AXEL KAISER | How the West Was Lost
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 10 minutes
Words per Minute
169.3196
Summary
In this episode, Axel Kaiser makes the case against leftist ideology, why America is the last glimmer of hope in the world, and how a basic understanding of economics could free us all. He is a Chilean-American lawyer with a Master s in Investments, Commerce, and Arbitration, a Master of Arts, and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Heidelberg, Germany. He s also a bestselling author of his latest book, The Street Economist, and has won several international prizes for his writings. His opinions have been published in international media such as the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and the Washington Post. And in 2021, a study published by the Johns Hopkins University Institute for Applied Economics, placed him third among the influencers on economic matters with the greatest global impact in Latin America, Spain and the United States.
Transcript
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We all know how the West was won with rugged individualism, a bold and daring approach to
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the new frontier, and a fierce belief in personal liberty and independence. But that does not
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describe the West, or more specifically, America any longer. We've traded individualism for
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collectivism, risk-taking for easy handouts, and liberty for big brother. My guest today,
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Axel Kaiser, makes the case against leftist ideology, why America is the last glimmer of
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hope in the world, and how a basic understanding of economics could free us all. Today, we talk
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about public debt and entitlement, whether the leftist ideology that permeates our culture
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is based in ignorance, stupidity, or malice, why the meritocracy isn't a representation of power
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hierarchies, which a lot of people like to say, and how if we continue down this path, we may see a
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new age of darkness. You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest, embrace your fears,
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and boldly chart your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every
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time. You are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life.
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This is who you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and
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done, you can call yourself a man. Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Michler. I'm the
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host and the founder of the Order of Man podcast and movement. Welcome here today and welcome back.
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If you're joining me for the very first time, this is a good one to join us on because this is a
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powerful representation of what we talk about here. And although some people might believe this
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is political, I think this has a lot to do with what it means to be a good man and how we can begin
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to reshape our culture and society in a way that not just serves us as individuals, but our families,
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our communities, our country, and everybody that we absolutely can, the people that we care about.
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So glad you're tuning in before we get into the meat of the discussion. I do want to share that
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doing great things in Montana. And I think you'll be very, very happy and pleased with the knives they
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create. All right, guys, let me introduce you to my guest. His name is Axel Kaiser. He is a Chilean
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German lawyer with a master's in investments, commerce, and arbitration, a master of arts and
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a doctor of philosophy from the university of Heidelberg, Germany. Uh, this guy is absolutely
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incredible. Uh, he's been a visiting scholar at Stanford university Hoover's institution. He's also
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a bestselling author of his latest book, the street economist, which we talk a little bit about
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today. And he's also won several international prizes for his writings. Uh, his opinions have
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been published in international media, such as the wall street journal, uh, the Washington post
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forbes.com newsweek, the Washington examiner. These are just to name a few. And in 2021, there was a
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study published by the Johns Hopkins university Institute for applied economics, which placed him
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third among the influencers on economic matters with the greatest global impact in Latin America,
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Spain, and the United States. So this is a man who's well-versed in economics and also the signs
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of the times and, uh, what is happening, not just with economics, but, uh, culture as a whole. Enjoy
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this one guys. Axel, what's going on? Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today.
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No, thank you very much for the invitation. Yeah. I was glad that you reached out because I, I,
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I, I've seen your work. I I've read a little bit of your book. I haven't got through the whole
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thing, but this is a constant pain point for me. The, uh, the ignorance, the ignorance around
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economics, uh, the ignorance around how money works, how value is driven, who gets to determine
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value. And I was, I was going through your book and going through your work. I'm like, okay,
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finally here, here's an individual who gets it and can explain it in a way that is easy for us to
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understand and consume. If we didn't spend any amount of time in the financial industry,
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like I have in the past. So your work is invaluable. Yeah. Thank you very much. Uh, I wrote this book,
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uh, you know, with the aim of, uh, having accessible material for, for people, uh, so that they can
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understand basic economic principles. And, um, that's because I've seen in Latin America, how populism
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and socialism, uh, feeds from this ignorance. People don't understand really basics, uh, economic
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ideas, like what are prices, for example, how, how do they form, uh, what is capital, how is capital
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created and so on. So I, I, uh, wrote this book, 15 lessons. Uh, it's called the street economist
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with 15 lessons in economics. Everyone should know it's a very short book. It has no, uh, footnotes
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and it has no, you know, math or graphs or anything like that. So it's very easy to understand. And it has
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been a huge success in many, many countries. Yeah. The only thing that would have been better for me,
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if there were more pictures, but outside of that, this is my speed and it's all, like I said,
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so easy to understand. Yeah. But you know, it has been very popular among the youth, which is
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really important to me because if you see surveys, polls, like even in the United States,
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socialism is, uh, becoming more and more popular among Gen Zers and, you know, uh, people who are at
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school or university or universities, not only in the United States, but also in Latin America or in,
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in Europe. So, uh, now it's being published in, in different European countries, even in Germany,
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it has been a huge success in Germany, uh, but also in different Latin American countries and Spain
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and so on. So, um, I think the aim of the book, which was to make it easy for people to understand,
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uh, economics has been achieved and, you know, it's from all social classes. It's very interesting
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because it's not elitist guys coming out from the university wanting to understand economics. It's,
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it's the taxi driver, you know, it's the, uh, you know, the delivery guy, everyone, I mean,
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from different social, um, circumstances, they are reading the book and that's makes, that makes me
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very happy. And it has been a huge selling book. How let's, let's talk about socialism. Let's define
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that term first before we get into the weeds and the nitty gritty of what that means and what it looks
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like and why it has become increasingly popular among, uh, younger generations. Uh, the way I
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understand it, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is that socialism is basically, uh, in a way that
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the, the control over the means by which, uh, products and goods and services are produced and
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then distributed through a government entity, uh, based on people's needs, not necessarily the
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meritocracy that we somewhat live in right now. Yeah. So, um, socialism in economic terms,
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this is a classic definition is the, uh, control by the state over the means of production. Right. Um,
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but now I would, I would suggest something a little bit different. It's, um, and it has more to do with
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philosophy than merely with economics. It has a lot to do with economics, but it's, it's, it's really the,
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it's a collectivist mindset. It's the idea that individualism is wrong, that pursuing your own
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happiness, uh, and trying to help others, uh, you know, in following arrangements, it's, it's a problem.
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And therefore you have to, uh, collectivize, uh, property and you have to collectivize more and more
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the fruits of people's labors and labor. And so socialism today means a lot of government
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redistribution, a lot of government intervention. And, um, so the, the, the product of your labor
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is socialized basically, because if you are paying taxes as you are paying in Europe, sometimes you're
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paying 60, 70% of your income in taxes. If you add everything, put everything together, then really
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you are not working for yourself or your family. You're working for the government and they spend the
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money as they see fit. So, um, I, I would, I would suggest that socialism nowadays, there are not many
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people who really propose the Soviet union style of economic system. They, they, what they want is to
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confiscate what, uh, private individuals can create. And in some cases like Latin America, you have,
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you know, uh, a more straightforward brand of socialism, which is government taking over crucial
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companies like mining, the mining sector, uh, like natural resources and, and things like that. It's
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what you have in Venezuela, for instance. Right. Um, so, and, and then you have the whole progressive
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part with, with, with deconstruction and the woke movement. And that is also mixed with this anti-capitalist
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mindset, um, which is very antithetical to all the ideals that was, that were very, uh, I mean,
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that were foundational to the United States, for example. So that's, that's what, um, what I would
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say socialism is today and a little bit different from the classic version, right?
