The NXR Podcast - THE LIVESTREAM - Where Did We Go Wrong With Capitalism？

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00:00:16.280 You and I both know that this ministry is willing to talk about things that most ministries

00:00:20.820 aren't.

00:00:21.860 We need this content for the glory of God to reach more people's ears.

00:00:30.000 It's no secret that here with Right Response Ministries, we are proud, unapologetic Christian

00:00:36.380 nationalist. Everybody knows that, and I've talked about it for a few years now. I even participated

00:00:40.920 in helping to write a statement on Christian nationalism. So, we're nationalists. We're also

00:00:48.140 nationalists, as you can tell from the thumbnail and the title of this video, who have problems

00:00:51.900 with capitalism, which makes us National JK. We're not going there, but we do have some serious

00:01:00.620 problems with capitalism. We're going to flesh out all the evils and all the problems of communism

00:01:06.640 and socialism and other forms of economics, but we're going to talk about capitalism and the good

00:01:12.880 that it's produced historically that's undeniable in the world, and yet we're going to talk about

00:01:18.540 many of the ways that it has recently, in the past few decades, devolved. This is a discussion

00:01:25.820 that conservatives have to be willing to have. This is kind of similar, in my mind, to being

00:01:32.280 willing to criticize our greatest ally. For a long time, there have just been certain things

00:01:38.380 that are associated with being a conservative that are not particularly helpful. If you're

00:01:44.720 a conservative, it doesn't mean that you need to be burning tires in your backyard, right? You can

00:01:50.280 be a conservative and actually conserve the environment. We shouldn't just hand issues like

00:01:55.260 that to the left. If you're a conservative, you also can criticize Israel when they're doing 0.50

00:02:00.660 heinous, wicked things, as they currently are, and often are. And if you're a conservative, 0.77

00:02:06.860 you can also criticize and point out some of the immense problems with capitalism,

00:02:11.620 especially given in light of certain technological innovations and the type of people that we now

00:02:20.140 have and all this in light of globalism. We're not just talking about capitalism with a national

00:02:27.220 framework here in these United States but we are globalists for better or for worse and I would

00:02:33.800 argue, the latter. And so with this embrace of globalism and crony capitalism, and with a

00:02:41.520 degenerate population, which is what we currently have in America, there are massive problems. And

00:02:47.480 that's what we'll discuss today. This episode is brought to you by our premier sponsors. That's

00:02:53.640 Armored Republic and Reese Fund. It does a little bit of capitalism, but in a good way. Also, this

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00:03:13.360 you'd like to make a donation today, you can do so by going to right response ministries.com

00:03:20.120 forward slash donate. Okay, let's dive in.

00:03:30.620 real quick i just gotta say we got the new stinger antonio has now been filtered in

00:03:38.960 and we know that you know preemptively we're going to get comments like this so i think it's

00:03:42.800 just good to just name it and get ahead of it here's the deal some people are going to be like

00:03:46.380 what you got a guy on the show who's half black the big concern is antonio pierre half french

00:03:52.220 to me that's a big concern here so i've done dna testing i'm only about two percent french

00:03:58.380 uh but uh but with the name it's really working for you but even that is just a shame two percent

00:04:04.100 too much to admit but this is okay so today's episode we're gonna let wes uh kick it off but

00:04:08.580 this is very much in your wheelhouse do you you probably don't want to exactly share where you're

00:04:13.920 currently working stuff but do you want to give a little bit of your general background yeah so i've

00:04:18.160 uh i went to a pretty a good university uh more on the prestigious side uh and i studied business

00:04:24.340 So I studied finance and I studied economics and and those sorts of things.

00:04:28.600 And so I spent, you know, four years of my life really from the ground up thinking about economics and theories, you know, like more sort of baseline theories that we all know, like supply and demand economics all the way up to some more sophisticated, you know, hyper efficient theories of economics.

00:04:46.040 So and I've and I've went, you know, politically went through a very, you know, several different kinds of variations of, you know, capitalist, you know, libertarian capitalist early on.

00:04:58.640 Then you become like sort of a conservative capitalist.

00:05:00.880 You say, hey, there are some things that are off limits.

00:05:03.160 And then you become what I am now, which I think is new.

00:05:08.160 And I don't even really have a label for it yet.

00:05:10.740 but i think it's some it's it's sort of uh you know christian it's christian capitalism right

00:05:16.840 so it's some hybrid between recognizing virtue and recognizing the sacred in even in the public

00:05:22.240 sphere so all that to say yeah i spent quite a lot of time both you know in my education but

00:05:27.420 after graduating spending a lot of time in the business world um working for many different

00:05:32.640 companies so um yeah if you could i've seen it up close yeah if you could name just two or three

00:05:38.080 so that we don't get bogged down here, because we're going to flesh it out a little bit more,

00:05:41.000 but right from the get-go, if you could name like two or three elements of capitalism,

00:05:46.220 not necessarily right now, today, with some of the craziness that we currently have,

00:05:50.660 but historically, two or three elements of historic capitalism, as we've seen it in the West,

00:05:57.220 that you think actually are biblical.

00:06:00.520 No, I can make a scriptural argument for that, and I don't want to see these elements lost.

00:06:04.880 What would they be?

00:06:05.520 Yeah, so I think private property is the biggest one. It's probably the strongest element that capitalism reinforces. I think that's very early on. You see that in biblical case law, recognizing a man's property, a man's assets, if you will, his donkey, his ox, so on and so forth.

00:06:24.600 not moving the the goalposts or the the boundary post yeah yeah of someone's exactly yeah so um i

00:06:31.340 think private property is kind of the fundamental element to to capitalism uh you see that really

00:06:37.060 early on uh in the americas is you know the the the one of the preeminent sort of virtues that

00:06:44.700 our government protected was private property and stood and in that way stood you know stood

00:06:50.480 even separate from many of the western nations and including the uk um stood apart from those

00:06:56.120 so to add to that that one of the the safeties that i see with private property um on the flip

00:07:03.280 side from it just being eternally and and i'm not using that word hyperbolically but like eternally

00:07:08.980 abused um is the year of jubilee that there was there was an economic mechanism built in with you

00:07:16.920 know spiritual reasoning and connotations but built into the framework of old covenant israel

00:07:22.360 to where the land would eventually go back to its original owning family um so and and just for the

00:07:30.780 record all this they weren't stupid right they're not they're not archaic they're they're not um

00:07:35.720 primitive people they were they were intelligent and so this was all built into their buying and

00:07:41.740 selling it was like the land think of it like this it would be prorated right so you know if

00:07:46.980 it's if it's year 45 since the last jubilee and and jubilee is happening you know every 50 years

00:07:53.360 and you're gonna you know you're in israel and uh you're gonna buy a plot of land you know that

00:07:59.380 that land is going back to the original family right because the land when they conquered it

00:08:04.500 and canaan was divided up with the 12 tribes and then each of these clans and then ultimately down

00:08:09.840 to families within the tribes, all had their original allotted land. And so if it's year 45,

00:08:15.460 you got five years left on the clock, and you're going to buy this land, it's going to be prorated,

00:08:20.340 it's going to be at a discount. And if you're a sojourner in Israel, number one, sojourners,

00:08:26.440 when the Bible talks about, you know, the alien and the stranger and, you know, the sojourner,

00:08:31.200 these are not illegal, number one, illegal aliens, illegal sojourners. And the sojourner is somebody

00:08:37.420 who's there for a time whether it be business or trade or whatever the purpose may be but the

00:08:43.480 sojourner is expected to eventually go back unless they're truly going to be kind of like a Ruth

00:08:48.840 situation your people will be my people your God will be my God truly assimilate into Israel and

00:08:54.780 in those cases Israel still even when it came to certain certain levels of acceptance of their

00:09:02.580 worship, like entrance to the temple and these kinds of things, somebody who was actually

00:09:09.600 immigrating and assimilating into Israel would not be able to have full access to temple worship

00:09:16.640 until the third generation. And depending where they were coming from and what the history of

00:09:21.360 that nation was with Israel, whether they had betrayed them or whatever the case may be,

00:09:25.720 there were some nations that were listed that they could not enter until the 10th generation.

00:09:30.000 So my point is this, if you're a sojourner in Israel and you're doing business, there's

00:09:35.980 this turnover, reset mechanism at the 50-year mark, Jubilee, where the land is actually

00:09:42.580 going to go back to heritage Israelites. 0.60

00:09:45.760 It's actually going to go back to the people, the descendants of the original families that

00:09:51.360 started the nation of Israel, that God started this nation with.

00:09:55.100 And so you could be there as a sojourner with some other nationality, some other nationhood,

00:10:00.000 and and you could trade and you could live comfortably you're going to behave yourself

00:10:04.380 as a guest all the religious laws like sabbath keeping still apply to you well i i don't um i

00:10:10.700 don't worship uh god you know the god of israel i uh well well that's fine we're not gonna we

00:10:16.900 can't control what you do privately in your heart but publicly you're still going to keep the sabbath

00:10:21.640 because this is israel and and this is where you are and so you're going to behave as a guest and

00:10:27.380 if you behave as a guest, you'll be treated as a guest. So there's all these laws about not

00:10:31.980 exploiting the sojourner or taking advantage of the sojourner. So you're treated as a guest,

00:10:36.540 but you're also expected to behave as a guest. And as a guest, you don't walk into the house

00:10:42.320 of Israel with mud on your shoes and kick it around by blaspheming God and breaking the Sabbath.

