threaten financial stability? Richard Portes thinks so.
The Trump administration puts the squeeze on 300,000 fake college applicants and stops $60 million for going out the door in one month. Milton Friedman warned us. The deep state really doesn't want Trump to release the UFO files as new discussions about alien breeding programs are getting odd. Millions of people flock to the government's UFO website.
Albina du Boisrouvray est philanthrope, productrice de cinéma et autrice de Naviguer l'existence. Venue d'une bonne famille, elle a donné la quasi-totalité de sa fortune à sa fondation FXB pour sortir 100 000 personnes de l'extrême pauvreté.Je connais peu de trajectoires aussi denses que celle d'Albina. Militante écologiste dans les années 70 quand personne n'écoutait, productrice de cinéma dans un milieu misogyne, candidate aux législatives en 78, et puis surtout : mère d'un fils de 24 ans mort dans un accident d'hélicoptère, celui dans lequel se trouvait aussi Daniel Balavoine. Ce que j'aime chez Albina, c'est qu'elle n'est pas dans la posture. Elle dit qu'elle ne sait pas toujours comment elle a tenu. Elle dit qu'elle a parfois tort. Elle dit que son manque d'études l'a probablement rendue plus libre que si elle avait fait l'ENA.Dans cet épisode, nous parlons de deuil, de sens, de résilience et de cette méthode qu'elle a inventée contre l'avis de tout le monde, "la graduation approach", qui transgresse la doxa du micro-crédit. J'ai questionné Albina sur les bouées qu'elles considèrent comme la colonne vertébrale de toute son existence : ne jamais se pourrir le présent pour un futur qu'on ne peut pas imaginer.Citations marquantes"La mort aura toujours le dernier mot. Mais qu'elle n'ait pas le dernier mot plus vite qu'elle devrait l'avoir.""La résilience, c'est apprendre à vivre avec. Pas s'en débarrasser. Vivre avec.""Quand j'ai vu que les gens à qui on apportait tout ça, leurs yeux s'illuminaient — ça réallumait ma propre capacité à ressentir du bonheur.""Quand on est convaincu d'avoir raison, il faut aussi questionner ça. Il faut tout questionner.""Ne jamais se pourrir le présent pour un avenir qu'on ne peut absolument pas imaginer, parce qu'il ne se passe jamais comme on l'a imaginé."Idées centrales 1. La résilience n'efface pas la douleur — elle l'intègre Titre : "Apprendre à vivre avec, pas à guérir" Albina ne dit pas qu'elle a "surmonté" la mort de son fils. Elle dit qu'elle a appris à vivre avec l'amputation. Ce décalage — entre guérir et intégrer — change tout dans la manière dont on traverse les épreuves. Cyrulnik lui a donné les mots. La vie lui a donné la méthode. Pourquoi c'est important : On vend trop souvent la résilience comme une victoire sur la douleur. Albina dit l'inverse : c'est une coexistence. Timestamp : ~07:00–10:052. Donner aux autres peut rallumer ce qu'on croyait éteint en soi Titre : "Le bonheur des autres comme carburant personnel" Ce n'est pas de la générosité romantique. C'est une mécanique très précise : quand tu vois les yeux de quelqu'un s'illuminer parce que tu lui as apporté quelque chose, ça rouvre ta propre capacité à ressentir. Albina l'a découvert au Liban en 1987, un an après la mort de François. Pourquoi c'est important : Ça retourne la question du sens — on ne trouve pas le sens en cherchant, on le trouve en faisant. Timestamp : ~20:44–21:463. La transgression comme méthode : donner plutôt que prêter Titre : "La graduation approach contre la doxa du micro-crédit" La grande transgression d'Albina : donner des entreprises aux familles au lieu de leur prêter de l'argent, et accompagner ça avec l'accès simultané à tous les droits de base. Les Nations Unies disaient que ça ne se faisait pas. Elle l'a fait quand même. Résultat : 86% de réussite, 100 000 personnes sorties de l'extrême pauvreté. Pourquoi c'est important : Quand le consensus est fort, c'est souvent le moment de questionner, pas d'obéir. Timestamp : ~13:20–18:044. Penser par soi-même contre les doxas de son époque Titre : "Quitter une réunion d'extrême gauche en 1970 parce qu'on y préparait des attentats" Elle a été militante gauchiste jusqu'au jour où elle a compris que ça menait au terrorisme. Elle a refusé le micro-crédit quand tout le monde le défendait. Elle a soutenu le maintien du nucléaire quand sa famille politique voulait le démanteler. Sa boussole : ses propres valeurs, pas les étiquettes. Pourquoi c'est important : La liberté de pensée n'est pas un droit qu'on reçoit — c'est une discipline qu'on exerce contre soi-même d'abord. Timestamp : ~45:24–48:325. Le capitalisme n'est pas le problème. Le capitalisme débridé, si. Titre : "L'offre et la demande ça fonctionne — le problème c'est quand ça sert les actionnaires plutôt que les humains" Elle fait une distinction que peu de militant.e.s de sa génération acceptent : la nature humaine n'est pas totalement oblative, il faut un intérêt pour que ça marche. Ce qui ne fonctionne pas, c'est l'article de Friedman de 1970 qui a scellé l'idée que le seul but d'une entreprise est de redistribuer des dividendes. Pourquoi c'est important : On ne changera pas le système en le refusant en bloc. On le change en redéfinissant ce qu'il sert. Timestamp : ~36:28–39:16Questions posées dans l'interviewTu dis que l'avenir a perdu ses promesses — mais pour ta génération, les 30 glorieuses, c'était le contraire. Qu'est-ce qui a changé, selon toi?Comment on traverse la mort d'un enfant sans se laisser détruire?Est-ce que c'est la douleur qui t'a poussée vers l'humanitaire, ou tu l'aurais fait de toute façon?La graduation approach était une transgression totale à l'époque. Comment tu as eu le courage de contredire le consensus des Nations Unies?Comment on fait pour ne pas laisser sa famille imposer notre destin — surtout quand on l'aime?Tu parles de "ne pas accepter les doxas de son époque" — mais comment tu sais que tu n'es pas juste en train de remplacer une doxa par une autre?La place des femmes — tu dis que rien n'est acquis. Qu'est-ce que tu dirais à une femme jeune aujourd'hui face au retour des religions et du patriarcat?Comment tu pratiques l'instant présent concrètement? C'est une philosophie ou une discipline quotidienne?Avec le recul de tes 80 ans, qu'est-ce que tu changerais dans ta manière de vivre?A quoi tu veux claquer la porte — et où est-ce que tu veux ouvrir?Références citées dans l'épisodeLivresNaviguer l'existence — Albina du Boisrouvray (fil rouge de tout l'épisode) ~00:29Indignez-vous! — Stéphane Hessel (résonance sur la capacité d'indignation d'Albina) ~25:04Livre de Boris Cyrulnik sur la résilience (titre non précisé, mais "ça a totalement résonné") ~07:38Articles / textesArticle de Thomas Friedman (journaliste) sur "l'ère du polysène" — le monde comme système complexe et non binaire ~34:03Article de Milton Friedman (économiste, NYT, 1970) — le seul but d'une entreprise est de redistribuer des dividendes aux actionnaires ~35:44Documentaire Arte sur la violence de l'extrême droite en France et en Allemagne ~54:21PersonnesDaniel Balavoine — mort dans l'accident d'hélicoptère du Paris-Dakar 1986 ~01:03François, son fils — pilote de l'hélicoptère, 24 ans ~06:55Bernard Kouchner — mission au Liban en 1987 ~20:44Professeur Jonathan Mann (Harvard/OMS) — paradigme santé publique, alerte sur les orphelins du SIDA ~11:37Mohamed Yunus — micro-crédit (admiré, mais insuffisant pour l'extrême pauvreté) ~14:15Brice Lalonde, René Dumont — militants écologistes des années 70 ~05:04André Gorz — cité rapidement comme proche des mouvements écolos ~05:03André Delvaux — réalisateur belge représenté par Albina à Cannes ~48:59Kim Chapiron — réalisateur français, propos sur la représentation des musulmans au cinéma post-2001 ~53:32Anne Chirac — avait posé des pots de fleurs sur les Champs-Élysées en réponse aux plaidoyers écologistes ~04:04OrganisationsFXB (Fondation François-Xavier Bagnoud) — fondée par Albina ~12:24Médecins sans Frontières / Médecins du Monde — Albina a été bénévole ~22:59Banque mondiale, BRAC, Ford Foundation — ont repris la graduation approach à grande échelle ~18:31ConceptsRésilience (Cyrulnik) ~07:38Graduation approach (méthode FXB) ~15:48Polysène — ère où tout est imbriqué, plus rien n'est binaire ~34:03Famille étendue africaine ~13:32Bouddhisme : "ici et maintenant" ~59:50Talmud / pil-poul : questionnement constant ~47:07Timestamps clés (optimisés YouTube)00:00 — Introduction VLAN Greg ouvre sur la question centrale du podcast : "Et si on pouvait à nouveau se réjouir du futur?" Présentation d'Albina, de son livre Naviguer l'existence et de ses 12 bouées de sauvetage.01:55 — Les 12 bouées : pourquoi des bouées et pas des clés "Les clés ouvrent des portes. Les bouées, elles te sauvent dans une tempête." Une distinction qui dit tout sur l'état dans lequel elle perçoit le monde aujourd'hui.02:05 — L'avenir a perdu ses promesses Retour sur les 40 glorieuses, l'espoir de l'après-guerre, et le moment où tout a basculé. Albina raconte comment elle portait l'alerte climatique il y a 50 ans — et comment personne ne l'écoutait, même dans les réunions politiques enfumées.06:38 — Bouée #1 : ne pas se laisser détruire par le malheur La mort de son fils François à 24 ans. Comment on tient. Ce que la résilience veut vraiment dire. Cyrulnik lui a donné les mots, la vie lui a donné la méthode.10:50 — Comment la douleur l'a conduite à l'humanitaire Un an après la mort de François, elle part avec Kouchner au Liban porter des médicaments des deux côtés de la ligne de front. Elle retrouve là, pour la première fois, sa capacité à ressentir du bonheur.13:20 — La transgression de la graduation approach En Afrique, elle comprend que son modèle occidental ne fonctionne pas. Elle invente une méthode qui transgresse la doxa du micro-crédit et choque les Nations Unies. Elle a raison.18:04 — 100 000 personnes sorties de l'extrême pauvreté 86% de réussite. La méthode FXB reprise par la Banque mondiale et BRAC. Elle a tout dépensé. Et elle continue avec des donations.24:05 — Bouée #2 : la famille et la liberté Son enfance entre Amérique du Sud et Afrique du Nord. Sa mère Quechua, son père résistant gaulliste. Comment l'absence de famille l'a paradoxalement rendue libre. Et comment elle a fait la paix avec sa mère après sa mort.33:41 — Bouée #3 : défendre la justice Néolibéralisme, Friedman, l'article qui a tout scellé en 1970. Sa distinction entre capitalisme utile et capitalisme destructeur. Et l'ère du polysène : on ne vit plus dans un monde binaire.42:09 — Bouée #5 : la place des femmes Rien n'est acquis — les États-Unis, l'Afghanistan, l'Iran. Son expérience au Festival de Cannes où deux hommes parlent d'elle comme d'un objet en direct. Et comment elle a géré un ministre qui avait fermé la porte à clé.45:24 — Bouée #9 : ne pas accepter les doxas de son époque La réunion en 1970 où elle quitte les mouvements gauchistes. Le Talmud comme modèle de questionnement permanent. Et pourquoi être convaincu d'avoir raison, c'est souvent le premier signe qu'on a un peu tort.52:56 — Bouée #8 : s'autoriser à penser par soi-même Les imaginaires des films américains post-2001, l'islamophobie ordinaire, les extrêmes qui identifient de vrais problèmes mais proposent de mauvaises solutions.58:36 — Bouée #10 : ne jamais se pourrir le présent La bouée centrale. Comment elle pratique l'instant présent concrètement — son chat le matin, la gentillesse des jeunes dans la rue. Les petits cadeaux de la vie qu'on rate quand on est dans la projection.01:00:57 — Ce qu'elle dirait aux jeunes en pleine course à la réussite 80 ans résumés en quelques phrases : ne pas mettre la réussite économique comme seule priorité. Rester ouvert aux autres. Saisir les moments de bonheur.01:06:49 — VLAN : claquer la porte sur la haine Elle veut claquer la porte sur toutes les formes de haine — islamophobie, antisémitisme, haine du voisin. Et elle termine sur une surprise : la gentillesse des jeunes qu'elle croise dans la rue, à Clichy et ailleurs. Suggestion d'autres épisodes à écouter : #346 Retrouver du pouvoir dans le chaos avec Matthieu Dardaillon (https://audmns.com/yOgbycm) Vlan #73 La vieillesse ne ressemble à rien de ce que vous pensez avec Perla Servan Schreiber (https://audmns.com/JrdGWwO) #377 Pourquoi l'avenir appartient aux sociétés solidaires? Avec Pablo Servigne (partie 1) (https://audmns.com/WMxgIMf)Hébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
Former U.S. Congressman Bob Inglis joins Brian Nichols to make the "conservative" case for a carbon tax and why most Republican voters keep rejecting his free-market climate proposal. Inside, we dig into the Raise Wages Cut Carbon Act, the Milton Friedman defense of pricing pollution, and the border adjustment mechanism Inglis says could force China to follow America's lead on emissions.We expose the structural cracks in the "revenue-neutral" carbon tax pitch... why the social cost of carbon swings from $42 to $190 depending on who's running Washington... and the uncomfortable fact that every country that's tried this policy has either repealed it, rioted over it, or rejected it at the ballot box.Is this really the free-market answer to climate change... or just a federal Trojan horse dressed in Milton Friedman quotes? What happens when "revenue-neutral" becomes a moving target? And why are libertarians the ones cutting emissions while bureaucrats are still chasing the perfect tax rate?Stick around for the 13:54 mark when I ask Bob to name ONE federal tax in American history that stayed revenue-neutral... the 25:00 moment when we lay out why this policy has failed everywhere it's been tried... and the 40:32 stretch where we expose the fact that US emissions dropped 20% in 15 years - without a carbon tax.Subscribe and hit the bell so you never miss an episode of The Brian Nichols Show. Visit briannicholsshow.com for show notes, guest links, and past episodes. And huge thanks to our studio sponsor Cardio Miracle - the best heart health supplement on the planet. Visit cardiomiracle.com/TBNS and use code TBNS for 15% off your order. New episodes drop every Thursday at 9PM ET.CHAPTERS:0:00 - Intro2:37 - The Trip To Antarctica That Cost Him His Seat10:33 - The $42 To $190 Carbon Tax Problem13:54 - Name ONE Tax That Stayed Revenue-Neutral?17:38 - The Hidden Government Growth Nobody Talks About25:00 - Why Do Carbon Taxes Keep Failing Everywhere?40:32 - We Cut Emissions 20% Without Them?46:46 - Where To Find Bob + republicEnStudio Sponsor:Cardio Miracle (w/ 15% off discount) - https://cardiomiracle.com/TBNSBob Inglis / republicEn:republicEn.org - https://republicen.orgThe Brian Nichols Show:Website - https://briannicholsshow.comX/Twitter - @BNicholsLibertySubscribe on YouTube, Rumble, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube MusicContact - brian@briannicholsshow.comMentioned In Episode:The Raise Wages, Cut Carbon Act of 2009 - Bob Inglis legislationMilton Friedman on Phil Donahue (1980s pollution tax clip) - available at republicEn.orgJFK Profile in Courage Award (2015 recipient: Bob Inglis)Merchants of Doubt documentary - features Inglis Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Former U.S. Congressman Bob Inglis joins Brian Nichols to make the "conservative" case for a carbon tax and why most Republican voters keep rejecting his free-market climate proposal. Inside, we dig into the Raise Wages Cut Carbon Act, the Milton Friedman defense of pricing pollution, and the border adjustment mechanism Inglis says could force China to follow America's lead on emissions.We expose the structural cracks in the "revenue-neutral" carbon tax pitch... why the social cost of carbon swings from $42 to $190 depending on who's running Washington... and the uncomfortable fact that every country that's tried this policy has either repealed it, rioted over it, or rejected it at the ballot box.Is this really the free-market answer to climate change... or just a federal Trojan horse dressed in Milton Friedman quotes? What happens when "revenue-neutral" becomes a moving target? And why are libertarians the ones cutting emissions while bureaucrats are still chasing the perfect tax rate?Stick around for the 13:54 mark when I ask Bob to name ONE federal tax in American history that stayed revenue-neutral... the 25:00 moment when we lay out why this policy has failed everywhere it's been tried... and the 40:32 stretch where we expose the fact that US emissions dropped 20% in 15 years - without a carbon tax.Subscribe and hit the bell so you never miss an episode of The Brian Nichols Show. Visit briannicholsshow.com for show notes, guest links, and past episodes. And huge thanks to our studio sponsor Cardio Miracle - the best heart health supplement on the planet. Visit cardiomiracle.com/TBNS and use code TBNS for 15% off your order. New episodes drop every Thursday at 9PM ET.CHAPTERS:0:00 - Intro2:37 - The Trip To Antarctica That Cost Him His Seat10:33 - The $42 To $190 Carbon Tax Problem13:54 - Name ONE Tax That Stayed Revenue-Neutral?17:38 - The Hidden Government Growth Nobody Talks About25:00 - Why Do Carbon Taxes Keep Failing Everywhere?40:32 - We Cut Emissions 20% Without Them?46:46 - Where To Find Bob + republicEnStudio Sponsor:Cardio Miracle (w/ 15% off discount) - https://cardiomiracle.com/TBNSBob Inglis / republicEn:republicEn.org - https://republicen.orgThe Brian Nichols Show:Website - https://briannicholsshow.comX/Twitter - @BNicholsLibertySubscribe on YouTube, Rumble, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube MusicContact - brian@briannicholsshow.comMentioned In Episode:The Raise Wages, Cut Carbon Act of 2009 - Bob Inglis legislationMilton Friedman on Phil Donahue (1980s pollution tax clip) - available at republicEn.orgJFK Profile in Courage Award (2015 recipient: Bob Inglis)Merchants of Doubt documentary - features Inglis Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Former U.S. Congressman Bob Inglis joins Brian Nichols to make the "conservative" case for a carbon tax and why most Republican voters keep rejecting his free-market climate proposal. Inside, we dig into the Raise Wages Cut Carbon Act, the Milton Friedman defense of pricing pollution, and the border adjustment mechanism Inglis says could force China to follow America's lead on emissions. We expose the structural cracks in the "revenue-neutral" carbon tax pitch... why the social cost of carbon swings from $42 to $190 depending on who's running Washington... and the uncomfortable fact that every country that's tried this policy has either repealed it, rioted over it, or rejected it at the ballot box. Is this really the free-market answer to climate change... or just a federal Trojan horse dressed in Milton Friedman quotes? What happens when "revenue-neutral" becomes a moving target? And why are libertarians the ones cutting emissions while bureaucrats are still chasing the perfect tax rate? Stick around for the 13:54 mark when I ask Bob to name ONE federal tax in American history that stayed revenue-neutral... the 25:00 moment when we lay out why this policy has failed everywhere it's been tried... and the 40:32 stretch where we expose the fact that US emissions dropped 20% in 15 years - without a carbon tax. Subscribe and hit the bell so you never miss an episode of The Brian Nichols Show. Visit briannicholsshow.com for show notes, guest links, and past episodes. And huge thanks to our studio sponsor Cardio Miracle - the best heart health supplement on the planet. Visit cardiomiracle.com/TBNS and use code TBNS for 15% off your order. New episodes drop every Thursday at 9PM ET. CHAPTERS: 0:00 - Intro 2:37 - The Trip To Antarctica That Cost Him His Seat 10:33 - The $42 To $190 Carbon Tax Problem 13:54 - Name ONE Tax That Stayed Revenue-Neutral? 17:38 - The Hidden Government Growth Nobody Talks About 25:00 - Why Do Carbon Taxes Keep Failing Everywhere? 40:32 - We Cut Emissions 20% Without Them? 46:46 - Where To Find Bob + republicEn Bob Inglis / republicEn: republicEn.org - https://republicen.org The Brian Nichols Show: Website - https://briannicholsshow.com X/Twitter - @BNicholsLiberty Subscribe on YouTube, Rumble, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music Contact - brian@briannicholsshow.com Studio Sponsor: Cardio Miracle (w/ 15% off discount) - https://cardiomiracle.com/TBNS Mentioned In Episode: The Raise Wages, Cut Carbon Act of 2009 - Bob Inglis legislation Milton Friedman on Phil Donahue (1980s pollution tax clip) - available at republicEn.org JFK Profile in Courage Award (2015 recipient: Bob Inglis) Merchants of Doubt documentary - features Inglis Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dean Karayanis, New York Sun columnist and former Rush Limbaugh staffer, takes the helm of the Derek Hunter Podcast, bringing his signature historical perspective to the chaos of modern politics. From the "shoot-to-kill" raid on Mar-a-Lago to the selective morality surrounding Joe Biden's classified documents, Dean breaks down why the "will of the people" is often a hollow excuse for undermining the Constitution. Plus, a look at the "Crusader" ambition of Congresswomen Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, the rising fury of the "Essex Man" in Britain, and a masterclass from Milton Friedman on why inflation is a hidden tax you never voted for but always pay. Selective Transparency: A deep dive into the DOJ's efforts to block the release of Joe Biden's audio tapes and the stark contrast in how the media and government treat document scandals depending on the last name of the politician involved. The "Parchment Guarantee": Using the wisdom of Justice Antonin Scalia, Dean explains why a "living, breathing Constitution" is a threat to liberty and why the judiciary must remain insulated from the "will of the people." AOC vs. The Establishment: An analysis of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's recent interview with David Axelrod, exploring her "Crusader" mindset and why Republicans fail when they underestimate her political connectivity. The "Essex Man" and Global Populism: A cautionary tale from the UK, where hardworking citizens are abandoned by both parties in favor of open borders and "colonization," leading to a surge in support for Nigel Farage. Inflation 101: Vintage clips from Milton Friedman explain the "hangover" of government spending. Dean argues that inflation isn't caused by unions or oil sheiks—it's made in Washington.