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It's, it's interesting that you're talking about that, that, um, that collectivist mindset, because on
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one hand, you're talking about it with this growth of socialism, but on the other hand, there's really a
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pervasive idea in, in the United States. And I'm sure across much of the Western world that it's all
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about the idolization of self. So you have people saying, you know, they're, uh, like trans, the
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transgender movement, I think is a great example of that. We're no longer going to fit into these
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clearly identified biological, uh, windows or, or labels, as they like to say. And instead,
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we're going to say that I feel this way, therefore I am. And it's become an idolization of self rather
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than, uh, the, the collective agreement or understanding of, in this case, how biology
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works. So on one hand, in this idea of socialism, you have this idea that, uh, it's not about self,
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but then, but then societally it really has become about self and all the institutions of the Western
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world are being systematically and, and, and painfully dismantled.
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I, I, I fully agree. But you know, the main difference is we classical liberals or conservatives,
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we, we, we believe in the individual, even some social Democrats like Bill Maher, for instance,
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right. They, they are not so much a woke thing, but we believe in the individual as a, as a reality.
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What does it mean that we believe that there is a truth? And, and part of that truth is that we
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exist as individuals. That means we have concrete circumstances, like you are male or female,
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male, and we believe in reason. That means, uh, we can use arguments based in logic and evidence
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in order to make our case. And we believe in fundamental rights like liberty and life and
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all of that. Right. And, uh, the problem with the woke movement, and we have to remember this is that
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it is, um, an offspring of neo-Marxist ideologies, uh, like the French postmodern tradition and the
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Frankfurt school in Germany. And so the main idea within the woke movement is that the truth doesn't
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exist. Everything is about power. So it's, it's narratives competing in order to dominate, um,
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the, uh, certain groups like white has heterosexual, heterosexual straight men. I mean, of course,
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straight men, um, create narratives that would marginalize all other groups. And therefore,
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if for instance, you say Shakespeare was a great writer, what you are saying is, um, that you are,
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um, marginalizing all other writers who are not a white straight upper class, uh, Western civilization
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type of, uh, white men. Right. And so, um, the, the problem with the woke movement is because they don't
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have an idea of objective truth. It's all about your own feelings and nothing else. And, and, and,
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and they destroy the individual as a practical reality. They, they, uh, deny that the individual
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does exist in the sense that, uh, there is some reality beyond your feelings, your perceptions,
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or the ideas you have in your mind. And that relativism, it's core to every totalitarian ideology.
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If you go to Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, it was exactly the same. And that was, uh, one of
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Carl Popper is the great philosopher of science in the 20th century. He criticized these ideologies
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for being relativistic in nature. And they deny the existence of the existence of truth in order to
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impose the truth that they want. And that's sort of, uh, their interest and their, um, you know,
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um, uh, their aim of, um, having more and more power in their own hands. And so it's, uh, it's a very,
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um, um, you know, deep, a debate that you can have about these issues because there have,
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they have a long history in, in, in philosophy. And unfortunately you are seeing now that the West
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going down the drain because of these, uh, relativistic ideologies are, uh, taking over
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all the institutions. And that's why you can't claim that the West is better than other civilizations.
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You can't claim that there are, um, intrinsically positive things about the West. And you cannot
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claim that there is any sort of hierarchy or superiority about anything because all that there
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is, is power structures and narratives and, um, and that have been created by the white guys in order
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to oppress everyone else. And you only can sustain that if you deny the existence of truth, because if you
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admit that there is truth, then you have to accept that some things are better than others, because
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you have an objective standard in order to measure if something is better than the other thing.
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Right. And if some cultures are better than others, and if some ideas are better and so on and so forth.
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So, so that I would say is the main difference between, um, between what we argue individual.
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I mean, what we classical liberals defend as an individual and what they argue is an individual.
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They, they, they, the, as, as I said, they deny the existence of the individual and go to a point
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where is a, a mere creation of their imagination, like it, like it, you know, um, like they were in
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the matrix or something like that. It's, it's not really, um, a serious philosophy, but it's very contagious.
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The, the power, the power dynamics is a really interesting argument. Uh, for example, someone
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listening to this podcast might, might conclude if they fall under this ideology that I have some
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level of power because I have access to this podcast or access to guests like yourself, or I'm somewhat
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influential with the people who would listen. And I'm on a micro scale compared to other companies and
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organizations out there, but I'm just using this as an example. But what's interesting about it is
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that if I let that so-called power go to my head, uh, or I start losing my ability to add value.
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And that's one of the concepts you talk about in your book is who determines value if I understand
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correctly. So if I lose perceived value in the eye of the consumer, that's so-called power that I had
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goes away. I'm no longer as influential as I once was. So the power is not really there. The power is
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with the 8 billion people collectively, uh, on the planet deciding what is valuable and what they're
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willing to trade or pay for goods and services. But I'm always fascinated with individuals who buy into
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this power hierarchy. And in order to replace the power dynamics and structures they believe exist,
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they're willing to trade it to a all powerful, all, uh, benevolent government that has proven throughout
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time in history to squash and trample individuals way quicker and with much more brutality than any
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organization or corporate company on the planet. I don't understand why it's okay that the government
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Yeah. You know, Ludwig von Mises, the great Austrian economist used to, used to speak about this and
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he, he defined this worldview as a statolatry, right? It's a sort of religion that, um, that you
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embrace and makes you believe that the government, the state is going to somehow solve all problems and
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it's going to, you know, elevate society to higher degrees of moral, uh, standing and economic
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prosperity, which is of course nonsense because there is no such thing as government or state,
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the state. There are groups of people who have certain privileges in the monopoly of violence.
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That's what we call the state and politicians and they have their own agendas and their own,
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and they also pursue their own interests, but with our money. And then we have the regular citizens who
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have to pay taxes in order to support all of that and, uh, and, and fund all of these people. And, um,
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um, and, and, and this is one of the things I explained in the book, uh, value is, is created
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by the entrepreneurs and, you know, business people only in so far as they are, um, satisfying
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demands and needs from the consumers and the regular people. I mean, there is, there is zero chance that
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you can become rich in a capitalist society or the free market. If you don't come up with some idea that
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people value because no one is going to buy it. Uh, and so you will go broke, uh, and you have
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every day, uh, thousands of companies that are going broke, you know, from large corporations to
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small, um, enterprises. And so it's, it's a big misconception to think that for instance,
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even your income is determined by the generosity of your employer. That's not the case. And there is
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no power. Bill Gates has no power over us because he's much wealthier than we are. I mean, and,
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and, and, and astronomically wealthier than we are. So why not? Because we, we have something
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called a human capital, right? If Bill Gates came to you and told you, okay, now you work for me for
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$500 per month, you would say no chance. I will, I will not do that because I mean, I have alternatives,
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right? In the free market, I can go and make 10,000, 20,000 a month, whatever. And, um, and so Bill
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Gates has no power over you. He, he will have to go to the MIT engineers and pay what they are demanding in
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the market, even though he's much wealthier. So this idea that wealthy people have power
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because they have money, it's a complete misconception. And, and the only way they
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can have real power is by colluding with the politicians, because then they have the compulsory
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apparatus of the state that can make, you know, laws that benefits, uh, benefit them and, and give
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them privileges and all sorts of subsidies. And that's when you have crony capitalism, which is the
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opposite to free market capitalism. And I think that's what people conflate, right? They say,
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well, capitalism is bad. It's like, well, tell me what about capitalism is wrong. And they'll
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explain crony capitalism. I'm like, I agree. That is horrible. You know, whether it's big pharma or
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we even see this in, in tech spaces and social media spaces with, uh, all sorts of revelations showing that,
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uh, the, the department of justice and other departments within the federal government,
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uh, have, have colluded with big tech companies to suppress certain platforms, certain thoughts
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and concepts that has nothing to do with capitalism. That's crony capitalism. And that's actually what
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we're suggesting people want more of that's a confusing concept to me. Yeah. But that's exactly,
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you know, that happens because people really don't know a lot about economics. And that's why I wrote the
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books, the book, uh, the street economist, because if people understood like how prices work, how
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productivity is determined, why does capital and things like that, they would never, um, endorse this
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worldview that the government is the solution for our problems. And, and that, you know, uh, capitalism
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is the same as crony capitalism. A free market system is by definition free. You have some rules
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like private property and others, and then you have to compete and you have to compete in order to
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collaborate with your consumers, which is another myth that, you know, that the system is cruel because
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you are only competing and then, uh, it's so inhuman and so on. No, a free market is a system where
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people compete. Yes. Companies compete, but in order to collaborate with the consumers, you have
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Toyota competing, you know, with Mazda or Subaru or whatever, but, uh, in order for you to have a better
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car that is cheaper, right? Or now Tesla with other, uh, uh, companies, uh, making, uh, electric
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vehicles. So, um, so it's, it's the best system that has ever existed and we are corrupting it more
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and more with huge government spending, with huge government interventions everywhere. And the United
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States, unfortunately is not an example. And I see many resemblances to what's going on in Latin
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America. I mean, I'm very worried about the United States if they don't, if they don't go back to
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their free market. Um, if you want Jeffersonian type of, uh, ideas, um, with small government,
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no, uh, he, Jefferson, uh, was bragging about the fact that they had, he had shrunk the government
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when he was a president. And at the time the government was minimal. It didn't exist practically.