00:10:48.280 You're going to obey all these spiritual stipulations. And then there's also an economic 0.55

00:10:53.240 system that makes sure that the heritage wealth of Israel stays with Israel. And so other people

00:11:04.540 are benefiting and coming in for a time, but then it resets and kicks back. So yes, you can't move

00:11:12.640 the landmarker. Yes, private property, all those things. And we defend those things, believe in

00:11:17.500 those things the problem is that for us um capitalism coupled with globalism and just this

00:11:24.940 this limitless indefinite flood of immigration um we basically just uh the the wealth and prosperity

00:11:33.840 and blessing economic blessing of heritage americans for decades now has just been eroded

00:11:41.240 away but with no system no no reset system where it would ever come back you're just you're you're

00:11:47.560 just robbed your your wealth that your forefathers built for you right i mean the founders even said

00:11:54.520 and and original documents were doing this for us and our posterity they weren't starting this

00:12:00.120 country for um for india they weren't doing it for h1b visas they weren't doing it for uh they

00:12:07.520 weren't they sure as heck weren't doing it for israel you know uh their greatest ally was not

00:12:12.400 their greatest ally shouldn't be ours they were doing it for them and their children and the

00:12:17.920 reality is the reason why so many people are frustrated today especially young people young

00:12:22.500 men gen z um is because they realize that the inheritance that was supposed to be theirs

00:12:27.960 has been given away to somebody else so i think it's capitalism coupled with this this um zero

00:12:36.060 borders, porous borders, limitless globalism has just absolutely destroyed the wealth of America

00:12:44.520 to where America as a sports team, as an economic zone, is still incredibly wealthy. But in terms of

00:12:51.040 the American people themselves, especially the younger generation, they're not wealthy at all.

00:12:58.320 All right, Wes, what are you going to say? So I'm going to go ahead and actually define

00:13:01.700 different types of capitalism. When you say that, it could be very similar. What kind of

00:13:06.000 conservative. Well, I'm a conservative. What do you actually mean by that? There's a number of

00:13:09.540 different types, but to kind of lay the foundation, and someone even, I think it was Cosmic Treason

00:13:13.920 pointed out in the comments, we have to be very clear that when we talk about capitalism, even in

00:13:18.240 all of these different forms, we're talking about a narrower definition of it that's mostly existed

00:13:22.820 since the 1700s and the Industrial Revolution. To Antonio's point, to Joel's point, the idea of

00:13:27.820 private property and the idea of private trade has existed for basically all of humanity's time.

00:13:33.500 We've always understood I have something of value.

00:13:36.180 However, I could have 50 pairs of boots.

00:13:37.940 That doesn't get me food for today.

00:13:39.520 I need to trade it for something else of value.

00:13:41.500 So nothing what we're going to say here today is a critique of, again, basic ownership of

00:13:45.360 private property, the ability to trade.

00:13:47.620 But what we are critiquing is especially, again, in an industrial revolution age, in

00:13:52.060 an age where a corporation, this entity that's abstract, can absolve all of the failures

00:13:57.340 of individuals within that corporation.

00:13:59.300 It can persist generations long.

00:14:01.640 so you could have hundreds of billions of dollars that simply persists in perpetuity to your point

00:14:06.760 could just own land it could just operate it could just do things just basically till the end of time

00:14:11.800 because it has so much money those are some of the things specifically we're critiquing not 5 000

00:14:16.680 years of people owning a home and owning their trade and having a skill and selling their wares

00:14:21.800 but more specifically what's come out in the last about two to three hundred years yeah i'm gonna

00:14:25.880 give five types of capitalism here the one that probably everyone's really familiar with is free

00:14:30.200 free market capitalism, laissez-faire capitalism. That's where there's minimal government intrusion.

00:14:35.860 And we have some problems with that. We'll get into it. Then you have a type of welfare

00:14:38.840 capitalism. This is more common in Northern European, Northern Europe. So this would be

00:14:42.800 your government, for example, it provides services like your healthcare and insurance and things like

00:14:47.800 this. So it does provide through welfare, some of these things, you know, there's not private

00:14:51.980 insurance companies or private hospitals that are competing for your business, but the economy

00:14:56.620 itself is generally not as interfered with then you would have more interference and that would

00:15:00.220 be a kind of a state capitalism where the state specifically says we're going to set quotas for

00:15:05.000 this different sectors of our economy we're going to take control of manufacturing for instance and

00:15:09.740 we're going to have state officials that are on the ground they're running it they're saying how

00:15:13.580 this should be so that's laissez-faire free trade capitalism no boundaries welfare capitalism state

00:15:19.920 capitalism and then the two that i think we have the most problems with corporate capitalism large

00:15:25.620 corporations exerting significant influence on the economy and society. And so the government

00:15:31.560 may have some involvement in that, but really it's just, it's big corporations. The government

00:15:35.980 may say, Hey, you cannot monopolize, right? So Amazon and T-Mobile can't just get together and

00:15:40.040 say, we're just going to force everyone out of business with low costs because we're so profitable.

00:15:43.960 But for the most part, that's a lot of what we have here. And then the final one would be crony

00:15:48.860 capitalism. And then kind of the, there's no system that's purely one of those things, not

00:15:54.540 no system, but typically a system's not one of these things. And so the kind of the final stage

00:15:58.740 that all countries will be in at some level is called a mixed economy, that an economy will

00:16:02.780 incorporate some elements of capitalism and some elements of welfare capitalism or some elements of

00:16:08.480 corporate capitalism. And then crony capitalism, as we all know, has a susceptibility to come up

00:16:13.820 everywhere. I want to go through some of the benefits to life that have happened in just the

00:16:19.180 average life, mostly in the West, in the last 200 years. So if you go back, let's look at GDP per

00:16:25.260 capita, gross domestic product. This is a measure of productivity. So you can see on a graph here,

00:16:30.160 this is a graph from 1820 to 2018, kind of the tail end of the start of the Industrial Revolution

00:16:35.120 through to about seven years ago. The GDP per capita, and this is adjusted for inflation,

00:16:41.040 so this is not just saying, you know, $20 then, $20 now, it just, it does less. It actually,

00:16:46.780 the production is incredible. If you kind of trace it in, and I'll describe it for anyone

00:16:51.080 that's listening, probably 3,000 per capita in specifically Western offshoots, United States,

00:16:57.600 Canada, Australia, New Zealand, probably about 3,000 per capita in 1820, a little bit before.

00:17:03.060 By 2018, that's over 55,000. So you're talking about close to 20 times GDP. And I think that

00:17:10.380 actually is a good measure of productivity. As in literally per capita, these Western offshoots, 1.00

00:17:15.920 specifically western european nations or america including canada and the united states per capita

00:17:21.880 we're producing more and then you have obviously down the list you can read all the different

00:17:25.580 nations and this carries across in the united states specifically as well so this is another

00:17:29.980 chart and the growth is just astronomical again this is ingested for inflation so in real practical

00:17:36.400 terms as far as gdp as far as production of product that can be sold in equivalent dollars

00:17:41.860 standardizing everything we've had huge growths in the amount that we produce the value of what

00:17:47.500 we produce per capita what it can be sold what can be brought in what can be shipped out it's

00:17:52.320 just in the last 200 years the industrial revolution has unleashed unleashed an incredible

00:17:57.800 capacity to build to sell to create anything to add to those two gentlemen before i get into life

00:18:04.500 expectancy yeah i was just going to say that you you can think about statistics around gdp but not

00:18:10.020 only gdp other measure measures of of productivity so you can think about um cost being one element

00:18:15.920 of that so freight costs is something that economists look at a lot in the 19th century

00:18:20.420 which is essentially how much does it cost to travel over rail what you know to pay for travel

00:18:26.480 over rail of one ton of freight and you see these things have in less than a decade you see real

00:18:33.920 output of commodities like corn and wheat um these things double triple sometimes in several

00:18:41.060 decades in the late 19th century um and so there was a time uh you know where capitalism was doing

00:18:49.280 precisely what it was you know it was expected to do which is increase quality of life increase

00:18:56.840 real world output you know uh tides coming in it's raising all the boats everyone's being

00:19:02.500 everyone's wealthier everyone's doing uh better off and there was a time and and i think

00:19:08.040 particularly after world war ii there was about a decade and a half of american hegemony

00:19:13.900 economically speaking and then we start to see some of these things taper off uh as it relates

00:19:18.660 to productivity and quality of life and you know gdp adjusted for inflation so on and so forth

00:19:23.820 yep so an innovation like we would all agree the cotton gin is a more for sure humane compared to

00:19:28.900 human labor and just efficient it is a better way to take cotton which hopefully you're wearing

00:19:33.620 cotton clothing we all still wear cotton a lot of the synthetic stuff your polyester

00:19:37.480 your nylon it's not good for you so we still have a need for this resource we've captured

00:19:41.300 incredibly effective ways to harvest it to take it to spin it and to make it into clothing and

00:19:46.680 that's just objectively better than what we had before yeah two more graphs so this is life

00:19:51.320 expectancy this is for england and wales from 1700 to 2013 some of the statistical reporting

00:19:57.080 only starts right around 1850 or so but you can see for every single age so at the top is life

00:20:02.180 expectancy of a 70 year old of a 60 year old of a 50 year old kind of goes down there's a huge dip

00:20:07.900 right there in 1940 with uh with world war ii but by every single metric as far as life expectancy

00:20:13.220 every single group greatly increased life expectancy this one is incredible this is

00:20:18.760 global childhood mortality so this is the expectation what percent of children are

00:20:23.040 expected to live in past the first five years of their life. So you have 1800 to 2015. 1800 is

00:20:30.120 about 42% were expected not to make it. That's about one in two. Generally speaking, if a family

00:20:36.260 had six children, you'd expect there were five to six that didn't make it. By 2015, it's 4.2%.