Tyler Goodspeed is the former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors and is currently a chief economist in the private sector. In Tyler's first appearance on the podcast he discusses his new book highlighting a different way of looking at recessions, the challenge of breaking away from the human inclination of ascribing patterns to random phenomena, whether recessions are more Dorian Gray or Peter Pan, what history and stories like Jay Cooke tell us about recessions, how to evaluate supply side shocks and the 2008 Financial Crisis, why Milton Friedman's Plucking model might be the best we have at modeling recessions, and much more. Watch the full length video on our new YouTube Channel! Check out the transcript for this week's episode, now with links. Recorded on April 15th, 2026 Subscribe to David's Substack: Macroeconomic Policy Nexus Follow David Beckworth on X: @DavidBeckworth Follow the show on X: @Macro_Musings Check out our Macro Musings merch! Timestamps 00:00:00 - Intro 00:00:43 - Recessions 00:07:07 - Epiphanies or Apophanies 00:26:40 - Peter Pan vs. Dorian Gray 00:33:40 - Jay Cooke and the Railroad 00:39:00 - Models of Recessions 00:47:55 - Supply Shocks 00:50:12 - Recessions in Different Places 01:00:25 - Outro
“It was a completely unthinking exercise in cost-cutting that made no sense in terms of the newspaper. I think perhaps if you want to destroy the newspaper, it made sense.” — Simon Elegant on being ‘eliminated' by the Washington Post Hong Kong in 2019. A dismembered body is found in a landfill. A disgraced police superintendent is called back from internal exile to solve it. The city around him is burning. Rather than a John Woo movie, this is the setting for a Simon Elegant thriller. Born in Hong Kong, former Beijing bureau chief for Time magazine, most recently the Washington Post's man in China until Jeff Bezos “eliminated” him three months ago — Elegant has written the definitive Hong Kong novel. First and foremost, City on Fire: A Novel of Hong Kong is a crime thriller. Superintendent Killian Tong — half-Chinese, half-Irish, loved by no one in his department — investigates a murder while his sister is noisily demonstrating on the other side of the barricades. But the book doubles as a compressed history of Hong Kong: from Palmerston's “barren rock” in the 1840s — seized from China after the opium wars — through the ninety-nine-year lease, the handover in 1997, and the slow strangulation of the “one country, two systems” promise. Elegant is neither a hardline China hawk nor an apologist for Beijing. Yes, he credits the British with a relatively enlightened administration — from its public housing to the uncorrupt civil service that inspired the Singapore model. But he is also clear about what happened after 1997. Hong Kong people assumed Beijing would honour the Thatcher-Deng terms, and then discovered, to their horror, that they had no rights. It was a silent coup rather than a gaudy takeover of power. And so the 2019 protests — when a million people went onto the streets — are not just a backdrop to City on Fire but also the real-life stage on which Hong Kong burnt. Five Takeaways • Enlightened Colonialism — With Caveats: Was Hong Kong an example of enlightened British colonialism? Elegant says: relatively, yes. The administration was light-handed. The public housing was so good that Singapore copied it. The civil service was — after 1972, when they had to create the ICAC following a police corruption scandal — genuinely clean. Milton Friedman praised the free-market model. But it was also racialized: the upper levels were almost entirely white Anglo, and the Chinese were largely excluded from administrative power. Governor Jock MacLehose changed this. Enlightened colonialism, Elegant concludes, is not a contradiction in terms — but it is relative. Compared to the Belgian Congo, Hong Kong was paradise. • One Country, Two Systems: A Promise Broken: The terms negotiated by Thatcher and Deng in the 1980s guaranteed Hong Kong's autonomy until 2047. Hong Kong people assumed these terms were real and would be adhered to. They were not. The first attempt to pass a national security law came in 2004. There were mass protests in 2014. In 2019, a million people — in a city of six million — were on the streets. Beijing's choice was not between crushing them or not. It was between blood in the streets and a silent coup. They chose the silent coup. The national security law of 2020 was the final instrument. There is no longer any meaningful “one country, two systems.” • The Policeman as Moral Complexity: Elegant's decision to make his protagonist a policeman — rather than a protester — is the novel's central artistic choice. Superintendent Killian Tong is not a villain. He is a man caught between institutions he has served his whole life and a conscience that knows what's happening is wrong. His younger sister is on the other side of the barricades. The murder investigation forces him to confront not just the crime but the system that made it possible. Elegant wanted to write about moral complexity, not propaganda — and the only way to do that was to give the story to the person most implicated in the system. • Bezos ‘Eliminated' the Washington Post's Foreign Staff: Simon Elegant's final paycheck from the Washington Post used the word “eliminated.” He was one of 35-40 foreign correspondents let go in a single exercise — one of the biggest foreign staffs at any American newspaper. No one, he says, can explain what the thinking was, or if there was any. Every person he meets in Washington has cancelled their subscription. The Post still has excellent national security reporters, but in terms of foreign coverage it is, Elegant says, “doomed.” His conclusion: “perhaps if you want to destroy the newspaper, it made sense.” • Hemingway's Iceberg, Applied: What did writing fiction teach Simon Elegant after a career in journalism? The iceberg principle, which Hemingway described: seven-eighths of a book — the knowledge, the research, the reported detail — should sit below the waterline. Only the tippy-top should be visible. The weight of the knowledge gives the visible surface its authority. The book started at 128,000 words — every reported detail jammed in. By the third or fourth round of cuts with the editor's blade, it was 75,000. The lesson: don't jam in your entire notebook. Fiction goes more directly into the heart. It bypasses the brain and seeks a different truth. About the Guest Simon Elegant is a journalist and novelist born in Hong Kong. He was Beijing bureau chief for Time magazine and most recently China bureau chief for the Washington Post. He is the author of City on Fire: A Novel of Hong Kong (Pegasus Crime, May 5, 2026), A Floating Life (Ecco/HarperCollins), and A Chinese Wedding (Piatkus). He is based in Kuala Lumpur. References: • City on Fire: A Novel of Hong Kong by Simon Elegant (Pegasus Crime, May 5, 2026). • Episode 2870: Eyck Freymann on Defending Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War with China — the companion episode on Taiwan and the growing China crisis. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple Pod...
Paris Marx is joined by Ben Tarnoff and Quinn Slobodian to discuss their new book Muskism which explores how Elon Musk exemplifies a new economic system shaping our lives, similar to Fordism in the twentieth century. Ben Tarnoff & Quinn Slobodian are the authors of Muskism. Ben is a writer and technologist based in Massachusetts and the author of Internet for the People. Quinn is professor of international history at Boston University, and the author of books like Crack-Up Capitalism. Tech Won't Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon. The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Kyla Hewson. Also mentioned in this episode: For listeners who are feeling extra academic, here is the Milton Friedman economics paper, “The Methodology of Positive Economics.” Quinn discusses his struggle to find any reporting on Jared Leto and the Optimus robot media stunt (that goes deeper than commenting on the virality).
The Capitalism and Freedom in the Twenty-First Century Podcast
Jon Hartley and Phil Gramm discuss Graham's career as an academic economist at Texas A&M, his service in the US House of Representatives and in the US Senate, and his work on the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings and Gramm-Leach-Bliley legislation. Graham also talks about his recent books on the role that economic freedom plays in economic growth, as well as various fallacies surrounding the rise of inequality in the US. Recorded on April 28, 2026. ABOUT THE SERIES Each episode of Capitalism and Freedom in the 21st Century, a video podcast series and the official podcast of the Hoover Economic Policy Working Group, focuses on getting into the weeds of economics, finance, and public policy on important current topics through one-on-one interviews. Host Jon Hartley asks guests about their main ideas and contributions to academic research and policy. The podcast is titled after Milton Friedman‘s famous 1962 bestselling book Capitalism and Freedom, which after 60 years, remains prescient from its focus on various topics which are now at the forefront of economic debates, such as monetary policy and inflation, fiscal policy, occupational licensing, education vouchers, income share agreements, the distribution of income, and negative income taxes, among many other topics. For more information about the podcast, or subscribe for the next episode, click here.
Hinsegin bókmenntir, langborðsumræður, fræðadagskrá og fjölbreyttur hópur alþjóðlegra höfunda, er það sem gestir bókmenntahátíðarinnar Queer Situations geta átt von á í næstu viku. 14.-17. maí fer hátíðin fram í annað sinn, og þær Eva Rún Snorradóttir og Halla Þórlaug Óskarsdóttir, skipuleggjendur, eru gestir Lestarinnar í dag. Kolbeinn Rastrick rýnir í tvær nýjar bíómyndir, Apex í leikstjórn Baltasars Kormáks, sem skartar Charlize Theron í aðalhlutverki, og Michael, nýja myndin um poppstjörnuna Michael Jackson. Einar Már Jónsson, sagnfræðingur, flytur pistil um byltingu frjálshyggjunar og hvernig hugmyndir Antonio Gramsci höfðu þau áhrif að Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman og Friedrich Hayek, voru gerð að spámönnum þeirrar hugmyndafræði.
Economists and politicians have turned him into a mascot for free-market ideology. Some on the left say the right has badly misread him. In this updated replay of a 2022 episode, we hold a very Smithy tug of war. SOURCES: Eamonn Butler, co-founder and director of the Adam Smith Institute. Glory Liu, a political scientist and Adam Smith scholar at Georgetown University. Mariana Mazzucato, professor in the economics of innovation and public value at University College London. Dennis Rasmussen, a professor of political science at Syracuse University. Russ Roberts, president of Shalem College in in Jerusalem; host of the EconTalk podcast; and author. Craig Smith, Adam Smith Senior Lecturer in the Scottish Enlightenment at the University of Glasgow. RESOURCES: Adam Smith's America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism, by Gloria Liu (2022). "Henry and Adam: A Deep and Special Friendship," by Benny Higgins (Adam Smith Panmure House Perspective, 2020). "Rescuing Adam Smith From Myth and Misrepresentation," (The Economist, 2018). The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought, by Dennis C. Rasmussen (2017). How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness, by Russ Roberts (2014). "British Privatization — Taking Capitalism to the People," by John Moore (Harvard Business Review, 1992). Free to Choose: A Personal Statement, by Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman (1990). The Essential Adam Smith, edited by Robert L. Heilbroner (1986). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith (1776). The Theory of Moral Sentiments, by Adam Smith (1759). EXTRAS: "In Search of the Real Adam Smith," series by Freakonomics Radio (2022). Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Milton Friedman famously remarked, "It's not what you don't know that is the problem, it is what you think you know that just ain't so." This has never been as obvious as it is today. When you look at all the problems in America, it is very reasonable to ask the question, "Is the History we've learned accurate? Could the story actually be different?" It's becoming more obvious that this must be the case.Tom Woods Show with Dave Smithhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFQYgz9OMuY
Keith shows how simple buy-and-hold real estate can be a powerful path to long-term wealth. He explains how the tax system and inflation often reward property owners—especially those with fixed-rate debt and rental income—turning modest rent increases into outsized gains in cash flow. Keith also explores how broader economic forces and neighborhood trends shape real estate markets, and why even an extra $1,000 a month in passive income can meaningfully increase your freedom, reduce reliance on a single job, and move you closer to financial independence. Episode Page: GetRichEducation.com/603 For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREinvestmentcoach.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments. For predictable 10-12% quarterly returns, visit FreedomFamilyInvestments.com/GRE or text FAMILY to 66866 Unlock truly passive real estate income—visit flockhomes.com/GRE today to see if your properties qualify for a 721 exchange with Flock Homes. Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search "how to leave an Apple Podcasts review" For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— GREletter.com Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Complete episode transcript: Keith Weinhold 0:01 Welcome to GRE I'm your host. Keith Weinhold. Learn how rent inflation makes real estate investors wealthy. Do certain grocery stores in your neighborhood stoke real estate prices, then how just $1,000 of extra monthly cash flow can be surprisingly life changing. Today, on get rich education, Keith Weinhold 0:24 Let me ask you something, if you've worked hard to build wealth, is your money positioned to actually support your goals? A lot of accredited investors leave capital sitting in cash because it feels safe, but inflation and missed income opportunities can quietly erode its value. Freedom. Family investments offers freedom notes for investors seeking structured income backed by real estate. It's a straightforward approach built on real assets, not speculation and full disclosure. I'm an investor myself. What I like is that their team walks you through how it all works, so you can decide if it aligns with your portfolio and income goals. Every investment carries risk and nothing is guaranteed, but with a track record of consistent on time investor payouts, they built real credibility. Go to freedom. Familyinvestments.com to book a clarity call or text. Family 266, 866, that's family 268, 66 Speaker 1 1:28 you're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education. You Chris, Keith Weinhold 1:44 Welcome to GRE I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, it's the show that coined the phrase real estate pays five ways. This is get rich education. You learned how to work at your job. The reason we're here is to make you aware that capital compounds labor doesn't, and that's almost why you have to be an investor today. A couple weeks ago, we had tax day in the USA, and that's not quite a holiday. Virtually no one celebrates it. Yes, here in our 250th year of existence as a nation that erstwhile mentioned semi quincentennial. How did America go from fighting a revolution over a 2% tax on a breakfast beverage at the Boston Tea Party to what we pay today? Have you really processed what this has come to now we're taxed when we earn money, taxed when we spend it, taxed when we save it, taxed when we invest it, even taxed when we die with it. And that's just the start. Think about your typical day, your routine. We commute to work in a car, were taxed to register driving on roads. Were taxed to build fueled by gas that's taxed again and then often paying tolls on top of that. Well, those taxes are supposed to maintain the infrastructure, like bridges, highways and tunnels, but yet, they already have billions of taxpayer dollars allocated to them. Then we arrive at an office that's taxed to exist inside a business that's taxed to operate that requires permits and licenses that act like other layers of taxation. When we finally get our paycheck, our employer matches payroll taxes on top of our wages, just incredible. And at the end of the day, we go home to a property we're taxed to own every single year, purchased with income that was already taxed in the first place, and somehow all of this is considered normal. Here's the turning point. Most people when they realize this, feel frustrated and saddened and even victimized. But instead, real estate investors flip the frame from victim to strategist, the same system that taxes seemingly everything quietly rewards those who own assets through depreciation, we report a loss even when the property produces real cash flow. Last week, I told you how you can specifically lower your property taxes step by step, then through mortgage interest and operating expenses, we can reduce that amount of our income that's even taxable at all through long term leverage, we're often repaying debt with inflated dollars, while our tax burden stays surprisingly low, and then it gets even more power. Powerful, more advanced real estate investors use a cost segregation and bonus depreciation to pull years of deductions forward into today. And it's something that's not really that sophisticated or tough to understand either. And then when we sell a property 1031, and 721, exchanges help us defer the capital gains tax. And when you start to think about it, could these turnabouts even get us patriotically excited for a dare I say, semi quincentennial. Keith Weinhold 5:36 our system of taxation, it can feel punitive. Some high earners lose more than 55% of their income to taxes, both federal and state. Real estate investors don't just earn gains in income. We reshape it. We continue to thrive in a tax system that rewards ownership. Not only is wealth built from owning things rather than having a high salary, tax breaks are gained by owning things rather than having a high salary. And now it's somewhat common knowledge that war leads to inflation. The latest Middle East conflict entails a lot of military spending, and it's been made worse by disrupting an energy producing region. Four weeks ago, I told you about why wars are inflationary and just how bad it can get. That is why the first major wartime inflation reading that we got was so telling. And wow, inflation grew at the fastest annual rate from one month to the next since the pandemic spike back in 2022 it went from 2.4% up to now 3.3% just like that. And with more inflation poised to come along, even if the war winds down, and I want to talk more about how this benefits you shortly. And yes, if you're a newer listener, you're not used to inflation benefiting you, but it benefits the educated and the aware. GRE listener. And first, here's what fewer people pay attention to. M2 money supply that's jumped 4.8% annually to a record of almost $23 trillion now the money supply, this is the 24th consecutive monthly increase the supply was only about $5 trillion back in 2000 10 trillion by 2012, 15 trillion in 2020, and then the pandemic made the money supply explode, and it's almost 23 trillion today. And what does this all mean that the US dollar is losing purchasing power at a historic pace, because, look, inflation is actually not rising prices. The thing that's now up to 3.3% the CPI. Rather, inflation is an expansion of the money supply. It inflates. That is the very etymology of the word people often overlook that. That's why I'm talking about the historic expansion rate of the money supply, and how that can show up in higher prices later. High prices are not inflation. Rather, they are a consequence of inflation. And I want to tell you more about what this means to you, and explain how this builds your wealth in a new way. But first, I mean, my gosh, have you been as flabbergasted about inflation as I am, just at the consumer shelf and aisle level in a store, and I'm a guy that likes to spend money, yet I've got to say sticker shock. It still gives me pause when I'm in a store, even on the cheapest of items, I recently went inside a gas station convenience store after I filled up a regular size York Peppermint Patty, 1.4 ounces cost $3.19 this consequence of inflation has left me slack jawed, but already was a Slack jaw however, has it left you slack jawed? All right, let me tell you about how the wildly overpriced York Peppermint Patty makes real estate investors rich in their sleep. Did you know that the classic economist, Milton Friedman, discussed the concept of get rich. Education's inflation, Triple Crown, essentially. Now we didn't call it that. In fact, he discussed it before GRE existed in 2014 let's listen into this. Friedman won a Nobel Prize in 1976 I'm going to guess that this is him speaking in about 1980 essentially, he. Discuss the first two crowns, which are also the ones that homeowners with a mortgage benefit from which are asset price, inflation and debt debasement. This is about two minutes in length. Speaker 3 10:11 If I ask people, are you in favor of inflation or not? Everybody is against inflation. But when I explore a little bit further, if I say to people, tell me, have you gained from inflation? Oh, no, you say I haven't gained. And yet, the fact is that a great many people have gained from inflation. There are many, many people who have benefited. Of course, the major gainer from inflation is the federal treasury, as I've already said, but almost everybody who has bought a home in the past 30 years has gained from inflation. He was able to borrow on a mortgage, which inflation has paid off, along with paying off the government debt, so that almost all homeowners in this country are beneficiaries from inflation. Indeed, one of the things that makes inflation such a bad social disease is precisely that it tends to be divisive, because some people do very well during an inflation period, and some people do very badly. And as a result, the population gets split into people who are seeming in great prosperity and people who are in great distress. When most people say they want to stop inflation, what they mean is that they want the prices of the things they buy to go down and the prices of the things they sell to go up. But since what one man sells is what another man buys, that's a neat trick, if you can do it. And as a result, people aren't really serious when they say they want to stop inflation, certainly not in the early stages, not before they fully understand, not before it's gotten to the point where it is really creating serious social problems. Everybody wants to stop inflation at somebody else's expense. Keith Weinhold 12:11 That was classical macro economist Milton Friedman discussing the rarely talked about benefits of inflation. He also served as an advisor to President Reagan and to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher Friedman extolled the virtues of free markets and minimal government intervention. Well, yeah, he discussed the first two crowns of get rich, education's inflation, triple crown. So let me discuss the third one, because you benefit from this when you rent out property. And what's interesting about what I'm going to tell you is that this example is going to make it more apparent than it ever has to you, that rent inflation makes landlords rich in their sleep. In fact, the positive effect on you is even greater than I thought I double checked these numbers I'm about to share with you before I came on the air, because I didn't expect this high of a degree of cash flow enhancement. And also, I was talking about what I'm going to show you on YouTube earlier, and it generated a negative, biting comment from a viewer. I'll tell you about that, but yeah, I showed this to a guy that's been investing in real estate for 36 years, and he didn't even understand this. Here it is with general monetary inflation. Rent inflation is a consequence. So let's keep this simple. Say that you charge rent of $2,000 and that could very well be a realistic rent amount for a single family rental property that our GRE investment coaches help you find today, although the average is probably a little less than that. So in any case, $2,000 rent. When you subtract out your fixed rate mortgage payment of $1,000 and your operating expenses of $800 This leaves you with $200 of monthly cash flow. We'll say that's your scenario today. Next rents rise 3% This means you're getting $2,060 now. Doesn't sound so exciting, yet your mortgage payment stays locked in at $1,000 inflation can't touch it. That's the key to this. Your operating expenses also rise 3% up to $824 This leaves you with cash flow of 236 okay. So what happened there is your cash flow went from 200 up to 236 that's not a 3% gain, inflation gain 3% this is an 18% increase in your income. 200 up to 236, an 18% cash flow spike off just a tiny rent adjustment will extrapolate that effect. Right across your portfolio. I mean, this is like your annual income going from 100k up to 118k and then compounding like that every single year. That is power, because inflation couldn't touch your fixed mortgage payment. And this is something I've explained before. It's the third crown of get rich education's inflation Triple Crown called Cash Flow enhancement. But it's a better example than I've ever had for it, and it's a germane time to talk about it with inflation on the rise again. Now here's an angle. Does what I just explained feel wrong in any way. The thing is, you aren't fleecing your tenant. It's just an adjustment to inflation, a little 3% bump to them, a big 18% difference to you. You didn't get rich off your tenant. You got rich because, again, you're leveraging the bank's money, but you're doing it in a way that most people don't see or think about and of course, mortgage free owners lose this entire benefit. It is just another way that real estate investors get rich in their sleep. Yet few ever understand how. But like I said, I was talking about this on YouTube just a little bit ago, and a commenter simply wrote, this makes you a bad person. Keith Weinhold 16:27 Now, the viewer of GRE YouTube channel, sometimes it's you, but you know, sometimes it's someone that doesn't listen to this audio show here, where we do more learning, the casual or occasional YouTube viewer. They just probably don't understand all of what you do. But yes, like me, you have probably run into people out there that think that landlords are bad because they charge tenants rent and they adjust the rent as their expenses rise. And some of these people even say something like, I believe housing is a human right. I seem to hear that more and more, okay, that's one thing, but they imply that the taxpayer should pay for their housing. I mean, does that even work over time? You can see how often government provided housing fails and it ends up being exorbitantly expensive when the free market prevails. Instead, you know, I think that this sentiment has gotten a little worse because of the K shaped economy, more people having to sleep in their cars makes those people resentful. America, you know, we're in better shape when we have a strong middle class. What can really help you a lot is if you haven't yet. Finally, watch the three part video series, the inflation triple crown. The video really helps reinforce your learning well, because it's helpful to show numbers on screen, like you can in a video. You can watch that directly by going to get rich education. COMM, slash inflation, Triple Crown, or shorter. You can just go to the abbreviated get richeducation.com/itc, it takes you to the same place. It really shows you how to optimize your income increases and do it the right way. I mean, if someone thinks you're a bad person for raising the rent 3% commensurate with 3% inflation, well, you know what? Then if that person is an employee, should they also feel bad for getting a 3% pay raise at work? Well then they should, right, because they're charging their employer 3% more for their services as an employee. Well, of course, that's okay. So that sentiment doesn't make one bit of sense, all right. Well, let's temper the 3% rent inflation that I used in our example here. There's both bad news and good news around this, because today, rent increases are below average nationally. In fact, Zillow has forecast only a 1.1% rent increase in single family rentals this year. And then the good news is that the average rent increase since 2020 is 6% and we only used 3% in our example. The bottom line here is that few real estate investors ever have the epiphany that cashflow enhancement is yet another significant way that inflation makes them wealthy, and it's just another reason why carefully selected simple buy and hold. Residential real estate makes people wealthy. Just buy and hold you don't have to dig in and do a bunch of aggressive value add or get into a niche like self storage or short term rentals or assisted living homes that you sure can do those things. And there's nothing wrong with niching down. You just don't have to, and sometimes we even discuss those nichey vehicles here on the show. In fact, we've done four episodes on assisted living homes, but it's hard to beat the relative passivity and the durability of simple buy and hold residential not the latest hot thing, not speculation, but just what's proven. But you have to understand these forces and then act on them. I mean, I gave an example there of $200 in cash flow, and since that's only the most visible component of the five ways real estate pays. When you add it all up, you might be getting $1,500 of monthly benefit on a single family rental property that only costs 300k 1500 a month on a 300k property that you might have only put 20% down on. And for that 1500 a month, it might only take one hour per month of your asset managing of your property to get that $1,500 of benefits. So that is $1,500 an hour. That's great, but it's only one hour a month, and that's exactly what makes you want to scale with buy and hold property as soon as you get into a lot of real estate niches, which, again, it can be worthwhile, whether that's self storage or assisted living homes or something like that. Well, now it's more like an active business that you have to run, and you're probably going to spend substantially more hours there. But yes, a guy that's been investing in real estate for 36 years. Did not understand cash flow enhancement from Rent inflation until I showed this to him and watch it all. He watched the three part video series, which, again, you can watch for free at get rich education.com/inflation. Triple Crown or shortened simply, get rich education.com/itc. Open it up now and watch it later, because I'm back with more next. I'm Keith Weinhold on episode 603 of get rich education. Keith Weinhold 22:13 Flock homes helps you retire from real estate and landlording, whether it's one problem property or your whole portfolio through a 721 exchange, deferring your capital gains tax and depreciation recapture. It's a strategy long used by the ultra wealthy. Now Mom and Pop landlords can 721 the residential real estate request your initial valuation, see if your properties qualify@flockhomes.com slash GRE that's F, l, O, C, K, homes.com/g R, E, Keith Weinhold 22:49 the same place where I get my own mortgage loans is where you can get yours. Ridge lending group and MLS, 42056, they provided our listeners with more loans than anyone because they specialize in income properties. They help you build a long term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your prequel and even chat with President chailey Ridge personally, while it's on your mind, start at Ridge lending group.com that's Ridge lending group.com Tarek El Moussa 23:23 What's up? Everyone? This is hgtvs Tarek El Moussa. Listen to get rich education with Keith Weinhold, and don't quit your Daydream. Keith Weinhold 23:30 Welcome back to get rich Education. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, I'm here in Las Vegas today and staying at the Bellagio with a terrific fountain view room. Yes, the paradox of having a giant water show every 30 minutes in the middle of the Mojave Desert, as it is today, just up the street at the Venetian the big Bitcoin 2026, conference kicks off. I might attend some of the sessions, and I might not. While I'm here in Vegas, I'm more focused on spending time with my brother's family. I know I've mentioned to you before that they live in nearby Henderson, Nevada, and I come here pretty often. You could call me a real estate investor. That's crypto curious. I own a little Bitcoin because I think it has some compelling value propositions as well as a number of problems. I think, like a lot of people, I have more questions about Bitcoin than I do answers, and each time I get a new answer, it just prompts three new questions. Now I plan to shop at Trader Joe's shortly. I'm kind of a weirdo here in Vegas, in the sense that I don't gamble, and rather than eating every one of my meals out, I like to be a little healthy shop at a grocery store and bring good food back to the fridge in my room. Well, how? Do certain grocery store chains impact local real estate prices. And you might have heard about this before, but there's a good new study about it that just appeared in the USA Today. And I kind of like the USA Today, because you can easily find a USA Today article where a columnist wrote a story about me as well. But what happened is an analyst matched more than 32,000 store openings to property prices over 50 years. And one conclusion found that homes in the same zip code as a trader joe's saw their values rise about 6% faster than the national average over three years. Another study found that over five years, home prices near Trader Joe's rose by 49% compared with 45% for homes near Whole Foods and 58% near Aldi. I wouldn't have expected that Aldi is a low cost bargain grocery store. Now there are a couple twists here. First, a higher end grocery store, like Whole Foods, that might very well correlate with a good, more affluent neighborhood, sure, but it also might reflect the fact that home values are high, and that usually is not profitable for long term rentals. And the other takeaway is that grocery stores don't actually cause price appreciation. Instead, they reflect it. These grocery chains, they really invest heavily in site selection, so their presence signals that an area was already trending upward, even before a Trader Joe's arrives in an area, the median household income in a neighborhood hovers around $82,000 and that was the highest in the chains that were studied with a typical home value of 425k and the flip side is also pretty noteworthy, the study found that Walmarts tend to be built in neighborhoods with an average household income of only $49,000 and home values of under 200k plus the home price appreciation Proximus to a Walmart, it ends up trailing the national average by 4% over three years. So really, can we say then that the K shaped economy runs through the grocery aisle? I want to get back to discussing your wealth shortly, but first, let's have a checkup on the economy that you're invested inside every day. Over the past year, the US economy has continued to do well, which has surprised some people, some saying that the economy seems to defy gravity. I mean, look at this point. It has withstood chaotic tariff changes, labor supply shocks, swings to the stock market and then a kinetic war on top of that. And how is it pulling this off? Probably starting with AI investment, including all the data center building you see taking place technology innovation and a consumer that you know, it's funny all these consumer surveys where the consumer feels negative, probably because they keep seeing higher prices, but yet, even though they feel negative, oh, they just keep spending more anyway, the unemployment rate is still really low. The AI build out is significant, and that drives jobs and rents and incomes realize, though, this is a new infrastructure build out. This is substantial, just like railroads in the internet were, and companies racing not to fall behind in the AI boom, that's exactly what fuels the economy and productivity and therefore supports real estate. It's similar in spirit, to the.com boom, really, but this time, there's real revenue, and it ALL Fuels wage growth, which is an antecedent to rent growth. And by the way, have you ever noticed how economists and corporations, they're so addicted to growth in the notion of growth, that if something goes down in value, they call it negative growth. What is negative growth? That's always been a funny phrase to me. Don't you mean a decline? Negative growth? That's kind of like calling growth a positive decline. That's nonsense. Some people are allergic to saying that something is a dip or decline, so instead, they say that it's negative growth. That's sort of like how companies they don't want to say that they're undergoing a round of layoffs instead of layoffs. Oh, they say that we are right sizing. She should just tell it like it is. Now, when it comes to building your wealth, this. Say that you're more of a beginning real estate investor, say that your income from your job is 100k and you might wonder, if I add, say, five properties each with $200 a monthly cash flow, that equals $1,000 a month. That's an extra 12k per year. You know, that really isn't that much of a lifestyle difference. You know, even though there are four other ways real estate pays, let's just talk about this. That's only 12k per year, on top of 100k You know, I contend that that really does make quite a difference. Okay, if your real estate cash flow gets up to 1k a month, and you might only spend four hours a month managing that. It matters more than you think, because of your 100k of job income. All right, after all, your expenses are taken care of, like you pay for your housing, your transportation, your Trader Joe's, groceries, all of that stuff that you spend on. Well, what's left over your discretionary income? That might only be $2,000 per month. So if you add 1000 to that, that is a 50% increase in your discretionary income. What really matters? That's why real estate cash flow is actually a bigger deal than a lot of people think. You just bought back your time. This can help you replace a second job. This can let you cut back hours or even fund a sabbatical buffer for beginners. That's why even a kind of paltry sounding $1,000 a month in cash flow from, say, five rental doors that can actually be a life changer. When you get right down to it, it really starts to change your control over your time, and an extra $1,000 a month can, of course, help fuel your next investment, if you so choose. But that's not all. A psychological shift begins to happen inside you. You're no longer dependent on one income source. This is really the underrated one, because before $1,000 of real estate cash flow, a job loss that could mean stress and urgency and bad decisions, but afterward, now you have margin. Now you're making better decisions in life. You negotiate better you think longer term. That shift alone improves your entire life. And what else can just 1000 a month do for you an extra 1000, it can give you lifestyle upgrades without guilt. Let's say you do spend some of it that can fund travel without touching savings, that can give you better housing or a better location, that can give you experiences instead of a life of what feels like just bills. And here's the key, it does not cannibalize your future. Just $1,000 a month gives you options, like we say around here, don't live below your means. Grow your means. I mean, if you're a beginner, this is something that you could have in less than a year. That extra 1k that comes whether you work that day or not. And for a more advanced investor, you can imagine what multiples greater than 1k per month do. So can you see how everything compounds here? Capital compounds labor doesn't earlier, I discussed how even a 3% rent bump can increase your cash flow 18% all right, and then your cash flow has a greater impact than you thought, because it is discretionary income where a small change can make a world of difference in your life. And when you layer all these things together, it almost makes you wonder why more people aren't real estate investors. Well, most people just have not had it explained to them this way before, and then other people give up after starting in real estate because they don't buy the right property in the right market. Keith Weinhold 34:16 Here at GRE we really help you avoid those mistakes. And in fact, let me give you an example of what I mean. This can really help. Redfin reports that national home prices have jumped up again, rising 2.1% annually, but yet, a place like Florida, they still have year over year housing price declines, not negative growth declines, and that's due to a temporary overbuild, like I've talked about before. But Cape Coral, Florida homes that area has been hit harder than most with more building than most places, they're actually down in price 3.8% it looks like an opportunity, and people say they want an opportunity. What they really want is certainty, and once certainty arrives, the opportunity is gone. Winners often embrace the heterodox. They're willing to lean into the sort of uncomfortable, mildly contrarian, awkward moment right when others are hesitating, some Florida brand new property builders. They're getting creative, and the translation to creative is that they are motivated. They're offering to throw in the kitchen sink and the backsplash. Here's one example, a duplex in Cape Coral, Florida. The listing price is 550k it's in an A class neighborhood. The rent is 3890 both sides of the duplex are already leased, six beds, four baths. It's 2474 square feet. The down payment you can expect to make is 25% the projected cash flow is up to $1,096 per month. Yeah, you've potentially got your surprisingly life changing 1k in cash flow in one fell swoop here and here's where it gets interesting, a 3.75% mortgage rate, buy down and one year of free property management. They're either giving you that or take $25,000 cash instead and structure your own advantage. All right, that's what this certain builder is offering. Now, a reputable builder, in fact, they've been a guest on the show here before. You can push the envelope a little further than that. I encourage you to make an offer below the list price on these property types. Yes, offer lower than the 550k how much lower should you go? That's where a free chat with our investment coach gives you an inside edge, because, see, they know what other offer amounts were accepted previously by these sellers, so they know where the real flexibility is, and they've got all kinds of what I'll call specific deal knowledge like this that you're just not going to find anywhere else. Our coaches can also help you with other inventory, if it better meets your personal objectives than something like a Florida new build duplex. Usually, those places are in the Midwest and South, from Ohio out to Missouri and Georgia out to Texas. In full disclosure, what I just described is a better deal than any Florida properties that I personally own myself. Now it is clearly a buyer's market in Florida. We're in that fleeting window where long term demand is strong, short term supply is high, and builders are motivated. So take the free consult, or maybe no properties are right for you. Once our coach learns more, if you're interested, we can help you structure a smart offer. Talk to us. We can help you build an entire portfolio, if you so choose, and find the right markets and properties with a management solution, we've got the team and the contacts, you can make your process easier than guessing and figuring it out on your own. Often like to leave you with something actionable at the end of the show. I encourage you, if you think it's right for you, book time with a friendly GRE investment coach@greinvestmentcoach.com you can find an open slot on their calendar and book it again@greinvestmentcoach.com Until next week, I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, don't quit your Daydream. Speaker 4 38:54 Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get rich Education LLC, exclusively, Keith Weinhold 39:14 the pre preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth, building, get richeducation.com
The Capitalism and Freedom in the Twenty-First Century Podcast
Jon Hartley and Niall Ferguson explore Niall's career, the power of networks in his books The House of Rothschild volume one (1998) and volume two (1999), and The Square and the Tower (2017); the rise and fall of empire in his books Empire (2003) and The Great Degeneration (2013), America's global role in his book Colossus (2005), and the enduring legacy of Adam Smith on the 250th anniversary of The Wealth of Nations—as well as the Anglosphere, economic growth, and the rise of 21st-century socialism. Recorded on March 23, 2026. ABOUT THE SERIES Each episode of Capitalism and Freedom in the 21st Century, a video podcast series and the official podcast of the Hoover Economic Policy Working Group, focuses on getting into the weeds of economics, finance, and public policy on important current topics through one-on-one interviews. Host Jon Hartley asks guests about their main ideas and contributions to academic research and policy. The podcast is titled after Milton Friedman‘s famous 1962 bestselling book Capitalism and Freedom, which after 60 years, remains prescient from its focus on various topics which are now at the forefront of economic debates, such as monetary policy and inflation, fiscal policy, occupational licensing, education vouchers, income share agreements, the distribution of income, and negative income taxes, among many other topics. For more information about the podcast, or subscribe for the next episode, click here.
Most people think the US dollar will rule the world forever.But what if the country that printed $3.3 trillion since 2020 and invaded Iraq while the world cheered is actually heading toward collapse?In 1976, British general Sir John Glubb published The Fate of Empires. He studied 11 empires across 3,000 years. Every single one lasted roughly 250 years.America was founded in 1776.Today, Balaji Srinivasan sits down with us to break down how and why the American empire is ending. Former CTO of Coinbase, former GP at Andreessen Horowitz, Stanford PhD, angel investor in 100+ startups, and author of The Network State. He called Bitcoin, remote work, mRNA vaccines, and the pandemic years before the mainstream caught on.In this episode, he explains how the world's most powerful economy is silently collapsing, and why the next decade belongs to countries like India, powered by technology, talent, and thorium.What you'll learn:- How the American empire peaked on September 10, 2001- Why dollar inflation is a global tax, and what Milton Friedman said about it- The petrodollar: oil-for-dollars, one of history's most profitable business models- Glubb's 250-year rule, and why 2026 fits the pattern of every empire that fell- Why Bangalore now beats San Francisco to live in- What Indians and the diaspora must do right now to ride this shiftIf you're an entrepreneur, investor, policymaker, or student, this episode will change how you see America, the dollar, and India's place in the next century.Watch the full episode now.
Eind februari zette het Amerikaanse Hooggerechtshof een streep door een groot deel van Donald Trumps tarieven. Ze bleken illegaal. Het grote procederen kon beginnen: transportreuzen als FedEx spanden procedures aan om onterecht betaalde heffingen terug te vorderen. En nu is het zover. Amerikaanse importeurs die onterecht importheffingen hebben betaald, kunnen deze vanaf vandaag terugvorderen bij de Amerikaanse douane. Welke bedrijven hier nog van kunnen profiteren, bespreken we deze aflevering Hoor je ook over Tesla. De cijfers komen woensdag, maar vandaag was er nog ander nieuws. Nieuws met een Nederlands tintje, al is het weinig feestelijk. Reuters ontdekte dat Tesla de afgelopen 20 jaar zo goed als geen belasting betaalde in de VS. Het bedrijf kreeg dat voor elkaar door een slimme belastingconstructie via Singapore en Nederland. Er ging liefst 18 miljard dollar aan winst door die twee landen, zonder dat daar ook maar een cent belasting over werd betaald. En we hebben een nieuwe Warren Buffett voor je gevonden: Brad Jacobs is een miljardair die graag hele industrieën consolideert. Vandaag zette hij met een nieuwe overname van 17 miljard dollar het aandeel TopBuild bijna 20 procent hoger. Of jij erbij moet zijn, gaan we je vertellen. Hoor je ook nog: Over een nieuwe stap in de overname van Commerzbank door Unicredit: Italië wil een reorganisatie Wanneer online bank Revolut eindelijk naar de beurs komt Welk bedrijf tot 10 procent verliest door een foutje met een raket van Jeff Bezos Wat we moeten verwachten van de hoorzitting van beoogd Fed-baas Kevin Warsh Te gast: Arend-Jan Kamp van Stockwatch BNR Beurs is een journalistiek onafhankelijke productie, mede mogelijk gemaakt door Saxo. Over de makers: Jelle Maasbach is presentator van BNR Beurs en freelance financieel journalist. Zijn favoriete aandeel om over te praten is Disney, maar daar lijkt hij de enige in te zijn. Sinds de eerste uitzending van BNR Beurs is 'ie er bij. Maxim van Mil is presentator van BNR Beurs en journalist bij BNR, waar hij zich focust op de financiële markten en ontwikkelingen in de tech-wereld. Je krijgt hem het meest enthousiast als hij kan praten over ASML, of oer-Hollandse bedrijven zoals Ahold of ABN Amro. Jorik Simonides is presentator van BNR Beurs, economieredacteur en verslaggever bij BNR. Hij wordt er vooral blij van als het een keer níet over AI gaat. Milou Brand is presentator van BNR Beurs, freelance podcastmaker en columnist bij het Financieele Dagblad. Jochem Visser is presentator van BNR Beurs, maakt Beursnerd XL en is redacteur bij de podcast Onder Curatoren. Vraag hem naar obscure zaken op financiële markten en hij vertelt je waarom het eigenlijk nóg leuker is dan je al dacht. Over de podcast: Met BNR Beurs ga je altijd voorbereid de nieuwe beursdag in. We praten je in een kleine 25 minuten bij over alle laatste ontwikkelingen op de handelsvloer. We blijven niet alleen bij de AEX of Wall Street, maar vertellen je ook waar nog meer kansen liggen. En we houden het niet bij de cijfers, maar zoeken ook iedere dag voor je naar duiding van scherpe gasten en experts. Of je nu een ervaren belegger bent of net begint met je eerste stappen op de beurs, de podcast biedt waardevolle inzichten voor je beleggingsstrategie. Door de focus op zowel de korte termijn als de lange termijn, helpt BNR Beurs luisteraars om de ruis van de markt te scheiden van de essentie. Van Musk tot Microsoft en van Ahold tot ASML. Wij vertellen je wat beleggers bezighoudt, wie de markten in beweging zet en wat dat betekent voor jouw beleggingsportefeuille.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
¿Estamos programados para ver solo la crisis? En este capítulo de Tertulia y Dinero, nos sumergimos en la psicología del empresario venezolano y el contraste radical con la visión del inversionista extranjero. Mientras el sesgo local se queda en el lamento, el capital de afuera está viendo una Venezuela donde "casi todo está por hacer". Analizamos por qué sectores como los seguros, el mercado automotriz y el consumo masivo tienen un potencial de crecimiento explosivo para quienes sepan leer los "dolores" del mercado como oportunidades de negocio.Lo que aprenderás en este episodio:Mentalidad de oportunidad: Cómo pasar de la queja a la acción estratégica para ganar cuota de mercado.Gerencia basada en datos: Por qué el entorno no es excusa si no dominas las cifras básicas de tu nómina y cuentas por cobrar.Casos de éxito: Desglosamos por qué modelos como Cashea y Venemergencia triunfaron donde otros solo veían obstáculos.El futuro del Estado: El debate sobre las Alianzas Público-Privadas (APP) y el modelo de vouchers educativos de Milton Friedman para rescatar el sistema públicoLa Píldora
Companies built on love outperform the S&P 500 by 14 to 1. Conscious capitalism, stakeholder leadership, healing organizations — Raj Sisodia proved it with data, then spent a year in the Himalayas and the Amazon proving it on himself.Raj Sisodia, Co-Founder of the Conscious Capitalism movement and author of sixteen books including Firms of Endearment and The Healing Organization, grew up across four countries and eight schools before the age of 18. He trained as an electrical engineer in India because that was what you did if you were good at math. He stumbled into a PhD at Columbia almost by accident — following seven friends to pick up a GMAT application and ending up the only one who made it to New York. From there, he built a body of research that fundamentally challenged Milton Friedman's doctrine that the only business of business is profit. Then, at 60, he turned that same rigour inward: pilgrimages to the high Himalayas, silent retreats with Peter Senge, and the painful reckoning with a father who once pointed a gun at him.This conversation runs close to what I have lived. When I watched Satya Nadella introduce "model, coach, care" at Microsoft — a framework Raj references directly — I saw firsthand what happens when a leader chooses purpose over power. And Raj's conviction that business must actively heal what it has broken echoes what drove me to create Live for Good: the belief that the organizations we build should leave people stronger, not depleted.In our conversation, we explore: → Why companies that spend 95% less on marketing than competitors have the highest customer loyalty — and what that reveals about extraction-based capitalism → The four pillars of Conscious Capitalism — higher purpose, stakeholder integration, conscious leadership, conscious culture — and the specific acronyms (HEALING, SPICY, SELFLESS) Raj uses to make them actionable → The Bob Chapman story: how one CEO refused to lay off a single employee during the 2008 crisis by asking "What would a family do?" — and emerged stronger than every competitor → His year of conscious awakening at 60 — pilgrimages, silent retreats, ayahuasca in the Amazon — and what four women forced him to confront about his own unhealed trauma → What conscious capitalism demands of AI: the marriage of humanity's most important idea with its most powerful technology — and why the market will ultimately correct for unconscious companies
A radical macroeconomic experiment is under way at exactly the moment the US external position is showing signs of real stress.Gilles Moëc, Chief Economist at AXA, has written a chapter in the fourth Paris Report, published jointly by CEPR and Bruegel, on stablecoins: what they are, why the US government is so keen to promote them, and what risks they carry. His argument is that stablecoins are a fast-growing digital asset backed almost entirely by short-dated US government debt. When investors buy a dollar stablecoin, they are effectively buying into a US T-bill at zero interest; the platform keeps the yield. The US government likes this because it draws global savings into dollar assets at minimal cost, extending the dollar's reach and helping fund the deficit. But the regulatory framework has a three-year grace period and leaves supervision partly to the states, which compete to attract platforms. And there's the historical parallel: find out how the National Banking Acts of 1863 and 1864 give us an insight into the attraction, and risks, of using stablecoins in this way.The report discussed in this series of episodes:Rey, Hélène, Beatrice Weder di Mauro, and Jeromin Zettelmeyer (eds). 2026. The New Global Imbalances. Paris Report 4. CEPR Press and Bruegel. Free to download at cepr.org.The chapter discussed in this episode:Moëc, Gilles. 2026. "Stablecoins and global imbalances: Attempting to preserve the US exorbitant privilege." In Rey, Weder di Mauro, and Zettelmeyer (eds), The New Global Imbalances. Paris Report 4. CEPR Press and Bruegel. Chapter 9, p. 210.To cite this episode:Phillips, Tim, and Gilles Moëc. 2026. "Stablecoins and Global Imbalances." VoxTalks Economics (podcast). Assign this as extra listening. The citation above is formatted and ready for a reading list or VLE.About Paris Report 4The fourth Paris Report, The New Global Imbalances, is a joint publication of CEPR and Bruegel. It was edited by Hélène Rey (London Business School and CEPR), Beatrice Weder di Mauro (Geneva Graduate Institute and CEPR, and President of CEPR), and Jeromin Zettelmeyer (Bruegel and CEPR). The report examines how, in a high-debt and fragmented world, excess savings, rising surpluses, and rising deficits pose a risk to stability and undermine the global trading system. It is free to download at cepr.org.About the guestGilles Moëc is Chief Economist at AXA and Head of AXA Research. He previously held senior roles at in the French civil service, Banque de France, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch. His research covers macroeconomics, monetary policy, and the European economy.Research cited in this episodeStablecoins are privately issued digital tokens whose value is pegged to an existing fiat currency, typically the dollar, and backed by safe and liquid assets, typically short-dated US Treasury bills. Unlike most cryptocurrencies, they are designed to maintain a stable exchange rate with the pegged currency. Platforms issue the tokens and invest the cash received in T-bills, keeping the interest for themselves; holders receive no yield. Stablecoin platforms may have absorbed roughly twenty to twenty-five percent of net US T-bill issuance.The GENIUS Act (Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins) is the US federal legislation organising the stablecoin market. It requires platforms to hold back-to-back liquid assets as reserves and establishes common minimum standards across states. Regulatory competition across states means platforms can seek the most permissive jurisdiction. European regulation, MiCA, is more detailed and already in force but has not yet generated European platforms.Exorbitant privilege describes the advantage the US gains from issuing the world's dominant reserve currency. For decades, foreigners were content to hold low-yielding dollar assets while Americans invested in higher-returning foreign assets; the result was a positive US income balance despite a large trade deficit. In 2024, for the first time in modern records, the income balance turned negative: the US was paying more on its foreign liabilities than it was earning on its foreign assets. The National Banking Acts of 1863 and 1864 created a system of private national banks that issued dollar banknotes backed by US government bonds. The structure is the closest historical parallel to today's stablecoin framework: private platforms issuing dollar-denominated tokens backed by government debt. The system required over-collateralisation (one hundred and ten dollars of bonds for every one hundred dollars of notes) and included a Treasury backstop. Milton Friedman, in his Monetary History of the United States, identified the key flaw: money supply became tied to the quantity of public debt rather than the needs of the economy. The system was replaced by the Federal Reserve in 1913.De-dollarisation refers to the trend in some countries toward conducting trade and holding reserves in currencies other than the dollar. Moëc notes examples such as Iranian demands for non-dollar payments for passage through the Strait of Hormuz. Stablecoins work against this trend by making dollar access easier and cheaper for people in developing countries with weak or distrusted domestic financial systems; rather than buying dollars directly, they can buy a dollar-pegged token through a digital platform. More VoxTalks Economics episodesThis episode is the second of two published simultaneously to mark the launch of Paris Report 4. In the first episode, Maurice Obstfeld of the Peterson Institute for International Economics examines the history of global imbalances and what today's policymakers can learn from previous episodes. For an interview with two of the report's editors, Beatrice Weder di Mauro and Jeromin Zettelmeyer, on the problem of global imbalances, listen to The Sound of Economics, Bruegel's podcast. Available at bruegel.org.
The Capitalism and Freedom in the Twenty-First Century Podcast
Jon Hartley and Stephen Miran discuss Stephen's new paper on strategies to reduce the Federal Reserve's balance sheet, the state of inflation and the labor market in the US economy, estimating the neutral rate of interest and the stance of current monetary policy, and how the rise of AI and the public debt may influence monetary policy going forward. Recorded on March 26, 2026. ABOUT THE SERIES Each episode of Capitalism and Freedom in the 21st Century, a video podcast series and the official podcast of the Hoover Economic Policy Working Group, focuses on getting into the weeds of economics, finance, and public policy on important current topics through one-on-one interviews. Host Jon Hartley asks guests about their main ideas and contributions to academic research and policy. The podcast is titled after Milton Friedman‘s famous 1962 bestselling book Capitalism and Freedom, which after 60 years, remains prescient from its focus on various topics which are now at the forefront of economic debates, such as monetary policy and inflation, fiscal policy, occupational licensing, education vouchers, income share agreements, the distribution of income, and negative income taxes, among many other topics. For more information about the podcast, or subscribe for the next episode, click here.