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And he was pretty much against the idea of expanding the powers of government. And now
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you have this ideology proposing that the government has to intervene everywhere. And on top of that,
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you have the woke movement, which is a sort of totalitarian ideology that is, you know,
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corrupting everything from the humanities, which are completely lost, I would say to, uh,
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hard sciences. You can't, you can't even do physics now without having concern for diversity in your
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team. If the results will offend or not certain groups and so on and so forth. This is insane.
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What's going on. It's, it's really the decline of the West. And I'm very worried about this.
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We see, uh, one of the most recent things, I think to your point in the news is this, uh,
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frivolous lawsuit against, uh, I believe it's against SpaceX because, uh, SpaceX has not, uh, hired enough,
00:23:12.060
uh, uh, asylum seekers or, you know, foreign nationals. And so now SpaceX is being sued and
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it's no longer about, it's no longer about the product, the rockets and the propulsion and the
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innovation and the adaptation that you talk about in the book. And now it's more, well,
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what does your workforce look like? And that has nothing to do necessarily with creating a better
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product that's going to get us to the moon or space exploration or Mars, or even advancements
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in technology that we as consumers will use in our everyday lives. Absolutely. You know,
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the problem is that, you know, the United States is, it's a nation that was founded on the idea of
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moral equality. That means that everyone, all men are created equal. Basically that means we have the
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same rights. Yeah. And, and so the, uh, natural outcome of that is institutional, institutional
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arrangements, uh, that guarantee equality before the law, equal treatment. Right. But the problem is
00:24:14.140
that in order to have a free society, you need to believe that the important unit is the individual
00:24:20.780
and not collective groups. Like, um, so you are an individual with your own, um, character and I
00:24:28.860
judge you, but I can judge you by the content of your character and your actions. But the woke movement,
00:24:34.860
what, what has, um, achieved is to convince many people that the important, um, thing is that,
00:24:43.100
I mean, the color of your skin, your genitalia, uh, your, your, whatever, you know, your, um,
00:24:49.740
sexual orientation, all of those things. And why did they do that? Because they, they have fallen
00:24:57.180
to what is called identity politics. The politics of identity means that you, uh, create certain
00:25:04.300
groups that have contingent, um, qualities like the color of the skin, uh, sexual orientations, what I,
00:25:11.660
what I, what I just explained, and you conceive them as being in existential opposition with other
00:25:19.020
groups. So straights against, uh, gays and then white people against all the rest and so on.
00:25:26.300
And when you have this worldview institutionalized, you cannot have equality before the law.
00:25:33.340
And so SpaceX can't really hire people anymore based on their qualifications and their merits,
00:25:39.900
because that would assume that you are evaluating people for their, um, abilities and not for the color
00:25:47.260
of their skin, their social condition, their background, and so on. And that's incompatible
00:25:54.140
with the expectations of an identitarian sort of mindset, which would tell you, you need to have
00:26:00.860
women, you need to have black people, you need to have Latinos and so on. And, and, and it's a
00:26:06.380
never ending story because you can always go further, you know, down the road and say, why don't you have
00:26:12.780
overweighted people in your, in your, in your, in your team. And then all institutions become politicized
00:26:19.260
and then they don't serve the purpose that they are, they have been created to, uh, for, which is,
00:26:24.060
uh, in the case of SpaceX, you know, to get to Mars or whatever, they, they become tools for, um, power agenda,
00:26:32.460
which is promoted by the left. Um, and it has to do with, um, the, this forced diversity, forced
00:26:41.340
inclusion, which is everything, but real diversity and real inclusion because they celebrate the color
00:26:47.500
of your skin as long as you don't vote for Trump. Right. I mean, if, if you think differently from
00:26:53.100
everyone else, then you are also not invited despite the fact that you are a black or Latino
00:26:59.020
or something like, like, you know, a minority. And, um, and so diversity is okay. As long as
00:27:04.700
everyone thinks the same and you see that in universities, you see that everywhere. And that's
00:27:08.940
why I, I claim that the West is in decline because everything from sports to new classical music and
00:27:16.620
companies has become politicized and, uh, they have been corrupted by this agenda. That's what I was saying.
00:27:25.900
Right. If you have, if you have a laboratory at university in Harvard, let's say at Harvard,
00:27:32.620
and you don't have enough women, like you have a problem. They're not giving you the funds. They're
00:27:37.900
not giving you money for research because now that's a requirement if you want to get funds.
00:27:44.700
Uh, but what makes you think that because you have more diversity in your lab in terms of, of, uh,
00:27:50.380
you know, biological diversity, for example, right. Gender that would make it a better place to
00:27:57.260
discover anything like, like, is it cells are going to reveal themselves, uh, you know,
00:28:01.980
easy to have two women and one guy looking at them. I don't think so. So this is complete nonsense.
00:28:09.820
And, but it's, it is having, it's having disastrous effect all over, all over the institutions,
00:28:16.540
public and private institutions. Well, I mean, part of it is just speaking out of both
00:28:20.540
sides of your mouth. What do they call it? 1984, uh, uh, double speak, right? It's like,
00:28:24.700
you think about what is it? Yeah. The, uh, double, yeah. The, uh, or well with the,
00:28:32.140
having two contradictory ideas up the same. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's double.
00:28:35.820
Yeah. So here's one right here. You mentioned it yourself. Uh, having, having enough women,
00:28:41.820
for example, at a university in order to secure grants. Well, the same people that would say you
00:28:47.260
need more women can't even tell me what a woman is. They can say that one person can define themselves
00:28:52.140
as a woman one day. And the next day define themselves as a, you know, a, a pansexual
00:28:57.660
kangaroo or something. It's like, well, how are you going to tell me you need more women,
00:29:01.420
but you can't even tell me what an actual woman is like that's speaking out of both sides of your
00:29:05.500
mouth. And you know, at this point, I can't help, but think it's only one of three things.