00:20:43.320 Now, of course, we can't credit all that to corporations, to Amazon, but we can generally

00:20:48.260 say innovation, we can say hospitals, scale, industry, and innovation have been the drivers

00:20:55.260 of real, genuine improvements in life, lower childhood mortality, living longer, and producing

00:21:01.640 more. And that, again, has been the last two, three hundred years, very capitalistic, very open

00:21:06.220 market, free market in nature. Yeah. I wanted to add, Joel, going back to your question at the

00:21:11.520 front, which was, what are the elements that we would say are particularly biblical? We talked

00:21:16.920 about private property i think the other one that we should mention is uh the the degree to which

00:21:24.080 capitalism is the most meritocratic system you talk about do not muzzle an ox um you talk about

00:21:29.900 the parable of the talents right and that a man is able to go and and create a return with that

00:21:36.620 which he is given so capitalism isn't egalitarian it doesn't say we all start at the same place

00:21:41.780 but what it does affirm is that every man with his god-given abilities god-given vocation god-given

00:21:48.620 resources can go and bring a return with those things and it and more or less capitalism is a

00:21:54.680 system that removes the shackles particularly the shackles that government would place on man's

00:22:00.140 ability to do that so government arbitrarily muzzling a man saying these men and these men

00:22:05.740 only will have these resources this land can only be owned by these families with this last name so

00:22:10.260 on and so forth. There were these honorary titles, as you see in feudal systems. And so capitalism is

00:22:15.820 actually rejection of those things. And I think in that way, certainly more biblical. The other

00:22:21.600 thing I wanted to mention, just to talk a little bit about the history of capitalism, and we'll

00:22:25.920 look at corporations specifically. So the modern corporation is something that you or your mom or

00:22:31.760 your sister could start in a day. Okay, so that's not how corporations were thought of as sort of

00:22:38.480 separate legal entities in the late 18th century. In the late 18th century, with the creation of

00:22:45.240 the corporation, corporations were actually chartered. And what that meant was when someone

00:22:50.040 wanted to create a corporation, they went to the government, they made an appeal to the government

00:22:54.160 and particularly the body politic to say, we want to create a chartered corporation to do this

00:23:00.420 specific thing, create a railroad, go and grab resources across an ocean. We want to do this

00:23:09.220 for the public good. And as a consequence, we want a unique legal designation where many people can

00:23:17.040 own a piece of this company. So it's not structured like a partnership. And there's all sorts of legal

00:23:22.360 advantages. And those things were denied all the time because the people fundamentally through the

00:23:28.940 parliament or through the the you know the congress were able to say that's not that that

00:23:35.500 doesn't deserve a charter that isn't in our best interest um and that that is how the corporation

00:23:40.940 was initially conceived of it was it was primarily for public good so um in the modern corporation

00:23:48.240 it's it's kind of the opposite it's like you create a corporation for personal tax advantages

00:23:53.380 you create a corporation for um you know easy access to raising funds or whatever the case is

00:24:01.660 but it's certainly not for the public good well it's just kind of like the economic um outflow

00:24:06.520 of democracy if that's the you know the the governing form then you know then the kind of

00:24:12.420 capitalism we have today is the economic form and so it's like we'll let the people decide right it's

00:24:17.260 a free market and the people will decide if it's a public good yeah but what what happens when the

00:24:23.160 people are degenerate and they decide that only fans is a public good when objectively it's not

00:24:28.020 right it's like um like that one you know video it's some uh some muslim guy but i i agree on this 0.52

00:24:34.980 point he says um he's like democracy you know is uh for the people you know of the people by the 0.97

00:24:41.240 people but the people are retarded so democracy is you know for the retarded of the retarded and 0.98

00:24:46.600 by the retarded and i think that sums it up pretty nicely you know and so uh crony capitalism where 0.98

00:24:53.080 It's like, well, you know, anybody can start a corporation in a day, and well, we are getting 0.73

00:24:58.900 the people's consent in this kind of organic sense by simply just starting it, and, you

00:25:05.560 know, and the people, it'll, the corporation will close itself if no one's willing to patron

00:25:11.480 it, you know, but then what you're assuming is you're betting on the nature of man, that

00:25:16.800 that man is fundamentally good and therefore will only spend money on things that are

00:25:22.720 are virtuous but the reality is that that's not true people will spend money on a plenty of things

00:25:29.800 that are not virtuous and so yeah so i don't want um a perfectly free market i i want the state

00:25:37.500 first i want the state to be christian which we currently don't have um but i want the state to

00:25:43.520 be Christian. Separation of church and state, that's fine. But separation of Christ and state, 0.82

00:25:50.140 no way. There is a God above the state, or else the state is God. And so I would like

00:25:54.880 the true God, the one that actually exists, the triune God, to be the head of the state. And then

00:25:59.600 assuming that, a Christian state, I want that Christian state to be able to govern even economic

00:26:06.980 affairs. And not necessarily in a meticulous way, not in a way that's overbearing, but absolutely,

00:26:13.120 i want the state to be able to come in and say oh i see you have a business here uh called only 0.93

00:26:19.620 fans right that's shut down oh but but the people want it oh yeah but the people are retarded that's 0.86

00:26:24.820 shut down so yeah big piece go ahead i was just gonna say quickly like the the important uh i 0.87

00:26:31.920 guess the consequence of that kind of analysis is that similar to the constitution we know that

00:26:37.340 the constitution assumes a particular kind of national life right and and a virtue in the body

00:26:43.160 of the the national body and so does an economic system similar fashion social construct it assumes

00:26:50.920 these things and we were talking about before we went live uh you know adam smith right the founder

00:26:56.720 of capitalism he wrote a book a famous book called the wealth of nations a lot of people don't know

00:27:01.920 that he actually wrote a work of moral philosophy prior to writing that book, which was actually

00:27:07.440 underpinning of the economic work, which was called The Theory of Moral Sentiments. And in

00:27:13.060 this book, he actually, contrary to the notion of capitalism as sort of like, my selfish motives

00:27:19.540 compete with your selfish motives for the collective good, he actually talked a lot about

00:27:25.020 self-command and discipline. Benevolence was one of the key philosophical points he makes

00:27:31.140 in that book um self-command um was was one of the major ones as well but but he talks a lot about

00:27:38.900 virtue and the requirement for virtue in in economic life and so these things were assumed

00:27:45.380 and uh we're we would be fools to assume those things now uh when we try to interpret the economy

00:27:50.820 so we you know a neocon might hear what we're talking about oh you're you're a socialist or

00:27:55.260 you're a communist you're you're agreeing with aoc but it's like frankly i'm just recognizing

00:27:59.560 the moral degradation in our society, right?

00:28:03.220 And seeing how far we've fallen from where we were

00:28:07.800 and the kind of capitalism we had.

00:28:10.100 That limited liability piece,

00:28:11.560 just before we go to our first commercial break, is huge.

00:28:13.980 It was about the mid-1800s that in England, for example,

00:28:16.740 they allowed corporations,

00:28:18.380 but then there was an act in, I think, 1820

00:28:20.180 that they could be registered without a charter

00:28:22.520 and without approval.

00:28:23.500 And then the limited liability piece was stamped on.

00:28:26.260 And what that means is that individuals

00:28:27.860 could form a corporation

00:28:28.940 and they could take your money. 0.91

00:28:30.180 Daphne has a great critique of this

00:28:31.720 in essay in Forgotten Saints,

00:28:33.300 but they could take your money

00:28:34.440 and they could say,

00:28:34.920 we're going to use it for this.

00:28:35.800 They could blow through it and say,

00:28:37.040 I'm sorry, the product just didn't work.

00:28:38.980 We couldn't get this, that or the other

00:28:40.180 and your money is gone.

00:28:42.200 Partnerships, typically, on the other hand,

00:28:43.660 you could be personally liable.

00:28:45.300 If I went to Joel's dad and I said,

00:28:46.440 hey, you need to take your retirement savings

00:28:47.920 and I found the cure for cancer

00:28:49.460 and you need to give this to me

00:28:50.660 and I can promise you 10X returns

00:28:53.120 and I'm a corporation and all of that money,

00:28:55.800 unless there's criminal misuse,

00:28:57.860 I could say we tried the drug didn't actually work I would have no responsibility for the things that

00:29:03.040 I promised the things that I told them taking people's money and so when you have that structure

00:29:07.360 someone pointed out well that protects people from being sued into oblivion well maybe we shouldn't

00:29:11.440 have structures that have the ability to take someone's entire livelihood I think of Alex Jones

00:29:15.680 and Infowars being sued for I believe it's in the trillions the judge settled on so then you have

00:29:20.900 the problem where well we're going to take people's stuff through court through suing them but then

00:29:26.520 they say all right we're going to form this type of thing that protects us from being sued but then

00:29:30.880 you have these corporations vivek ramaswamy the way he made his money is he took a drug

00:29:34.900 parkinson's drug that basically everyone knew wouldn't work he got his mom to tell the story

00:29:40.880 about how promising it was had his company ipo initial public offering so tons of different

00:29:45.680 people bought the shares thinking that by owning a small percent of the company that that company

00:29:50.700 would go up in value because they had the first alzheimer's drug the drug failed trials the

00:29:55.740 company went bankrupt he sold all of his ownership to people who thought it would be more valuable

00:30:00.160 so now he's a multi-millionaire and about to be governor of ohio unfortunately and tons of people

00:30:05.760 lost their investments because he can't be personally liable i don't support a system

00:30:10.460 like that that's what we're saying that it reminds me there's this famous uh now i well-known

00:30:15.860 south park clip not an endorsement of south park um although they do they do have some funny clips

00:30:22.240 they're on the nose sometimes they're on the nose that's true uh there's this clip uh one of the

00:30:27.080 characters goes to like a a bank he's like hey i just got a hundred dollars for from for my birthday

00:30:32.720 or something like that i'm probably butchering it gives it to the the teller the teller's like okay

00:30:36.920 we'll put that in a mutual fund and it's gone he's like what what do you mean it's gone next

00:30:44.320 customer that's the embodiment of the limited liability the operation great we'll hit our

00:30:50.320 first commercial break. We'll be right back.

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00:35:02.760 All right.

00:35:03.880 To introduce this segment, we're going to really get into the meat of some of our critiques of capitalism.

00:35:07.820 We're going to play just a short video here.

00:35:09.580 20 seconds.

00:35:10.280 Let's kick it off.