What if the purpose of a system isn't what it claims… but what it consistently produces?Milton Friedman once observed, “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”Today we're offering a new lens through which to consider the modern world—one that invites you to evaluate systems not by what they claim… but by what they consistently produce in the invisible electromagnetic realm.Support the showContinue the journey with the EMF Remedy Premium Podcast, with over 110 episodes and counting! Keith Cutter is President of EMF Remedy LLChttps://www.emfremedy.com/YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCp8jc5qb0kzFhMs4vtgmNlgKeith's SubstackThe EMF Remedy Podcast is a production of EMF Remedy LLC
In part two of Red Eye Radio with Gary McNamara and Eric Harley, we discuss the notion of greed from the liberal left featuring a classic audio clip from Milton Friedman on the Phil Donahue Show. We point out the comparison of not being greedy by simply having a successful business versus the left's greedy agenda of 'taking what you have' and hiking tax rates. Also the Washington state legislature votes to spike tax rates on luxury homes priced over 2 million dollars and the latest on the Iranian war and the opening of the Strait of Hormuz. For more talk on the issues that matter to you, listen on radio stations across America Monday-Friday 12am-5am CT (1am-6am ET and 10pm-3am PT), download the RED EYE RADIO SHOW app, asking your smart speaker, or listening at RedEyeRadioShow.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
(0:00) Intro (1:40) About the podcast sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel (2:26) Start of interview (3:19) Eric's origin story (5:00) The Lean Startup Journey (10:23) About The Long-Term Stock Exchange (18:00) Governance and Eric's New Book Incorruptible (24:14) On Governance in Startups vs. Public Companies and so-called "best practices." "One of the key ideas in the book is that it's always too early until it's too late." (28:37) Why the title Incorruptible. How to become an incorruptible force for good in the world. (33:15) The board members' sacred obligation. The call for a director's oath. (34:40) The concepts of Financial Gravity and Career Equity. "The force that no one controls, but everyone obeys." "The number one thing CEOs notice before and after the IPO: every employee is looking at the stock ticker every day." (41:38) Innovations in AI Governance (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc) "A new old idea" (44:36) On the Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) structure. (46:25) The Case for New Governance Structures. "The shareholder primacy debate has become completely divorced from the actual material interests of shareholders." The example of Costco. (52:45) On Dual-Class Share Structures. "I don't think emperor for life is a great political system" "[The] standard governance [model] has to be really bad for dictator for life to be an improvement." "I'm interested in trying to create what I call the architecture of institutional longevity. What would it take to create organizations that can endure for decades or even centuries? In order to do that, by definition, we have to find ways to encode the ethos." (56:51) Mission-Locked Constellations. "Structures that involve many different entities that are locked together to act as a bit of an immune system against corruption." "The spiritual holding company: a constellation of multiple entities where some entity has the responsibility of being at the center to provide basically mission protection as a service to the for-profit entities under its purview." (1:01:07) The Novo Nordisk story. *reference to the Acquired podcast episode. (1:07:10) Books that have greatly influenced his life: The Machine that Changed the World, by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones, and Daniel Roos (1990) Toyota Production System, by Taiichi Ohno (2001) Toyota Way, by Jeffrey Liker (2003) Dune, by Frank Herbert (1965) The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber and David Wengrow (2021) The Enlightened Capitalists, by James O'Toole (2019) (1:12:20) His mentors. Steve Blank, Ken Duda, Maliz Beams, Dario Amodei, Brian Chesky, Matthew Prince, Sid Sijbrandij, Dustin Moskovitz, James Reinhart, Todd Park. (1:14:00) Quotes that he thinks of often or lives her life by "Nothing real can be threatened, and nothing unreal exists" (from A Course in Miracles) (1:15:25) An unusual habit or an absurd thing that he loves (1:16:08) The living person he most admires Eric Ries is the Creator of the Lean Startup method and author of The Lean Startup, he has spent two decades reshaping how companies are built and managed. He is also the founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE) and host of The Eric Ries Show podcast. More info on his latest book Incorruptible here. You can follow Evan on social media at:X: @evanepsteinLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/ Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/__To support this podcast you can join as a subscriber of the Boardroom Governance Newsletter at https://evanepstein.substack.com/__Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
Most people associate Adam Smith with free markets and “the invisible hand”. But does this conventional narrative purposefully ignore Smith's deep suspicions about monopolies and power? Georgetown assistant professor Glory Liu argues this narrow interpretation is actually a deliberate historical reconstruction. In her book, “Adam Smith's America”, Liu reintroduces the famous philosopher as a theorist of power who worried deeply about organized wealth distorting society. She notes that Smith watched early merchants use their disproportionate resources to capture political influence and actively suppress workers. Hosts Luigi and Bethany debate whether early merchant wealth accumulation truly mirrors the massive capital concentration seen in today's corporate landscape. They also explore the argument that reintroducing moral foundations to economic theory might provide a better foundation for capitalism itself. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
It's Big Wednesday—and the studio is standing room only. Dan Shearer is in the hot seat to tackle everything from the Board of Supervisors to the latest local fallout. We're also talking "Clean City" fees, the ideological shift on college campuses, and why Milton Friedman still matters.Later, Don Cox stops by to talk golf and giving back with the Oro Valley Optimist Club. Don't go anywhere—Bruce and Eb keep the momentum going at 9:00 AM with Inside Track.
Pierre de Villiers, général et ancien chef d'état-major des armées de France jusqu'en 2017, auteur notamment de Servir et d'un nouveau livre sur le redressement de la France intitulé ""pour le succès des armées de la France" J'ai une vraie fascination pour la culture militaire, cette culture du temps long, de la loyauté vraie et du sens du service — et c'est précisément ce que Pierre de Villiers incarne mieux que quiconque. Il a grandi dans une famille où le père avait fait cinq ans de captivité, il a commandé jusqu'à 80 chars Leclerc, il a côtoyé quatre présidents de la République en Conseil de défense, et il a eu le courage peu commun de démissionner publiquement plutôt que de se taire. Ce n'est pas l'invité habituel de VLAN, et c'est exactement pour ça que j'ai voulu l'avoir.Dans cet épisode, nous parlons de la situation géopolitique mondiale — le retour des États-puissances, la guerre en Ukraine, la relation ambiguë avec les États-Unis — mais aussi de l'état intérieur de la France : la désindustrialisation, la crise de l'autorité, le fossé entre gouvernants et gouvernés, la démographie, l'immigration, la dette. J'ai questionné le général de Villiers sur ce que signifie vraiment servir, sur pourquoi nos démocraties produisent des décisions courtes alors que les défis sont longs, et sur ce qui, malgré tout, lui donne de l'espoir.CITATIONS MARQUANTES« Les États-Unis sont des partenaires adversaires. Les États n'ont pas d'amis, ils n'ont que des intérêts. » — 0:32:52« La vraie autorité, c'est quand l'ordre a été exécuté avant d'être donné. » — 0:22:26« Il faut penser l'impensable. Et aujourd'hui, j'ai le sentiment qu'on repousse tout ça en se disant : ça ne sera pas pour nous. » — 0:53:00« 80% des Français sont d'accord sur les grandes mesures. Et 90% de ceux qui dirigent sont opposés à ces 80%. » — 1:16:06« Ces migrants, ils arrivent pour leur malheur, pas pour leur bonheur. Et toutes ces belles âmes qui se bouchent le nez à vélo à Paris — ça suffit. » — 0:43:20IDÉES CENTRALES1. Le retour de la guerre comme réalité, pas comme concept La guerre n'est pas une abstraction historique. De Villiers l'a vue en ex-Yougoslavie, il voit l'Ukraine perdre 1 000 hommes par jour. Ses préventions remontent à 2017 : les États-puissances réarmaient à 5-10% par an depuis quinze ans pendant que les démocraties européennes savouraient les dividendes de la paix. Ce que les politiques français refusent encore de voir ressemble trop à 1935 pour ne pas inquiéter. Pourquoi c'est important : ce n'est pas un discours belliciste, c'est un appel pragmatique à ne pas répéter l'aveuglement des années 30. Timestamp : 0:26:17 – 1:00:072. L'autorité vraie versus l'autoritarisme L'ordre donné et exécuté avant d'avoir été dit : telle est la définition de de Villiers d'une autorité réussie. En France, la culture du pouvoir confond décision unilatérale et leadership. L'adhésion prime sur la contrainte ; la vraie loyauté consiste à dire la vérité à son chef, pas à lui plaire. Pourquoi c'est important : ce modèle interpelle autant les patrons d'entreprise que les responsables politiques. Timestamp : 0:21:41 – 0:22:263. Le fossé entre gouvernants et gouvernés 80% des Français partagent un socle commun sur les grandes questions (sécurité, immigration, pouvoir d'achat, réarmement) ; 90% des dirigeants s'y opposent ou l'ignorent. Ce fossé explique à la fois l'abstention massive et les votes protestataires aux extrêmes, y compris l'élection de Trump lue comme un vote de rejet. Pourquoi c'est important : la démocratie ne se fracture pas par accident — elle se fracture par accumulation d'inattention. Timestamp : 0:25:06 – 1:16:574. La mondialisation comme erreur fondamentale Désindustrialisation, chômage endémique, territoires vidés, dépendance stratégique : de Villiers relie directement la mondialisation heureuse à la fragilisation des nations. Il défend la coopération interétatique sur des projets souverains, pas une Europe fédérale qui, selon lui, se terminera en cauchemar. Pourquoi c'est important : la souveraineté industrielle est un enjeu de défense nationale autant qu'économique. Timestamp : 0:29:13 – 0:31:385. Le sens du collectif comme antidote à l'individualisme L'armée et le football lui ont appris que les cohésions s'additionnent, ne s'opposent pas. La société de consommation a produit le tout-à-l'égo. Retrouver le sens du service — et l'enseigner à la jeunesse — est pour lui la condition d'un redressement moral avant d'être politique. Pourquoi c'est important : le problème français n'est pas d'abord budgétaire, il est civilisationnel. Timestamp : 0:50:16 – 0:52:516. Trois pistes pour sortir de la crise budgétaire Réforme du modèle social (retraites, sécu), remise au travail de la France (l'un des pays OCDE qui travaille le moins), réforme de l'État régalien (faire moins mais faire ce pour quoi l'État existe). Ce n'est pas un programme partisan : tous les responsables politiques qu'il a fréquentés convergent sur ces trois pistes sans jamais les appliquer. Pourquoi c'est important : la lucidité sur les solutions rend l'inaction encore plus inexplicable. Timestamp : 1:13:07 – 1:15:557. La jeunesse comme signal d'espoir Malgré le tableau sombre, de Villiers perçoit dans la jeunesse une soif authentique. Pas de valeurs fondatrices reçues, mais une demande réelle. Il faut leur parler aux tripes, pas à l'intelligence managériale — leur donner la gloire, l'honneur, l'amour des autres. Pourquoi c'est important : l'espérance n'est pas naïve si elle repose sur une observation directe du terrain. Timestamp : 1:20:33 – 1:22:19QUESTIONS POSÉES DANS L'INTERVIEWPouvez-vous retracer les étapes qui vous ont conduit jusqu'à la tête de l'état-major des armées ? (0:02:25)Jusqu'où un haut fonctionnaire doit-il avaler des couleuvres avant de démissionner ? (0:19:24)Pourquoi le système politique produit-il des personnalités perçues comme médiocres, et est-ce vraiment une question de personnes ? (0:22:26)Le néolibéralisme et la financiarisation ont-ils dépossédé le politique de sa capacité à décider sur le long terme ? (0:25:06)Comment décririez-vous la situation géostratégique mondiale aujourd'hui — États-Unis, Russie, Chine ? (0:26:03)Les États-Unis sont-ils encore des alliés fiables pour la France et l'Europe ? (0:32:37)Comment avez-vous vécu l'élection de Trump en 2016, et l'avez-vous anticipée ? (0:34:01)Sommes-nous à l'aube d'une Troisième Guerre mondiale, ou a-t-elle déjà commencé ? (0:52:51)Comment remettre de l'ordre et restaurer l'autorité de l'État sans sacrifier la démocratie ? (1:07:01)Quels sont les trois signes qui, malgré tout, vous donnent de l'espoir pour la France ? (1:18:47)RÉFÉRENCES CITÉES DANS L'ÉPISODEPersonnalités historiquesDe Gaulle — cité pour sa formule sur les intérêts des États et son rôle de "dernier vrai stratège français" (0:32:52)Napoléon — "La chance est la forme la plus élaborée de la compétence" (0:17:04)Clemenceau — "l'union sacrée" comme modèle de cohésion nationale (1:20:33)De Lattre de Tassigny — "l'amalgame" (1:20:33)Leclerc — le serment de Koufra (1:20:33)Soljenitsyne — discours de Harvard 1978 sur Le déclin du courage (0:24:40)Malraux — "Le XXIe siècle sera spirituel ou ne sera pas" (0:50:16)Chevènement — "un ministre, ça obéit ou ça ferme sa gueule ou ça démissionne" (0:19:42)Personnalités politiques contemporaines citéesFrançois Hollande — (0:15:15 – 0:20:55)Jean-Yves Le Drian — ministre de la Défense qualifié de "remarquable" (0:15:15)Emmanuel Macron — rupture à son arrivée, accélération de la dette (0:15:15 – 1:13:07)Nicolas Sarkozy — réduction de 50 000 postes militaires, commentaire sur la justice (0:54:07 – 1:11:09)Jean-Pierre Raffarin / Dominique de Villepin — deux styles à Matignon (0:13:00)François Fillon — chef de cabinet militaire (0:14:31)LivresServir — premier livre de de Villiers, écrit après sa démission en 2017 (0:20:32)Son nouveau livre (titre non précisé dans le transcript) — sur le redressement de la France (1:22:28)L'Archipel français de Jérôme Fourquet — cité sur les fractures intérieures (0:53:11)Le rôle social de l'officier — livre de chevet de de Villiers (1:15:55)Invités VLAN mentionnésJean-Michel Valentin — géopolitique, programme Trump prévisible (0:37:07)Événements / conceptsBataclan, 13 novembre 2015 (0:27:13)Chute du Mur de Berlin, novembre 1989 (0:04:00)Guerre du Kosovo, juin 1999 (0:05:35)Forum "Quelle sécurité en Europe à l'aube du XXIe siècle ?" 1989-91 (0:04:00)Référendum européen français de 2005 (0:30:08)Article de Milton Friedman, 1970 (0:49:50)Étude sénatoriale sur les 210-220 milliards d'aides aux entreprises (1:16:57)TIMESTAMPS CLÉS0:00:00 — Introduction VLAN Présentation du format et de l'invité : un chef d'état-major pour parler de l'état du monde et de la France.0:02:25 — Parcours militaire De Saint-Cyr aux chars Leclerc, en passant par le Kosovo, Matignon et la démission. Une formation humaine autant que stratégique.0:19:24 — Avaler des couleuvres ou démissionner La tension éthique du haut fonctionnaire : loyauté vraie versus courtisanerie. Pourquoi "servir" est le plus beau mot de la langue française.0:22:26 — L'autorité vraie vs. le petit chef L'ordre exécuté avant d'être donné. Ce que les patrons et les politiques n'ont toujours pas compris sur le leadership.0:26:03 — Géopolitique mondiale : le monde tel qu'il est Retour des États-puissances, terrorisme islamiste, migrations, dérèglement climatique : les quatre facteurs de déstabilisation qu'il avait identifiés dès 2017.0:32:37 — Les États-Unis, partenaires adversaires De Gaulle avait compris. L'America First ne date pas de Trump. Pourquoi il faut mettre les bonnes lunettes plutôt que se bercer d'illusions.0:34:01 — L'anecdote Trump : quand il l'avait prédit à Hollande Un footing avec son homologue américain un an avant l'élection. Ce que le Quai d'Orsay n'avait pas vu venir.0:53:00 — Sommes-nous en train de rater les signaux de guerre ? Les quatre derniers présidents ont posé la même question naïve. Ce que la situation française rappelle dangereusement : 1869, 1910, 1935.1:00:07 — La guerre des drones et l'économie de guerre Le retour d'expérience Ukraine : des soldats qui ne peuvent plus sortir des tranchées. Pourquoi il faut réformer les procédures d'armement en mode Notre-Dame.1:07:01 — Remettre de l'ordre sans sacrifier la démocratie La comparaison avec les États-puissances. Le chaos démocratique français : remaniements permanents, élus déconnectés des territoires.1:13:07 — La dette, les trois pistes, et le courage qui manque 1 000 milliards de dettes sous Macron. Réforme sociale, remise au travail, réforme de l'État régalien : tout le monde sait, personne ne fait.1:18:47 — Ce qui lui donne espoir malgré tout Le génie français, la vocation de la France dans le monde, et la jeunesse qui a soif — à condition de lui parler aux tripes, pas aux gains de productivité.1:23:39 — La porte VLAN : claquer la porte au mensonge Dans une société du paraître, la vérité comme ligne de vie. Ce qu'il a transmis à ses six enfants.Hébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
Pierre de Villiers, général et ancien chef d'état-major des armées de France jusqu'en 2017, auteur notamment de Servir et d'un nouveau livre sur le redressement de la France intitulé ""pour le succès des armées de la France" J'ai une vraie fascination pour la culture militaire, cette culture du temps long, de la loyauté vraie et du sens du service — et c'est précisément ce que Pierre de Villiers incarne mieux que quiconque. Il a grandi dans une famille où le père avait fait cinq ans de captivité, il a commandé jusqu'à 80 chars Leclerc, il a côtoyé quatre présidents de la République en Conseil de défense, et il a eu le courage peu commun de démissionner publiquement plutôt que de se taire. Ce n'est pas l'invité habituel de VLAN, et c'est exactement pour ça que j'ai voulu l'avoir.Dans cet épisode, nous parlons de la situation géopolitique mondiale — le retour des États-puissances, la guerre en Ukraine, la relation ambiguë avec les États-Unis — mais aussi de l'état intérieur de la France : la désindustrialisation, la crise de l'autorité, le fossé entre gouvernants et gouvernés, la démographie, l'immigration, la dette. J'ai questionné le général de Villiers sur ce que signifie vraiment servir, sur pourquoi nos démocraties produisent des décisions courtes alors que les défis sont longs, et sur ce qui, malgré tout, lui donne de l'espoir.CITATIONS MARQUANTES« Les États-Unis sont des partenaires adversaires. Les États n'ont pas d'amis, ils n'ont que des intérêts. » — 0:32:52« La vraie autorité, c'est quand l'ordre a été exécuté avant d'être donné. » — 0:22:26« Il faut penser l'impensable. Et aujourd'hui, j'ai le sentiment qu'on repousse tout ça en se disant : ça ne sera pas pour nous. » — 0:53:00« 80% des Français sont d'accord sur les grandes mesures. Et 90% de ceux qui dirigent sont opposés à ces 80%. » — 1:16:06« Ces migrants, ils arrivent pour leur malheur, pas pour leur bonheur. Et toutes ces belles âmes qui se bouchent le nez à vélo à Paris — ça suffit. » — 0:43:20IDÉES CENTRALES1. Le retour de la guerre comme réalité, pas comme concept La guerre n'est pas une abstraction historique. De Villiers l'a vue en ex-Yougoslavie, il voit l'Ukraine perdre 1 000 hommes par jour. Ses préventions remontent à 2017 : les États-puissances réarmaient à 5-10% par an depuis quinze ans pendant que les démocraties européennes savouraient les dividendes de la paix. Ce que les politiques français refusent encore de voir ressemble trop à 1935 pour ne pas inquiéter. Pourquoi c'est important : ce n'est pas un discours belliciste, c'est un appel pragmatique à ne pas répéter l'aveuglement des années 30. Timestamp : 0:26:17 – 1:00:072. L'autorité vraie versus l'autoritarisme L'ordre donné et exécuté avant d'avoir été dit : telle est la définition de de Villiers d'une autorité réussie. En France, la culture du pouvoir confond décision unilatérale et leadership. L'adhésion prime sur la contrainte ; la vraie loyauté consiste à dire la vérité à son chef, pas à lui plaire. Pourquoi c'est important : ce modèle interpelle autant les patrons d'entreprise que les responsables politiques. Timestamp : 0:21:41 – 0:22:263. Le fossé entre gouvernants et gouvernés 80% des Français partagent un socle commun sur les grandes questions (sécurité, immigration, pouvoir d'achat, réarmement) ; 90% des dirigeants s'y opposent ou l'ignorent. Ce fossé explique à la fois l'abstention massive et les votes protestataires aux extrêmes, y compris l'élection de Trump lue comme un vote de rejet. Pourquoi c'est important : la démocratie ne se fracture pas par accident — elle se fracture par accumulation d'inattention. Timestamp : 0:25:06 – 1:16:574. La mondialisation comme erreur fondamentale Désindustrialisation, chômage endémique, territoires vidés, dépendance stratégique : de Villiers relie directement la mondialisation heureuse à la fragilisation des nations. Il défend la coopération interétatique sur des projets souverains, pas une Europe fédérale qui, selon lui, se terminera en cauchemar. Pourquoi c'est important : la souveraineté industrielle est un enjeu de défense nationale autant qu'économique. Timestamp : 0:29:13 – 0:31:385. Le sens du collectif comme antidote à l'individualisme L'armée et le football lui ont appris que les cohésions s'additionnent, ne s'opposent pas. La société de consommation a produit le tout-à-l'égo. Retrouver le sens du service — et l'enseigner à la jeunesse — est pour lui la condition d'un redressement moral avant d'être politique. Pourquoi c'est important : le problème français n'est pas d'abord budgétaire, il est civilisationnel. Timestamp : 0:50:16 – 0:52:516. Trois pistes pour sortir de la crise budgétaire Réforme du modèle social (retraites, sécu), remise au travail de la France (l'un des pays OCDE qui travaille le moins), réforme de l'État régalien (faire moins mais faire ce pour quoi l'État existe). Ce n'est pas un programme partisan : tous les responsables politiques qu'il a fréquentés convergent sur ces trois pistes sans jamais les appliquer. Pourquoi c'est important : la lucidité sur les solutions rend l'inaction encore plus inexplicable. Timestamp : 1:13:07 – 1:15:557. La jeunesse comme signal d'espoir Malgré le tableau sombre, de Villiers perçoit dans la jeunesse une soif authentique. Pas de valeurs fondatrices reçues, mais une demande réelle. Il faut leur parler aux tripes, pas à l'intelligence managériale — leur donner la gloire, l'honneur, l'amour des autres. Pourquoi c'est important : l'espérance n'est pas naïve si elle repose sur une observation directe du terrain. Timestamp : 1:20:33 – 1:22:19QUESTIONS POSÉES DANS L'INTERVIEWPouvez-vous retracer les étapes qui vous ont conduit jusqu'à la tête de l'état-major des armées ? (0:02:25)Jusqu'où un haut fonctionnaire doit-il avaler des couleuvres avant de démissionner ? (0:19:24)Pourquoi le système politique produit-il des personnalités perçues comme médiocres, et est-ce vraiment une question de personnes ? (0:22:26)Le néolibéralisme et la financiarisation ont-ils dépossédé le politique de sa capacité à décider sur le long terme ? (0:25:06)Comment décririez-vous la situation géostratégique mondiale aujourd'hui — États-Unis, Russie, Chine ? (0:26:03)Les États-Unis sont-ils encore des alliés fiables pour la France et l'Europe ? (0:32:37)Comment avez-vous vécu l'élection de Trump en 2016, et l'avez-vous anticipée ? (0:34:01)Sommes-nous à l'aube d'une Troisième Guerre mondiale, ou a-t-elle déjà commencé ? (0:52:51)Comment remettre de l'ordre et restaurer l'autorité de l'État sans sacrifier la démocratie ? (1:07:01)Quels sont les trois signes qui, malgré tout, vous donnent de l'espoir pour la France ? (1:18:47)RÉFÉRENCES CITÉES DANS L'ÉPISODEPersonnalités historiquesDe Gaulle — cité pour sa formule sur les intérêts des États et son rôle de "dernier vrai stratège français" (0:32:52)Napoléon — "La chance est la forme la plus élaborée de la compétence" (0:17:04)Clemenceau — "l'union sacrée" comme modèle de cohésion nationale (1:20:33)De Lattre de Tassigny — "l'amalgame" (1:20:33)Leclerc — le serment de Koufra (1:20:33)Soljenitsyne — discours de Harvard 1978 sur Le déclin du courage (0:24:40)Malraux — "Le XXIe siècle sera spirituel ou ne sera pas" (0:50:16)Chevènement — "un ministre, ça obéit ou ça ferme sa gueule ou ça démissionne" (0:19:42)Personnalités politiques contemporaines citéesFrançois Hollande — (0:15:15 – 0:20:55)Jean-Yves Le Drian — ministre de la Défense qualifié de "remarquable" (0:15:15)Emmanuel Macron — rupture à son arrivée, accélération de la dette (0:15:15 – 1:13:07)Nicolas Sarkozy — réduction de 50 000 postes militaires, commentaire sur la justice (0:54:07 – 1:11:09)Jean-Pierre Raffarin / Dominique de Villepin — deux styles à Matignon (0:13:00)François Fillon — chef de cabinet militaire (0:14:31)LivresServir — premier livre de de Villiers, écrit après sa démission en 2017 (0:20:32)Son nouveau livre (titre non précisé dans le transcript) — sur le redressement de la France (1:22:28)L'Archipel français de Jérôme Fourquet — cité sur les fractures intérieures (0:53:11)Le rôle social de l'officier — livre de chevet de de Villiers (1:15:55)Invités VLAN mentionnésJean-Michel Valentin — géopolitique, programme Trump prévisible (0:37:07)Événements / conceptsBataclan, 13 novembre 2015 (0:27:13)Chute du Mur de Berlin, novembre 1989 (0:04:00)Guerre du Kosovo, juin 1999 (0:05:35)Forum "Quelle sécurité en Europe à l'aube du XXIe siècle ?" 1989-91 (0:04:00)Référendum européen français de 2005 (0:30:08)Article de Milton Friedman, 1970 (0:49:50)Étude sénatoriale sur les 210-220 milliards d'aides aux entreprises (1:16:57)TIMESTAMPS CLÉS0:00:00 — Introduction VLAN Présentation du format et de l'invité : un chef d'état-major pour parler de l'état du monde et de la France.0:02:25 — Parcours militaire De Saint-Cyr aux chars Leclerc, en passant par le Kosovo, Matignon et la démission. Une formation humaine autant que stratégique.0:19:24 — Avaler des couleuvres ou démissionner La tension éthique du haut fonctionnaire : loyauté vraie versus courtisanerie. Pourquoi "servir" est le plus beau mot de la langue française.0:22:26 — L'autorité vraie vs. le petit chef L'ordre exécuté avant d'être donné. Ce que les patrons et les politiques n'ont toujours pas compris sur le leadership.0:26:03 — Géopolitique mondiale : le monde tel qu'il est Retour des États-puissances, terrorisme islamiste, migrations, dérèglement climatique : les quatre facteurs de déstabilisation qu'il avait identifiés dès 2017.0:32:37 — Les États-Unis, partenaires adversaires De Gaulle avait compris. L'America First ne date pas de Trump. Pourquoi il faut mettre les bonnes lunettes plutôt que se bercer d'illusions.0:34:01 — L'anecdote Trump : quand il l'avait prédit à Hollande Un footing avec son homologue américain un an avant l'élection. Ce que le Quai d'Orsay n'avait pas vu venir.0:53:00 — Sommes-nous en train de rater les signaux de guerre ? Les quatre derniers présidents ont posé la même question naïve. Ce que la situation française rappelle dangereusement : 1869, 1910, 1935.1:00:07 — La guerre des drones et l'économie de guerre Le retour d'expérience Ukraine : des soldats qui ne peuvent plus sortir des tranchées. Pourquoi il faut réformer les procédures d'armement en mode Notre-Dame.1:07:01 — Remettre de l'ordre sans sacrifier la démocratie La comparaison avec les États-puissances. Le chaos démocratique français : remaniements permanents, élus déconnectés des territoires.1:13:07 — La dette, les trois pistes, et le courage qui manque 1 000 milliards de dettes sous Macron. Réforme sociale, remise au travail, réforme de l'État régalien : tout le monde sait, personne ne fait.1:18:47 — Ce qui lui donne espoir malgré tout Le génie français, la vocation de la France dans le monde, et la jeunesse qui a soif — à condition de lui parler aux tripes, pas aux gains de productivité.1:23:39 — La porte VLAN : claquer la porte au mensonge Dans une société du paraître, la vérité comme ligne de vie. Ce qu'il a transmis à ses six enfants. Suggestion d'autres épisodes à écouter : #345 L'occident ne comprends plus le monde avec Pierre Haski (partie 1) (https://audmns.com/yGmnzUq) #312 Les défis géopolitiques d'un monde hors de contrôle avec Thomas Gomart (https://audmns.com/jscnrns) #376 Quelles stratégies pour reconstruire une France autonome et résiliente? Avec Arnaud Montebourg - Partie 1 (https://audmns.com/UxFQjUM)Hébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