00:29:10.060
It's either ignorance, just being dumb or being malicious. And I don't know that we can do anything
00:29:17.980
about being dumb or malicious, uh, ignorance. Sure. We can educate, but outside of that has me
00:29:24.060
very concerned. You've, you've mentioned multiple times that you're concerned for the future of the
00:29:28.060
West, specifically the United States. What does this look like in your mind? If we continue down,
00:29:33.660
uh, with our, with our identity politics and with our, uh, economic catastrophes, what does this
00:29:40.860
actually look like in reality? If we continue down this path? I wouldn't rule out in the future,
00:29:46.620
if this continues our civil war in the United States, because, you know, the last time in us,
00:29:53.740
I mean, you, you had this, um, this fight for the soul of the nation was in the American civil war,
00:30:01.580
which was really the idea that no slavery was incompatible with the promises made by the founding
00:30:06.860
fathers. Which I think most people would agree with. Of course, it's absolutely true. There's no
00:30:12.860
question about that. But now you have this, um, totalitarian left, um, woke people telling you
00:30:22.460
that the, the idea of equality before the law, which is, you know, what the civil war was about,
00:30:30.220
it was equality before the law, equality for everyone, um, is racist in itself, in its essence.
00:30:38.140
It's, it's a part of the narrative and the power structures created by white men in order to
00:30:45.500
marginalize the rest. And how do they, uh, demonstrate this? Well, they tell you, look at the
00:30:52.940
numbers of African Americans who are, you know, um, not, uh, I mean, being, being very, uh, left behind,
00:31:02.220
I mean, who are being left behind or, or so. And they tell you that's because of systemic racism.
00:31:08.380
And how do you fix systemic racism, which is baked into the constitution in, into the traditional
00:31:14.460
institutions in the United States? Well, you have to, you have to make a revolution. That's
00:31:19.420
basically what you have to do. You have to get away with the American constitution. You have to get
00:31:23.180
away with the idea of equality before the law. You have to start introducing all of these, of course,
00:31:28.460
affirmative actions, which are already old in, in the United States. That's, that's not recent thing,
00:31:33.500
but now you are having universities that are, you know, dropping, uh, the GREs or, uh, you know,
00:31:41.420
standardized tests in order to have more inclusion. And then you have people fighting each other.
00:31:46.780
You had the Asian American community suing Harvard because they are being discriminated
00:31:51.820
massively against in order to favor Latinos and black people. This is a disgrace. This is not the
00:31:57.500
spirit of the United States. So I can easily imagine that if everything becomes politicized at some
00:32:03.100
point, people will want to have their country back and, and, and, and others will want to destroy it.
00:32:09.260
Yeah. Yeah. On the left. And, and that's really dangerous to me. If, if, if there is not, if the,
00:32:14.940
if the democratic party does not react against this woke nonsense and starts becoming more reasonable,
00:32:23.740
then I believe that, uh, the reaction will be also much more aggressive. And at some point you will have,
00:32:29.900
uh, a national crisis and that's the worst, the worst scenario that you can, it's a nightmare basically.
00:32:35.980
Yeah. Well, of course, you know, millions of people will die if that's the case. Uh, it's,
00:32:40.940
I've thought about that with regards to civil war. And I think some of the cases against it are,
00:32:45.500
you know, what does, what does that even look like geographically? You take the civil war, uh,
00:32:50.220
and it was essentially drawn North versus South. Right. But that, that doesn't take place today.
00:32:56.060
That's different. I mean, my, my neighbor, you know, could, could be, uh, a leftist and I could be
00:33:01.580
ultra conservative, uh, or, or, or vice versa. And so we're so intermingled and intertwined that
00:33:07.660
I don't think there's a, a clearly defined geographical line where that civil war takes
00:33:11.980
place, which has me wondering, I don't know that you're wrong. I just wonder what that actually would
00:33:17.260
look like because of how mixed we are geographically. Yeah. I'm not entirely sure, but, uh, if you take a
00:33:26.140
look at the voting records in the United States, you can see that Democrats are winning in the, uh,
00:33:31.420
in the coasts basically. And, uh, yeah, cities and all the rest is, is basically red. So there is a
00:33:39.580
huge divide between the elites and the urban type of population and the rest of the, of the, uh,
00:33:46.300
American citizens. And, uh, and, and it's so, the mindset is so different that you can have
00:33:54.860
someone like Hillary saying these people are all deplorables, right? And then you have the
00:34:00.620
arrogance of the coast elites, um, telling them that they are all racist and xenophobes and this
00:34:07.820
and that. And of course, that's not, that's not really helping. And then you have, for instance,
00:34:13.180
someone who, who has, uh, studied this in great detail, which is the sociologist, um, Charles
00:34:19.740
Murray, he wrote this book coming apart. And, and you can see that in the United States, you have
00:34:28.300
now, um, uh, a huge divide that had never happened before in terms of social classes,
00:34:36.140
in terms of ideas, in terms of values, in terms of everything. And so, um, even,
00:34:43.660
even in terms of politics, people are trying to move to places where they don't find
00:34:51.260
people who think differently anymore. I mean, of course you have everywhere,
00:34:54.540
Republicans and Democrats, and that's, that's for sure. But if you take a look at the large numbers,
00:34:59.900
I know many people who have left, uh, California because they don't like the politics of the place
00:35:04.140
and they don't like to be surrounded by these, uh, inquisitors who are, you know, trying to,
00:35:09.340
to, to cancel you all the time. Uh, and I'm sure there are millions of cases like that. Um,
00:35:16.460
if I had, if I had to move to the United States and I'm in the process of probably doing so,
00:35:21.500
I would move to Florida where I'm right now, because I can't really express my free opinion
00:35:28.220
if I was living in New York among the elites there or in, or in California and LA or something
00:35:33.580
like, unless I'm in a very close circle of friends. And so, um, this totalitarian mindset
00:35:39.500
of the woke movement, I think, of course, is creating a reaction against it, which is also
00:35:44.700
strong and it will make it more difficult to, to be, to, to live together. And, and, and I've seen
00:35:54.220
this idea. I don't remember which politician proposed it, but like, let's, let's, let's end the union
00:36:00.540
and have Democrats living in some States and Republicans living in other States.