00:35:19.520 so for anyone maybe that was listening what that was was a short video a young girl she said uh

00:35:36.200 hey could you just stay nine seconds and and take a look because my dad is at risk of shutting down

00:35:40.920 his disney lamp business and she shows some really sentimental scenes of her father doing some

00:35:45.800 sketches and some painting. And the product she actually shows that's being sold is a crappy

00:35:51.220 Chinese drop ship product that's made for pennies on the dollar in China. And as in someone goes in

00:35:57.000 and they take footage like that, I don't even know if she herself would be the drop shipper,

00:36:01.180 and they emotionally manipulate people. We're going to go in and we're going to pull on the

00:36:04.300 heartstrings with the music. And man, look at this. This is a dad who hand paints Disney characters

00:36:10.320 for kids, and won't you please just support our business? Now, the margins on it are 90%

00:36:15.940 because it's made by child labor in China. And this gets to some of, it's kind of a humorous 0.94

00:36:20.880 example, but it gets to really the example of the type of thinking, the type of regard for our

00:36:25.680 neighbor, the second greatest command is to love your neighbor as yourself, that capitalism can

00:36:30.600 tend towards enabling. Early on in the Christian church, always early as the Council of Nicaea,

00:36:36.000 the Christian church put a ban on usury and Thomas Aquinas, he expounds one of the big reasons for

00:36:41.560 this is that ultimately it's artificial. It's creating value. Usury is the charging of interest

00:36:46.780 on money. It's creating value. It's creating wealth where there is none. So if I take money

00:36:52.640 and I lend it to someone, money is not a plant. Money is not a child. Money is not a field.

00:36:58.160 It doesn't actually physically grow. It's an inorganic object. And so from the earliest time,

00:37:02.860 be it ancient philosophers prior to Christ, the early Christian church, the Middle Ages,

00:37:08.080 the Christians have said, look, usury, speculation is a bad thing. It tends towards greed in people's

00:37:16.040 heart. We all have greed in our hearts that can be enabled by the possibility of lucrative gain.

00:37:22.340 So whether it be inclinations towards greed and towards gain, whether it be needless speculation,

00:37:27.260 spending time speculating on, could I make this type of return here? Could I purchase this?

00:37:31.980 or just general consumerism, coveting, a violation of the 10th commandment.

00:37:36.880 For a long time, the Christian church has recognized,

00:37:39.040 hey, when value and money and all of these things are very abstract

00:37:42.860 and you're speculating on their value detached from anything real,

00:37:47.060 detached from an actual product, detached from an actual service,

00:37:50.100 detached from an actual skill, that can actually be corrosive to the soul.

00:37:54.780 One of the big parts of modern capitalism,

00:37:56.500 it would not be what it is without the stock market.

00:37:58.840 the stock market is what actually moves when i buy a stock right if i had to go into robin hood

00:38:04.760 and i was to buy a stock or i was to buy options what am i actually purchasing well practically

00:38:10.520 tangibly nothing theoretically i notionally own a portion of the company which could increase in

00:38:15.880 value but the stock market as it is right now it's 24 7 it's worldwide so i can speculate on

00:38:22.360 atlantic salmon futures markets like i think in the future salmon will be worth this amount

00:38:28.000 and i can speculate on that it's very disconnected and so i think definitely one of our critiques of

00:38:33.560 capitalism is not just the excesses well of course only fans or of course uh perversion or of course

00:38:38.980 these things that aren't good but also even too as christians just mindless speculation on value

00:38:45.760 a fixation on money that when you detach money from its use in trade as an intermediary that

00:38:52.340 you get yeah yeah i think like uh you know the way that the american economy has shifted from

00:38:58.600 the manufacture of goods into predominantly white collar professional services over the last 40

00:39:04.980 years like as far as i'm concerned professional certain now you can be a legal you know you can

00:39:10.360 be a lawyer you can be an accountant and offer legitimate you know worthwhile advice but but

00:39:18.000 the reality is when you have an economy composed of hr marketing uh like all of these sort of

00:39:24.960 fickle intangible services being provided um you you kind of have a soulless economy it's like no

00:39:32.120 one you've you've you've gone from the you know tradesman who's like manufacturing furniture in

00:39:38.440 his garage there's a ton of honor ascribed to that there's a ton of hard work labor um the labor of

00:39:45.180 love that is embedded within that thing when you buy it it's it's it's it's more than the product

00:39:51.220 itself it's it's it's a recognition of your neighbor's hard work and diligence that's gone

00:39:57.080 into those things like all of those things are stripped from our economy both in the kinds of

00:40:02.180 work that we do but also as a consequence of sort of global capitalism and ship making everything

00:40:07.480 be a race to the bottom how cheap can i make this thing um you've essentially punished the very

00:40:13.740 things that capitalism was designed to reward right when i think of you know capitalism in its

00:40:20.580 kind of fundamental state it's um you know it's the customer is always right but because of the

00:40:27.620 stock market it's the shareholder is always right so which is very different than the customers so

00:40:32.640 you can actually make decisions and corporations do this all the time they make decisions that

00:40:37.380 knowingly will frustrate the customer that will produce a worse product over time uh but

00:40:43.620 in order to make you know the bottom line go down so the profit margin increases for a short term

00:40:50.800 the next quarterly earnings report so that the shareholders are pleased and we see this happen

00:40:56.380 all the time a couple years ago bmw got in huge trouble they said we're going to charge people i

00:41:00.920 think it was like a hundred dollars a year for their heated seats so it's a functionality that

00:41:04.960 was already in the car it was not as though like hey there's additional labor additional parts no

00:41:08.840 we are charging a certain amount of money for you to unlock the functionality that already exists

00:41:14.800 in your car just so we can make more money yeah and people are like are you kidding me like this

00:41:19.520 isn't it didn't cost you anything it doesn't add any value but to your point point shareholders

00:41:24.260 love that yeah like if you if you serve the shareholder and we're talking about quarterly

00:41:27.940 reports Antonio I can give it to you the shareholders who you answer to well you're

00:41:32.100 going to pursue capital yeah when they announced that decision initially I wouldn't be surprised

00:41:38.160 that the stock bumped you know spiked up five percent if it's publicly traded i don't know if

00:41:42.380 it is bmw i'm sure it is yeah bmw so yeah so all that kind of stuff there are problems with that

00:41:48.120 another thing that i've always despised and i may just be ignorant on this point but i i hate

00:41:53.340 um i hate i hate the concept that seems so prevalent where anytime money moves especially

00:41:59.820 a significant amount of money there's a ton of people who have nothing to do with it right you

00:42:04.380 have a buyer you have a seller and then you have 15 other people that have nothing to do with it

00:42:08.920 like the it's like um on finding nemo like the seagulls like mine mine mine and i think of this

00:42:16.000 um i'll probably offend you know some of our people but look if this is you you can get mad

00:42:21.240 at me or what you can do to absolve your conscience is you can just donate some of

00:42:26.440 your money to this ministry and uh and you know and be forgiven um but real estate agents

00:42:32.480 that's the male equivalent of only fans to be honest well there's no there's no males really

00:42:38.020 in it anymore sadly because that's actually true because honestly like i like i and i know this

00:42:43.140 personally i know a few men who are still in real estate and they say all the time that like they've

00:42:48.540 just been utterly replaced by um women returning to the work field and particularly women with

00:42:55.580 low-cut blouses and uh who are generously endowed in uh in their bosoms and they just you know and 0.97

00:43:04.240 they're just doing this but it's it's this busy work it's like you got a house i want to buy the

00:43:10.700 house but i can't just buy it like i we've created this system where it's it's so many hoops legal

00:43:18.180 hoops to jump through on purpose so that i won't be able to do it uh not not while continuing to

00:43:24.840 be a husband and a father and not quitting my day job so i i just don't know how to do it so you have

00:43:30.860 the you have the product that i want the house you're willing to sell it to me for this price

00:43:34.940 i'm willing to buy it for that price but then between the two of us we have to come up with

00:43:40.200 an additional three percent five percent that you know whatever to pay somebody else with a low-cut

00:43:47.580 blouse to come and do something that didn't even traditionally have to be done but was created

00:43:54.380 just well money's moving and everybody should get a piece of it yeah and i'm like what why why is

00:44:00.660 that a thing yeah all of the intermediaries i mean it's not just real estate agents you think about

00:44:05.920 you know i just bought a house recently and it's like four or five intermediaries that are taking

00:44:10.320 some some various proportion of the the price um and you know as a buyer you're not necessarily

00:44:17.300 paying all of that a lot of times the seller's footing that stuff but um yeah it's it's but still

00:44:22.020 i mean that's just as unfair the seller should be able to get the full right no exactly there

00:44:27.120 was a time in which instead he's losing a piece here to this person this person this person

00:44:31.580 it's like i've got something that i worked for to buy i'm now selling it and i have to give all of

00:44:38.040 you a piece of it yeah why i mean and this is like two rabbit holes that we won't go down but

00:44:42.620 the first one is government regulation the national natural consequence of over regulation

00:44:47.220 and red tape is more intermediaries now you need an expert on real estate law now you need an expert

00:44:53.720 on tort law whatever the case is and you end up having four or five people come to a table

00:44:58.820 in contract negotiations and the transfer of assets so on and so forth because of all of the

00:45:05.320 regulation that it can't just be a man's word with another man's word and that contract be

00:45:09.920 legally binding that's one the second one national association of realtors is one of the biggest

00:45:14.340 lobbying groups in the united states now who is paying those those lobbying groups all that money

00:45:18.680 mom and pop realtors nope it's remax big corporations that systematize scale taking

00:45:25.940 massive amounts of money and then could turn around and pay people to influence our politics

00:45:29.480 to get policies that get them more fees yeah and here's the and here's the other other thing

00:45:35.380 we talked about ai on on the last episode or you know one of the more recent episodes if if you do

00:45:42.560 one of these things that we're describing get good at something quickly because you are the jobs

00:45:49.300 that everyone wants to replace yeah on both if i'm a seller i'm selling a house i'm like can chat