Jesús Huerta de Soto traces the Austrian school's intellectual roots from the Spanish scholastics to Rothbard, making the case that anarcho-capitalism is the natural endpoint of the classical liberal tradition.The Ludwig von Mises Memorial Lecture, sponsored by Yousif Almoayyed.The Austrian Economics Research Conference is the international, interdisciplinary meeting of the Austrian school, bringing together leading scholars doing research in this vibrant and influential intellectual tradition.Full Text version of the Lecture (Submitted by Prof. Huerta de Soto):Thank you very much to the Mises Institute and Joe Salerno for his kind introduction as well as for inviting me to deliver this “Ludwig von Mises Memorial Lecture” to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of Murray N. Rothbard's birthday. It is the second time I visit the Mises Institute to deliver this most important lecture: The first one was almost thirty years ago, back in April 1997, when I delivered a lecture on “The Scholastic Roots of the Austrian School”. In this second opportunity I am very happy to have been able to accept Joe's invitation and to come with a very well represented retinue of ten of my colleagues and doctoral students. All of them are teaching as professors or making their research at our more than twenty-year-old Doctoral and Master Programs in Austrian Economics at King Juan Carlos University back in Madrid, and which is the only one officially approved and with full validity inside the whole European Union. You have already had the opportunity to hear from each one of them a detailed description of the so-called “Madrid Austrian Research Hub” and of all the activities we are developing every year, including the 54 Doctoral Theses on Austrian Economics that have been read up to now in our program. And here you have also copies of the English version of our main books published by Routledge, Edward Elgar, and by the Macmillan Austrian Series edited by my Madrid Colleagues, the German professor Philipp Bagus and the Canadian professor Dave Howden. And you will have the unique opportunity to buy these books that, as you know, have a hefty price of almost 100 pounds each one, at the almost “stolen property” and symbolic price of 5 dollars per copy, thanks to the most generous help of the Spanish Jesús Huerta de Soto Foundation that is helping to finance our participation in this important event.And now what I will do in the next forty minutes is to try to summarize not only my main contributions, but also “The Libertarian Vision of the Scientific and Moral Truth” as we see it from our Austrian School Hub in Madrid. And I will do it by focusing on a series of fundamental points.Precisely, the youngest of all sciences, Economics is the one that has provided Humanity with the most important scientific contributionThe first one is that Economics, being the last science to arrive, or as Mises said, "the youngest of all sciences," has nevertheless achieved the milestone of providing Humanity with the most important scientific contribution. For the first time, and thanks to Economic Science, human beings have discovered and understood that voluntary social cooperation, free from all institutional and systematic external coercion, generates a spontaneous order that cannot be designed nor organized by anyone, and that peacefully and without limits drives the prosperity and expansion of Humankind.This transcendental message of Economic Science, on the one hand, resolves the impossible antithesis of attempting to apply, within the realm of interactions carried out by human beings endowed with free will, the manipulative approach of external entities that human beings have no choice but to use, supported by technology and the natural sciences, in order to dominate the subject of the material world. And on the other hand, this is a radically revolutionary message: for the first time, it has been scientifically demonstrated that states, in any of their forms, are neither necessary nor viable; that Society, understood as a process of voluntary human interactions, does not need anyone to govern it, because it regulates and organizes itself spontaneously; and that the attempt to coordinate Society on the basis of social engineering and state coercive commands is impossible, doomed to failure, and gives rise to all kinds of distortions, social conflicts and violence, that continually hinder and block human progress.Economic science is generalized into a complete Theory of Liberty that makes it possible to reinterpret History and promote the expansion of civilizationThe second point is that Economics has been generalized into a whole Theory of Liberty, understood as the most essential attribute and requirement of human nature. Liberty means that all human actions are carried out voluntarily, based on the principle of non-aggression, and free of external coercion or violence imposed and organized from above by the always minority group of human beings who, under whatever title, exercise any kind of political power.Moreover, Economics dismantles and turns upside down the erroneous and biased account of Thomas Hobbes and his followers. Neither was the "state of nature" a terrifying situation, nor did a supposed "social contract" ever exist or was it necessary to create and maintain a State that would impose order and guarantee peace. What happened was precisely the opposite: natural evolution consisted, above all, in the spontaneous discovery of the great advantages provided by voluntary exchanges and peaceful trade. Systematic and generalized violence, war, and terror arose only with the appearance of States, as coercive institutions composed of the most antisocial and violent human beings, who wanted (and still want) to live at the expense of plundering those citizens who earn their living by working and trading peacefully with each other (Oppenheimer, 1926).Thus, Economics, demonstrates that what Étienne de La Boétie named "voluntary servitude", is an anti-human aberration to which human beings have been subjected for centuries. And that it is not necessary to continue with the resigned habit of obeying the State; nor do governments enjoy an aura of prestige (but are literally "stripped" of any attribute of intellectual or moral superiority); nor is the caste—or “praetorian guard”—of intellectuals, “experts”, and acolytes that surround states and rulers to be regarded as untouchable; nor should we allow ourselves to be seduced and deceived by subsidies or perks, whether supposed or real, with which they seek to purchase the will and secure the loyalty of exploited human beings, so that they will consent, voluntarily and permanently, to their exploitation and servitude (De la Boétie, 1975).Economics is the Science developed by the Austrian School of Economics, which should in fact be known as the Spanish School, as it has its origins in the thinking of our scholastics of the Spanish Golden AgeThe third point is that Economic Science has reached its highest level of development thanks to the Austrian School of Economics. As you know, our school is based on the realism of its analytical assumptions, in the dynamic approach based on the entrepreneurial, creative, and coordinating capacity of every human being, and in the study of the spontaneous and self-regulated order of the social process of voluntary human interactions (Huerta de Soto, 2008). The institutional and multidisciplinary approach of the Austrian School is also very relevant. As a result of the spontaneous social process important institutions emerge which, in turn, make it possible and drive it forward: Law and property rights rooted in human nature and discovered and developed spontaneously outside the state; the family, a basic and essential institution, on which the expansion of Humanity is made possible and consolidated; moral principles, which act as a true "automatic pilot" for liberty and which human beings internalize and transmit from generation to generation, thanks to the family and other community or religious institutions; economic institutions, and in particular, money, which also evolves spontaneously outside the State, and which can and should be considered the social institution par excellence, since by overcoming the problems of barter, it enables the exponential multiplication of voluntary exchanges and human interactions, within which the rest of the social, linguistic, moral, legal, economic, and religious institutions are discovered, shaped, and perfected.Our fourth point is that the first theorists of the spontaneous order emerged in the field of law, led by the great jurists of classical Rome. They were the first ones to understand the organic and evolutionary nature of the social process, and so they became, without being aware of it, the first economists. Their tradition was kept alive throughout the Middle Ages thanks to the Catholic Church and, through thinkers such as Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Antoninus of Florence, and Saint Bernardino of Siena, eventually came to influence the Spanish scholastics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries gathered around the University of Salamanca. As Rothbard demonstrated (Rothbard, 1976) these thinkers of the Spanish Golden Age should be considered the most immediate precedent of the Austrian School of Economics, which, precisely for this reason, should be called the Spanish School of Economics. And in fact, these Spanish scholastics were already able to articulate the following ten essential principles which constitute the theoretical foundation of the Austrian School:Firstly, the subjective theory of value developed by the Bishop of Segovia, Diego de Covarrubias, who as early as 1555 clearly explained that, although the objective nature of wheat is the same in Spain as in America, its price was higher in America because there human beings subjectively valued it much more highly; from this follows the correct relationship between prices and costs set out by Luis Sarabia de la Calle, in the sense that it is market prices that determine costs and not the other way around, as equilibrium theorists mistakenly believe; the Scholastics also realized that equilibrium models and prices lack realism and theoretical meaning because they presuppose a degree of knowledge “so complex that only God, and in no case human beings, could ever acquire it” (in latin “pretium iustum mathematicum licet soli Deo notum”), as already explained by the Jesuit cardinals Juan de Salas in 1617 and Juan de Lugo in 1643, more than three hundred years earlier than Hayek could conclude that “a science which assumes knowledge that can never be acquired is not a Science”; also the dynamic concept of competition is fundamental, understood as a process of rivalry among sellers based on the dynamic conception of market processes developed by Jerónimo Castillo de Bobadilla and Luis de Molina in 1589 and 1597, and that has nothing to do with the static model of "perfect competition" of equilibrium theorists; and also the important contributions of the Spanish Scholastics related with capital theory, business cycles, and the effects of fiduciary media generated by banks; so, particular emphasis should be placed on the rediscovery of the principle of time preference by Martín de Azpilcueta, following what Lessines had already stated in 1285; as well as on the fact that bankers commit mortal sin when they operate with fractional reserves, creating bank deposits as a form of virtual money (or chirographis pecuniarium, as Luis de Molina said in latin) that only exists in their accounting books and distorts the structure of relative prices, creating bubbles and deep economic crises that ultimately "bring everything crashing down," as Saravia de la Calle and Tomás de Mercado so vividly explained in the 16th Century; and in short, the Scholastic's idea that it is impossible to organize society through coercive commands due to lack of the information that would be required to give them coordinating content; as well as the discovery that inflation is a hidden and very harmful tax that arises from an act of tyranny, since it is neither known nor accepted by citizens, which would even justify the assassination of the King according to the theory of tyrannicide, a contribution originally made by the Castilian Comuneros eventually defeated by the tyrant King Charles V in 1521, and developed by Father Juan de Mariana almost a century later [in 1610].This entire line of proto-Austrian scholastic thought also spread throughout the Americas, especially in the newly founded universities of San Marcos in Lima and Mexico City in 1551 where brilliant disciples of these Scholastics, who had studied at the University of Salamanca itself, came to occupy prominent academic positions. Thus, for example, we should mention the cases of Bartolomé Frías de Albornoz in Mexico, and above all the great Juan de Matienzo, who became judge and president of the Royal Audiencia of Charcas and Lima from 1560 onwards (Popescu, 1997).Finally, the doctrine of our scholastics did spread even to North America two centuries later through the books of Juan de Mariana, who greatly influenced Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers of the United States.However, the southern part of the continent ultimately proved unable to neutralize the wave of growing statism and centralization that first came with the arrivals of the Habsburgs in Spain, and which was intensified even further after the arrival of the Bourbons with Philip V at the beginning of the eighteenth century (Martínez Marina, 1820). How different and much more prosperous and libertarian might the historical evolution of Spain and Latin America have been, had the statist centralism of the Habsburgs and the Bourbons not prevailed, and had the far more libertarian, local, and decentralized traditional representative institutions of the kingdoms of Castile instead remained predominant—institutions that were dismantled, together with Europe's first libertarian revolution, beginning with the defeat of the Castilian Comuneros at Villalar on April 23, 1521 (Leonard Liggio, 2025).The most important and far-reaching contributions of economic scienceLet us now turn, in greater detail, to the most important contributions of Economics, as developed by the Austrian School.First, human cooperation takes place spontaneously, without the need for anyone to organize it coercively from outside. This is so because human beings are endowed with an entrepreneurial and creative capacity that continually drives them to discover the multiple opportunities for profit that arise in their environment. Each of these opportunities embodies a previous discoordination in human behavior that remains latent until it is discovered and overcome by the corresponding entrepreneurial act. This entrepreneurial act always arises from a creative tension and interpretation of events of the outside world that is essentially subjective and, therefore, cannot be reproduced by any artificial intelligence algorithm; in other words, the same objective events can be interpreted in multiple ways, even contradictory ones, without it being possible to postulate which is correct until the corresponding entrepreneurial process is completed in the form of a subjective profit. In any case, every entrepreneurial act involves, firstly, the creation of information that did not exist before (regarding the profit opportunity that arose from the previous discoordination that had gone unnoticed); secondly, the transmission of that knowledge (directly to the parties involved in the entrepreneurial act and indirectly through a series of institutions and signals such as market prices); and third and finally, the coordination of the previous maladjustments takes place when the parties involved learn motu proprio, that is, voluntarily and for their own benefit, to discipline their behavior according to the needs of others (for example, when they discover that they achieve their ends more effectively by specializing and trading peacefully the mutual results of their efforts). The discovery of the essence of this pure entrepreneurial act, with its elements of creation and transmission of information and the spontaneous coordination of the previous maladjustments continually generated by human coexistence, constitutes the most important contribution that Economic Science has provided to Humanity, and explains why the spontaneous process of voluntary social cooperation that drives the multiplication of human beings and the expansion of civilization does not require any statist system of institutional coercion.Another essential contribution of Economics is the concept of Dynamic Efficiency, understood as the process of unlimited expansion of human creativity and entrepreneurial coordination that arises only within a specific institutional framework of moral and legal norms. This framework is the one grounded on the ethical principle according to which every human being has a natural right to appropriate the results of his entrepreneurial creativity; that is, a property right over what one has created and which did not previously exist, which is the most obvious and important human right. For this reason, (dynamic) Efficiency and Morality and Justice (properly understood) cannot be separated one from the other; or, as we might say, they are two sides of the same coin in the sense that only Justice and Morality induce and generate efficiency; and at the same time, what is dynamically efficient in economic terms cannot be neither unjust nor immoral. All of which, on the other hand, demonstrates the integrated order that exists in the social universe, and highlights the three levels of research (theoretical, ethical, and historical) that complement and reinforce with each other and are essential in our search for truth (Huerta de Soto, 2000).Finally, another key contribution of Economic Science is to have demonstrated the impossibility of socialism, or better, the impossibility of statism, in the sense that it is impossible for the State to achieve and coordinate what it promises for the following four reasons:First, because of the enormous volume of information required for such coordination, which the State cannot acquire because it is dispersed in the minds of the eight billion human beings who participate and interact in the social process every day. Second, given the tacit and inarticulate character of this information (and therefore its inability to be transmitted in an objective manner). Third, because the information that is generated is not "given," nor is it static, but instead changes continuously as a result of human creativity, making it impossible to transmit today information that will only be created tomorrow, and which is precisely the information that the organs of State intervention and the so-called “experts” would need today in order to direct society to achieve their objectives tomorrow. And fourth, and above all, because the coercive nature of State commands blocks the entrepreneurial activity of creating the very information which the State organization itself would need in order to give its commands a coordinating content. In sum, the State is always and everywhere violence and coercion; coercion blocks the entrepreneurial act of creation, discovery, and adjustment of discoordinated human behavior, while at the same time preventing the creation of the information and the emergence of free market prices that make economic calculation and social coordination possible. For this reason, statism is not only unnecessary but is also scientifically impossible.The impact of these essential contributions of Economics on the course of social evolution has so far been very limitedAll of these scientific contributions have so far achieved only a very partial, imperfect, and limited impact on the inertia of a social and political reality that has for centuries been characterized by the coercive power of States and rulers, and by the more or less resigned servitude of the citizens. And despite the very limited nature of this impact to date, which at best has materialized in a series of naïve and "liberal" revolutions aimed, with as much arrogance as lack of success, toward the impossible objective of trying to separate and limit the powers of states and rulers through political constitutions and "liberal democracies" (Rothbard, 2009); Humanity has been propelled as never before in those places and historical moments where it has managed, despite everything, to at least partially free itself from the State and open up some of the new channels of liberty shown by the teachings of Economics. Beginning with the Industrial Revolution, which was but the first chapter of the never-completed "Revolution of Liberty" inspired by Economics. And although what has been achieved in terms of prosperity and standard of living by the now eight billion human beings seems relatively significant—and indeed it is—we cannot even conceive of the standard of living and population size that could be achieved if Humanity were able to take full advantage of and fully implement the teachings of Economic Science.We can be few and poor in a context of servitude and submission to the State, or many and wealthy in a context of liberty (Hayek, 1988, p. 133). The globe is practically empty of human beings (the Earth's current population would fit into an area equivalent to that of the state of Alaska, with a population density equal to that of Brussels). And we cannot even imagine the prosperity that could be achieved in a free market daily driven by eighty billion, or even eight hundred billion, human beings. Economics explains and demonstrates that the increasing prosperity of an ever-growing population of human beings never results from deliberate and coercive State plans, nor from the egalitarian income redistribution, nor from increases in public spending, nor from subsidies, debt, or inflation, but only arises from the free market of the capitalist system. This consists of the process of voluntary exchanges among all human beings who, endowed with an innate entrepreneurial and creative capacity, are able to detect and assess, through the system of free prices, the relative urgency and necessity of each good and service, overcoming the relative scarcity of each and satisfying, every day and in the best humanly possible way, the desires and needs of billions of consumers. Entrepreneurs who succeed in this never-ending process of profit-seeking accumulate significant resources, which, in turn, are saved and invested in capital goods and new technologies that make human beings increasingly productive, boosting their wages and standards of living; a virtuous process of continuously expanding prosperity and population growth that, if not coerced or hindered by the State, has no limits.Therefore, it is crucially important for the future of Humanity that it be able to take full and maximum advantage of the lessons and essential message in pursuit of human liberty that Economics provides. But this will only be possible if we are able to unmask and carefully analyze the powerful forces of the pseudoscientific and counterrevolutionary reaction that has been mobilized to prevent the advance of the theory of liberty derived from Economic Science. Despite their diverse origins, they all converge on the same objective: to attempt to justify and preserve State coercion at all costs under the appearance of scientific legitimacy. They are driven by the "fatal conceit" (Hayek, 1988) of many visionaries, thinkers, and supposed "experts" who believe themselves to be clever enough to correct the spontaneous market order, of course, using the violence and coercive power of the State. Together with a privileged caste of rulers, bureaucrats and acolytes, they continually manipulate a Humanity that is sadly accustomed to serving the State. For all of them, it is vital that statism be maintained and that the message of liberty provided by Economics never prevail.Next, we will list the main reactionary pseudoscientific currents that have infiltrated Economic Science like a lethal virus and constitute, in Hayek's terminology, "the counter-revolution of science" (Hayek, 1955).Pseudoscientific reactionary currents opposed to Economic Science. The role played as “useful innocents” by many libertarian economists of the counterrevolutionary mainstreamFirst, positivism and scientism as pseudoscience. By "scientism" we must understand the improper application of the methods of the natural sciences to the field of Economic Science. Thus, while the natural sciences study their object of research as something external, measurable, and quantifiable, Economics studies the implications of the voluntary actions of human beings. And given the essentially creative nature of human beings, the supposed empirical "evidence" has, at best, only a superficial, partial, and always historically contingent value. In Bastiat's words, of "what is seen" —or rather, what is believed to have been seen— but not "what is not seen" (Bastiat, 1995); and at worst, it always entails the assumption, that human beings are an object of research that can be manipulated as the matter of the external world studied by the natural sciences. This inevitably introduces the idea that to improve the world, the State and its rulers must use their coercive power to manipulate and change the things they believe they see in their historically contingent "empirical photos." But these "empirical photos" cannot capture the underlying dynamic essence of spontaneous social processes, let alone what is already happening spontaneously to solve and coordinate every problem. Therefore, it is not surprising that from the very first steps of Economic Science promoted by the Austrian School, its most violent opponents were the "socialists of the chair" gathered around the German Historical School, reinforced in France by the empiricists of the school of Saint-Simon, the insane Comte, and Durkheim, who sought to create a new and alternative pseudoscience of society. And their unhealthy positivist and ultra-empirical influence has persisted to the present day, first through American Institutionalism and later through the massive compilation of empirical data, for example, in the work of Wesley C. Mitchell or Henry Schultz, the latter, as shown by Professor Salerno, having gone on to exert a decisive influence on his assistant Milton Friedman and, through him, even on the Chicago School itself (Salerno, 2023).Secondly, the pseudoscience of neoclassical economics is characterized by its claim that only its own approach constitutes true “science,” that is, the approach based on the principles of equilibrium, maximization, and constancy. Moreover, in addition to the lack of realism of its assumptions, it adds the reductionism of a mathematical language that has developed in response to the needs and demands of the natural sciences, but which is alien to Economic Science because it does not allow for the subjective concept of time or entrepreneurial creativity. Neoclassical economists develop their pseudoscience based not on real human beings of flesh and blood, but on "ideal types" that are like "robotic penguins" who, even in their most sophisticated dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models are limited to moving and reacting to events and State coercion as if they were characters of a sort of economic video game ("videogame economics"). Yet neoclassical pseudoscience, despite its apparent and ever-increasing sophistication, is not capable of accounting for the immense complexity of the real world and rebels against the idea of spontaneous market order in two ways that are equally harmful to human liberty: on the one hand, by promoting the coercive "social engineering" of central banks, States, and governments to use "fine tuning" to force reality toward to the mathematical optimum of their models; and, on the other hand, by labeling as "market failures" everything they believe they observe in reality that does not coincide, in their empirical studies, with their ghostly models of “perfect” equilibrium and adjustment (Milei, 2023); failures that, according to them, refute the "benefits" of the spontaneous order of the market and human liberty, and justify their elimination as soon as possible by a coercive State authority. Note also how neoclassical pseudoscience needs, and feeds upon, the empirical work of the previous pseudoscience, positivism, in order to justify its conclusions against human liberty and in favor of State coercion, so that positivists and neoclassicists join hands and end up reinforcing each other in their reactionary agenda.Third, Keynesianism and macroeconomics as pseudoscience. The very “macro” approach already entails, inevitably, an obvious bias in favor of justifying State intervention, aggression, and coercion against the spontaneous order of the market and human liberty. As F. A. Hayek pointed out in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1974 (Hayek, 1978), macroeconomists ignore everything they cannot measure, specifically truly relevant economic processes and theories. At the same time, they believe that certain aggregate concepts—which lack genuine economic meaning—possess a “real” existence, that permits to collect empirical information or evidence that can be manipulated and statistically treated. Once again, macroeconomic pseudoscience goes hand in hand with positivist pseudoscience, and the two reinforce with each other in their counterrevolutionary