00:36:05.980
It's happening. It's happening naturally, I think. And the question is, can you, can you sustain the
00:36:11.420
union in the long run? If you have such divisions, I'm not sure. All right, man, I'm going to take a
00:36:18.220
break from the conversation very quickly. I got to ask, are you feeling stuck? I mean, I talk with
00:36:23.180
hundreds, if not thousands of men each and every week, and I can tell you with 100% certainty that
00:36:30.460
many of them are feeling trapped and stuck in horrible relationships, uh, dead end jobs,
00:36:36.820
basically just a life of complacency and mediocrity. Uh, unfortunately, way too many of these men
00:36:42.680
attempt to pull themselves out of the waking nightmare. Uh, they found themselves in, but that
00:36:48.220
doesn't work. It's impossible to pull yourself out of a place that you currently are. And what you need
00:36:53.360
is someone else from a different perspective on sure footing to offer a hand so that you can begin
00:36:58.700
to change your current reality. And that is what we do inside of our brotherhood of men. We work
00:37:03.900
together to help each other out. We don't offer handouts because that doesn't help either. We offer
00:37:08.520
hand ups. And that means that you're going to have to work as hard, if not harder than the man who is
00:37:16.040
working to serve you. So if you're ready to put in the work and just need an assist along the way,
00:37:21.620
we have a proven, a proven framework and a solid network of men who will band with you along the
00:37:27.620
way. So I'd invite you to join us in less than 10 days in the iron council. And you can do that at
00:37:34.380
order of man.com slash iron council again, order of man.com slash iron council. Do that right after
00:37:41.540
the show for now. Let's get back to it with Axel. Yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't think it's,
00:37:46.600
I don't think it's possible at the rate that we're going, you know, we've talked a lot about
00:37:51.360
different political ideologies that fall outside of the scope of economics, but you chose to write
00:37:59.400
this book and you study a lot on economics, especially these 15 principles that people can
00:38:03.600
apply is part of the reason. And I don't want to lead you at all, but I'm wondering if part of the
00:38:08.540
reason is because this is the entry point to helping people understand, and then it permeates other
00:38:13.620
facets of our lives, or is it just a small piece of the puzzle that's separate from other areas that
00:38:20.000
we also need to address? I think, I think it's a, it's a crucial part of the battle against tyranny and
00:38:28.280
against ever-growing governments, because I'm absolutely convinced that economic, you know,
00:38:36.180
illiteracy is the main reason why people, or one of the main reasons why people tend to support
00:38:42.340
big, uh, government politicians and populists and socialists and demagogues. And, um,
00:38:49.580
are you saying because those individuals, you said economic literacy, but some of, well,
00:38:56.100
some of the wealthiest people on the planet support these insane ideologies. So I'm, I'm not sure if
00:39:03.740
And, and we can't forget that socialism was invented by the elites, just like communism and, uh, well,
00:39:10.600
communism and socialism is more or less the same and fascism. Uh, yeah, I mean, that's, that's
00:39:16.840
true. And that deserves, deserves an explanation, but I think it has to do with the fact that many wealthy
00:39:23.960
people, and I know some do not necessarily understand economics, no, no, like if you ride a bike, that
00:39:33.300
doesn't mean that, you know, the physical laws that enables you, enable you to ride the bike. So many
00:39:39.220
people have made a lot of money and some feel guilty because they have a lot of money. And so they
00:39:44.240
start supporting, uh, BLM or other NGOs that promote really, um, very, very toxic ideologies.
00:39:54.700
And so that's part of virtue signaling, uh, it, it, it has to do a lot with virtue signaling. And,
00:40:00.720
and this is the classic case with Hollywood stars who are communists and Marxists and live
00:40:04.640
in their $30 million LA mansions, you know, which is a completely hypocritical thing to do.
00:40:11.980
And they speak about inequality and, and, and, and, and they support people like Chavez, you know,
00:40:18.140
Oliver Stone's working Chavez. And so, uh, it's, it's really insane, but this is nothing new in
00:40:23.540
history. I mean, we, we had Felix Weil, who was a very rich German guy who, who started the
00:40:30.940
Institut für Sozialwissenschaft in Germany, which it was basically created in order to transform
00:40:38.520
Germany in the 1920s into a Marxist communist state. And that's the, the epicenter for many
00:40:45.840
of the ideas that you have right now in the United States, because also a lot of these thinkers like
00:40:51.260
Herbert Marcuse and, uh, Theodor Adorno and Horkheimer and others came to the United States.
00:40:57.080
When the Nazis came to power, they, they fled to the United States and brought the ideas with them.
00:41:00.880
And, and so this is the, this is critical theory. This comes from the Frankfurt school and is this
00:41:07.580
cultural Marxism basically that took over universities a year later. And also with the
00:41:12.980
help of the French thinkers like Michel Foucault and Jacques Serrat. And this, uh, my point is that
00:41:18.420
these people were funded by very wealthy George Soros type of tycoons, right? And, and, and one could
00:41:24.860
ask, uh, uh, oneself, why is George Soros funding so many destructive initiatives? And, and, and in
00:41:33.440
his case, I don't think it's ignorance into his case. I think he's really much a person who hates
00:41:38.300
the West. That's, that's my, it's malicious. Sure. I think it's evil. Right. And that's, that does
00:41:44.700
exist. I mean, if you study the history of communism, it was evil. It was really, truly evil. And many people,
00:41:50.520
uh, you know, fell for, for this thing and, um, and they endorsed it and they supported it. And many
00:41:57.340
rich people did that. Even, even, even people from, from the Catholic church and others, our Pope,
00:42:03.380
the Pope that we have now, the Catholic church, he's a, he's a communist. I mean, he's socialist. He
00:42:08.360
said that the true Christians were the communists. He actually said that. And so, um, I mean, you,
00:42:15.800
you have this ideology, this worldviews, these religions that can really, uh, ruin everything.
00:42:21.340
And then it doesn't matter if you are wealthy or not. People will want to, you will have people
00:42:26.180
from all social conditions that, uh, will want to endorse these things. And also, as you said,
00:42:32.660
because of purchasingly, it's, it's really convenient. So you can, you don't get your privileges
00:42:38.380
examined very, um, you know, carefully, uh, by the woke, uh, mob, uh, to endorse some woke causes
00:42:48.360
and say, oh, I care so much about diversity or you have, you know, Megan Fox having all the,
00:42:54.120
all her children being trans. I mean, what are the odds? Three children and the three of them
00:42:58.520
are trans. I mean, this is, this is pure virtual signaling. This is pure. I'm, I'm so cool.
00:43:04.380
Yeah. I, I go with this, uh, uh, uh, trend and, and, and, and, and I'm, I'm better than the rest.
00:43:10.780
And this need to, to prove that you are more or less superior to others, it's intoxicating
00:43:16.040
and, and, and enables you to cancel the rest because you claim you are, you are better person,
00:43:22.740
not only, you know, more famous or wealthier, you're also a better person that gives you the
00:43:29.560
right to shut everything, everything else down, everything, everyone else down. So
00:43:34.060
yeah, it's, it's a very complex situation. And I think, uh, if the reaction is not really strong,
00:43:40.060
there is no way that we are going to, to save our, our, our hemisphere. And, and, and the United
00:43:46.380
States is like, it's a key battleground. If we lose the U S we lose the whole world.
00:43:51.140
Hmm. Yeah. I, I, uh, I think there's also an inherent danger in speaking up and speaking out,
00:43:58.500
you know, there, there, you will be shunned, you will be doxxed, you will be canceled. You will be,
00:44:03.920
uh, hurt in the wallet, sometimes even violently. I think about with regards to your comments about
00:44:08.820
transgenderism, there's the, uh, author Abigail Schreier with the book, uh, irreversible damage,
00:44:14.200
you know, that like she took so much criticism, so much heat. And that book has just been blasted for
00:44:20.720
credible work that's supported scientifically. And, and yet it cannot be tolerated, uh, because it goes
00:44:31.600
against these ideologies. Yeah. That's why I say this is a totalitarian movement. We have to be
00:44:36.720
very careful because at the essence of every totalitarian movement, you have, um, you know,
00:44:44.900
epistemic relativism. That means the idea that there is no objective truth. And, and, and so science
00:44:52.560
doesn't matter anymore because it's not about arguments based on reason and logic and evidence.