00:45:54.700 gpt can grok do what i'm paying that person fifteen thousand dollars to do right yep um and so uh get

00:46:03.020 good at something quickly yeah eventually that's one thing that i mean ai in the long run may

00:46:08.180 destroy all of us who knows but um but what i do like is that ai at least initially um is kind of

00:46:15.380 like a repellent for leeches like it really is like that like the portions of society that don't

00:46:21.080 actually offer a tangible good or service like they're just it's just busy work it's just bean

00:46:26.720 counters and pencil pushers um and also i'll be honest this is a little freebie but um i would

00:46:34.900 like to see, you know, like make motherhood great again. I'd like to see women return home and be 1.00

00:46:40.040 mothers first. And so I like AI for that reason. Because, you know, I was, you know, really hoping 0.95

00:46:46.220 for a revival and just a return to the Word of God. But sometimes it doesn't look super hopeful

00:46:53.800 that we're going to get that. But what we'll get instead is artificial intelligence that can do

00:46:59.660 some of the most menial jobs which uh conveniently are held by women um what are the what are the

00:47:07.520 leech type of jobs that you don't really need that are you know currently filled by 80 percent

00:47:13.940 women and 20 percent men hr right you know like uh uh this this little you know legal service

00:47:21.460 that's not actually like a lawyer who's defending you in a court but it's just writing a will it's

00:47:26.420 like that'll be you know 15 bajillion dollars it's like but i could have written this on a napkin

00:47:31.600 that'll be 15 bajillion dollars well now like you'll be able to use ai to write a will to do

00:47:37.180 this to do that um all these kinds of um all these things that are really common sense things

00:47:42.980 but it's it's all the legislation that that that require you to you know instead of it being a

00:47:49.360 common sense thing you have to pronounce the you know the perfect incantation get the spell

00:47:54.100 just right for it. It's like, well, you said that, and I know what you meant, but it doesn't count.

00:48:01.100 It's literally what the Pharisees did in the first century in the ministry of Jesus. They would say,

00:48:07.100 remember, Jesus actually combats them. He says this about taking oaths. He says,

00:48:11.900 well, you say that if you swear by the temple, you're not bound by your oath. But if you swear

00:48:18.200 upon the gold of the temple, then you're bound by your oath, which is the equivalent of literally

00:48:23.580 like a five-year-old bratty kid like looking his dad straight in the eyes and his dad saying hey

00:48:29.620 will you um i want you to go and clean your room and he says yes daddy and then he goes and plays

00:48:34.800 and never cleans his room and then pretends that somehow he's justified because when he said yes

00:48:39.480 daddy well daddy didn't see but uh technically he had his hand behind his back with his fingers

00:48:45.160 crossed that's literally what the pharisees the pharisees were five-year-old legalese brats that

00:48:51.960 who were the Pharisees? The HR department, who were the Pharisees? The assistant for the assistant

00:48:59.320 for the assistant of lawyers. The Pharisees were the people who would come in, and they did it 0.99

00:49:04.280 economically, not just religiously, but they would come in and they would create pencil-pushing, 0.91

00:49:09.760 bean-counting busy work that added no value to society whatsoever with all these little loopholes

00:49:16.540 that weren't actually like, hey, you need to be a logical person or a reasonable person to

00:49:22.040 understand. No, like any reasonable person could understand, but you had to get the incantation

00:49:26.800 just right. And so they would make all these little legal loopholes to where the only way

00:49:32.600 you could function in the society, economically, religiously, you know, culturally at every level

00:49:37.600 was you had to be familiar, you know, perfectly, you know, up to speed with hundreds and hundreds

00:49:44.740 of different laws and all these different regulations. And today it's like, yeah, we

00:49:51.640 absolutely still have Pharisees. It's the people in society who create the busy work. They don't

00:49:58.360 actually add a real value. They don't have a real service or a real good to offer someone,

00:50:03.160 but they come and attach themselves every time someone is selling a real good or offering a

00:50:08.940 real service and somebody's willing to buy it. And they say, but you need me. And I'm like,

00:50:13.700 why do i need you because the law says and who made the law me and in our in our lobbying and 0.97

00:50:19.620 and and it's like well who are these people well they're they're feminists they're you know they're

00:50:24.900 the teachers unions they're the real estate you know lobbyists and ironically a lot of them are

00:50:30.140 still jews just like the pharisees in the first century um very speculative not all of them but 0.79

00:50:35.920 a lot of them yeah and and and i see that as saying like okay like this actually makes sense 0.56

00:50:41.600 I can see a direct correlation. In that sense, you know, like there really is continuity for

00:50:47.600 the last 2,000 years, you know, like the spirit of being a Pharisee, adding no value, attaching

00:50:55.400 yourself like a leech to something that you're not contributing with, but lobbying certain

00:51:00.620 legislation to where nobody can actually move. They're all bound unless you're a part of it and

00:51:05.680 you get a percentage, that spirit is very much alive and well. And it's not just alive and well

00:51:13.140 in Judaism at the religious side of the equation, but it's alive and well in capitalism on the

00:51:18.160 economic side as well. I mean, think about the thing that drove Jesus to break out a whip and

00:51:22.980 flip tables. They were coming into the temple, poor people, to offer sacrifices, and it was the 0.53

00:51:27.480 exchange rate that they were jacking up. So people would come to try to offer service to God, and it's

00:51:31.840 like okay you gave fifteen dollars wink wink but in once i did the exchange to a certain type of

00:51:37.220 shekel what that actually converts to is you have nowhere near as much money as you thought

00:51:41.420 just to again rip people off not provide a service whatsoever and jesus hated it you can

00:51:47.060 for sure categorize literally why he was turning the table this is hating your neighbor right have

00:51:51.800 your neighbor with his hard work come in here and you rip him off and rob him blind to put more

00:51:57.200 money in your pocket jesus hates that he yes amen it's like he can't he can't worship without a

00:52:02.480 sacrifice and there were you know different tiered sacrifices all the way you know from a burnt bull

00:52:07.560 which would be very costly down to a dove offering or a pigeon offering you know like something much

00:52:12.320 smaller and more affordable and so you know the poor would worship you know with with a smaller

00:52:17.940 offering and the rich would worship with a larger offering and and it cost a certain amount but then

00:52:23.640 here are the money changers um these these you know pharisees religious you know rulers who are

00:52:30.760 treating the house of god that's supposed according to jesus to be a house of prayer for all nations

00:52:37.060 and the nations are now represented there they've come to worship uh to worship the true god and

00:52:43.320 these people are saying not only do you have to uh you've already spent money because you've taken

00:52:46.960 off work you've spent money on all the travel and the lodging and you're going to spend money now on

00:52:51.400 the sacrifice but you're going you're going to spend four times five times ten times what it

00:52:56.200 should actually cost but essentially what they did is um the best way i can describe it i feel

00:53:00.520 like a helpful illustration i came up with you know a few years ago was they turned the house

00:53:04.880 of god into a chuck e cheese yeah um it you know it's like uh well i want to play this game

00:53:10.560 can i put a quarter in the machine no you need a chuck e cheese coin okay well uh is that cost

00:53:17.800 a quarter? No, it cost, you know, two quarters for one. And that's essentially what they were

00:53:25.100 doing. And so I feel like the Pharisees have always done this and they're still doing it to

00:53:31.300 this day. Yeah. So we identified already two big flaws, which would be the speculation,

00:53:35.300 the abstract nature of it. We also identified robbing your neighbor man to man. You're robbing

00:53:39.820 him. You don't actually provide him a service. And here's the third one is actual damage. I think

00:53:44.520 one of the best stories of this is the biotechnology giant Masanto. So Masanto created

00:53:49.660 biotechnology through experimentation and research, created genetically modified seeds. And these

00:53:55.340 seeds would be resistant to glyphosate or Roundup was the commercial name. And so you'd be able to

00:54:00.140 take crops and you could grow them and you could spray them with this herbicide that would kill

00:54:04.220 fungus. It would kill bugs. It would kill all sorts of things that were on it. But because the seed

00:54:09.120 itself and the plant that grew from it was genetically modified, it itself would be resistant

00:54:14.180 to it. Now for decades, people said, hey, this stuff is toxic. It had a relation to non-Hodgkin's

00:54:20.340 lymphoma, carcinogenic causing cancers. So for decades, people were telling the company and

00:54:25.460 research was coming out, this product that you're using, that you're putting on our food so that

00:54:30.580 you get more of it when you harvest it. You also, if you do it really late, you don't have to,

00:54:35.280 but if you do it really late, it also helps to dry out corn, for example. So you're doing it

00:54:39.160 all the way through its life cycle so you can maximize return on it. And you're doing it,

00:54:42.840 taking this this toxic chemical you're this herbicide you're putting it out at the very end

00:54:47.700 so it dries out the corn and it's causing cancer in people masanta was ghost writing articles so

00:54:53.300 they were paying scientists to make fake articles about how safe it was and in 2015 they settled

00:54:59.060 the initial settlement was 290 million and then billions more of people that lost loved ones of

00:55:04.920 people that got cancer of people that were disabled there were farmers that would grow the

00:55:09.140 seeds. Like, Hey, we're trying to do this too, to increase, you know, it's a mom and pop shop. Hey,

00:55:13.200 we grow corn as well. This would be helpful for us for this acre back here to be able to grow

00:55:17.420 these and be able to just maximize. They went on lawsuits against them. They issued cease and

00:55:22.560 desist letters, even farmers that cross grew. So like the plants drifted over, you had a farm 0.97

00:55:27.300 nearby. They started growing it as well. They aggressively said like, Hey, you can't grow this

00:55:31.540 there. So you have this giant corporation and they destroyed thousands, if not tens of thousands of

00:55:37.460 lives so that they could maximize returns on their crops, maximize returns on this herbicide.