reaction. Furthermore, Keynesianism is particularly harmful: not only does it flatly deny the coordinating capacity of creative entrepreneurship and the spontaneous market order, but it also builds as an alternative explanation a whole model—of course—of equilibrium with permanent unemployment, to justify the coercive intervention of the State in the lives of human beings in the form of all kinds of fiscal and monetary manipulations. Moreover, the macroeconomic and Keynesian pseudoscience feeds upon, and is reinforced by, the pseudoscientific approach of the Neoclassical School, to the point that, the so-called "neoclassical Keynesian synthesis" became, throughout the twentieth century, the main reactionary movement inside Economics. Keynesians and macroeconomists thus become the champions of that intoxication with statism, manipulation, and political power which constitutes the framework, orchestrated by governments and central banks, to which we have, regrettably, become accustomed and in which we are forced to live. This context repeatedly destabilizes the spontaneous market order, generates serious financial and economic crises and social conflicts, and continually hampers the prosperity and advance of civilization.We have left the quasi-religious mysticism of Marxist pseudoscience for last, because Marxism was scientifically dead even before it was born: in fact, it emerged with—and was theoretically demolished by—the subjectivist revolution led by the Austrian School of Economics. From the beginning, the Austrian School's development of time preference and capital theory revealed the contradictions and grave scientific errors of Marxism, while at the same time exposing its pronounced character as an intellectual fraud (Böhm-Bawerk, 1949). This intellectual fraud was historically illustrated by the collapse of the Soviet Union, and of virtually all other communist countries, after many decades of unspeakable human suffering for a large part of the world's population, all of which was perfectly consistent with the theory on the impossibility of statism developed by the Austrian School beginning with the von Mises of 1920 (Mises, 1936), and which was the final nail that forever sealed the coffin of the corpse of Marxist pseudoscience (Huerta de Soto, 2010).Finally, in this context, we must mention the destructive role played by a number of distinguished economists who, although they defend liberty and the market economy, could be described as a kind of "useful innocents" in Mises' terminology (Mises, 1947). This is so because, even though they officially oppose rampant statism and defend liberty, by accepting—even if only partially—some of the postulates of the reactionary pseudoscientific currents we have described, they ultimately end up, often without intending to and much to their regret, providing additional impetus to the statist reaction within our discipline; for example, when they insist on advising States with proposals aimed at making them more efficient and at helping them do somewhat better things that they should not be doing at all. By way of illustration, we should include in this category of “useful innocents”, for example, thinkers as the Karl Popper of The Open Society and Its Enemies (Popper, 1966, p. 366), who came to admire the “scientific capacity” and even the “humanism” of Karl Marx, and who proposed a statist strategy of “piecemeal social engineering”; or George Stigler, when he claimed that only empirical evidence could determine which economic system, socialism or capitalism, might function (Stigler, 1975, pp. 1-13); and, more generally, the members of the Chicago School, led by Gary Becker and Milton Friedman. Becker when defending that only economics developed within the strict limits of equilibrium, constancy, and maximization, typical of the neoclassical pseudoscience, constitutes true "economic science." And even more serious could be considered the case of Milton Friedman, whose very sincere love of liberty and intense and popular media support for free markets stand in sharp contrast to his pseudoscientific approach based on the aggregate method of economics of Keynesian origin, on positivist empiricism, and on the full acceptance of the unrealism of assumptions. Only in this way it can be explained Friedman's litany of scientific errors which, much to his regret, have invariably ended up reinforcing statist interventionism, to the point that Hayek himself was forced to conclude that after Keynes's The General Theory, the book that has done the greatest harm to Economic Science has been Friedman's Essays in Positive Economics (Hayek, 1994, pp. 145).The failure of democracy and classical liberalism: the triumph of statismAs we see, many classical liberals and advocates of liberal democracy have also acted as "useful innocents." The fatal error of classical liberals lies in the failure to realize that their program is theoretically impossible, because it incorporates within itself the seeds of its own destruction, precisely to the extent that it considers necessary and accepts the existence of a State (even if it is "minimal") understood as the monopolistic agency of institutional coercion. Therefore, the great error of classical liberals is very basic: they believe in a program of political action and economic doctrine that aims to limit the power of the State, while at the same time accepting it and even considering state's existence necessary. However Economic Science has already shown that the State is unnecessary, that statism (even in its minimal form) is theoretically impossible, and that, given human nature, once the State exists, it is impossible to limit its power. On the other hand, liberal democracy is a concept as naïve as it is impossible. Mises already warned us that democracy could only function if all its participants accepted the classical liberal principles, which is impossible because democracy itself encourages and amplifies vote-buying and the partisan use of power. So, the inevitable conclusion is that "liberal democracy" is a contradiction in terms as absurd as speaking (following Anthony de Jasay) of a “square circle,” of “hot snow,” or of a “virgin prostitute” (A. de Jasay, 1990). And even Hayek considered democracy unworkable if it is understood as the exercise of absolute power by majorities (Kratos in classical Greek). It should therefore come as no surprise that democracy once and again tends to be a perverse system based on lying and buying votes with money stolen through taxation.The fact is that the State attracts like a magnet the worst passions and vices of human nature, for instance, when individuals try to obtain rents produced by others using the State's coercive power. Moreover, the combined effect of the privileged groups, the phenomena of governmental myopia and vote-buying, the megalomaniacal character of politicians, and the irresponsibility and blindness of bureaucracies generate a dangerous, unstable and explosive cocktail, continually shaken by social, economic, and political crises which, paradoxically, are always used by the political caste to justify further doses of intervention and statism that, instead of solving problems, further aggravate them. Statism therefore corrupts the entire social body and at the same time blocks the spontaneous and free market solutions of social and economic problems.In fact, the State has become the "idol" that almost everyone turns to and worships. Statolatry is the most serious and dangerous social disease of our time. We are educated to believe that all problems can and must be detected and solved by the State. Our destiny depends on the State, and the politicians who control it are expected to guarantee everything our well-being may require. Human beings remain immature and rebel against their own creative nature, which makes their future always uncertain. They demand a crystal ball that assures them not only knowing what will happen, but also that any problems that arise will be solved for them. This "infantilization" of the masses is encouraged by politicians, as it justifies their own existence and ensures their popularity, position of dominance, and capacity to control. In addition, a whole legion of intellectuals, so-called "experts," and social engineers join in this arrogant intoxication of power. Not even the Church and the most respectable religious denominations have been able to realize that statolatry today constitutes the principal threat to the free, moral, and responsible human being; that the State is a false idol of immense power, worshipped by all, and that does not allow Humanity to be free from its control or have moral or religious loyalties beyond those the state can dominate. Furthermore, it is kept hidden from the public that the state is the true source of social conflicts and evils, and "scapegoats" (such as "capitalism" or private property) are blamed for the problems, and they become the goal of the most serious condemnations, even from moral and religious leaders, almost none of whom have realized the deception or dared to denounce that statolatry is the main threat in the present century to religion, morality, and, therefore, to human civilization.Perhaps the main exception within the Church is included in the brilliant biography of Jesus of Nazareth written by Benedict XVI. That the State and political power constitute the institutional incarnation of the Antichrist should be obvious to anyone with a minimal knowledge of history who reads the former Pope's considerations on the most serious temptation that the Evil One can present to us (and I quote Ratzinger literally): "The tempter is not so crude as to propose to us directly the worship of the devil. He merely proposes that we opt for the rational solution, that we prefer a planned and organized world in which God may have a place as a private spiritual matter, but must not be allowed to interfere in our essential purposes. Soloviev attributes to the Antichrist a book entitled The Open Road to World Peace and Prosperity; it becomes the new Bible, and its core message is the worship of well-being and rational planning," by the state (Ratzinger, 2007). And so, we should not be surprised that, for example, the great author of The Lord of the Rings, J. R. Tolkien, whose Catholic anarchism I fully share, went so far as to say that he would arrest anyone for simply daring to pronounce the word "State." Because the State is, always and everywhere, a reality of violence and systematic coercion against the most intimate essence of the human being, which is his capacity to act freely, creatively, and spontaneously; and so, it is unavoidable to conclude that the State is essentially immoral and that statism constitutes the principal threat to humankind.A theological digression: the dismantling of statism as a logical necessity inseparable from the work of GodAnd almost without realizing it, we can go ahead with a theological digression on how dismantling the State is a logical and moral necessity inseparable from the work of God. I fully understand that referring to God in this conference may come as a shock to many of those present, but I would ask that even those who do not believe in God, at least for dialectical purposes, make an effort of imagination and, for the next few minutes, imagine that God does indeed exist.And what do we mean by God? We must understand God to be a Supreme Being, Creator out of love for all things. And the most important creature that God has created is precisely the human being: in His image and likeness. And if there is a point of connection between God and man, it is precisely in the creative entrepreneurial ability: the capacity to discover, to see, and to create new things, goals and actions. But now I am going to go one step further and attempt to demonstrate that God is not only the Supreme, loving Creator of all things, but that—moreover—God is libertarian.And what does it mean to say that God is libertarian? It means that God, the Lord of all the Universe, has absolute power over it, and yet He chooses not to use force, but always leaves his creatures free. To the point that He gives human beings the freedom to rebel against Him; even though, again and again, God forgives human beings and allows them to rise up and begin anew.God always lets the universe He has created, flow in a spontaneous manner ("laissez faire, laissez passer, le monde va de lui même" could be the motto of our libertarian God). And this despite the fact that human beings tempt God again and again and demand that He manifest His absolute power, that He give us clear and indisputable signs of His existence and supreme power in order for us to believe in Him. But of course, God does not accept our challenge. Why? Because love and liberty are inseparable, and a forced conversion, for example by an evident cataclysm, would be completely contrary to that liberty with which God has created human beings out of love.Moreover, the Kingdom of God is not of this world; Jesus himself says this to a fearful Roman state official, who was also in charge of judging him: "My kingdom is not of this world." Does this mean that there are two types of kingdoms? The kingdoms of this world or States, which would be legitimate at their own level (remember "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's"), and the Kingdom of God, of ("render unto God the things that are God's"). That is the standard interpretation that has prevailed until now, but I think is completely wrong. The Kingdom of God—which is the exact opposite of the kingdoms or States of this world—never makes systematic use of violence and coercion: it is a Kingdom that has already come to us and, moreover, has been given to us freely, in an act of immense mercy and love (Deus caritas est). And just as the hateful institution of slavery came to an end, the Kingdom of God will also dismantle the kingdoms of this world, the states of this world, or as St. Paul said, of every principality, power, and glory (Ephesians 1:21-23), because God is libertarian and man is made in the image and likeness of God.Ludwig von Mises, in his book Interventionism, introduced the term "destructionism" to refer to the economic and social effects of statism. If Evil (represented by statist destructionism in Mises' terminology) were to prevail, the human race and civilization would have disappeared long ago. The fact that, despite everything and the immense power of seduction of statism over humankind, the process of social cooperation continues to unfold and even prosper in certain historical periods and geographical areas, is a clear manifestation that God does not abandon the world nor leave libertarians alone in their struggle against the Evil; and that Good, represented by liberty, the principle of non-aggression, the spontaneous order of the market, entrepreneurial creativity and coordination, and above all, moral principles, always with God's help, prevails and is capable of overcoming Evil, represented by the fatal conceit of the statist ideal and the destruction that it produces.And now I will finish with some thoughts on anarcho-capitalism as the only possible system of social cooperation truly compatible with human natureAnd now I will finish with some thoughts on anarcho-capitalism as the only possible system of social cooperation truly compatible with human nature. The most important intellectual and moral event that is taking place nowadays is the full fusion between Christianity and anarcho-capitalism. Because anarcho-capitalism is the only possible system of social cooperation that is truly compatible with human nature. Anarcho-capitalism is the purest representation of the spontaneous market order in which all services, including law, justice, and public order, are provided through a voluntary process of social cooperation. In this system, no area is closed to the drive of human creativity and entrepreneurial coordination; efficiency and justice in the resolution of problems are simultaneously enhanced, while the conflicts, inefficiencies, and discoordinations generated by the State are eradicated at their root.The progressive abolition of States and their gradual replacement by a dynamic network of private agencies different legal systems, and providing all kinds of prevention and defense services, constitutes the most important social transformation that will take place in the twenty first century. Without forgetting that exactly what prevents us from knowing with precision what the future without the state will look like, the creative nature of entrepreneurship, is what gives us the peace of mind of knowing that any problem will tend to be resolved and overcome, once the entrepreneurial effort and creativity of Humanity are devoted to its solution (Kirzner, 1985).Therefore, the revolution against the “Old Régime” carried out in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by the old classical liberals, today finds its natural continuation in the anarcho-capitalist revolution of the twenty-first century. The message of anarcho-capitalism is clearly revolutionary. Revolutionary in terms of its goal: the dismantling of the State and its replacement by a competitive market process consisting of a network of private agencies, associations, and organizations. And revolutionary in terms of its means, especially in the scientific, economic-social, and political fields:a) First, Scientific revolution, in the field of Economic Science, which becomes the general theory of spontaneous market order extended to all social areas. And by contrast and opposition, the theory and analysis of the effects of social discoordination generated by statism in any sphere in which it operates, as well as the study of the transition process from the State towards liberty.b) Second, an Economic and social revolution, as we cannot even imagine today the immense human achievements and discoveries that could be made in an entrepreneurial environment totally free from statism. Today, and despite continuous governmental harassment, an unknown civilization is already developing, with a degree of complexity that is beyond the reach and control of the state, and which will achieve unlimited expansion once it manages to completely rid itself of statism. And when human beings become more and more aware of the perverse nature of the State that restricts them, and of the immense possibilities that are frustrated each day when the State blocks the driving force of their entrepreneurial creativity, the social demand to reform and dismantle the State will multiply creating a future that is largely unknown to us but that will elevate human civilization to heights that we cannot even imagine today.c) And finally, a political revolution in which, although day-to-day political struggle is important, it should not be the top priority. It is true that the least interventionist alternatives must always be supported, in clear alliance with the efforts of classical liberals in their long term impossible democratic limitation of the State (including reforms such as those proposed by Hayek in the third volume of Law, Legislation, and Liberty). But the anarcho-capitalist does not stop at this task, for he knows that he can and must do much more. He knows that the ultimate goal is the total dismantling of the State, and this goal leads all his imagination and political action in everyday life. And here we cannot fail to mention the unprecedented impact of our disciple and follower of our Master Program in Austrian Economics in Madrid, the President of Argentina, Javier Milei, who has done more than anyone else before to disseminate the principles of the Austrian School and the anarcho-capitalist ideal. Principles that he never ceases to quote and explain and defend once and again in all his public appearances, from the United Nations to the Davos Forum; and in all his meetings with other Heads of State, universities, and parliaments, to whom he even gives copies of the most important Austrian works by Mises, Hayek and even myself, as he did, for example, with the two popes, Francis and Leo XIV, with the French President Macron, the Italian Prime Minister Meloni, and even with Elon Musk. For us, it is a great honor that Milei has, to a large extent, emerged from the Austrian School of Madrid and that he continually keeps drawing inspiration from us. This is, without a doubt, much more important than incremental political steps in the right direction—which should of course be welcomed—and that should never fall into a political pragmatism that could betray the ultimate goal of achieving the end of the State (Huerta de Soto, 2010).And all this with tireless enthusiasm in the search for scientific and moral truth, an attitude that, inspired by the immortal work of Miguel de Cervantes, we could describe as follows: "It matters not whether they be giants or windmills, when the plume of our helm is stirred by the winds of tenacity and faith." And always creating a future that, although it may seem distant today, may at any moment witness giant steps that will surprise even the most optimistic among us. History has entered into an accelerated process of change which, although it will never stop, will open a whole new chapter when humankind finally succeeds in ridding itself definitively of the State, reducing it to no more than a dark historical relic of tragic memory.Thank you very much.REFERENCESBASTIAT, Frédéric: Selected Essays on Political Economy, Foundation for Economic Education, New York 1995.DE LA BOÉTIE, Étienne: The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, Free Life Editions, Nueva York 1975.BÖHM-BAWERK, Eugen von: Karl Marx and the Close of His System, Augustus M. Kelley, Nueva York 1949."The Exploitation Theory," Capital and Interest, Vol. I: History and Critique of Interest Theories, Libertarian Press, South Holland 1959.HAYEK, Friedrich A. von: The Counter-Revolution of Science, Free Press, New York, 1955.Hayek on Hayek: An Autobiographical Dialogue (eds. Stephen Kresge and Leif Wenar), University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1994.Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. III: The Political Order of a Free People, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1979.The Fatal Conceit: the Errors of Socialism, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1988."The Pretence of Knowledge," in New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1978.HUERTA DE SOTO, Jesús: Socialism, Economic Calculation and Entrepreneurship, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham y Northampton 2010."A Hayekian Strategy to Implement Free Market Reforms," in Theory of Dynamic Efficiency, Routledge, Oxfordshire, 2010.Proyecto Docente, Chapter I: "Ciencia y Economía," Rey Juan Carlos University, Madrid 2000.The Austrian School: Market Order and Creative Entrepreneurship, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham y Northampton 2008.DE JASAY, Anthony: Market Socialism: A Scrutiny, published by the Institute of Economic Affairs, Occasional Paper no. 84, 1990.KIRZNER, Israel: "The Perils of Regulation: A Market Process Approach" in Discovery and the Capitalist Process, University of Chicago Press, 1985.LIGGIO, Leonard: "The Hispanic tradition of Liberty," published in Procesos de Mercado: Revista Europea de Economía Política, vol. XXII, nº 1, Summer 2025, pp. 403-420.MARTÍNEZ MARINA, Francisco: Teoría de las cortes o grandes juntas nacionales de los reinos de León y Castilla, Collado, 1820.MILEI, Javier: Capitalism, Socialism, and the Neoclassical Trap, in The Emergence of a Tradition: Essays in Honor of Jesús Huerta de Soto, Volume II (editors Howden, D., Bagus, P.), Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2023.MISES, Ludwig von: Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, Jonathan Cape, London 1936.Planned Chaos, Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington-on-Hudson 1947.OPPENHEIMER, Franz: The State, Vanguard Press, Nueva York 1926.POPESCU, Oreste: Studies in the History of Latin American Economic Thought, Routledge, London 1997.POPPER, Karl: The Open Society and its Enemies, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1966.RATZINGER, Joseph. Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration. Translated by Adrian J. Walker. Doubleday, New York, 2007.ROTHBARD, Murray N.: "New Light on the Prehistory of the Austrian School," in The Foundations of Modern Austrian Economics (editor Edwin G. Dolan), Sheed and Ward, Kansas City 1976, pp. 52–74.Anatomy of the State, Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn 2009.SALERNO, Joseph. "Milton Friedman's Views on Method and Money Reconsidered in Light of the Housing Bubble", in The Emergence of a Tradition: Essays in Honor of Jesús Huerta de Soto, Volume I, (editors Howden, D., Bagus, P.), Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2023.STIGLER, George: The Citizen and the State, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1975, pp. 1-13.
Milton Friedman once famously said, "It's not what you don't know, It's what you know that just ain't so!" This is especially when it comes to war and the framework America knows as the "Global Order" formed in the wake of WWII. Many times I have posited the idea that the so called, Global Order is a construct that only exists as long as it is working for everyone. It's no longer working for large portions of the global population, including the United State of America. The USA has been attempting to pushing the order beyond its acceptable limits and the Globe is pushing back.Professor Jiang Xueqin Game Theory on Iranian Conflicthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQSDSqdlFxk&t=124sBreaking Points with Professor Jiang Xueqin Truth Predictionshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ql24Z8SIeE
Milton Friedman and others tried to explain interest rates using liquidity, economic activity, and inflation expectations. These things, however, only describe interest but do not explain it. Only the Austrian theory of time preference correctly explains interest.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/popular-interest-rate-theory-describes-fails-explain
Milton Friedman and others tried to explain interest rates using liquidity, economic activity, and inflation expectations. These things, however, only describe interest but do not explain it. Only the Austrian theory of time preference correctly explains interest.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/popular-interest-rate-theory-describes-fails-explain
The Capitalism and Freedom in the Twenty-First Century Podcast
Jon Hartley and Jim Esposito discuss Jim's beginnings, his career in senior roles at Goldman Sachs in New York and London, and moving to Miami to run one of the world's largest broker-dealer and market makers, Citadel Securities. They also discuss the rising role Miami is playing in global capital markets (becoming “Wall Street South”) with Citadel's moving its headquarters there, ongoing trends in the economy, and the rising role of AI in finance and business. Recorded on February 27, 2026. ABOUT THE SERIES Each episode of Capitalism and Freedom in the 21st Century, a video podcast series and the official podcast of the Hoover Economic Policy Working Group, focuses on getting into the weeds of economics, finance, and public policy on important current topics through one-on-one interviews. Host Jon Hartley asks guests about their main ideas and contributions to academic research and policy. The podcast is titled after Milton Friedman‘s famous 1962 bestselling book Capitalism and Freedom, which after 60 years, remains prescient from its focus on various topics which are now at the forefront of economic debates, such as monetary policy and inflation, fiscal policy, occupational licensing, education vouchers, income share agreements, the distribution of income, and negative income taxes, among many other topics. For more information about the podcast, or subscribe for the next episode, click here.
Glenn kicks off the show by discussing two major developments overseas, including Israel's Iron Dome and India's alleged seizure of oil tankers tied to Russia and Iran, which Glenn argues is signaling India's pivot toward the West economically, strategically, and on security matters. Glenn argues this is evidence that America is reversing course and becoming the leader of the free world once again. Glenn discusses the latest scandal involving Microsoft founder Bill Gates and accusations of stepping outside his marriage. Glenn admits he was wrong about something. Glenn admits he's finally come around to President Trump's use of tariffs after seeing how he uses them to advance America's economic interests. Did Elon Musk just suggest AGI is coming and that means you shouldn't save for retirement? Glenn makes the case for why it's time for America to eliminate the income tax. Glenn plays a video of American economist Milton Friedman, who lays out how he would handle taxes, as Glenn warns of the dangers of a universal basic income. Glenn takes a call from his audience about AI data centers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Episode: 2562 Paul Samuelson and the textbook Economics. Today, a book that helped educate the world.