00:45:00.780
It's about power and it's only about that. And, and, and so I I've read the book. I think it's a
00:45:09.120
great book and, uh, and we have to say these things. I mean, recently Richard Dawkins with whom I have,
00:45:15.360
have had, you know, long conversations a couple of years ago, uh, was also claiming that biological
00:45:24.320
sex is real and that you can be polite. And of course, you know, treat someone who believes who
00:45:32.500
is a woman and being a biological male as a woman, you can do that. But what you can't do is to deny
00:45:40.140
the underlying biological, the reality. And this, this pretense that there is no objective reality
00:45:46.700
is the problem because we could agree that, I mean, let's, let's be, let's be nice and kind and,
00:45:54.880
and, and, and don't really be aggressive towards people or impolite, you know, with people who
00:46:00.320
believe they are something different. Okay. That's one thing, but it's also your right not to accept it,
00:46:05.200
but, but you can, we could agree on that. Yeah. But what is, what is really, uh, the problem
00:46:11.640
is that is, is this, is this, uh, claim that there is no objective reality, that everything
00:46:19.400
is a construction of the mind basically, or, uh, and the self does not exist because in order
00:46:25.600
for you to create a self, right, you have to exist first. So you cannot create a self ex nihilo
00:46:34.100
for out of nothing. You know what I mean? So, so this, this idea is also idiotic because
00:46:39.500
you have to exist as an individual in order to have an identity. You can't have an identity before
00:46:46.160
you are an individual. And if you're an individual, a member of a human species, you are, uh, you have
00:46:52.560
a head, you have bones, you have cells, and you have chromosomes, chromosomes, right? And you can be
00:46:59.100
male or female. That's it. That's it. There is no other alternative. I mean, there are some cases.
00:47:06.300
Okay. But as a general rule, there are no, there are no, there are no, those are, those are medical
00:47:11.680
anomalies. Those, those don't, that does not represent a separate class or gender or sex of an
00:47:17.180
individual. Absolutely. But my point is you cannot define and say I'm a woman, right? Uh, because,
00:47:25.020
because you already exist before you have claimed that you are a woman. And that means you are a
00:47:32.200
reality that is independent from your thoughts, your, uh, your thoughts about yourself, right? I,
00:47:39.140
I, I could claim I'm black, but I'm not black, right? I mean, it's the same thing or that I'm 15
00:47:43.920
years old and I'm not 15 years old. And actually this deconstruction, because that's the way,
00:47:49.920
that's the word that was used in philosophy, in the French philosophy, postmodernist, uh, you know,
00:47:55.020
uh, kind of, um, mindset, the deconstruction of the structures leads to chaos. And that's
00:48:01.160
why now you are seeing all this chaos in, in women's sports, for instance. And now there
00:48:06.540
are some States and countries and organizations that are banning trans men from, uh, this,
00:48:12.660
uh, female, uh, women, women's competitions, because, because of course, if you allow trans
00:48:19.500
athletes, then you will have chaos within the, uh, the female, um, uh, communities that, that athletes,
00:48:29.520
athlete communities, uh, they will not be able to win anything else anymore. And then it will collapse
00:48:36.060
because which women will, will want to go and compete against biological males, right? I mean,
00:48:42.280
if this becomes a trend, a trend, no one will want to do that. Yeah, of course. And so, and so,
00:48:48.200
and then, and then you have men claiming to be babies, grownups. Have you seen that?
00:48:54.400
No, I, I, I, I don't doubt that, but I haven't seen that.
00:48:58.260
Yeah. They're claiming like 50 year old man dressed, I mean, with diapers and dressed like babies,
00:49:04.420
claiming that there are babies and they perceive themselves, you know, as babies. And now I,
00:49:10.820
I, I, I, I was in Puerto Rico recently giving some, some lectures and I was told that there was,
00:49:16.220
um, uh, uh, a student at, uh, it was a school boy or girl. I don't remember exactly, but who believed
00:49:22.760
to be, um, um, a cat and she went to school. I think it was like 12 years old or 10 dressed
00:49:33.420
with a cat, uh, type of, uh, costume. And the, um, and the, um, you know, the other children were
00:49:43.180
forced into accepting her as a cat. Like imagine the confusion that that creates in your mind
00:49:48.960
as a child. And, and the professor, the teacher, the teachers were okay with it. I don't know what
00:49:54.260
the parents were thinking, but, uh, it's, they were not thinking. And, but I think it's also
00:50:00.800
criminal because you have to, or, uh, you have to give, uh, children, uh, clear, a clear message
00:50:09.240
and clear standards because they are not capable of doing the sophisticated analysis that we grownups
00:50:15.360
can. That's why, for instance, fairy tales have these very clear ideas of good and evil. It's,
00:50:21.800
it's, it's, it's, there are no, there are no gray areas. It's, it's, it's black and white,
00:50:26.320
right? Because children need that. They are not in a position to, to do this, uh, more nuanced
00:50:33.940
approach and to have this, uh, you know, most adults aren't capable of doing it. Exactly. Exactly.
00:50:41.000
That's, that's what, and they are also destroying fairy tales. I mean, uh, you know, the snow white now
00:50:46.060
with, with Disney, the last, uh, production that they are, they're doing right now, it's, it's a
00:50:51.420
complete perversion of the original Grimm's tale. It has nothing to do with the original. And I tell
00:50:56.900
you, I grew up in a German family, so I know about this stuff. Um, and, and it's really harming also,
00:51:03.020
uh, children because you are depriving them of, of, of a source, uh, of knowledge that is very useful
00:51:12.120
for them in order to develop, uh, sense, uh, as a strong sense of morality and fairy tales
00:51:18.740
help you do that. Uh, but if you start woking it up, then, then, then you lose it, you lose
00:51:26.360
it. It's, it's, it's, it's perverted. And maybe you achieve, I think of like fairy, you
00:51:32.420
know, like Hansel and Gretel. Right. And it's like, you teach a kid, don't go with strangers
00:51:36.100
into the forest. That's probably a good principle that kids should know. But all of a sudden,
00:51:39.760
if, if, you know, the, the, the witch is painted as, as a victim and, you know, she's actually
00:51:45.900
a good person, but she lures kids into, you know, because she's a pedophile and that's
00:51:50.600
normalized. Well, that might be an issue for kids to hear that and think that that's acceptable
00:51:54.260
and okay. Well, you know, pedophilia is actually a big thing and it's coming back into fashion
00:51:59.360
in, in, in the 60s. I hate the way you said that. I, and I'm not criticizing you. It just,
00:52:04.240
the, the way that, the way that that is said is just so it's, it's, it's horrific. It's
00:52:09.180
horrific. Yeah. But you know, it's a natural result of this woke ideology, because if you
00:52:14.680
really believe that there is no objective truth and that all social norms are just forms
00:52:20.680
of discourse that, you know, have the aim of, um, exerting, uh, oppression by some groups
00:52:31.400
of people over other groups of people, then the idea that, I don't, I mean, that sex can
00:52:39.420
only happen between consenting adults is in itself nothing else than a form of narrative
00:52:46.340
that is competing against other narratives, uh, in order to, um, consolidate the, um, power
00:52:54.520
of certain type of, of people, which are, you know, straight, white, or not even necessarily
00:53:01.120
white, but straight adults. And so the pedophiles are being discriminated and oppressed, uh, you
00:53:10.300
know, if you follow this logic. And, and so now you don't call them pedophiles anymore.