00:55:43.860 Even after four decades, people were sounding the alarm and saying this stuff is toxic. Another

00:55:51.160 example is Lucky Charm cereal. If you compare it to Europe, and Europe actually gets this right, 0.97

00:55:56.180 rare European W, the colors on Lucky Charm cereal, kids cereal, they don't look as vivid. Well,

00:56:02.640 they don't look as vivid because the dyes that are used in the United States are banned in Europe

00:56:06.940 because we know red dye 40, yellow five, I think it's blue one. We know that they're all also

00:56:11.560 toxic to children. We know that they're carcinogenic. But why do they put them in the

00:56:15.840 cereal? Well, they think it's healthy. No, they put it in the cereal. So it's brighter. So your

00:56:20.080 kids are more stimulated and they want more of it. And so this third category that capitalism

00:56:24.820 can tend towards, especially a type of corporate capitalism, is absolutely destructive to your

00:56:30.660 neighbor. And it is the Christian duty to say, you have no right to destroy the life of your 0.88

00:56:35.800 neighbor to maximize your profits that is immoral and that is wicked. And ideally in a Christian 1.00

00:56:41.140 society, it would not just be the corporation that's responsible, but individuals that purposefully 0.94

00:56:46.120 covered it up, that harmed individuals so they could make more money. Paul does say the love

00:56:51.280 of money is the root of all kinds of evil. People love money and they will do terrible things to get

00:56:59.400 a hold of more of it. And so practically speaking, especially in our time with globalism, big

00:57:03.620 corporations you might have a bigger state in some respects we've talked about this before

00:57:08.100 smaller and others department of education zero but food safety that might be a department for a

00:57:14.720 while that has to be bigger under a christian nation you can't feed children this you can't

00:57:20.000 make vegetable oil i think the fda panel that voted on it they mandated inclusion of vegetable

00:57:24.820 oil and certain baby formulas which very conveniently benefits vegetable oil manufacturers

00:57:30.540 So you might need a bigger state for a bit coming in and saying, you can't do this and you can't do that and you can't maximize profits this way because it's immoral and it's damaging and destructive.

00:57:41.080 Yeah, for the longest time, I just thought, you know, the biblical answer is small government, period.

00:57:46.960 And by default, you know, small government would be righteous government, big government would be wicked government.

00:57:53.320 And now I realize, I mean, I still think that our government is absolutely bloated in a million different ways. 0.98

00:57:58.400 And that if it was Christian, it would actually, on the whole, be smaller. 0.98

00:58:02.000 But in terms of departments, categories, I do believe there are some categories of our government that if it became more righteous, some categories would be enlarged. 0.87

00:58:11.040 They actually would be larger, smaller on the whole, but some sectors of government actually would be larger, at least, like what you said, Wes, for a time.

00:58:19.700 at least initially, as the law is working as a tutor, training the populace, training the

00:58:25.740 citizens to actually care about virtuous things and to kick their vices. So yeah, I don't think

00:58:33.800 it just means, if that's all it takes to be righteous, then we might as well be anarchist.

00:58:41.060 There's no government in anarchy.

00:58:42.340 Yeah, let's just have no government at all, right? Why settle for a small government when

00:58:46.200 you could be extra righteous and have no government at all. But that's not what the Bible

00:58:49.980 teaches. Romans 13 tells us the good of the state and tells us what the state is for. It's to punish

00:58:55.960 the evildoer. So then that, to me, seems to immediately raise the question, okay, well,

00:59:00.540 can you do evil in markets? Can you do evil with money? Yeah. Punishing the evildoer is not just

00:59:10.940 punishing you know the person who commits murder but but it's also the person who's um who's taken

00:59:17.060 you know i think of the old testament where it says um that you know to take someone's um i think

00:59:23.560 it's millstone is is what it uses and not like wrapping it around your neck you know to be

00:59:27.940 thrown into the sea that's a different uh passage but a millstone used as a tool uh to to produce

00:59:34.700 to make a livelihood. It says that if you are borrowing it or have taken it as collateral for

00:59:42.580 something, that you must give it back in a timely manner. I'm paraphrasing. And it says you must

00:59:48.620 give it back in a timely manner, for it is his life. And if I'm remembering correctly, the text

00:59:54.760 doesn't say his livelihood, but his life, because his livelihood is directly correlated with his

01:00:02.000 life. A man's livelihood essentially is his life. And so to do certain things that knowingly

01:00:10.420 destroy someone's livelihood and not beating them fair and square, well, I'm just providing a better

01:00:15.780 product at a better price. No, like you actually are weeding out the competition providing an

01:00:23.340 inferior product. Your product is poisoned. Your product is actually bad for people. It's killing

01:00:28.880 people, and yet you're still winning. And how are you winning? Through lawfare, through lobbying,

01:00:34.740 through being a Pharisee in these wicked kinds of ways. Well, number one, you're hurting people's

01:00:42.660 lives. If you're in the food industry and your food is poison, you're hurting their physical

01:00:47.180 life. And then on the other hand, you also have upseated and ruined the livelihood of all these

01:00:54.240 other people that were producing that that food or whatever that was healthy and are no longer able

01:00:59.720 to provide for their families their livelihood so in in two ways you have destroyed people's lives

01:01:05.700 and your life i believe your life should be held um as as you know the payment for that yeah and i

01:01:15.260 would just say quickly like unless uh you know less people think that we're creating some kind

01:01:20.180 of like new version of capitalism or trying to articulate something that hasn't existed in this

01:01:25.340 country before. I'd point you to Sabbath laws, which existed very early on in this country and

01:01:31.340 persisted into the 19th century. I'd point you to temperance laws. So we're all familiar with

01:01:36.760 prohibition in the early 20th century. There were still laws in the 19th century that forbid

01:01:42.280 the sale of alcohol after a certain period, a time of day, for example, after 10 p.m., after 9 p.m.

01:01:49.000 And so there's always been these state-level laws. I point you to usury. In the 17th century, Massachusetts had a cap on usury at 8%. The list goes on and on in terms of price gouging is another one. Price gouging is an intentionally deceptive technique in a market. And all of these things at various points have been illegal in this country.

01:02:13.640 this is not new right we have we have like actively digressed in our view of capitalism

01:02:19.560 and our licentiousness and our willing willingness to simply just open the market to any gratifying

01:02:25.580 desire um to any day of the week and any product and as long as there's a buyer it's okay like

01:02:32.560 that is not the historic view of capitalism and our christian forefathers would just simply be

01:02:37.880 appalled at at what the market looks like today it truly has become an idol in many regards just to

01:02:43.380 give a comparison my father-in-law works in a cutting tool industry he's a sales representative

01:02:47.360 he said when he started this would have been 30 40 40 years ago so think of time frame this is

01:02:51.500 about a generation when he started working i think he said maybe 10 to 20 percent of companies would

01:02:56.420 be owned by a bigger be it another conglomerate another corporation or private equity he said

01:03:01.240 now it's close to 80 percent private equity companies are coming in and they're buying up

01:03:05.460 these businesses and he said they'll come into these businesses he's heard guys tell them the

01:03:09.500 story and let's say we've looked at all your books we look through your financials and here's

01:03:13.440 your problem you're just paying your people too much so you build from the ground up say you build

01:03:17.840 a 15 million dollar carbide cutting tool business and you've got great guys that work for you and

01:03:22.980 they work hard and they do good labor and you provide a good product and then private equity

01:03:26.940 comes in they say we would love to give you a 50 million dollar paycheck one of the first things

01:03:30.820 we're going to do when we come into this company is uh we're gonna we're gonna cut staff and we're

01:03:35.260 going to lower pay so that we can make more money. And this is, like I said, in a generation,

01:03:39.760 you've gone from an economic landscape, certainly not as much marked by private equity, large

01:03:46.040 corporations, big multinational corporations to now the point where a business owner, they have

01:03:52.840 to make very conscious decision. I'm not going to sell to someone overseas. I'm not going to sell

01:03:57.480 to private equity. I'm not going to sell my home. I just saw a huge statistic, billions and billions

01:04:02.240 of dollars of international buyers of real estate i'm not going to sell my home to people that are 0.98

01:04:07.000 foreigners i'm going to sell it to americans this is something new last 10 15 years that christians

01:04:12.380 have to navigate yeah i was just last last point i'll make on this uh teddy roosevelt right often

01:04:19.320 framed as a progressive many of the many of the quote-unquote progressive policies that he supported

01:04:24.460 were were actually kind of in the vein of some of the things we've been talking about

01:04:29.120 uh one of the major bills that he was a proponent of was uh the uh i think it was clean food it was

01:04:36.200 some something like the clean food act which essentially just was regulating companies would

01:04:41.000 you know you would butcher a cow or you'd butcher a chicken in chicago and you'd ship it to um you'd

01:04:46.660 ship it to new york city for example and it would sit in a warehouse for 12 hours 24 hours not on

01:04:53.180 ice not on salt before being shipped and it was and he he came in and he would he would himself

01:04:59.420 go and inspect these facilities um he would go to tenement houses where immigrant communities 0.57

01:05:04.520 were making cigars in apartments and just absolute squalor children there crying on the floor i mean 0.62

01:05:10.860 just decrepit environments he would go and inspect them and and say this is not christian and this is

01:05:18.000 not uh american and uh obviously he's been framed as a progressive but i mean the reality is is that

01:05:24.580 um this modern notion this is the last thing i'll say the modern notion of this sort of

01:05:30.360 this capitalistic engine that's global and it's hyper efficient like all of this stuff is

01:05:37.660 is was never the point of american capitalism um yeah i love that because it's just in our past

01:05:44.800 100 years ago no you can't develop this land it is to be enjoyed no you can't make things in these

01:05:49.800 conditions because it's unsanitary no you can't put these people to work no you can't have i think

01:05:54.360 it was bars even open at during his time in new york city you can't have bars open because this

01:05:58.140 is immoral here in the united states you can't do this says the government because it's bad now fall

01:06:03.680 in line good things were better yep let's go to our last commercial break and we'll be right back

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01:09:56.760 So welcome back. Let's get practical here in the third segment.