Andrew For America talks about Donald Trump, Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, the Hegelian Dialectic, Epstein, Q, 4Chan, immigration, and the welfare state. Andrew also explains the Cloward-Piven Strategy: a strategy devised by two sociologists in the 1960's which sought to overwhelm our welfare system with an influx of immigrants which would result in a universal basic income being given to the citizens by the government in order to solve the problem. Andrew plays a debate between Richard Cloward, Frances Fox Piven, and famed economists Thomas Sowell, and Milton Friedman discussing their views on the American welfare state. Andrew ends the show by playing a few comedy clips from Canadian comedian Ben Bankas, who recently had his shows cancelled in Minneapolis due to his controversial material.The song selection is the song, "Harsh Truth" by the band One Reason To Rise.Visit allegedlyrecords.com and check out all of the amazing punk rock artists!Visit soundcloud.com/andrewforamerica1984 to check out Andrew's music!Like and Follow The Politics & Punk Rock Podcast PLAYLIST on Spotify!!!Check it out here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1Y4rumioeqvHfaUgRnRxsy...politicsandpunkrockpodcast.comFollow Future Is Now Coalition on Instagram @FutureIsOrgwww.futureis.org
On Wednesday's Mark Levin Show, processed foods should be defended against their common portrayal as dietary villains. About 100 years ago, mass urbanization, poverty, and lack of refrigeration made fresh food scarce, expensive, and prone to spoilage or contamination in cities, leading to widespread issues like foodborne illnesses, malnutrition, and short life expectancy. Processed foods, including canning, pasteurization, and preservatives, emerged as a critical solution to feed growing populations safely and affordably, preventing starvation and reducing risks from rancid items. While some synthetic additives may have downsides, they are far safer than historical alternatives like rotten eggs or swill milk. Also, our military personnel deserve our respect and our gratitude. They stand ready to act on orders from President Trump to protect current and future generations from Iran. Ordinary Americans strongly support the military, unlike Marxists, Islamists, woke individuals, neo-Nazis, and isolationists. Isolationism against evils like Islamism, Communism, and fascism is suicidal. Later, decades ago Landmark Legal Foundation and other patriot lawyers litigated school choice, starting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They represented a black liberal state representative, Polly Williams, and her constituents in the city's poorest areas, advancing an idea originated by the late Dr. Milton Friedman. The program aimed to let money follow inner-city students—primarily minority and black children—out of failing, crime-ridden, union-controlled, government-run schools to better options, including participating private schools. Despite fierce opposition from Democrats, the NEA, AFT, NAACP, and others, the effort succeeded through multiple victories at the Wisconsin Supreme Court and twice at the U.S. Supreme Court over years. These wins, achieved alongside key colleagues and heroes, established school choice as one of the greatest civil rights victories in modern times, without which it would not exist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Capitalism and Freedom in the Twenty-First Century Podcast
Jon Hartley and Tevi Troy discuss Tevi's career as a Presidential historian, serving in a variety of roles in the George W. Bush administration including as White House Domestic Policy Council Deputy Director and as Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services, as well as Tevi's new book The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes Between American Titans of Industry and Commanders in Chief. Recorded on December 25, 2025. ABOUT THE SERIES Each episode of Capitalism and Freedom in the 21st Century, a video podcast series and the official podcast of the Hoover Economic Policy Working Group, focuses on getting into the weeds of economics, finance, and public policy on important current topics through one-on-one interviews. Host Jon Hartley asks guests about their main ideas and contributions to academic research and policy. The podcast is titled after Milton Friedman‘s famous 1962 bestselling book Capitalism and Freedom, which after 60 years, remains prescient from its focus on various topics which are now at the forefront of economic debates, such as monetary policy and inflation, fiscal policy, occupational licensing, education vouchers, income share agreements, the distribution of income, and negative income taxes, among many other topics. For more information about the podcast, or subscribe for the next episode, click here.
In this episode of Built to Divide, we pick up where the post-2008 housing machine left off—and show how the subscription economy (SaaS, streaming, “pay forever”) migrated into the built environment. Dimitrius Lynch traces the privatization movement from Milton Friedman's voucher logic and post–Brown v. Board backlash to modern power brokers like ALEC, corporate bill-writing, and the quiet reframing of citizens into customers.Then we explore build-to-rent communities engineered for “predictable cash flow,” housing-as-a-dashboard, and the rise of rentier capitalism—profits from controlling gates, not creating value. The episode connects BlackRock's infrastructure thesis and Aladdin risk platform, the 2008 recovery pipeline, and the long continuity from Bretton Woods → financialization → asset management dominance. Finally, we widen the lens to the next frontier: farmland financialization, where ownership detaches from stewardship and the right to live—and farm—becomes something you lease back.Episode Extras - Photos, videos, sources and links to additional content found during research.Episode Credits:Production in collaboration with Gābl MediaWritten & Executive Produced by Dimitrius LynchAudio Engineering and Sound Design by Jeff Alvarez
The Wealth Formula Podcast is one of the longest-running personal finance podcasts still standing. For more than a decade, I've shown up every single week to talk about investing, markets, and the forces shaping the economy. What's interesting is how much my own thinking has evolved over that time. Early on, I was more rigid. I was—and still am—a real estate guy. But back then, I didn't give much thought to ideas outside that lane. I was dogmatic, and I didn't always challenge my own beliefs. Time has a way of doing that for you. I've now lived through multiple market cycles. I've watched the stock market melt up to valuations that felt absurd—and then keep going. I've seen gold go from flat for a decade to parabolic over a year. I've seen interest rates sit near zero for a decade and then snap higher at the fastest pace in modern history. And I've learned, sometimes the hard way, that diversification is about survival and that every asset class has its day. One lesson I learned that I am thinking a lot about these days is: ignore major technological shifts at your own peril. Back in 2014, I first started hearing people talk seriously about Bitcoin. At the time, I dismissed it. I listened to the critics, was convinced it was a scam, and didn't take the time to truly understand it. That was a mistake—not because everyone should have bought Bitcoin, but because I ignored a structural change happening right in front of me. Bitcoin went from a cypherpunk expression of freedom to the largest ETF owned by BlackRock. Today, the dominant story is artificial intelligence. And whether you love stocks, hate stocks, prefer real estate, or focus exclusively on cash flow, you cannot afford to ignore AI. This isn't a fad. It's a general-purpose technology—on the scale of electricity, the internet, or the industrial revolution itself. That doesn't mean it's easy to invest in. It's hard to look at headline names trading at massive valuations and feel good about buying them today. But investing in AI isn't about chasing a single company. It's about understanding second- and third-order effects: energy demand, data centers, productivity gains, labor displacement, capital flows, and how blockchain and decentralized systems intersect with all of it. What experience has taught me is this: you don't need to be first to invest—but you do need to be early in understanding. If you wait until something feels obvious, most of the opportunity is already gone. This week's episode of the Wealth Formula Podcast is focused squarely on AI and blockchain—what's real, what's noise, and where the long-term implications may lie. Listen to this episode. You'll come away smarter. And years from now, you may look back and realize this was one of those moments where paying attention really mattered. Transcript Disclaimer: This transcript was generated by AI and may not be 100% accurate. If you notice any errors or corrections, please email us at phil@wealthformula.com. Welcome everybody. This is Buck Joffrey with the Wealth Formula Podcast. Coming to you from Montecito, California. Today we wanna start with a reminder. We are in a new year and we are already doing deals, uh, through the Wealth Formula Accredit Investor Club. You can go and sign up for that for free. Uh, wealth formula.com just hit investor club and you just get on there and, and you’ll get onboarded. And from there, all you gotta do is wait for deal flow and webinars coming to your inbox. And, um, you know, if nothing else, you learn something. So go check it out. Uh, go to. Wealth formula.com and sign up for Investor Club now onto today’s show. Uh, the, it is interesting. I don’t know if you are aware it’s a listener, but we are, wealth Formula is, uh, probably I would say one of the, certainly in the one of the top longest running personal finance podcasts still. Standing. Uh, I’ve been around, well, I think the first episode was on like 2014, so it was a long time, but in earnest, you know, at least for over a decade. And, you know, during that time, I’ve shown up every week, every single week. Don’t Ms. Weeks, but none, none. Isn’t that incredible? I’ve shown up, uh, talked about investing and talked about very way markets are working, forces, shaping the economy, all that kind of stuff. But you know, as you can imagine, as a. As a younger individual versus, um, my crusty self. Now, you know, a lot of my own thinking has evolved over that time, you know, back then. And I, you know, I think this appealed to some people, but, um, you know, I was really dogmatic. I’m a real estate guy, right? And I still am a real estate guy, but back then I wouldn’t give anything else the time of day to even think about, you know, and, and, uh, I, I, you know. I was dogmatic and didn’t always challenge my own belief systems. Um, I’m different now, right? I’ve softened And time is a way of, of changing all of that dogmatic stuff for you. You know, I’ve lived through multiple market cycles. I’ve watched, well, I’ve watched the stock market, which I, which I always maligned, you know, melt up to valuations. Uh, that felt absurd. And then keep going higher. I’ve seen gold, which was kind of ridiculous for the longest time. I watched it for like a decade, just pretty much flat, and then it goes parabolic. Over the last year, I’ve seen interest rates sit near zero for a decade and then snap higher. Uh, not even as time, just launch higher at the fastest space in modern history. And I’ve learned sometimes I guess, the hard way that diversification is about survival and that every class, every asset class has its day. Just like every dog has its day. And um, you know, one other lesson that I learned that I’m thinking a lot about these days is ignore major technological shifts at your own peril. So what am I talking about? Well. It’s kind of a, it is a technological shift, whether you think it about not, but Bitcoin. Okay. Back in 2014, I first started hearing people talk seriously about Bitcoin, and at that time I dismissed it. I was, uh, I was listening to critics beater Schiff that constantly called it a scam, said it was going to zero and so on. I didn’t, I didn’t take the time to truly understand it, to try to understand it the way I understand it now, that makes me a believer in Bitcoin. That, of course was a big mistake, not because, you know, everyone should have bought Bitcoin and, uh, back then, well, they, you know, would’ve been nice if they did, but because fundamentally I ignored something that was a structural change happening right in front of me. And since then, Bitcoin went from a cipher punk expression of freedom to the large CTF owned by BlackRock today. The dominant story is actually artificial intelligence. Now, whether you love stocks, hate stocks, prefer real estate focused exclusively on cab, whatever, you cannot afford to ignore ai. It’s not a fad. It’s a general purpose technology and a technology shift, and the scale of electricity. The internet bigger than the internet, bigger than the industrial revolution. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s easy to invest in. I mean, I’m gonna go invest in AI and make a bunch of money because I mean, what does that even mean? It’s hard to look at headline names, trading at massive valuations like Nvidia and all that right now, and saying, oh, I’m gonna go buy that. Who knows? That’s gonna work out. When I talk about investing in AI isn’t really just investing in stocks or any individual company or data centers or whatever. It’s about understanding. The second and third order effects, energy demand. You know, as I mentioned, data centers, productivity gains, labor displacement, capital flows, and how blockchain and decentralized systems intersect with all of that. It is very, very complicated. Um, but it’s really important to start to try to understand, you know, an experience that stop me is this. You don’t need to be the first to invest, but you do need to be early in understanding. If you wait until something feels obvious, usually the opportunity’s gone by then. And you know, the thing about AI is even if you think it’s obvious now. The reality is that most people haven’t really caught on. Maybe they played with chat GPT, but I don’t think they’re understanding what this whole, you know, this thing is gonna do to our world. Um, anyway, so that is what this week’s episode of Wealth Formula Podcast, uh, is about. It’s about AI and also, um, a little bit about, you know, bitcoin and blockchain and that kind of thing. Um, we’re gonna talk about what’s noise, uh, you know, where the long, what the long-term, uh, implications are all of this stuff. This is a show that, uh, I really enjoy doing really, really good stuff. Um, so make sure you listen in. We’ll have that interview for you right after these messages. Wealth Formula banking is an ingenious concept powered by whole life insurance, but instead of acting just as a safety net. The strategy supercharges your investments. First, you create a personal financial reservoir that grows at a compounding interest rate much higher than any bank savings account. As your money accumulates, you borrow from your own bank to invest in other cash flowing investments. Here’s the key. Even though you borrowed money at a simple interest rate, your insurance company keeps paying you compound interest. On that money, even though you’ve borrowed it, that result, you make money in two places at the same time. That’s why your investments get supercharged. This isn’t a new technique. It’s a refined strategy used by some of the wealthiest families in history, and it uses century old rock solid insurance companies as its backbone. Turbocharge your investments. Visit Wealth formula banking.com. Again, that’s wealth formula banking.com. Welcome back to the show, everyone. Today. My guest on Wealth Formula podcast is Jim Thorne, chief Market strategist at Wellington. L is private wealth with more than 25 years of experience in capital markets. He’s previously served as chief capital market strategist, senior portfolio manager, chief economist, and CIO. Uh, equities at major investment firms and has also taught economics and finance at the university level. Uh, Jim is known for translating complex economic, political, and market dynamics into clear actionable insights to help investors and advisors navigate long-term capital decisions. Uh, Jim, welcome with the program. Thanks for having me Buck. Well, um, Tim, I, I, I, uh, had been following a little bit of, uh, what you discuss on, uh, on X and, um, one of the things that caught my eye is, you know, your, your narrative on, on ai, a lot of people are tend to be still sort of skeptical of AI and what’s going on, uh, with the markets. Um, uh, but at the same time, uh, there’s this. Sense. I think that ignoring AI altogether as an investor is, is, is downright potentially dangerous. So, uh, at the highest level, why is AI something people simply can’t dismiss? Well, we live in an, uh, uh, you know, many other people have coined this term, but we live, we’re living in an exponential age of, of technological innovation. And, you know, AI and I’ll just add into their, uh, blockchain is just the normal evolutionary process that, you know, for me started when I left graduate school and came into the business in the nineties where everybody had this high degree of skepticism of the computer and the, the, the phone, the, the. And the internet. And so, you know, what we do is we go through these cycles and there are periods of time where the stars align. And we have a period of time where we have what I would call an intense period of innovation where I would suggest to you that. People are skeptical. Skeptical, and yet at the same point in time, they very early on in the, in the, in the trade, call it a bubble when it’s not. And so I think it comes from the position of ignorance. One, I think two, fear, and then three. If you think about if you are an active manager, I in a 40 ACT fund, um, you know, and you’re sitting there with, uh, you know, mi. Uh, Nvidia at, you know, eight or 9% of your index. And that’s a big chunk that you’ve gotta put into your fund, uh, just to be market neutral. So there’s a lot of people that hate this rally. There’s a lot of people that are can, going to continue to hate this rally. But the thing I anchor my hat on are a couple of things. Look at if this is no different than the railroad. Canals, any major technological innovation, will it become a bubble? Yes. Just not now. So, so let’s follow up on that, because a lot of people think, or are talking about the, do you know the.com bubble, uh, comparisons, and you’ve argued that that sort of misses the real story. So, so where are we getting it wrong right now? Are those people getting it wrong? In the nineties buck, you’d walk into a bar and there wouldn’t be ESPN on there’d be CNBC on people were getting their jobs to become day traders. Folks didn’t go to the go to university because they were basically getting their white papers financed. You had companies that were trading off of clicks. So I lived that. Anybody who is of a younger generation has no idea what a bubble is, and it’s specious and pedantic for them to use that term when they have no clue about what they’re talking about. But you did mention that it could become a bubble. How do we know when it does become a bubble? Oh, it’ll become a bubble. Well, when, when, when you know, the, what, what I am looking for is, you know, when we, when the good investment opportunities start to dry up, when liquidity starts to dry up. So what I, it’s not about valuation, to me it’s about liquidity. So in 2000, what, and I’m roughly speaking, what went down was you had all these companies that were trading at Strat catastrophic valuation, this stupid valuations, and you walked in one day and they didn’t get financing. And if you read the prospectus or you followed the company, you knew that they were not going to be free cash flow positive for another two or three rounds of financing. All of a sudden you walked in and everybody goes, oh my God, this thing, you know, trading at 250 times sales. And everybody went, yeah, of course. And so what it was is, was when does liquidity dry up? So I’ll give you a date, um, you know, with Trump’s big beautiful bill act. 100% tax deductibility of CapEx and that goes until Jan 1, 20 31. So to me, that’s a very motivating factor for people to, um, invest. The last thing I would say to you in more of a game theoretic context book is, look, if you are a big tech company and you don’t invest in ai. You are ensuring your death. Yahoo, Hela Packard. I can go through the list of companies that cease to invest, so they’re looking. If it was you and I when we were running this company, I would say, dude, we gotta invest because if we don’t have a poll position in this next platform, whatever it is, we’re done. We’re toast. And I think that’s why you’re seeing all these hyperscalers spending as much money as they are. ’cause they get this, they saw it. So, you know, you framed ai not necessarily as a a tech trade, but as a capital expenditure cycle. Can you explain that to people? Well, what we need to do is we need to build out the infrastructure of ai. Then, and that’s the phase that we’re in right now. So it’s more like we’re building out all of the railroads, the railway tracks and the railway stations across the United States back in the 18 hundreds. And then we’re gonna go through that building phase. And then as that building phase goes, some companies, some towns, are going to basically realize and recognize what’s happening and start to basically take ai. Bring it into their business model, into enhanced margins. Right. So right now we’re building it out. I mean, you know, we all focus on the hyperscalers, but the majority of companies, pardon me, governments. Individuals, they haven’t used AI and, and what is interesting about this is back in the nineties, they were talking about how the internet had to evolve to be much more. You know, uh, have critical thinking in, in, in it. And it was more explained when you went to these conferences, as you know, you know, think about this. You’re hearing this in 99, okay? Not today. You go in and you ask Google or dog pile at the same time, or excite, okay? You would say, I wanna go to Florida in the third week of March and I wanna stay here and I wanna spend this amount of money and I wanna rent a car. Plan it for me. And they would come back and they would tell you that it would come back and it would, it would, everything would be there. And you would have your over here and all you would have to do is drop your money and you had your thing planned. So none of this is as, it’s aspirational, but we’ve heard it before. And in technology, what happens is it’s not like it’s new. We’ve been talking to, I did machine learning in in graduate school. Ai, you know, I did neural networks and I’m a terrible Ian. This isn’t, you know, Claude Shannon wrote about this in 1937, right? But it’s about when does it hit, and so it was chat GBT. Can we argue, was that right? As an investor, it’s stop arguing, start investing. Then what you’ve gotta figure out, which is the question you ask, is when does the music stop? I think it goes until the end of the decade. You know, one of the things that, uh, is interesting about this, uh, AI investment, uh, it’s, it’s unfolding in a higher interest rate environment. Why is that detail so important? Understanding its significance? Well, it’s the cost of capital, right? And so this phase that we have right now. It’s funny you say that, right? ’cause our reference point is zero interest rates, right? Yeah, yeah. Right. That’s right. So, you know, you know, so, so think about this, what it happens right now. Now we’re in the phase where you’ve got these hyperscalers that instead of taking all their free cash flow and buying bonds and buying back stock, are increasing CapEx because there’s a great tax deduction on it. So you get a lot of, so we’re in this phase where, for where, where a lot of the money is, you know, was. Was, let me, let me be clear, was a hundred free cashflow. Now we’re getting these guys, these companies like Oracle and what have you, you know, starting to issue debt and look at debt isn’t bad as long as the rate of return on debt is higher than the interest rates. And so, you know, you know, I, I would say historically speaking, for a lot of these high quality names, the interest rates are not, uh, at levels that will stop them from investing. Right. Right. You know, you’ve written that, um, productivity is ultimately the real story behind ai. So why does productivity matter more than the technology headlines themselves? Well, let me just put it this way, right? So we’ve grown, I grew up, I, I joined, I’m up here in Toronto, right? So I’m gonna give it to you in Canadian dollars, right? So I joined, I joined here. You know, I grew up here, went to the states, came back home. Growing this company I joined when we’re about three and a half billion. We’re getting close to 50 billion, and we’re the fastest growing independent platform in the country. I’m a one man band, right? I use three ai. In the old days, I’d have four research assistants. Where’s the margin in that? And so I, that’s how I see it. And let me be clear, it’s, you know, this isn’t we’re, it’s not perfect. But if I wanted to say, instead of you, but hey, write me a 2000 word essay on the counterfactual of what happened with railroads up until 1894 when the, when the bubble popped, give me a f, you know, a a thousand word essay and, and just a general overview. I can get that in less than five minutes. Michael Sailor is writing product on ai, which, which, which you would take, which you would take. He’s in his presentation, say it would take a hundred lawyers. So it’s gonna be more about those. And it’s, it’s no different than Internet of things or, you know, it was, uh, Kasparov that talked about this. Gary Kasparov talking about the melding of, of technology in humans. He would ran, run this chess tournament called freestyle. You could use a computer, you could use, you know, grand Masters. You could use whatever you wanted to compete. And who won? Well, who won it Was that those teams that were generalists that had a little bit of that, the knowledge of the computer and the knowledge of the test. Uh, o of chess, right? That’s what’s gonna happen. So this isn’t we’re, as far as I’m concerned, we’re not, yes, there’s going to be some d some jobs that are going to be replaced, but that is always the case in technology. I’m not a Luddite, okay? I am not Luddite. But the same point in time. I, I would suggest to you that it, it is just a really, for me, it’s a, helps me. Do research no different than when I was an undergrad and they went from cue cards in the, the library at the university to actually having a dummy terminal and I could ask questions in queue. You know, it stalked me from having to go to the basement of the library and going to microfiche. Right. Have helping that way. Now can it, can, will it do other things? I’m sure it is, and I’ll lead that to Elon Musk and the crew. You know, that’s above my pay grade. But for me, I see it as a very helpful way of, you know, allowing me to process and delineate. Much more information a a and not have me waste so much time trying to figure out what got went on in the past or, you know, QMF. Right. You know, summarize me the talk five, you know, academic papers in this area, what are they saying? And then they gimme the papers. Right. It just speeds the process up. Yeah. You know, um, one of the things that I’ve been sort of talking about and thinking about. Is that it’s hard to not see AI as a very, very strong deflationary force. Um, how do you think about that? Yeah. Technology is deflationary, right? Doubt about it. And so I look at it this way, Ray. Um, so I work at the financial services industry, okay. You know, Mr. Diamond of JP Morgan is talking about how they are starting to embrace blockchain and ai. They are going to cut out the back end of that in the, the margins in that, in that company by the end of the cycle are going to be fantastic. People just do not get in. You know, the financial services industry is built on a platform. Of the 1960s, dude. I mean, they’re still running Fortran, cobalt. So you know what I, how I look at this is much more as a margin type story, and there’s going to be a lot of displacement. But at the same point in time, I look at Tesla and automation and ai. And you know, people look at Tesla as a car company. I look at Tesla as an advanced manufacturing company. Elon Musk could basically go into any industry and disrupt it if it wanted to. Right. So that’s how I look at it. And so, you know, the hard part is going to be, you know. Nothing. If we get back to where we were, it’s not going to be perfect, right? Because here’s, here’s where the counter is, here’s where the counter is. Right? If you, if, if you think about, and we’re, I’m gonna take Trump outta the equation and ent outta the equation right now, but if we just went back to the way things were before COVID, we would have strong deflationary forces. Okay. Just with demographics, just with excessive levels of debt. Just with, you know, pushing on a string in terms of, in terms we couldn’t get the growth up, you know, and, you know, and the overregulation of financial institutions. Trump and descent are basically applying what’s called supply side economics, and they’re deregulating. It’s says law, which is John Batiste, that says basically supply creates his own demand and it’s non-inflationary. But really what they’re