00:53:15.060
You call them minor attracted person, in order to normalize it. But, but, and, and, and this
00:53:22.240
is really interesting because one of the main philosophers and thinkers that developed this
00:53:27.400
idea, who was Michel Foucault, was himself a pedophile. He would go, he was a French intellectual,
00:53:34.000
very famous, uh, in the sixties, seventies, even eighties. He, he, he was, um, homosexual who,
00:53:41.180
who, uh, would go to, to Africa, to Morocco and he, he would pay children to have sex with
00:53:49.020
him, poor children, poor, poor African children, children, and, and, and he would take them to
00:53:53.880
a cemetery and, and he would sex, have sex with them in the cemetery. And, and, and he developed
00:53:59.520
the theory that, um, the medical establishment had nothing. I mean, he had developed a sort of
00:54:09.120
narrative in order to control people, people's lives, people like himself, who, who also ended
00:54:16.000
up in a, in a mental institutions, institution at some point. And he took this to such an extreme
00:54:21.620
that he criticized the message given by the medical community to the homosexual community
00:54:28.440
to use, um, you know, protection when they had sex in order to prevent the spread of AIDS.
00:54:34.000
And, and, and he said, this was just another form of exerting power over them and discriminating
00:54:40.240
against them. And he died of AIDS in the end. Uh, so, so, so this is completely irrational.
00:54:48.000
This is, this is completely insane. And this is the same philosophy that you are seeing, uh,
00:54:55.140
right now, um, advancing at schools and, uh, media and other parts, sexualizing minors.
00:55:03.980
Not only in the U S also Latin America and Europe, uh, and Europe has a very dark past
00:55:09.820
with this. Like Germany would have in the seventies experiments with children where the parents,
00:55:16.480
and this is insane. Like, you know, when people say, what are the parents thinking? Like they
00:55:20.780
are not thinking, well, it was the same in the sixties and seventies in Germany, they would
00:55:24.700
have kindergartens where they would, uh, and these were all educated people coming out from
00:55:29.600
universities. I mean, only people coming out from universities would do something like this.
00:55:33.620
I think, uh, where they would sexualize children and bring them to have sex between them and
00:55:40.020
also with adults. And they would question if the, if it was a good idea to have sex with
00:55:46.180
their own children, because, you know, I mean, that was the point of, of, of, of, of lunacy
00:55:52.180
of this whole ideology, because once you get rid of the objective standards, objective truth
00:55:58.080
of anything or, or, or, or as a concept, what is the limit, right? If sexuality is nothing
00:56:05.360
but a convention, why can't you have sex with your own children? It's like who created this
00:56:11.320
convention? Ah, is the bourgeois society, the white, uh, straight men who, who want to criminalize
00:56:18.680
and marginalize the rest of people who are not like them. That's the concept. And, and they
00:56:23.580
would, they even signed a letter, Michel Foucault, Simone de Beauvoir, who is the mother of all
00:56:29.000
feminists, right? And, and, and from the whole queer movement today, even defending pedophiles
00:56:35.960
that were arrested in France in 1977 for having had sex with children. And they signed a letter,
00:56:42.860
all of these French intellectuals, dozens of them, uh, all of them rock stars at the time,
00:56:47.960
defending these people and claiming or arguing for the abolishment of, um, of, of, uh, consenting
00:56:55.100
laws, uh, of the, you know, uh, laws demanding that, you know, you have to be 17 or 18 or whatever
00:57:02.400
in order to have sex with someone. And this is gaining traction again. It's insane. Yeah.
00:57:10.720
What are, what are like with, with regard, we've talked a lot about the issues and I think,
00:57:14.860
you know, shedding light on these subjects because it can't exist in darkness. If more people are
00:57:19.260
talking about this, I mean, you're talking a lot about it with your research, with your book,
00:57:23.340
with economics specifically with regards to the book, but is the solution to then just continue
00:57:28.220
to talk about this, bring this to light, be vocal about it. And I would say be as vocal and active,
00:57:35.220
uh, as the, the social activists are there, there's gotta be a way to combat this. And it has to be with
00:57:41.180
doing things vocally and acting legislation, um, running for office, like all the things that we
00:57:46.380
can do. What, what are some of those suggestions that you would have?
00:57:48.980
I mean, this is a battle of ideas and it's a battle for the minds and hearts of people. And, and,
00:57:55.340
and I, I strongly recommend if, if the, uh, you know, viewers of your show have the, have the time,
00:58:03.220
um, to read Antonio Gramsci. Antonio Gramsci was the founder of the communist Italian party,
00:58:11.360
uh, in the 1920s. And he was the most little, little, uh, Marxist intellectual in the 20th century.
00:58:19.420
And he said that what you had to do was to take over institutions, to take over schools, churches,
00:58:26.660
and universities and media and so on, because it was not about the violent revolution against Lenin
00:58:34.660
and Marx. He argued, it's not so much about the violent revolution. It's about changing people,
00:58:41.000
how people think their minds and, and that you can achieve if you engage in what he called cultural
00:58:48.420
hegemony. And you create a discourse that is so, um, dominant in the public and private sphere,
00:58:56.220
even that convinces so many people that capitalism is wrong. And, uh, you know,
00:59:03.420
the institutions, the bourgeois institutions have to be overthrown, that the system will collapse by
00:59:08.740
itself. Once you destroy their, uh, its legitimacy in people's minds. And, and that's exactly what they
00:59:17.780
did with the long march through the institutions and they took over universities. And I think that's
00:59:23.660
the, the, the, the origin of the crisis that we lost the universities and they are now controlled
00:59:29.660
by, uh, you know, bureaucrats and professors who have, uh, this totalitarian tendencies. And then
00:59:38.760
you go to Harvard or Stanford or whatever, and then you, you go to other positions of influence
00:59:45.460
in the media and Disney companies. And then the, the, the, the, the effect, the influence of these ideas
00:59:54.460
go far beyond the department of humanities at the universities and sciences. Now everyone is forced
01:00:02.280
to take some training, microaggression training courses at Stanford, for instance. This is insane.
01:00:10.340
Uh, and it becomes, and this is, uh, this is very important. It becomes part of the, uh, um, general
01:00:18.460
culture at some point because the humanities, you know, tend to be relatively useless. If you want to
01:00:25.080
get a job and you have a degree in philosophy or literature or whatever, it's not very good. If you
01:00:30.900
have that, it's better to have engineering and engineering degree. But the, the, the, the, the fact is
01:00:36.140
that the humanities define the soul of a nation. All the questions about morality, what is wrong
01:00:45.660
and what is right are not scientific questions. These are philosophical questions and, and, and, and a
01:00:53.580
culture reinforces the answers to these questions through movies, through literature, through
01:01:01.120
philosophical books, uh, entertainment, music, music, all of that. And, and, and, and, but you need
01:01:09.220
this art, of course, you need the group of people who are thinking about these issues who are mostly
01:01:16.920
at universities, not only, but mostly at universities to give credit to these ideas and to develop these
01:01:22.740
ideas. And the West is basically, um, a philosophical achievement. The idea of the individual, which
01:01:30.880
which, which emerged from Christianity, uh, that we, we deserve equal rights, uh, which is in the, in the
01:01:36.780
declaration of independence in the United States. This is what made this, uh, civilization so prosperous.
01:01:44.400
And so when you lose the, the humanities, uh, you lose the, the fight, you lose the battle
01:01:50.240
because, because you lose the, the case for, um, for, for what you consider is good, for what we view
01:02:00.360
as, as, as good. And what we consider evil becomes what most people, or a lot of people consider,
01:02:06.760
uh, consider appropriate. That's why I think it's so dangerous when you, when you start saying,
01:02:12.660
oh, Shakespeare, he was just a representative of the bourgeois class and the white, uh, heterosexual
01:02:17.580
oppression of everyone else, which is what, by the way, are teaching you at many universities.
01:02:23.380
So they can tell you, you know, any, you know, African-American writer or Indian or Latino writer
01:02:32.060
is as good as Shakespeare. There is no hierarchy. It's all a social construction. Yeah. To make you
01:02:37.380
feel more inclusive. Uh, okay. Everyone can be like Shakespeare. It's not true. Shakespeare is superior
01:02:43.020
to everyone else, but you cannot make that claim if you don't believe there is a truth, an objective
01:02:47.760
standard for measurement. Right. Yeah. So, so that's the problem, uh, with universities. And I would
01:02:54.900
encourage everyone who is giving money to universities. I, I, I recently talked to one who is a big donor
01:03:00.000
at one of the Ivy league schools. I told him, don't give them more money. I mean, why do they continue
01:03:05.480
supporting the destruction of, of the United States and the American, you know, uh, they call it an
01:03:14.060
experiment, but it's a very successful one. And it's, it's now being attacked from, from, from
01:03:18.620
everywhere. Like, uh, you have also the rivalry with China, you have Russia, you have, but the main
01:03:24.780
problem is inside. It's a, it's a people trying to undermine it from the inside and the Colin
01:03:30.800
Copernicus of the world and all, all of these guys who, who would claim that the flag represents
01:03:38.360
something immoral. Which is, I mean, so it's so it's, it's lunacy. It's so ironic. And an individual
01:03:44.960
like that, who's been the recipient and beneficiary of this amazing, incredible social experiment
01:03:51.320
would basically spit and stomp all over the very thing that allowed him to progress the way that he
01:03:57.620
has. Yeah. And, and as I, again, I mean, he's, um, you know, a sports person, he's very famous,
01:04:05.260
but where did he, uh, get these ideas? Because Martin Luther King didn't think like that.
01:04:12.480
He was very much an admirer of the founding fathers and he was claiming, you know, the promises they
01:04:18.220
made in the Declaration of Independence, in the constitution, they have not been fulfilled for
01:04:22.820
everyone. So let's, let's move forward with this. But they would say like Frederick Douglass,
01:04:27.820
they would claim and argue that, uh, you know, that these were great ideas.
01:04:35.260
But Colin Capernaum comes now and say, and says, no, you know, this is an oppressive system. This is
01:04:41.700
horrible. The flag is, uh, represents, uh, you know, oppression and slavery. This is complete,
01:04:48.760
completely absurd. And it's, it's completely against what Luther King and Frederick Douglass,
01:04:53.500
who actually did something for black people in the United States, right? Uh, would argue. I mean,
01:05:01.140
they would be happy to see the huge progress that has been made, uh, over the last century in this
01:05:09.500
country, even over the last decades. And there is no society with more freedom and more respect for
01:05:14.460
individual rights, I think, than the United States and more diverse at the same time.
01:05:18.360
Um, and so, um, I think it's very, um, I mean, sometimes I get a little angry because I, I grew
01:05:28.840
up in Latin America. I know what failed nations look like. And I travel all, all over Latin America,
01:05:35.800
you know, uh, giving conferences and lectures and also Europe. But, uh, I mean, the United States is the
01:05:43.720
place everyone wants to go. Why, why is that? And, and, uh, and it's not because it's evil. It's
01:05:50.680
because you have better opportunities, you know, and it's a, it is a better place than the rest of
01:05:54.960
the world. That's the reality. And I'm not even an American. I'm saying that because I know it's
01:05:58.800
true, right? Um, the city upon a hill, when John Winthrop came with the settlers here to, it is a city
01:06:07.080
upon a hill and we all admire, uh, the United States. And we, and if we lose the United States,
01:06:11.940
we will not even have a reference point for the rest of the world. And that will be a new age of
01:06:19.820
darkness, a horrible one, because I don't think we can solve the vacuum with China or Russia or
01:06:27.140
India or, you know, in Switzerland, it's too small for that. So, yeah.
01:06:35.180
Well, Axel, I, I appreciate all of your efforts and all of your work and your conversation with me
01:06:39.520
today. I mean, all of this is so enlightening. I actually expected the conversation would take
01:06:44.040
a different track, um, talking more specifically about economics, but I'm really glad that we went
01:06:48.600
down this, this route because such needed conversations, um, and guys can always go pick
01:06:53.840
up a copy of the book and read the book on their own, you know? So, which I would highly suggest they
01:06:58.500
do. And you talk about it being, uh, a pinnacle component of the entire conversation that we're having
01:07:05.580
here. Why don't you let the guys know, as we wind things down, where to go, where to connect with
01:07:09.480
you, where to learn more about what you're up to. And of course, pick up a copy of the book as well.
01:07:13.560
Yes. So the book is on Amazon and it has been recommended by some of the best economists in
01:07:18.320
the United States. So I'm very happy. Um, like Deidre McCloskey, Casey Molina, Chicago University,
01:07:24.500
and many others. And, uh, they, they can buy it there. And also at the website of Republic books,
01:07:30.280
they can find it. Um, and, uh, I have an Instagram, which is at Axel Kaiser B. Um,
01:07:38.140
it's Kaiser with like Kaiser Permanente. It's the same, the same spelling and Axel with E not
01:07:42.960
like Axel Rose. It's, it's, it's, it has, yeah, it doesn't have any, it's a Axel with E and, and B
01:07:48.400
from Barent, which is my second last name. And also at Twitter, I am at Axel Kaiser. And so they can
01:07:54.120
follow me on, on social media and, and, and yeah, and I'd be happy if they make some comments
01:07:59.180
about the book there. Awesome. Well, we'll sync everything up again. Appreciate your work
01:08:04.220
and all the, all the efforts you're putting forth. Hopefully this gets into some ears that need to
01:08:08.620
hear it and we can start to, uh, turn the tide, so to speak. I appreciate you. Thanks for joining
01:08:13.260
me today. Thank you, Ryan. All right. There you go, guys. My conversation with Axel Kaiser. I hope you
01:08:20.440
enjoyed it. Uh, we talked a little bit about his book and a lot about other issues, but many of them
01:08:25.380
needed to be talked about. And I'm glad that I could do that with someone who is such as well-versed
01:08:28.940
as Axel would. I would highly encourage you to follow him over on social media with hundreds
01:08:33.560
of thousands of other people who are following along with his mission and his work. Check out
01:08:37.820
his book, which is called the street economist. And, uh, also take a screenshot and tag him,
01:08:44.100
tag myself, let everybody know what you're listening to guys. If we're going to change the tide of this
01:08:48.980
culture, whether we're just talking about masculinity in general, we're talking about economics or whatever
01:08:53.260
it may be, then what we have to do is begin to speak up and we have to share what we know,
01:08:57.800
share what we're learning, share the resources that we have. And I'm asking you to share this
01:09:01.720
resource with other men who are in your corner, who want to learn, who want to grow, who want to
01:09:05.740
get better. All right. That's my ask of you. Also make sure you check out the iron council,
01:09:10.120
which opens up September 15th. So we're about 10 days out and you can check that out at
01:09:15.440
order of man.com slash iron council. I'm going to send an email the night before we open
01:09:19.480
to those of you who want to be notified. So you can get in there before anybody else.
01:09:23.860
Uh, and you can do that again at order of man.com slash iron council. All right, guys,
01:09:28.640
I hope you enjoyed the conversation. If there's other conversations you want me to have, whether
01:09:31.840
it's an interview with a certain person, uh, or a Friday field notes where just me or questions
01:09:36.980
that you have hit me up on Instagram at Ryan Mickler, send me an email, Ryan at order of man.com
01:09:42.000
and, uh, continue to share. All right, guys, we'll be back tomorrow for our ask me anything until then
01:09:48.140
go out there, take action and let's all become the men we are meant to be. Thank you for listening
01:09:52.600
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01:09:57.520
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