01:10:01.280 Capitalism as we know it, it's not going away. 0.98

01:10:03.660 China will be as long as we will take them. 0.98

01:10:05.680 They will be sending boats full of plastic products to our shores for probably the next couple decades.

01:10:11.160 But practically, as Christians and as Americans, 2025, what does it look like, I think, to invest is the biggest thing.

01:10:18.540 So the stock market.

01:10:20.700 I think we would all make the argument it is moral for Christians to participate in it. 0.91

01:10:25.220 Part of it because that's just the way things are right now. 0.88

01:10:29.340 your money it's kind of funny we were talking about uh well man i'm blanking on his name he's

01:10:34.580 in the thumbnail warren buffett warren buffett yeah he's got a lot of his wealth just sitting

01:10:40.460 now in cash and it could be like well he uh he doesn't have it stored in anything right now

01:10:44.220 no he has it stored in something it's called the u.s dollar and it's a terrible place to store your

01:10:49.200 wealth you're always going to store it in something it could be literally fiat the u.s dollar it could

01:10:53.700 be crypto gold as a tangible asset something that you can hide under your bed you're going to store

01:10:59.200 your wealth in something. And I don't think it's immoral for Christians in this time in a fiat

01:11:04.020 currency environment, when your wealth is being inflated, when your dollars practically do not

01:11:09.780 go as far as they went five years ago, most certainly not 10 years ago to say, I'm going

01:11:14.740 to speculate moderately with a good portion of the wealth that I'm generating in the hopes of a

01:11:21.400 modest return, my five, my seven, my 10%. I will throw out the question though, what about specific

01:11:27.540 investments in some of the companies that we've named that are somewhat immoral palantir would 0.87

01:11:32.960 be a good example it's a day ai data and analytics company that uh is literally run by a communist 0.91

01:11:39.900 alex carp like these guys are not pro-america not most certainly pro-christianity what about

01:11:46.660 blackrock um didn't alex carp i think you told me he said uh his greatest fear is being thrown out

01:11:52.000 of the window by christian nationalists a couple years ago in a tweet that's now deleted he said

01:11:56.160 something to the equivalent of my greatest fear is that in the middle of the night christian

01:11:59.940 nationalists are going to come and throw me out of a window and he's the ceo of palantir so it's

01:12:05.120 like if you're buying palantir that is saying i you know what he's doing i would love just just

01:12:10.320 one percent of that just own a little bit of it well i would just quickly say like on that on that

01:12:17.780 question of where should we put our dollar like the consequence of the stock market becoming what

01:12:23.940 it is today is that to invest in a stock actually is more or less i mean there's a line but there's

01:12:30.580 it's a gradient i'll put it that way yeah uh of moral indifference which is to say when i invest

01:12:36.360 in a company it actually i as as much as we'd say you notionally own a piece of that company

01:12:41.440 you don't you have no control um your dollar actually because the the stock market is is

01:12:47.280 primarily unless it's an ipo it's actually secondary markets it's not like the the money

01:12:51.780 you pay for the stock goes to the company they don't have shares with your name written on them

01:12:55.920 now indirectly enough purchasing activity in the stock market does drive the value of stocks up

01:13:01.940 then the company could issue more shares and benefit that way but but practically speaking

01:13:07.020 if wes owns a stock in joel and co and i purchased that stock joel doesn't benefit

01:13:12.560 so in that way it's actually morally indifferent i would i would argue on a gradient to purchase

01:13:17.660 the stock, for example, of Palantir, because your dollar doesn't support them per se. It's

01:13:22.860 simply an investment vehicle. And I would suggest that, you know, Christians ought to be prudent

01:13:28.660 about it, right? Like it's not, I mean, there's certainly a line that I wouldn't cross if, you

01:13:34.340 know, Planned Parenthood was a public company, right? Like I wouldn't invest in Planned Parenthood

01:13:38.940 for obvious reasons. But certainly within the, there's a, I think a degree of reason where you

01:13:44.620 could say yes i'm going to invest in this stock no i don't necessarily like what it's what the

01:13:49.720 company's about or what the ceo is trying to enact but it is a good investment vehicle for my family

01:13:55.340 to ensure wealth to ensure my dollar holds um holds its value right um because it's being

01:14:03.000 inflated away correct it is being printed at an astronomic rate and if i do nothing

01:14:07.000 what i will be handing my kids if i save 350 000 and i do nothing with it i will be handing my

01:14:13.000 children something that's worth in real power less less than what i even earned it at yeah yeah i it

01:14:21.040 it hit me years ago when i you know for the longest time i thought like where's the best place to

01:14:25.820 to invest my dollar and then i realized that the better way to think of it is um where's the best

01:14:31.620 place to invest my wealth and the dollar is one of those investments so it's not so much where do

01:14:37.320 i put my dollars it's where do i put my wealth and the dollar is just one alternative for putting

01:14:42.520 your wealth and it's a and it's a bad place yeah so like if you i um stocks can go down

01:14:49.420 but the dollar always goes down yeah always um it's you know so like investing legally it always

01:14:58.200 goes down yeah because it's always being printed more and more and more and they have a devaluation

01:15:03.100 rate yep target inflation rate exactly so um so just putting money you know under your mattress

01:15:08.680 or in a coffee can and burying it in the backyard is a poor investment. 0.94

01:15:14.220 And it's not just that it's foolish, but it actually is wicked 0.94

01:15:17.160 because God has commanded us to be good stewards 0.93

01:15:20.320 and to show a return for all the resources he's given us,

01:15:25.860 including those monetary resources.

01:15:28.200 So, yeah, cash is not—I don't believe cash is a Christian option.

01:15:33.500 I think that to have some cash as an emergency fund that's available 0.85

01:15:38.300 uh that you you know so if something happens you don't have to liquidate with certain penalties

01:15:43.740 that may be attached i think it's wise to to have some cash on hand for such an occasion

01:15:49.140 other than that um as as a a storage for long-term uh savings and growth cash is one of the most

01:15:59.740 foolish decisions you can make yeah yeah i like what foxhound 21b commented by wealth production

01:16:05.740 assets farms building companies factories or mini factories obviously that's at a scale that's not 0.98

01:16:10.860 as accessible for most people but practically part of your portfolio being land being businesses

01:16:16.600 like reese fund he is not a trust fund trader betting on indexes like well we're actually

01:16:21.220 balanced to this that or the other david reese is going in and purchasing manufacturing businesses

01:16:25.700 that make a real product and saying i think that we can grow them so in as much as possible

01:16:31.020 ecclesiastes speaks highly of diversifying your investments right so it's not instead of cash

01:16:35.800 98 bitcoin and i love bitcoin i think you should be in it one of the reasons is is there can never

01:16:41.860 be more there will never be more than 21 million right it can't be well there won't even be close

01:16:45.960 to that because of the amount that's been lost right you know there will never certainly be

01:16:49.720 more than that right even 19 million um yeah you just own something that is truly limited it's not

01:16:55.100 fiat currency so it's not directly controlled by the government it can't be inflated because

01:17:00.120 it's a fixed amount so it has rarity scarcity um and then also you know because it's digital it's

01:17:06.900 more easily transported um even when you think of like gold and things like that like

01:17:11.780 it is you know it's it's possible it's feasible that all of a sudden uh you know some country

01:17:18.780 discovers you know just hits a literal gold mine and discovers oh my gosh we just have mountains

01:17:25.180 and mountains of gold and the way that god made the world it wouldn't actually surprise me

01:17:28.980 uh we discover things all the time you know whether it's oil you know or natural gases or

01:17:34.340 you know whatever it may be different resources or it's like okay well no we know there's no more

01:17:39.680 gold you know at least not mass amounts of it you know hidden on the planet but then all of a sudden

01:17:44.580 um some meteor you know uh is in orbit and we grab it and pull it in and uh lo and behold

01:17:52.260 you know the entire core is made of gold there's a moon on jupiter that actually rains diamonds

01:17:57.780 yeah i've heard that so my my point is building a rocket now to get out he's like we can do it

01:18:03.680 so my point is that even these things i'm not against uh investing in precious metals but my

01:18:09.680 point is that even these things the reason why they've been good investments historically is

01:18:13.480 because of scarcity but there is the possibility that all of a sudden you discover a whole a whole

01:18:18.720 bunch more and um and it's not so scarce whereas something like bitcoin um you know is actually in

01:18:26.120 the system it's it's set to where um they'll never be more than what you said 21 million

01:18:30.980 even crypto though um well we should bifurcate crypto from bitcoin and there is a there's a

01:18:37.840 pretty substantial difference between you know bitcoin and fart coin you know so like this is

01:18:43.520 a small one you know to just say like well bitcoin's crypto and crypto is uh filled with a bunch of

01:18:47.680 scams yeah crypto is filled with a bunch of scams um but there are uh some coins that like are

01:18:53.760 actually you know uh have function you know like a layer two you know blockchain technology or or

01:19:00.740 ai you know coins that have certain like so there actually are you know some coins that the um the

01:19:07.140 coding actually has like produces some kind of benefit it has some kind of functionality but

01:19:12.120 bitcoin has been around for a while now oh nine since oh nine and uh really has stood the test

01:19:18.600 of time and um and that could be i think a wise investment for someone i was gonna say and not

01:19:25.580 knowing who the creator is like ethereum has a governance board we don't know or if he's even

01:19:30.760 still alive who actually created it so there's not even an individual that could go in and say

01:19:34.540 at 21 million that was a little bit low for all practical purposes we don't think that person

01:19:39.340 exists and if he does he is most certainly not actively involved in his governance right yeah

01:19:44.260 um i was just gonna two points i think the first one and this is simply for polemics if i had to

01:19:50.020 steel man um fiat currency so essentially uh you know in the history of your pre-federal reserve

01:19:57.920 pre-national bank what you would see historically in the american economy is a basically a boom

01:20:04.140 bust cycle you're probably familiar this essentially every 13 years there was like a run on the bank

01:20:09.040 that would throw the entire economy in a severe recession slash depression for a number of years.

01:20:15.620 And so the concept of fiat currency was that you would be able to sort of arbitrarily ramp up

01:20:21.660 and ramp down money velocity, which would kind of smooth over the boom-bust cycle,

01:20:28.920 but sort of arbitrarily, arbitrarily and sort of in an artificial way.

01:20:34.220 It would be smoothing out boom-bust.

01:20:35.940 so there is a case to to be made i think still you have a problem of speculation boom busts

01:20:41.880 fundamentally are that cycle revolves around speculation and sort of consumer sentiment

01:20:47.860 can i trust if i go to the bank my money's going to be there oh no i can't okay i'm running to the

01:20:52.500 bank that's literally where you get bank runs from and then you see that person running to the bank

01:20:56.340 i've got to run to the bank and i'll get my money out and everyone now is storming to the bank they've

01:21:00.420 got to get their money out of the system before there's there are the people that are left with

01:21:04.940 the short short end of the stick so uh there is there was even before the federal banking system

01:21:10.600 there was still a problem of speculation there was still a problem of consumer sentiment

01:21:15.840 um that that still will have to be dealt with even if you move into um other forms of currency so

01:21:23.020 that's the that's the the one thing that people should just note about that when they talk about

01:21:27.160 these things right the inflation problem is a much more especially the amount printed diluting

01:21:31.660 the value that's already there that certainly is a much more recent problem so i would not pretend

01:21:35.660 that for 200 years of our american history it was always just growth that was multiples it hasn't

01:21:41.660 been actually for a while and i root that in the people that america was made up of uh it would

01:21:47.660 actually as well as the government the quality the character of the men that were there it was much

01:21:52.800 more tame compared to i think doubling our money supply in something like five years or like 80

01:21:58.740 percent of our money has been printed in the last five years so it works but if anything the take

01:22:03.900 away from this episode there isn't a perfect system that works everywhere forever there's

01:22:08.500 always going to need to be whether it be the state or even the individual hey right here right now

01:22:13.120 our country's much bigger our country's much smaller much smaller this is going to be the

01:22:17.760 best way yeah and i love that as a matter of prudence and it's like hey you know man you

01:22:22.400 didn't grow up you didn't grow up with the trust fund you didn't grow up with an inheritance these

01:22:26.220 are things that you have to take the time to understand. You know, you talk about schools of

01:22:31.440 investing. You have value investing. This is like the Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham-esque

01:22:36.320 investing. I'm sure we'll probably do something a little bit more in depth on these things,

01:22:39.800 which is to say, when I buy a company, I pretend as if I'm an owner of that company.

01:22:44.360 And so I care about the fundamentals. What's its EBITDA margin? What's its sort of,

01:22:49.160 there's Porter's Five Forces analysis. What is its barrier to new insurance? How defensible

01:22:54.420 is the business? Does it have a moat? So on and so forth. Then you have the school of technical

01:22:58.160 analysis. These are, you know, what the kinds of skills that day traders exercise. Can I identify

01:23:04.060 a trend in a stock price? Can I understand, you know, the different sort of variables like price

01:23:09.940 to equity ratio, so on and so forth. And those two schools of thought actually both work. And

01:23:15.840 they've made a lot of people a lot of money. I mean, just knowing when to apply them, knowing

01:23:19.640 how to leverage those, those different, uh, investing philosophies, uh, is important and

01:23:24.780 it's worth, uh, it's worth us talking about and it's worth people going out and investigating on

01:23:28.920 their own. Yep. Um, I think we have at least one super chat for the day. Nathan, can you pull that

01:23:33.960 up? Here we go. This is from Quinn Peterson, $10 from Quinn. We appreciate it. Thank you. He said,

01:23:39.660 you guys are killing it. Uh, thank you once again for your consistency and hard work. I have a large

01:23:45.700 question that i'll comment in the regular chat if you don't read it um i get it though thanks guys

01:23:52.560 all right so we're going to do our best to read it here it is uh he said thank you for responding

01:23:56.660 to my comment last week about the uh jb jordan book okay yeah um jim jordan the reason i asked

01:24:06.000 about it is because much of what he claims seems to coincide perfectly with the things you guys

01:24:12.200 often say. He builds the case that history cycles through eras of the Father, the Son, and the Holy

01:24:19.480 Spirit. He defines the timelines of the cycles he sees in history through the Old Testament, and he

01:24:27.480 believes we've nearly made it through one full cycle since Christ brought the new covenant. He

01:24:34.580 predicted that we would continue to sin against the Spirit by rejecting the proper order of loves

01:24:40.920 and destroying marriage in our culture, and at that point, judgment and grace would begin a new

01:24:48.120 cycle as the West deviates from the globalization being attempted, and we break out in tribalism.

01:24:56.300 But that crisis will ultimately occur, so the church can grow by appealing to people

01:25:02.180 with the local community and kinship we offer. What do you think of that idea? By the way,

01:25:08.980 he wrote this essay in 2009 i don't know what do you guys think any thoughts this trace is a very

01:25:17.060 similar idea to professor mark taylor he's one of my professors when i was in school and he would

01:25:22.500 probably he wouldn't consider himself a christian he would ask well what do you mean by being

01:25:26.160 christian but brilliant guy and there's been a lot that have made this identity this identification

01:25:31.140 of a transition that has happened of an age kind of of the father and an age of the son just in

01:25:37.160 Christian history, the transition that has happened through it. And it's kind of been this idea of the

01:25:41.420 death of God, that God is prominent in a culture and he rises. And Francis Schaeffer speaks about

01:25:46.420 this, of the arts and the beauty and everything it creates. But then a process happens where it

01:25:51.360 collapses in on itself. But then what happens paradoxically is the Christian faith is again

01:25:56.220 reborn. And in the macro, so not just talking 100 year cycles or 50 year cycles, but talking 2000

01:26:03.060 years, I think it would be applicable to say I haven't read the essay, but it sounds like some

01:26:07.720 great reading and I'll see if I can find it. But I think it does sound applicable that there's

01:26:12.360 something about an end of an age that's happening right now, that just the apostasy that the West

01:26:17.780 has undergone, nuclear war being a possibility, that we could significantly wipe out large regions

01:26:25.500 of the planet to be uninhabitable, capitalism in the sense of we may be interplanetary at some

01:26:30.940 point with people living on Mars that have never, you know, stood on earth, touched grass, so to

01:26:38.080 speak. So I find it a very compelling idea that something is ending, the first age of first

01:26:43.400 Christendom and something else is beginning. And he's not the only one, James B. Jordan, whether

01:26:47.660 it's Fukuyama, kind of in the political, the cultural sense, or religious, Karl Barth and

01:26:52.800 others, they've all kind of sensed something happened around the mid 20th century, the mid

01:26:57.440 1900s that kind of something ended and we're seeing the birth of something new yeah for better

01:27:03.080 or worse yeah yeah um ray dalio i've read his book um a few years ago he's a former ceo i think

01:27:10.380 of bridgewater associates he's a billionaire he's talked a lot about economic cycles in the same

01:27:14.980 vein i think um as you go through powers of sort of like he basically has created an economic theory

01:27:21.600 that mirrors america and rome and how economies grow and they become empires and then those

01:27:27.240 empires implode so on and so forth and he's done a lot of work on that but i like i would say like

01:27:32.740 on its face i'm amenable to the idea that you can an interpretive lens of history is a series uh

01:27:39.400 like you could think like an analogy like course correction on a on a vehicle right or lane

01:27:44.440 correction like once your vehicle like tack like tactically it's felt it's gone too far and over

01:27:50.440 to one side it kicks it in gear and takes it back to the other side um and so on and so forth that

01:27:55.760 We're going to go to the other side, I would course correct to the middle.

01:27:58.440 And I think that you could interpret history that way, that there are ditches on both sides

01:28:02.880 of the road, so to speak, and that we know, like, tactically, given biblical anthropology

01:28:07.700 and human psychology, what those ditches are, and we can kind of evidence in history the

01:28:13.820 thresholds at which man says, you know, you think of the hard men create, you know, good

01:28:18.760 times kind of cycle.

01:28:19.800 Like, we know the threshold at which enough hard men say, this is enough.

01:28:24.820 this has gone too far and we've seen that time and time again in history and we can create some

01:28:30.640 kind of thesis based off of that so i do i do tend to find work like that um like james b jordan and

01:28:37.460 some of these other guys you were talking about wes um interesting at the at the at the least

01:28:42.120 yeah i like james jordan all right well thank you guys for tuning in it's friday uh make sure to go

01:28:47.560 to church uh this sunday on the lord's day and we will see you guys lord willing on monday do we

01:28:53.820 have any ideas for next week just see what happens in the world and address it as it comes we'll be

01:28:58.940 here that's what i can almost guarantee you we can almost guarantee it we say if the lord wills

01:29:03.700 you never know for sure but uh barring some kind of disaster i guess i mean it's you know somewhat

01:29:09.280 plausible we almost got washed away with uh with the floods um georgetown uh was pretty bad man

01:29:16.280 some of i saw some of the drone footage and yeah pretty gnarly uh but yeah we'll uh hopefully see

01:29:22.480 you guys on monday and we've got um i kind of tease it out i think on wednesday a little bit

01:29:27.120 but um we have some some really big things in the works so be uh be praying for wisdom

01:29:33.200 uh for us but we're gonna be uh kind of unveiling some some pretty large projects and endeavors

01:29:40.460 uh in the very near future and um and i think you guys will be excited there'll be a lot of

01:29:46.200 people who are mad but um but that's that's always the case so uh lord willing we'll see

01:29:50.600 you guys on Monday. Go to church this Sunday, and the Lord be with you. God bless.

The NXR Podcast - July 18, 2025

THE LIVESTREAM - Where Did We Go Wrong With Capitalism？

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