going to try to do is they’re going to try to run the economy hot and they’re gonna try to pull this way out of the debt. And if you do that and you deregulate the banks. And allow the banks to get back to where they were before the financial crisis. Okay. You know, and, and the Fed takes its interest rates down to neutral, expands the balance sheet. Then I don’t think we’re gonna go back to the zero bound in deflation. I think this thing’s gonna run hot for a long time. And I think it, the real question is, is, is is 2 75 in the United States the neutral rate? I think it is. Uh, but as, as, as Scott be says, and, and, and, and, and let’s be clear, buck, the guy’s a superstar. Okay. Guy is a legend. Just you sit there, just shut up and listen to him. Okay. They keep up, right? Well, so they’re gonna run it hot, but where we are is, in his words, mine, not mine. We’re still in this detox period, you know what I mean? We still got the Biden era. We still got, you know, a over a decade of excessive ca of Central Bank intermediation. That needs to get, you know, go away. So what I say, and what I’ve been writing about is 26 is going to be the year that the baton is passed back to the private sector. Let’s get rates down to 2 75. That’s, I mean, I’m going off the New York Fed model. That says real fed funds, the real, the real neutral rate is 75 to 78 basis points. I think inflation’s at two. That that gets you 2 75. Get the rates there and then get the balance sheet of the Fed to the level so that overnight lending isn’t loose or tight. It’s just normal. And then step back, go away and let Wall Street and the private sector create credit. Create economic growth and let’s get back to the business cycle. And if we do that, we’re gonna have non-inflationary growth. It’s gonna be strong, but we’re not going back to the zero bound and we’re gonna grow our way out of this. And so that’s where I get really excited about. This is a very unique time in history. A very, very, very unique time in history where, and I don’t know how long it’s going to last because of the compression that we have now because of the, you know, we live in such a digital world, but let’s say it’s five years demographic says it’s to 33, 32 to 33. That’s, you know, that’s how long this run is. And, and to me, uh, AI is a massive play. I, I, to me, blockchain is a massive play and to me it’s to those countries and companies that get it is, whereas investors, we wanna think, start thinking about investing. Yeah. You mentioned, um, non non-inflationary growth. Can you drill down on that a little bit just so people understand a little bit where. Usually you think of an economy running super hot, you, you think automatically there’s an, you know, an inflationary growth. So I want you to think in your mind into your list as think in your mind. Go back to economics 1 0 1 with the demand curve. In the supply curve, okay? And there are an equilibrium. And at that equilibrium we have a price at an equilibrium, and we have an output as an equilibrium. Okay? Now what I want you to do is I want you to keep the demand curves stagnant or, or, or anchored. Then I want you to shift the supply curve out. Prices go down, output goes out. We can talk all this esoteric stuff, you know, you know Ronald Reagan and, and Robert Mandel and supply side economics. But it’s really your shift in the supply curve out, and that’s what, and that’s what BeIN’s doing. I mean, this is a w would just sit down and be quiet. He’s talking about, you know, what is deregulation? He’s pushing the supply provider. Oh, hold on. My phone. My, my thing. And what did, since the two thousands, what did, what was the policy? It was kingian, it was all focused on the demand curve. Everything was focused on demand. And so all we’re doing is we’re, we’re getting the keynesians out. I use 2000 ’cause that’s when Ben Bernanke really came in and was very influential. Let me just say he’s a very smart, I learned so much from reading. Smart, smart, smart, smart guy. But his whole thing was Kasan. He came from MIT, his thesis supervisor was Stanley Fisher, right? We’re going back to, you know, Mario Dragons thesis supervisors, Stanley Fisher, all these guys came from MIT, Larry, M-I-T-M-I-T, Yale, and Princeton. Whereas previously it was the University of Chicago. It was Milton Friedman. It was, it was supply side economics. We’re going back, they’re going back to supply side economics and right now we need it. We need balance. But my god, what did we end off with? We ended off with four years of mono modern monetary theory. Deficits matter. That’s insanity. You had mentioned a little bit, uh, you, you’ve talked about blockchain a few times here. Talk about the significance. I mean, it’s sort of, you know, blockchain was a thing that everybody was, everybody was talking about it, you know, three, four years ago, but now it’s all about ai. But you know, now you’ve got, um, but in, but in the background, blockchain has grown, uh, adoption has grown. Uh, tell us what’s going on there, and if you could tie it into the significance of, of where we’re at today. Yeah. Um, uh, Jeff Bezos gave a wonderful speech, I think in two thou, early two thousands, where he basically talked about the fact that, you know, once this innovation is led out of the genie’s, led out of the bottle, whether or not, you know, buck and Jim, like it as an investment, the innovation continues. And so after the internet bubble pop, right? Really smart guys like Jeff Bezos, uh, Zuckerberg, you, you, the whole cast of characters, right? Basically built it out. Okay. And it wasn’t perfect and everybody knew it wasn’t perfect. I mean, that was the whole thing that was so bizarre. But they knew it wasn’t perfect and they knew that they needed to solve some problems. Right. And you know, it was a double spend problem. I mean, the internet that we were dealing with right now was developed in the 1950s and so on and so forth. And so, you know, that always stuck with me. Right. A couple of things stuck with me because I’ve lived through a couple of these cycles. The first one is Buck. When the, when Wall Street coalesces around something just shut up and buy it, right? I mean, I, I spent too much of my life arguing about whether dog pile and Ask Gees was better than Google. Wall Street said Google was the best. Shut up. Invest, right? And so, so look, blockchain solved the double spend problem. Blockchain solved all the problems that the original iteration of the internet could solve, and everybody knew it was coming along okay. So it’s a decentral, it’s decentralized, right? Uh, does, does not need to be reconciled. So no. Not only do you have another iteration of the internet. You have basically introduced into society the biggest innovation in accounting or recordkeeping since double entry. Bookkeeping accounting was introduced in Florence, Italy centuries ago by the Medicis and, and buck. All this is out there like, so this is a profound, right? So think about you’re in an accounting department and you don’t have to reconcile, right? So look. The first use cakes was Bitcoin. And what was the, what was the beautiful thing about it? Well, first off, it grew up by itself. And secondly, it’s got perfect scarcity, right? And so let’s just full stop. And I mean, yes, gold and silver had the run that they should have had decades. So I had been waiting and listening to people, gold bugs, talking about this type of run since the nineties. Okay. Um, but look, you know, and the problem with fi money, right? I mean, this is, this goes back decades. It’s an old argument. The way you solve it is, is Bitcoin. That’s the solution. I mean, forget about it. I mean, if they’re gonna whip it around and do all this stuff, fine. But the other thing that people miss and Sailor hasn’t, and Sailor is brilliant, is look. Bitcoin is pristine collateral in 2008, in September. What caused the, the system to stop was the counter. We could not identify counterparty risk for near cash. It was a settlement problem. Anybody you talk to Buck that says it was, you know, the subprime this and it, yeah, that was crap. I get that. But when the system shut down is you had a $750 million near cash instrument with X, Y, Z, wall Street firm, and you did this for three extra beeps and it was no longer cash. Guess. And guess what? Your institutional money market fund broke the buck. That’s when the system blew sky high. When the money market broke the buck and it was a settlement problem, blockchain and Bitcoin solved that. Sailor knows that, look where Wall Street’s gonna go. They understand now that. Bitcoin is pristine, collateral and capital that is 100% transparent. Let’s lend against it, and that’s what Sadler’s doing. That’s why Wall Street hates the guy so much, right? Think about that. Think of where is he going after he’s going after all the stranded capital on Wall Street. And, and the whole point is he’s sitting there going, I’m too busy for this. And you’ve got all these other people that are gonna live off of other people’s ignorance. Meanwhile, Jing Diamond knows exactly what he’s talking about. We can identify, if I hear one more person on me in, in the meeting say, I don’t know. You know, you know, uh, micro strategies balance sheet is so complicated. Really. Compared to JP Morgans, I mean, you know what his capital is. It says Bitcoin, like, what are you guys talking about? But hey, fucking in this business, people make generational wealth on ignorance of people who think they know what they don’t know. So, you know, just going back to Jamie Diamond, you know, he spent, I don’t know how long. Throwing every insult, uh, he could towards Bitcoin. And now they’ve really kind of, they haven’t backtracked. I think he’s, he’s, you know, his, his, um, I think the way he phrases is the blockchain’s a real thing. He never seems to really say the word Bitcoin, uh, in this regard. Um, banks in general, where do you think they’re headed with this stuff? I mean, I, you know, right now, again, you can kind of see even. Um, I think, you know, some of the big advisory firms suddenly recommending one to, you know, one to 4% of people’s portfolios in Bitcoin. I mean, this is all, I mean, gosh, I, I’ve, you know, been talking about Bitcoin since 2017. This is in unbelievable transformation in less than a decade. Where do you see this going in the next five to 10 years? It’s called the, it’s called, what is it? It’s called, I’m gonna call it the Evolution of Jim. Me, you know, in my business and, and, and, and you know, the thing I have book is I’ve survived and I’ve gone through a lot of cycles. I’ve done a lot, you know, and you ask yourself, you scratch your head a lot and you’re, and you, but you’re continually doing objective research and you’re this, if you, this is why I love this game so much. Right? So let’s just go stop for a second. Let’s get some context. Right. My first summer job, one of my first summer jobs, I worked in the basement of a bank in the in, in downtown Toronto, right up the street from the Toronto Stock Exchange. And my job was to let guys in with beak, briefcases into the cage, into the big vault, to basically bring in certificates. Okay. And, and what? Stock certificates. And so remember, you know, and I remember my grandfather when we, when he died, look at, we couldn’t sell the house because he didn’t believe in the banks. And we were finding certificates all over the house in the walls. Okay? Right. So in the 1960s it was bare based. The whole industry was bare based. And there was the volume in Wall Street started to pick up to the point where they couldn’t handle the volume. There was a paper crisis where almost a third of the companies went down bankrupt because of the cage. The cage. Okay. So basically what happened was, to make a long story short, they came out with, they came, Hey, why don’t we get two computers At one point in time, they said, okay, crisis. Let’s solve it. Well, why don’t we get these two computers and we can solve, or we can sell trades among, amongst each other. Okay. And then we don’t need to have guys riding around Wall Street with bicycles and big briefcases. Okay. And then what we did was, what we did was we sat there and said, well, why don’t we have a centralized clearing, and we’re gonna call it DTC or CDS, depending on what country you’re in. And what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna offer paper, we’re gonna, we’re gonna issue paper rights to the underlying stock that was developed in the early 1970s. That’s the system that we’re on right now. There are a lot of faults with that. Let me give you, when you’ve talked about the GameStop a MC situation, when you have a company that’s basically have more shares outstanding short, sorry, more shares short than outstanding, that shows you that the old system doesn’t work. It’s called ation. The paper writes to the underlying assets, it, it doesn’t match up. There have been guys that make a career outta this and write books about this, right? Dole Pineapple. They had a corporate, a corporate event, right? Hostile takeover. 64,000 for 64 million shares, voted, I think, and there was only 3,200 on. We all know this, so this has to be solved. The way you solve it is you tokenize assets, and this was talked about a decade ago, and they know about it and true tofor, they, and if you’re thinking about it, it’s totally logical, right? But if we allow this innovation to go full stream ahead, we’re wiped out, right? So what did they do? They delayed. They delayed. And as you know, you could talk about, it’s called Operation choke 0.2 0.0. Right. You know, the Fed overreached their bounds, they de banked people. I mean, this is why, why Best it’s going after them. They, yet they stepped over their constitutional mandate. Right. The federal, the Fed Act is not, uh, does not supersede the US Constitution. Elizabeth warned the whole thing. They did it. Okay, so let’s not complain about it. So now Atkins is gonna, we’re gonna have the Clarity Act come out and they’re gonna basically deregulate New York Stock Exchange already there. They’re gonna put everything on the blockchain and when you put everything on the blockchain, trade a settlement. There’s no hypo. Immediate settlement. Immediate, which is a benefit if you can get your act together because it, you know, for Wall Street firms you need less capital, right? So it’s a natural evolutionary process. And then you sit there and go back in history, if you and I were writing it, we’d sit there and go, well, should we be surprised that the incumbents right, the status quo pushed back on innovation? No, there was a guy, there was a prophet, um. At, at Harvard, his name was Clay Christensen, and he wrote this wonderful book called The Innovator’s Dilemma. You know, why does, why don’t companies evolve, or why do they go bankrupt? It’s because they cease to evolve and the status quo doesn’t allow the evolution of the companies to take place. Right? Well, that’s what happened in RA. We’re gonna complain about it. No, it, it is what it is. It’s water under the bridge. And so what I think is happening is, you know, Mr. Diamond is basically saying. He’s pragmatic, he’s a realist. And now he’s saying, we gotta evolve. And hey, by the way, now I’ve gotten to the point where I think I can make a tunnel. Think about that. Yeah. Think about his own stable coins, right? So his own stable coins. And, uh, well think about this. If you trade like internal meetings, right? And I’m hyped this hypothetical, right? I go, fuck, don’t screw this up this time. And you’re gonna go, Jim, what are you talking about? I go. We want a nice bread between bid and ask in these financial price. We don’t wanna go down to pennies. Okay? Can we go back to the old days when we were, you know, trading in quarters and sixteenths and so we can make some skin in the game? I think you’ve got the deregulation of the banking industry where the banks are gonna, they’re fit. It’s gonna be baby steps. But what’s gonna happen is they’re gonna basically say, stop taking all that capital that’s sitting at the Fed, making four or fed funds rate overnights wherever it’s four half, 3 75 right now. And you can now trade it. Go back to prop trading, which is what they did. And they’re gonna start off, they will start off with, its only treasuries. Eventually they’ll be able to expand throughout our lifetime. So the old way you gotta look at it is, you know. We’re bringing the ba, you know, we’re putting the band back together, man. Right. And the banks are gonna deregulate, they’re gonna deregulate the banks, they’re going to innovate, they’re gonna be able to use the capital, their earnings profile going out into the end of the decade. It’s, it’s gonna be monstrous, it’s gonna be, you know, it, it’s, it’s, and, and that’s how I get, you know, when people say, where do you think the s and p goes? You know, I say, you know, 14,000, you know, double from here by the end of the decade. And he goes, well, what about ai? I go, well, they’re gonna, that’s important, but it’s the banks. I think the banks are gonna have a renaissance. Yeah. Yeah. Um, one thing just to get your thoughts on, so when you look at the banks, you talked about sort of the inevitability of tokenization. Um, the stock exchange, uh, we talked about stable coins. I mean, another great way for banks to make money. Uh, essentially where does that, how, how does that help or hurt Bitcoin adoption? Because Bitcoin is a sort of a separate, separate, you’re not, you’re not building on Bitcoin as much as you are, say, Ethereum, Mar Solana or, you know, some of the, some of the blockchain things. So, so is it just that. Is it just a, an adoption issue? Because you live in a, in a different world. You live in a world of blockchain and Bitcoin is, its currency. It’s weird, right? Because I, I’m writing this feed like, so Buck, where are you right now? Where, where, where are you located? I’m in Santa Barbara. You’re in California. So, yeah, so I’m in Toronto, right? Uh, you know, I lived in, worked in the States for, you know, a decade, a couple of decades, and I’m back home and it’s like, man, they don’t get it. Right, and, and, and, and what am I talking about? Well, well, this, this is the, the thing that you’ve gotta understand is this, right. Ethereum was invented by Vladi Butrin in this town, Joe Alozo, who’s the head of one of the largest Ethereum groups. Father is a dentist at Bathurst and Spadina. We’re up here and people are saying, oh, you know, president Trump don’t talk about being a 51st state. We act like a colony, duke. We are a, you know, we forget about calling us one. We are. So, look, it, look, there is no doubt in my mind that Ethereum is going to have a place and, and we’re going to use it. Seems like we’re going to use Ethereum and that’s the smart contract, you know? Um. And that’s fine. Um, you know, but going back in time. But, but remember, there’s not per, there’s not perfect scarcity there. So I like Ethereum, don’t get me wrong, but I look at Bitcoin and I look at the, I look at the scarcity, and I also look at the fact of, you know, what sa, what Sailor, if you sailor did a presentation in the middle of next year and all hell broke loose. What he did, and it’s, you know, and of course I’m hypothesizing. He basically went to New York and said, I am going to create fixed income products and I am going to give yields. On those products, and I’m coming after the stranded capital that sits on Wall Street that you guys have been ripping on for years. In the middle of last year, staler went public and declared war. Okay. Are we surprised that Jim Shane Oaks came out and everybody came out basically guns a blazing. Are we surprised? But what he, what Sailor did and put and slammed on the table is it’s pristine capital, it’s transparent capital. And what are you willing to pay for that? And now you GARP banks trading at. We have no idea what their capital structure really is. Honestly, we have an idea, but it’s very opaque, right? You know, the high quality names are trading at two, two to, you know, two times tangible book. You’ve got fintech’s companies trading at four to five times, right book, and you know, what’s Sailor doing right now? Diluting his stock so he can buy as much Bitcoin as he wants because he sees the next game. He says the hell with what you guys think the next game is going to be. Wall Street’s going to realize that Bitcoin is pristine capital and there’s only 21 million of it. What do you and, and what just happened today? What did Morgan Stanley just file a treasury company. So everything you and I are talking about, they know they’re smart guys, right? They’re real, they’re not. That’s, this is the whole point. They’re really, really, really smart. Okay. They see they’ve gone through the history. They know. Okay, so you’re sitting there, you get around the room, you say, so wait a minute. Wait. Whoa, sailor’s over here. And he’s basically saying he’s gonna give you a a pref that’s basically backed by Bitcoin charging 10%. And he’s going after our corporate clients. I mean, and what’s the pitch Buck? You’ve got a hundred million dollars. Okay, you got a hundred million dollars in the kitty. Okay, buck. What happens is you need $10 million a year for working capital, which is in cash, which means you’ve got $90 million sitting there idle. Hey, buck, I can give you 10% on that. You go to Jamie, he’s giving you two. What are you gonna do? Yeah. I think one of the issues right now is I the, the perceived risk profile of that. Right. Uh, you know. I tend to agree with you about the, uh, pristine nature of Bitcoin s collateral, but just in general, the perception. I don’t know that, that that’s. That’s the case. Well, you gotta go back to the fact that, do you think Bitcoin’s going to zero or not? No, of course not. Yeah. ‘ cause the Bitcoin doesn’t go to zero. There’s no, then, then that are, there’s Bitcoin could go to zero. There’s no, I mean, I don’t think, I mean, non-zero probability, of course, right? I don’t think it is. And if that has been, if it has been selected and now you have Wall Street coalescing it, I haven’t even mentioned the president of the United States or his family. Right. Uh, or the Commerce Secretary and his family, right? Or if you go to New York, wall Street, right, they’re all talking about it, right? So, I, I, you know, to me, I, I, the question about micro strategy, to me it’s not. That it’s a treasury company and it’s got a pile of Bitcoin. What does he do with it? Does he become a bank? Like why does it, this is me. I’m pitching him. Right. Hey, Mike, why don’t you just become a FinTech, say you’re like a FinTech company and you’ll get, and you, you’re gonna instantaneously trade it five to six times book. Why don’t you, why are you, you’re talking like you’re attacking them, but you’re still, you’re still a software company with a, with a big whack of Bitcoin that you are writing pres. Right? So, and, and so that’s, that’s how I look at it. I think the wave is too big. We are going to digitize. And the other thing that we didn’t really touch on with respect to AI and blockchain, and I’m gonna paraphrase the president. Right. Um, Mr. Trump is, look, um, it’s a matter of national security, duke, and when I hear that, I go back to the nineties in the eighties when I was in late eighties when I was an undergrad. Right. And it wasn’t China, it was Japan. And, and you know, what happened was, you know, it, it’s funny, Al Gore did deregulate so that. The internet could become for-profit. We all stood around and said, you know what the hell could, how do we make money on this? That’s, you know, what do we do? And then what did we do? We, we, we threw a ton of money at it and the United States controlled it. And what did we get out of it? We got out, we got, you know, all those companies. Right. The last thing I would say to you, and this is much more of a personal story, is I, when I was younger, I was in New York and it was 2000 and I was at the Grand Hyatt, and it was a tech, it was a tech conference and, uh, Larry Ellison Oracle was there and he gave a, he gave a, he gave a a, a fireside chat. Then, um, we go to a breakout room and, you know, in a break, I don’t know about if you’ve been to one, but you go to a breakout room, it’s a smaller room at the hotel, and you know, sometimes you got 25 people, sometimes you got 50 people, right. And, you know, I went to the, I went to the breakout with Mr. Allison ’cause of Oracle and I went in there and it was absolutely jammed and I was sweating and he just looked at us and he just ripped us. He AP Soly, just, I still have the scars today. I’m talking to you about it. Okay. He called it a bubble. He called it a bubble. He, he was early in calling it a bubble. I never forgot that. And then you sit there and see what he’s doing right now. Where he’s levering up the balance sheet. Now, to me, having survived in this game for such a long period of time, and I call it a game, it’s a game of strategy, whatever, you know, how does that not, you know, I would say to you, we were, your office was next to mine. Fuck. I remember New York, he’s loading the goose loaded in. He go in, he’s borrowing money from his grandmother. He’s, you know, what is going on. And he’s really stinking smart. You know, he’s, he, Larry Allenson just doesn’t do, and people, oh, he’s in, you know, he’s, no, he’s not, he’s, he’s like the mentor of all of these guys. You know what I mean? So there’s a, to me, there’s a discontinuity that these need to believe that we’re still early on because you know, what, if Larry’s, what do we take when Larry or Mr. Ellison is leveraging up to me, it’s profound because I’m anchoring off of my bias to the New York, the New York high at, at the Tech Co. I think it was, I think it was at Bear Stearn. I couldn’t remember Bear Stearns or Lehman. But you know, one of those I carry that experience on with the rest of my life. I do. It’s like, what is Larry thinking? Right? So he’s leveraging up buck. That’s all I know. He’s a priest or guy. Well, that’s probably a good place for us to stop, Jim, uh, chief, uh, market strategist at Wellington Elta Private Wealth. Thank you so much for joining me. Thanks so much and be safe. You make a lot of money but are still worried about retirement. Maybe you didn’t start earning until your thirties. Now you’re trying to catch up. Meanwhile, you’ve got a mortgage, a private school to pay for, and you feel like you’re getting further and further behind. Now, good news, if you need to catch up on retirement, check out a program put out by some of the oldest and most prestigious life insurance companies in the world. It’s called Wealth Accelerator, and it can help you amplify your returns quickly, protect your money from creditors, and provide financial protection to your family if something happens. The concepts here are used by some of the wealthiest families in the world, and there’s no reason why they can’t be used by you. Check it out for yourself by going to wealth formula banking.com. Welcome back to the show everyone. Hope you enjoyed it. Uh, and, uh, as I said before, do not ignore ai. This is something that you need to start using. Have your kids start using it. Uh, make sure that they, you know. They use it every day because this whole world is turning AI and it’s gonna happen. You know, it’s gonna happen in, in a blink of an, uh, blink of an eye. And the world is gonna change and there are gonna be real winners out there. And the winners are gonna be people who knew where there was, was going and kind of used it in their mind’s eye as they looked on navigating how. You know how to allocate their money. Anyway, that is it for me. This week on Wealth Formula Podcast. This is Buck JJoffrey signing off. If you wanna learn more, you can now get free access to our in-depth personal finance course featuring industry leaders like Tom Wheel Wright and Ken McElroy. Visit wealth formula roadmap.com.
On Tuesday's Mark Levin Show, history teaches us and helps demonstrate what patriotism is. But how can we demand patriotism from immigrants when we have American citizens on the neo-fascist right who trash our history? These people are not America first. How can they be America first when they don't understand our history, or founding? They will ensure that the Republicans lose the midterms and the Democrats choose the next president by causing even a small number of Republican and conservative voters to stay home. And the Marxist-Islamist left loves Carlson and the rest of them, as do the Democrat media that continuously promotes them. They know that he and his ilk will deliver them victories. We must do all we can to overcome this. Later, socialism light is not the answer to affordability. Capitalism is how you create prosperity and growth, which creates affordability and supply. Socialism light is also ineffective against aggressive socialism and the RINO proponents sound like liberals or Marxists. They lack coherent philosophy and resort to attacks while ignoring historical lessons from great minds like Milton Friedman, Mises, Hayek, Adam Smith, Reagan, and Trump. Afterward, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is doing an excellent job. That's why the hate America Democrats relentlessly attack him. They need to get the hell off his back and condemn our enemies instead! Finally, Steve Hilton calls in to discuss his race for Governor of California. He can achieve a political upset next year by adopting Trump's common-sense approach nationwide, focusing on addressing bloated government and high costs driven by the climate insanity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices