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

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00:00:21 We need this content for the glory of God to reach more people's ears.

00:00:30 It's no secret that here with Right Response Ministries, we are proud, unapologetic Christian

00:00:36 nationalist. Everybody knows that, and I've talked about it for a few years now. I even participated

00:00:40 in helping to write a statement on Christian nationalism. So, we're nationalists. We're also

00:00:48 nationalists, as you can tell from the thumbnail and the title of this video, who have problems

00:00:51 with capitalism, which makes us National JK. We're not going there, but we do have some serious

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

00:01:06 and socialism and other forms of economics, but we're going to talk about capitalism and the good

00:01:12 that it's produced historically that's undeniable in the world, and yet we're going to talk about

00:01:18 many of the ways that it has recently, in the past few decades, devolved. This is a discussion

00:01:25 that conservatives have to be willing to have. This is kind of similar, in my mind, to being

00:01:32 willing to criticize our greatest ally. For a long time, there have just been certain things

00:01:38 that are associated with being a conservative that are not particularly helpful. If you're

00:01:44 a conservative, it doesn't mean that you need to be burning tires in your backyard, right? You can

00:01:50 be a conservative and actually conserve the environment. We shouldn't just hand issues like

00:01:55 that to the left. If you're a conservative, you also can criticize Israel when they're doing 0.50

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

00:02:06 you can also criticize and point out some of the immense problems with capitalism,

00:02:11 especially given in light of certain technological innovations and the type of people that we now

00:02:20 have and all this in light of globalism. We're not just talking about capitalism with a national

00:02:27 framework here in these United States but we are globalists for better or for worse and I would

00:02:33 argue, the latter. And so with this embrace of globalism and crony capitalism, and with a

00:02:41 degenerate population, which is what we currently have in America, there are massive problems. And

00:02:47 that's what we'll discuss today. This episode is brought to you by our premier sponsors. That's

00:02:53 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 you'd like to make a donation today, you can do so by going to right response ministries.com

00:03:20 forward slash donate. Okay, let's dive in.

00:03:30 real quick i just gotta say we got the new stinger antonio has now been filtered in

00:03:38 and we know that you know preemptively we're going to get comments like this so i think it's

00:03:42 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 what you got a guy on the show who's half black the big concern is antonio pierre half french

00:03:52 to me that's a big concern here so i've done dna testing i'm only about two percent french

00:03:58 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 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 this is very much in your wheelhouse do you you probably don't want to exactly share where you're

00:04:13 currently working stuff but do you want to give a little bit of your general background yeah so i've

00:04:18 uh i went to a pretty a good university uh more on the prestigious side uh and i studied business

00:04:24 So I studied finance and I studied economics and and those sorts of things.

00:04:28 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 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 Then you become like sort of a conservative capitalist.

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

00:05:03 And then you become what I am now, which I think is new.

00:05:08 And I don't even really have a label for it yet.

00:05:10 but i think it's some it's it's sort of uh you know christian it's christian capitalism right

00:05:16 so it's some hybrid between recognizing virtue and recognizing the sacred in even in the public

00:05:22 sphere so all that to say yeah i spent quite a lot of time both you know in my education but

00:05:27 after graduating spending a lot of time in the business world um working for many different

00:05:32 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 so that we don't get bogged down here, because we're going to flesh it out a little bit more,

00:05:41 but right from the get-go, if you could name like two or three elements of capitalism,

00:05:46 not necessarily right now, today, with some of the craziness that we currently have,

00:05:50 but historically, two or three elements of historic capitalism, as we've seen it in the West,

00:05:57 that you think actually are biblical.

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

00:06:04 What would they be?

00:06:05 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 not moving the the goalposts or the the boundary post yeah yeah of someone's exactly yeah so um i

00:06:31 think private property is kind of the fundamental element to to capitalism uh you see that really

00:06:37 early on uh in the americas is you know the the the one of the preeminent sort of virtues that

00:06:44 our government protected was private property and stood and in that way stood you know stood

00:06:50 even separate from many of the western nations and including the uk um stood apart from those

00:06:56 so to add to that that one of the the safeties that i see with private property um on the flip

00:07:03 side from it just being eternally and and i'm not using that word hyperbolically but like eternally

00:07:08 abused um is the year of jubilee that there was there was an economic mechanism built in with you

00:07:16 know spiritual reasoning and connotations but built into the framework of old covenant israel

00:07:22 to where the land would eventually go back to its original owning family um so and and just for the

00:07:30 record all this they weren't stupid right they're not they're not archaic they're they're not um

00:07:35 primitive people they were they were intelligent and so this was all built into their buying and

00:07:41 selling it was like the land think of it like this it would be prorated right so you know if

00:07:46 it's if it's year 45 since the last jubilee and and jubilee is happening you know every 50 years

00:07:53 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 that land is going back to the original family right because the land when they conquered it

00:08:04 and canaan was divided up with the 12 tribes and then each of these clans and then ultimately down

00:08:09 to families within the tribes, all had their original allotted land. And so if it's year 45,

00:08:15 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 it's going to be at a discount. And if you're a sojourner in Israel, number one, sojourners,

00:08:26 when the Bible talks about, you know, the alien and the stranger and, you know, the sojourner,

00:08:31 these are not illegal, number one, illegal aliens, illegal sojourners. And the sojourner is somebody

00:08:37 who's there for a time whether it be business or trade or whatever the purpose may be but the

00:08:43 sojourner is expected to eventually go back unless they're truly going to be kind of like a Ruth

00:08:48 situation your people will be my people your God will be my God truly assimilate into Israel and

00:08:54 in those cases Israel still even when it came to certain certain levels of acceptance of their

00:09:02 worship, like entrance to the temple and these kinds of things, somebody who was actually

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

00:09:16 until the third generation. And depending where they were coming from and what the history of

00:09:21 that nation was with Israel, whether they had betrayed them or whatever the case may be,

00:09:25 there were some nations that were listed that they could not enter until the 10th generation.

00:09:30 So my point is this, if you're a sojourner in Israel and you're doing business, there's

00:09:35 this turnover, reset mechanism at the 50-year mark, Jubilee, where the land is actually

00:09:42 going to go back to heritage Israelites. 0.60

00:09:45 It's actually going to go back to the people, the descendants of the original families that

00:09:51 started the nation of Israel, that God started this nation with.

00:09:55 And so you could be there as a sojourner with some other nationality, some other nationhood,

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

00:10:04 as a guest all the religious laws like sabbath keeping still apply to you well i i don't um i

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

00:10:21 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 if you behave as a guest, you'll be treated as a guest. So there's all these laws about not

00:10:31 exploiting the sojourner or taking advantage of the sojourner. So you're treated as a guest,

00:10:36 but you're also expected to behave as a guest. And as a guest, you don't walk into the house

00:10:42 of Israel with mud on your shoes and kick it around by blaspheming God and breaking the Sabbath.

00:10:48 You're going to obey all these spiritual stipulations. And then there's also an economic 0.55

00:10:53 system that makes sure that the heritage wealth of Israel stays with Israel. And so other people

00:11:04 are benefiting and coming in for a time, but then it resets and kicks back. So yes, you can't move

00:11:12 the landmarker. Yes, private property, all those things. And we defend those things, believe in

00:11:17 those things the problem is that for us um capitalism coupled with globalism and just this

00:11:24 this limitless indefinite flood of immigration um we basically just uh the the wealth and prosperity

00:11:33 and blessing economic blessing of heritage americans for decades now has just been eroded

00:11:41 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 just robbed your your wealth that your forefathers built for you right i mean the founders even said

00:11:54 and and original documents were doing this for us and our posterity they weren't starting this

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

00:12:07 weren't they sure as heck weren't doing it for israel you know uh their greatest ally was not

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

00:12:17 reality is the reason why so many people are frustrated today especially young people young

00:12:22 men gen z um is because they realize that the inheritance that was supposed to be theirs

00:12:27 has been given away to somebody else so i think it's capitalism coupled with this this um zero

00:12:36 borders, porous borders, limitless globalism has just absolutely destroyed the wealth of America

00:12:44 to where America as a sports team, as an economic zone, is still incredibly wealthy. But in terms of

00:12:51 the American people themselves, especially the younger generation, they're not wealthy at all.

00:12:58 All right, Wes, what are you going to say? So I'm going to go ahead and actually define

00:13:01 different types of capitalism. When you say that, it could be very similar. What kind of

00:13:06 conservative. Well, I'm a conservative. What do you actually mean by that? There's a number of

00:13:09 different types, but to kind of lay the foundation, and someone even, I think it was Cosmic Treason

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

00:13:18 all of these different forms, we're talking about a narrower definition of it that's mostly existed

00:13:22 since the 1700s and the Industrial Revolution. To Antonio's point, to Joel's point, the idea of

00:13:27 private property and the idea of private trade has existed for basically all of humanity's time.

00:13:33 We've always understood I have something of value.

00:13:36 However, I could have 50 pairs of boots.

00:13:37 That doesn't get me food for today.

00:13:39 I need to trade it for something else of value.

00:13:41 So nothing what we're going to say here today is a critique of, again, basic ownership of

00:13:45 private property, the ability to trade.

00:13:47 But what we are critiquing is especially, again, in an industrial revolution age, in

00:13:52 an age where a corporation, this entity that's abstract, can absolve all of the failures

00:13:57 of individuals within that corporation.

00:13:59 It can persist generations long.

00:14:01 so you could have hundreds of billions of dollars that simply persists in perpetuity to your point

00:14:06 could just own land it could just operate it could just do things just basically till the end of time

00:14:11 because it has so much money those are some of the things specifically we're critiquing not 5 000

00:14:16 years of people owning a home and owning their trade and having a skill and selling their wares

00:14:21 but more specifically what's come out in the last about two to three hundred years yeah i'm gonna

00:14:25 give five types of capitalism here the one that probably everyone's really familiar with is free

00:14:30 free market capitalism, laissez-faire capitalism. That's where there's minimal government intrusion.

00:14:35 And we have some problems with that. We'll get into it. Then you have a type of welfare

00:14:38 capitalism. This is more common in Northern European, Northern Europe. So this would be

00:14:42 your government, for example, it provides services like your healthcare and insurance and things like

00:14:47 this. So it does provide through welfare, some of these things, you know, there's not private

00:14:51 insurance companies or private hospitals that are competing for your business, but the economy

00:14:56 itself is generally not as interfered with then you would have more interference and that would

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

00:15:05 this different sectors of our economy we're going to take control of manufacturing for instance and

00:15:09 we're going to have state officials that are on the ground they're running it they're saying how

00:15:13 this should be so that's laissez-faire free trade capitalism no boundaries welfare capitalism state

00:15:19 capitalism and then the two that i think we have the most problems with corporate capitalism large

00:15:25 corporations exerting significant influence on the economy and society. And so the government

00:15:31 may have some involvement in that, but really it's just, it's big corporations. The government

00:15:35 may say, Hey, you cannot monopolize, right? So Amazon and T-Mobile can't just get together and

00:15:40 say, we're just going to force everyone out of business with low costs because we're so profitable.

00:15:43 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 capitalism. And then kind of the, there's no system that's purely one of those things, not

00:15:54 no system, but typically a system's not one of these things. And so the kind of the final stage

00:15:58 that all countries will be in at some level is called a mixed economy, that an economy will

00:16:02 incorporate some elements of capitalism and some elements of welfare capitalism or some elements of

00:16:08 corporate capitalism. And then crony capitalism, as we all know, has a susceptibility to come up

00:16:13 everywhere. I want to go through some of the benefits to life that have happened in just the

00:16:19 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 capita, gross domestic product. This is a measure of productivity. So you can see on a graph here,

00:16:30 this is a graph from 1820 to 2018, kind of the tail end of the start of the Industrial Revolution

00:16:35 through to about seven years ago. The GDP per capita, and this is adjusted for inflation,

00:16:41 so this is not just saying, you know, $20 then, $20 now, it just, it does less. It actually,

00:16:46 the production is incredible. If you kind of trace it in, and I'll describe it for anyone

00:16:51 that's listening, probably 3,000 per capita in specifically Western offshoots, United States,

00:16:57 Canada, Australia, New Zealand, probably about 3,000 per capita in 1820, a little bit before.

00:17:03 By 2018, that's over 55,000. So you're talking about close to 20 times GDP. And I think that

00:17:10 actually is a good measure of productivity. As in literally per capita, these Western offshoots, 1.00

00:17:15 specifically western european nations or america including canada and the united states per capita

00:17:21 we're producing more and then you have obviously down the list you can read all the different

00:17:25 nations and this carries across in the united states specifically as well so this is another

00:17:29 chart and the growth is just astronomical again this is ingested for inflation so in real practical

00:17:36 terms as far as gdp as far as production of product that can be sold in equivalent dollars

00:17:41 standardizing everything we've had huge growths in the amount that we produce the value of what

00:17:47 we produce per capita what it can be sold what can be brought in what can be shipped out it's

00:17:52 just in the last 200 years the industrial revolution has unleashed unleashed an incredible

00:17:57 capacity to build to sell to create anything to add to those two gentlemen before i get into life

00:18:04 expectancy yeah i was just going to say that you you can think about statistics around gdp but not

00:18:10 only gdp other measure measures of of productivity so you can think about um cost being one element

00:18:15 of that so freight costs is something that economists look at a lot in the 19th century

00:18:20 which is essentially how much does it cost to travel over rail what you know to pay for travel

00:18:26 over rail of one ton of freight and you see these things have in less than a decade you see real

00:18:33 output of commodities like corn and wheat um these things double triple sometimes in several

00:18:41 decades in the late 19th century um and so there was a time uh you know where capitalism was doing

00:18:49 precisely what it was you know it was expected to do which is increase quality of life increase

00:18:56 real world output you know uh tides coming in it's raising all the boats everyone's being

00:19:02 everyone's wealthier everyone's doing uh better off and there was a time and and i think

00:19:08 particularly after world war ii there was about a decade and a half of american hegemony

00:19:13 economically speaking and then we start to see some of these things taper off uh as it relates

00:19:18 to productivity and quality of life and you know gdp adjusted for inflation so on and so forth

00:19:23 yep so an innovation like we would all agree the cotton gin is a more for sure humane compared to

00:19:28 human labor and just efficient it is a better way to take cotton which hopefully you're wearing

00:19:33 cotton clothing we all still wear cotton a lot of the synthetic stuff your polyester

00:19:37 your nylon it's not good for you so we still have a need for this resource we've captured

00:19:41 incredibly effective ways to harvest it to take it to spin it and to make it into clothing and

00:19:46 that's just objectively better than what we had before yeah two more graphs so this is life

00:19:51 expectancy this is for england and wales from 1700 to 2013 some of the statistical reporting

00:19:57 only starts right around 1850 or so but you can see for every single age so at the top is life

00:20:02 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 right there in 1940 with uh with world war ii but by every single metric as far as life expectancy

00:20:13 every single group greatly increased life expectancy this one is incredible this is

00:20:18 global childhood mortality so this is the expectation what percent of children are

00:20:23 expected to live in past the first five years of their life. So you have 1800 to 2015. 1800 is

00:20:30 about 42% were expected not to make it. That's about one in two. Generally speaking, if a family

00:20:36 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 Now, of course, we can't credit all that to corporations, to Amazon, but we can generally

00:20:48 say innovation, we can say hospitals, scale, industry, and innovation have been the drivers

00:20:55 of real, genuine improvements in life, lower childhood mortality, living longer, and producing

00:21:01 more. And that, again, has been the last two, three hundred years, very capitalistic, very open

00:21:06 market, free market in nature. Yeah. I wanted to add, Joel, going back to your question at the

00:21:11 front, which was, what are the elements that we would say are particularly biblical? We talked

00:21:16 about private property i think the other one that we should mention is uh the the degree to which

00:21:24 capitalism is the most meritocratic system you talk about do not muzzle an ox um you talk about

00:21:29 the parable of the talents right and that a man is able to go and and create a return with that

00:21:36 which he is given so capitalism isn't egalitarian it doesn't say we all start at the same place

00:21:41 but what it does affirm is that every man with his god-given abilities god-given vocation god-given

00:21:48 resources can go and bring a return with those things and it and more or less capitalism is a

00:21:54 system that removes the shackles particularly the shackles that government would place on man's

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

00:22:05 only will have these resources this land can only be owned by these families with this last name so

00:22:10 on and so forth. There were these honorary titles, as you see in feudal systems. And so capitalism is

00:22:15 actually rejection of those things. And I think in that way, certainly more biblical. The other

00:22:21 thing I wanted to mention, just to talk a little bit about the history of capitalism, and we'll

00:22:25 look at corporations specifically. So the modern corporation is something that you or your mom or

00:22:31 your sister could start in a day. Okay, so that's not how corporations were thought of as sort of

00:22:38 separate legal entities in the late 18th century. In the late 18th century, with the creation of

00:22:45 the corporation, corporations were actually chartered. And what that meant was when someone

00:22:50 wanted to create a corporation, they went to the government, they made an appeal to the government

00:22:54 and particularly the body politic to say, we want to create a chartered corporation to do this

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

00:23:09 for the public good. And as a consequence, we want a unique legal designation where many people can

00:23:17 own a piece of this company. So it's not structured like a partnership. And there's all sorts of legal

00:23:22 advantages. And those things were denied all the time because the people fundamentally through the

00:23:28 parliament or through the the you know the congress were able to say that's not that that

00:23:35 doesn't deserve a charter that isn't in our best interest um and that that is how the corporation

00:23:40 was initially conceived of it was it was primarily for public good so um in the modern corporation

00:23:48 it's it's kind of the opposite it's like you create a corporation for personal tax advantages

00:23:53 you create a corporation for um you know easy access to raising funds or whatever the case is

00:24:01 but it's certainly not for the public good well it's just kind of like the economic um outflow

00:24:06 of democracy if that's the you know the the governing form then you know then the kind of

00:24:12 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 a free market and the people will decide if it's a public good yeah but what what happens when the

00:24:23 people are degenerate and they decide that only fans is a public good when objectively it's not

00:24:28 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 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 people but the people are retarded so democracy is you know for the retarded of the retarded and 0.98

00:24:46 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 It's like, well, you know, anybody can start a corporation in a day, and well, we are getting 0.73

00:24:58 the people's consent in this kind of organic sense by simply just starting it, and, you

00:25:05 know, and the people, it'll, the corporation will close itself if no one's willing to patron

00:25:11 it, you know, but then what you're assuming is you're betting on the nature of man, that

00:25:16 that man is fundamentally good and therefore will only spend money on things that are

00:25:22 are virtuous but the reality is that that's not true people will spend money on a plenty of things

00:25:29 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 first i want the state to be christian which we currently don't have um but i want the state to

00:25:43 be Christian. Separation of church and state, that's fine. But separation of Christ and state, 0.82

00:25:50 no way. There is a God above the state, or else the state is God. And so I would like

00:25:54 the true God, the one that actually exists, the triune God, to be the head of the state. And then

00:25:59 assuming that, a Christian state, I want that Christian state to be able to govern even economic

00:26:06 affairs. And not necessarily in a meticulous way, not in a way that's overbearing, but absolutely,

00:26:13 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 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 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 guess the consequence of that kind of analysis is that similar to the constitution we know that

00:26:37 the constitution assumes a particular kind of national life right and and a virtue in the body

00:26:43 of the the national body and so does an economic system similar fashion social construct it assumes

00:26:50 these things and we were talking about before we went live uh you know adam smith right the founder

00:26:56 of capitalism he wrote a book a famous book called the wealth of nations a lot of people don't know

00:27:01 that he actually wrote a work of moral philosophy prior to writing that book, which was actually

00:27:07 underpinning of the economic work, which was called The Theory of Moral Sentiments. And in

00:27:13 this book, he actually, contrary to the notion of capitalism as sort of like, my selfish motives

00:27:19 compete with your selfish motives for the collective good, he actually talked a lot about

00:27:25 self-command and discipline. Benevolence was one of the key philosophical points he makes

00:27:31 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 virtue and the requirement for virtue in in economic life and so these things were assumed

00:27:45 and uh we're we would be fools to assume those things now uh when we try to interpret the economy

00:27:50 so we you know a neocon might hear what we're talking about oh you're you're a socialist or

00:27:55 you're a communist you're you're agreeing with aoc but it's like frankly i'm just recognizing

00:27:59 the moral degradation in our society, right?

00:28:03 And seeing how far we've fallen from where we were

00:28:07 and the kind of capitalism we had.

00:28:10 That limited liability piece,

00:28:11 just before we go to our first commercial break, is huge.

00:28:13 It was about the mid-1800s that in England, for example,

00:28:16 they allowed corporations,

00:28:18 but then there was an act in, I think, 1820

00:28:20 that they could be registered without a charter

00:28:22 and without approval.

00:28:23 And then the limited liability piece was stamped on.

00:28:26 And what that means is that individuals

00:28:27 could form a corporation

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

00:28:30 Daphne has a great critique of this

00:28:31 in essay in Forgotten Saints,

00:28:33 but they could take your money

00:28:34 and they could say,

00:28:34 we're going to use it for this.

00:28:35 They could blow through it and say,

00:28:37 I'm sorry, the product just didn't work.

00:28:38 We couldn't get this, that or the other

00:28:40 and your money is gone.

00:28:42 Partnerships, typically, on the other hand,

00:28:43 you could be personally liable.

00:28:45 If I went to Joel's dad and I said,

00:28:46 hey, you need to take your retirement savings

00:28:47 and I found the cure for cancer

00:28:49 and you need to give this to me

00:28:50 and I can promise you 10X returns

00:28:53 and I'm a corporation and all of that money,

00:28:55 unless there's criminal misuse,

00:28:57 I could say we tried the drug didn't actually work I would have no responsibility for the things that

00:29:03 I promised the things that I told them taking people's money and so when you have that structure

00:29:07 someone pointed out well that protects people from being sued into oblivion well maybe we shouldn't

00:29:11 have structures that have the ability to take someone's entire livelihood I think of Alex Jones

00:29:15 and Infowars being sued for I believe it's in the trillions the judge settled on so then you have

00:29:20 the problem where well we're going to take people's stuff through court through suing them but then

00:29:26 they say all right we're going to form this type of thing that protects us from being sued but then

00:29:30 you have these corporations vivek ramaswamy the way he made his money is he took a drug

00:29:34 parkinson's drug that basically everyone knew wouldn't work he got his mom to tell the story

00:29:40 about how promising it was had his company ipo initial public offering so tons of different

00:29:45 people bought the shares thinking that by owning a small percent of the company that that company

00:29:50 would go up in value because they had the first alzheimer's drug the drug failed trials the

00:29:55 company went bankrupt he sold all of his ownership to people who thought it would be more valuable

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

00:30:05 lost their investments because he can't be personally liable i don't support a system

00:30:10 like that that's what we're saying that it reminds me there's this famous uh now i well-known

00:30:15 south park clip not an endorsement of south park um although they do they do have some funny clips

00:30:22 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 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 or something like that i'm probably butchering it gives it to the the teller the teller's like okay

00:30:36 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 customer that's the embodiment of the limited liability the operation great we'll hit our

00:30:50 first commercial break. We'll be right back.

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00:35:02 All right.

00:35:03 To introduce this segment, we're going to really get into the meat of some of our critiques of capitalism.

00:35:07 We're going to play just a short video here.

00:35:09 20 seconds.

00:35:10 Let's kick it off.

00:35:19 so for anyone maybe that was listening what that was was a short video a young girl she said uh

00:35:36 hey could you just stay nine seconds and and take a look because my dad is at risk of shutting down

00:35:40 his disney lamp business and she shows some really sentimental scenes of her father doing some

00:35:45 sketches and some painting. And the product she actually shows that's being sold is a crappy

00:35:51 Chinese drop ship product that's made for pennies on the dollar in China. And as in someone goes in

00:35:57 and they take footage like that, I don't even know if she herself would be the drop shipper,

00:36:01 and they emotionally manipulate people. We're going to go in and we're going to pull on the

00:36:04 heartstrings with the music. And man, look at this. This is a dad who hand paints Disney characters

00:36:10 for kids, and won't you please just support our business? Now, the margins on it are 90%

00:36:15 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 example, but it gets to really the example of the type of thinking, the type of regard for our

00:36:25 neighbor, the second greatest command is to love your neighbor as yourself, that capitalism can

00:36:30 tend towards enabling. Early on in the Christian church, always early as the Council of Nicaea,

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

00:36:41 this is that ultimately it's artificial. It's creating value. Usury is the charging of interest

00:36:46 on money. It's creating value. It's creating wealth where there is none. So if I take money

00:36:52 and I lend it to someone, money is not a plant. Money is not a child. Money is not a field.

00:36:58 It doesn't actually physically grow. It's an inorganic object. And so from the earliest time,

00:37:02 be it ancient philosophers prior to Christ, the early Christian church, the Middle Ages,

00:37:08 the Christians have said, look, usury, speculation is a bad thing. It tends towards greed in people's

00:37:16 heart. We all have greed in our hearts that can be enabled by the possibility of lucrative gain.

00:37:22 So whether it be inclinations towards greed and towards gain, whether it be needless speculation,

00:37:27 spending time speculating on, could I make this type of return here? Could I purchase this?

00:37:31 or just general consumerism, coveting, a violation of the 10th commandment.

00:37:36 For a long time, the Christian church has recognized,

00:37:39 hey, when value and money and all of these things are very abstract

00:37:42 and you're speculating on their value detached from anything real,

00:37:47 detached from an actual product, detached from an actual service,

00:37:50 detached from an actual skill, that can actually be corrosive to the soul.

00:37:54 One of the big parts of modern capitalism,

00:37:56 it would not be what it is without the stock market.

00:37:58 the stock market is what actually moves when i buy a stock right if i had to go into robin hood

00:38:04 and i was to buy a stock or i was to buy options what am i actually purchasing well practically

00:38:10 tangibly nothing theoretically i notionally own a portion of the company which could increase in

00:38:15 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 atlantic salmon futures markets like i think in the future salmon will be worth this amount

00:38:28 and i can speculate on that it's very disconnected and so i think definitely one of our critiques of

00:38:33 capitalism is not just the excesses well of course only fans or of course uh perversion or of course

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

00:38:45 a fixation on money that when you detach money from its use in trade as an intermediary that

00:38:52 you get yeah yeah i think like uh you know the way that the american economy has shifted from

00:38:58 the manufacture of goods into predominantly white collar professional services over the last 40

00:39:04 years like as far as i'm concerned professional certain now you can be a legal you know you can

00:39:10 be a lawyer you can be an accountant and offer legitimate you know worthwhile advice but but

00:39:18 the reality is when you have an economy composed of hr marketing uh like all of these sort of

00:39:24 fickle intangible services being provided um you you kind of have a soulless economy it's like no

00:39:32 one you've you've you've gone from the you know tradesman who's like manufacturing furniture in

00:39:38 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 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 itself it's it's it's a recognition of your neighbor's hard work and diligence that's gone

00:39:57 into those things like all of those things are stripped from our economy both in the kinds of

00:40:02 work that we do but also as a consequence of sort of global capitalism and ship making everything

00:40:07 be a race to the bottom how cheap can i make this thing um you've essentially punished the very

00:40:13 things that capitalism was designed to reward right when i think of you know capitalism in its

00:40:20 kind of fundamental state it's um you know it's the customer is always right but because of the

00:40:27 stock market it's the shareholder is always right so which is very different than the customers so

00:40:32 you can actually make decisions and corporations do this all the time they make decisions that

00:40:37 knowingly will frustrate the customer that will produce a worse product over time uh but

00:40:43 in order to make you know the bottom line go down so the profit margin increases for a short term

00:40:50 the next quarterly earnings report so that the shareholders are pleased and we see this happen

00:40:56 all the time a couple years ago bmw got in huge trouble they said we're going to charge people i

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

00:41:04 was already in the car it was not as though like hey there's additional labor additional parts no

00:41:08 we are charging a certain amount of money for you to unlock the functionality that already exists

00:41:14 in your car just so we can make more money yeah and people are like are you kidding me like this

00:41:19 isn't it didn't cost you anything it doesn't add any value but to your point point shareholders

00:41:24 love that yeah like if you if you serve the shareholder and we're talking about quarterly

00:41:27 reports Antonio I can give it to you the shareholders who you answer to well you're

00:41:32 going to pursue capital yeah when they announced that decision initially I wouldn't be surprised

00:41:38 that the stock bumped you know spiked up five percent if it's publicly traded i don't know if

00:41:42 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 another thing that i've always despised and i may just be ignorant on this point but i i hate

00:41:53 um i hate i hate the concept that seems so prevalent where anytime money moves especially

00:41:59 a significant amount of money there's a ton of people who have nothing to do with it right you

00:42:04 have a buyer you have a seller and then you have 15 other people that have nothing to do with it

00:42:08 like the it's like um on finding nemo like the seagulls like mine mine mine and i think of this

00:42:16 um i'll probably offend you know some of our people but look if this is you you can get mad

00:42:21 at me or what you can do to absolve your conscience is you can just donate some of

00:42:26 your money to this ministry and uh and you know and be forgiven um but real estate agents

00:42:32 that's the male equivalent of only fans to be honest well there's no there's no males really

00:42:38 in it anymore sadly because that's actually true because honestly like i like i and i know this

00:42:43 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 just been utterly replaced by um women returning to the work field and particularly women with

00:42:55 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 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 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 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 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 the you have the product that i want the house you're willing to sell it to me for this price

00:43:34 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 an additional three percent five percent that you know whatever to pay somebody else with a low-cut

00:43:47 blouse to come and do something that didn't even traditionally have to be done but was created

00:43:54 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 that a thing yeah all of the intermediaries i mean it's not just real estate agents you think about

00:44:05 you know i just bought a house recently and it's like four or five intermediaries that are taking

00:44:10 some some various proportion of the the price um and you know as a buyer you're not necessarily

00:44:17 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 i mean that's just as unfair the seller should be able to get the full right no exactly there

00:44:27 was a time in which instead he's losing a piece here to this person this person this person

00:44:31 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 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 the first one is government regulation the national natural consequence of over regulation

00:44:47 and red tape is more intermediaries now you need an expert on real estate law now you need an expert

00:44:53 on tort law whatever the case is and you end up having four or five people come to a table

00:44:58 in contract negotiations and the transfer of assets so on and so forth because of all of the

00:45:05 regulation that it can't just be a man's word with another man's word and that contract be

00:45:09 legally binding that's one the second one national association of realtors is one of the biggest

00:45:14 lobbying groups in the united states now who is paying those those lobbying groups all that money

00:45:18 mom and pop realtors nope it's remax big corporations that systematize scale taking

00:45:25 massive amounts of money and then could turn around and pay people to influence our politics

00:45:29 to get policies that get them more fees yeah and here's the and here's the other other thing

00:45:35 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 one of these things that we're describing get good at something quickly because you are the jobs

00:45:49 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 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 good at something quickly yeah eventually that's one thing that i mean ai in the long run may

00:46:08 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 like a repellent for leeches like it really is like that like the portions of society that don't

00:46:21 actually offer a tangible good or service like they're just it's just busy work it's just bean

00:46:26 counters and pencil pushers um and also i'll be honest this is a little freebie but um i would

00:46:34 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 mothers first. And so I like AI for that reason. Because, you know, I was, you know, really hoping 0.95

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

00:46:53 that we're going to get that. But what we'll get instead is artificial intelligence that can do

00:46:59 some of the most menial jobs which uh conveniently are held by women um what are the what are the

00:47:07 leech type of jobs that you don't really need that are you know currently filled by 80 percent

00:47:13 women and 20 percent men hr right you know like uh uh this this little you know legal service

00:47:21 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 like that'll be you know 15 bajillion dollars it's like but i could have written this on a napkin

00:47:31 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 this to do that um all these kinds of um all these things that are really common sense things

00:47:42 but it's it's all the legislation that that that require you to you know instead of it being a

00:47:49 common sense thing you have to pronounce the you know the perfect incantation get the spell

00:47:54 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 It's literally what the Pharisees did in the first century in the ministry of Jesus. They would say,

00:48:07 remember, Jesus actually combats them. He says this about taking oaths. He says,

00:48:11 well, you say that if you swear by the temple, you're not bound by your oath. But if you swear

00:48:18 upon the gold of the temple, then you're bound by your oath, which is the equivalent of literally

00:48:23 like a five-year-old bratty kid like looking his dad straight in the eyes and his dad saying hey

00:48:29 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 and never cleans his room and then pretends that somehow he's justified because when he said yes

00:48:39 daddy well daddy didn't see but uh technically he had his hand behind his back with his fingers

00:48:45 crossed that's literally what the pharisees the pharisees were five-year-old legalese brats that

00:48:51 who were the Pharisees? The HR department, who were the Pharisees? The assistant for the assistant

00:48:59 for the assistant of lawyers. The Pharisees were the people who would come in, and they did it 0.99

00:49:04 economically, not just religiously, but they would come in and they would create pencil-pushing, 0.91

00:49:09 bean-counting busy work that added no value to society whatsoever with all these little loopholes

00:49:16 that weren't actually like, hey, you need to be a logical person or a reasonable person to

00:49:22 understand. No, like any reasonable person could understand, but you had to get the incantation

00:49:26 just right. And so they would make all these little legal loopholes to where the only way

00:49:32 you could function in the society, economically, religiously, you know, culturally at every level

00:49:37 was you had to be familiar, you know, perfectly, you know, up to speed with hundreds and hundreds

00:49:44 of different laws and all these different regulations. And today it's like, yeah, we

00:49:51 absolutely still have Pharisees. It's the people in society who create the busy work. They don't

00:49:58 actually add a real value. They don't have a real service or a real good to offer someone,

00:50:03 but they come and attach themselves every time someone is selling a real good or offering a

00:50:08 real service and somebody's willing to buy it. And they say, but you need me. And I'm like,

00:50:13 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 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 the teachers unions they're the real estate you know lobbyists and ironically a lot of them are

00:50:30 still jews just like the pharisees in the first century um very speculative not all of them but 0.79

00:50:35 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 I can see a direct correlation. In that sense, you know, like there really is continuity for

00:50:47 the last 2,000 years, you know, like the spirit of being a Pharisee, adding no value, attaching

00:50:55 yourself like a leech to something that you're not contributing with, but lobbying certain

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

00:51:05 you get a percentage, that spirit is very much alive and well. And it's not just alive and well

00:51:13 in Judaism at the religious side of the equation, but it's alive and well in capitalism on the

00:51:18 economic side as well. I mean, think about the thing that drove Jesus to break out a whip and

00:51:22 flip tables. They were coming into the temple, poor people, to offer sacrifices, and it was the 0.53

00:51:27 exchange rate that they were jacking up. So people would come to try to offer service to God, and it's

00:51:31 like okay you gave fifteen dollars wink wink but in once i did the exchange to a certain type of

00:51:37 shekel what that actually converts to is you have nowhere near as much money as you thought

00:51:41 just to again rip people off not provide a service whatsoever and jesus hated it you can

00:51:47 for sure categorize literally why he was turning the table this is hating your neighbor right have

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

00:51:57 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 sacrifice and there were you know different tiered sacrifices all the way you know from a burnt bull

00:52:07 which would be very costly down to a dove offering or a pigeon offering you know like something much

00:52:12 smaller and more affordable and so you know the poor would worship you know with with a smaller

00:52:17 offering and the rich would worship with a larger offering and and it cost a certain amount but then

00:52:23 here are the money changers um these these you know pharisees religious you know rulers who are

00:52:30 treating the house of god that's supposed according to jesus to be a house of prayer for all nations

00:52:37 and the nations are now represented there they've come to worship uh to worship the true god and

00:52:43 these people are saying not only do you have to uh you've already spent money because you've taken

00:52:46 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 the sacrifice but you're going you're going to spend four times five times ten times what it

00:52:56 should actually cost but essentially what they did is um the best way i can describe it i feel

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

00:53:04 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 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 a quarter? No, it cost, you know, two quarters for one. And that's essentially what they were

00:53:25 doing. And so I feel like the Pharisees have always done this and they're still doing it to

00:53:31 this day. Yeah. So we identified already two big flaws, which would be the speculation,

00:53:35 the abstract nature of it. We also identified robbing your neighbor man to man. You're robbing

00:53:39 him. You don't actually provide him a service. And here's the third one is actual damage. I think

00:53:44 one of the best stories of this is the biotechnology giant Masanto. So Masanto created

00:53:49 biotechnology through experimentation and research, created genetically modified seeds. And these

00:53:55 seeds would be resistant to glyphosate or Roundup was the commercial name. And so you'd be able to

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

00:54:04 fungus. It would kill bugs. It would kill all sorts of things that were on it. But because the seed

00:54:09 itself and the plant that grew from it was genetically modified, it itself would be resistant

00:54:14 to it. Now for decades, people said, hey, this stuff is toxic. It had a relation to non-Hodgkin's

00:54:20 lymphoma, carcinogenic causing cancers. So for decades, people were telling the company and

00:54:25 research was coming out, this product that you're using, that you're putting on our food so that

00:54:30 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 but if you do it really late, it also helps to dry out corn, for example. So you're doing it

00:54:39 all the way through its life cycle so you can maximize return on it. And you're doing it,

00:54:42 taking this this toxic chemical you're this herbicide you're putting it out at the very end

00:54:47 so it dries out the corn and it's causing cancer in people masanta was ghost writing articles so

00:54:53 they were paying scientists to make fake articles about how safe it was and in 2015 they settled

00:54:59 the initial settlement was 290 million and then billions more of people that lost loved ones of

00:55:04 people that got cancer of people that were disabled there were farmers that would grow the

00:55:09 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 we grow corn as well. This would be helpful for us for this acre back here to be able to grow

00:55:17 these and be able to just maximize. They went on lawsuits against them. They issued cease and

00:55:22 desist letters, even farmers that cross grew. So like the plants drifted over, you had a farm 0.97

00:55:27 nearby. They started growing it as well. They aggressively said like, Hey, you can't grow this

00:55:31 there. So you have this giant corporation and they destroyed thousands, if not tens of thousands of

00:55:37 lives so that they could maximize returns on their crops, maximize returns on this herbicide.

00:55:43 Even after four decades, people were sounding the alarm and saying this stuff is toxic. Another

00:55:51 example is Lucky Charm cereal. If you compare it to Europe, and Europe actually gets this right, 0.97

00:55:56 rare European W, the colors on Lucky Charm cereal, kids cereal, they don't look as vivid. Well,

00:56:02 they don't look as vivid because the dyes that are used in the United States are banned in Europe

00:56:06 because we know red dye 40, yellow five, I think it's blue one. We know that they're all also

00:56:11 toxic to children. We know that they're carcinogenic. But why do they put them in the

00:56:15 cereal? Well, they think it's healthy. No, they put it in the cereal. So it's brighter. So your

00:56:20 kids are more stimulated and they want more of it. And so this third category that capitalism

00:56:24 can tend towards, especially a type of corporate capitalism, is absolutely destructive to your

00:56:30 neighbor. And it is the Christian duty to say, you have no right to destroy the life of your 0.88

00:56:35 neighbor to maximize your profits that is immoral and that is wicked. And ideally in a Christian 1.00

00:56:41 society, it would not just be the corporation that's responsible, but individuals that purposefully 0.94

00:56:46 covered it up, that harmed individuals so they could make more money. Paul does say the love

00:56:51 of money is the root of all kinds of evil. People love money and they will do terrible things to get

00:56:59 a hold of more of it. And so practically speaking, especially in our time with globalism, big

00:57:03 corporations you might have a bigger state in some respects we've talked about this before

00:57:08 smaller and others department of education zero but food safety that might be a department for a

00:57:14 while that has to be bigger under a christian nation you can't feed children this you can't

00:57:20 make vegetable oil i think the fda panel that voted on it they mandated inclusion of vegetable

00:57:24 oil and certain baby formulas which very conveniently benefits vegetable oil manufacturers

00:57:30 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 Yeah, for the longest time, I just thought, you know, the biblical answer is small government, period.

00:57:46 And by default, you know, small government would be righteous government, big government would be wicked government.

00:57:53 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 And that if it was Christian, it would actually, on the whole, be smaller. 0.98

00:58:02 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 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 at least initially, as the law is working as a tutor, training the populace, training the

00:58:25 citizens to actually care about virtuous things and to kick their vices. So yeah, I don't think

00:58:33 it just means, if that's all it takes to be righteous, then we might as well be anarchist.

00:58:41 There's no government in anarchy.

00:58:42 Yeah, let's just have no government at all, right? Why settle for a small government when

00:58:46 you could be extra righteous and have no government at all. But that's not what the Bible

00:58:49 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 the evildoer. So then that, to me, seems to immediately raise the question, okay, well,

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

00:59:10 punishing you know the person who commits murder but but it's also the person who's um who's taken

00:59:17 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 it's millstone is is what it uses and not like wrapping it around your neck you know to be

00:59:27 thrown into the sea that's a different uh passage but a millstone used as a tool uh to to produce

00:59:34 to make a livelihood. It says that if you are borrowing it or have taken it as collateral for

00:59:42 something, that you must give it back in a timely manner. I'm paraphrasing. And it says you must

00:59:48 give it back in a timely manner, for it is his life. And if I'm remembering correctly, the text

00:59:54 doesn't say his livelihood, but his life, because his livelihood is directly correlated with his

01:00:02 life. A man's livelihood essentially is his life. And so to do certain things that knowingly

01:00:10 destroy someone's livelihood and not beating them fair and square, well, I'm just providing a better

01:00:15 product at a better price. No, like you actually are weeding out the competition providing an

01:00:23 inferior product. Your product is poisoned. Your product is actually bad for people. It's killing

01:00:28 people, and yet you're still winning. And how are you winning? Through lawfare, through lobbying,

01:00:34 through being a Pharisee in these wicked kinds of ways. Well, number one, you're hurting people's

01:00:42 lives. If you're in the food industry and your food is poison, you're hurting their physical

01:00:47 life. And then on the other hand, you also have upseated and ruined the livelihood of all these

01:00:54 other people that were producing that that food or whatever that was healthy and are no longer able

01:00:59 to provide for their families their livelihood so in in two ways you have destroyed people's lives

01:01:05 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 would just say quickly like unless uh you know less people think that we're creating some kind

01:01:20 of like new version of capitalism or trying to articulate something that hasn't existed in this

01:01:25 country before. I'd point you to Sabbath laws, which existed very early on in this country and

01:01:31 persisted into the 19th century. I'd point you to temperance laws. So we're all familiar with

01:01:36 prohibition in the early 20th century. There were still laws in the 19th century that forbid

01:01:42 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 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 this is not new right we have we have like actively digressed in our view of capitalism

01:02:19 and our licentiousness and our willing willingness to simply just open the market to any gratifying

01:02:25 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 that is not the historic view of capitalism and our christian forefathers would just simply be

01:02:37 appalled at at what the market looks like today it truly has become an idol in many regards just to

01:02:43 give a comparison my father-in-law works in a cutting tool industry he's a sales representative

01:02:47 he said when he started this would have been 30 40 40 years ago so think of time frame this is

01:02:51 about a generation when he started working i think he said maybe 10 to 20 percent of companies would

01:02:56 be owned by a bigger be it another conglomerate another corporation or private equity he said

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

01:03:05 these businesses and he said they'll come into these businesses he's heard guys tell them the

01:03:09 story and let's say we've looked at all your books we look through your financials and here's

01:03:13 your problem you're just paying your people too much so you build from the ground up say you build

01:03:17 a 15 million dollar carbide cutting tool business and you've got great guys that work for you and

01:03:22 they work hard and they do good labor and you provide a good product and then private equity

01:03:26 comes in they say we would love to give you a 50 million dollar paycheck one of the first things

01:03:30 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 going to lower pay so that we can make more money. And this is, like I said, in a generation,

01:03:39 you've gone from an economic landscape, certainly not as much marked by private equity, large

01:03:46 corporations, big multinational corporations to now the point where a business owner, they have

01:03:52 to make very conscious decision. I'm not going to sell to someone overseas. I'm not going to sell

01:03:57 to private equity. I'm not going to sell my home. I just saw a huge statistic, billions and billions

01:04:02 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 foreigners i'm going to sell it to americans this is something new last 10 15 years that christians

01:04:12 have to navigate yeah i was just last last point i'll make on this uh teddy roosevelt right often

01:04:19 framed as a progressive many of the many of the quote-unquote progressive policies that he supported

01:04:24 were were actually kind of in the vein of some of the things we've been talking about

01:04:29 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 some something like the clean food act which essentially just was regulating companies would

01:04:41 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 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 ice not on salt before being shipped and it was and he he came in and he would he would himself

01:04:59 go and inspect these facilities um he would go to tenement houses where immigrant communities 0.57

01:05:04 were making cigars in apartments and just absolute squalor children there crying on the floor i mean 0.62

01:05:10 just decrepit environments he would go and inspect them and and say this is not christian and this is

01:05:18 not uh american and uh obviously he's been framed as a progressive but i mean the reality is is that

01:05:24 um this modern notion this is the last thing i'll say the modern notion of this sort of

01:05:30 this capitalistic engine that's global and it's hyper efficient like all of this stuff is

01:05:37 is was never the point of american capitalism um yeah i love that because it's just in our past

01:05:44 100 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 conditions because it's unsanitary no you can't put these people to work no you can't have i think

01:05:54 it was bars even open at during his time in new york city you can't have bars open because this

01:05:58 is immoral here in the united states you can't do this says the government because it's bad now fall

01:06:03 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 So welcome back. Let's get practical here in the third segment.

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

01:10:03 China will be as long as we will take them. 0.98

01:10:05 They will be sending boats full of plastic products to our shores for probably the next couple decades.

01:10:11 But practically, as Christians and as Americans, 2025, what does it look like, I think, to invest is the biggest thing.

01:10:18 So the stock market.

01:10:20 I think we would all make the argument it is moral for Christians to participate in it. 0.91

01:10:25 Part of it because that's just the way things are right now. 0.88

01:10:29 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 in the thumbnail warren buffett warren buffett yeah he's got a lot of his wealth just sitting

01:10:40 now in cash and it could be like well he uh he doesn't have it stored in anything right now

01:10:44 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 wealth you're always going to store it in something it could be literally fiat the u.s dollar it could

01:10:53 be crypto gold as a tangible asset something that you can hide under your bed you're going to store

01:10:59 your wealth in something. And I don't think it's immoral for Christians in this time in a fiat

01:11:04 currency environment, when your wealth is being inflated, when your dollars practically do not

01:11:09 go as far as they went five years ago, most certainly not 10 years ago to say, I'm going

01:11:14 to speculate moderately with a good portion of the wealth that I'm generating in the hopes of a

01:11:21 modest return, my five, my seven, my 10%. I will throw out the question though, what about specific

01:11:27 investments in some of the companies that we've named that are somewhat immoral palantir would 0.87

01:11:32 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 alex carp like these guys are not pro-america not most certainly pro-christianity what about

01:11:46 blackrock um didn't alex carp i think you told me he said uh his greatest fear is being thrown out

01:11:52 of the window by christian nationalists a couple years ago in a tweet that's now deleted he said

01:11:56 something to the equivalent of my greatest fear is that in the middle of the night christian

01:11:59 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 like if you're buying palantir that is saying i you know what he's doing i would love just just

01:12:10 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 question of where should we put our dollar like the consequence of the stock market becoming what

01:12:23 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 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 in a company it actually i as as much as we'd say you notionally own a piece of that company

01:12:41 you don't you have no control um your dollar actually because the the stock market is is

01:12:47 primarily unless it's an ipo it's actually secondary markets it's not like the the money

01:12:51 you pay for the stock goes to the company they don't have shares with your name written on them

01:12:55 now indirectly enough purchasing activity in the stock market does drive the value of stocks up

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

01:13:07 if wes owns a stock in joel and co and i purchased that stock joel doesn't benefit

01:13:12 so in that way it's actually morally indifferent i would i would argue on a gradient to purchase

01:13:17 the stock, for example, of Palantir, because your dollar doesn't support them per se. It's

01:13:22 simply an investment vehicle. And I would suggest that, you know, Christians ought to be prudent

01:13:28 about it, right? Like it's not, I mean, there's certainly a line that I wouldn't cross if, you

01:13:34 know, Planned Parenthood was a public company, right? Like I wouldn't invest in Planned Parenthood

01:13:38 for obvious reasons. But certainly within the, there's a, I think a degree of reason where you

01:13:44 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 company's about or what the ceo is trying to enact but it is a good investment vehicle for my family

01:13:55 to ensure wealth to ensure my dollar holds um holds its value right um because it's being

01:14:03 inflated away correct it is being printed at an astronomic rate and if i do nothing

01:14:07 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 children something that's worth in real power less less than what i even earned it at yeah yeah i it

01:14:21 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 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 place to invest my wealth and the dollar is one of those investments so it's not so much where do

01:14:37 i put my dollars it's where do i put my wealth and the dollar is just one alternative for putting

01:14:42 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 but the dollar always goes down yeah always um it's you know so like investing legally it always

01:14:58 goes down yeah because it's always being printed more and more and more and they have a devaluation

01:15:03 rate yep target inflation rate exactly so um so just putting money you know under your mattress

01:15:08 or in a coffee can and burying it in the backyard is a poor investment. 0.94

01:15:14 And it's not just that it's foolish, but it actually is wicked 0.94

01:15:17 because God has commanded us to be good stewards 0.93

01:15:20 and to show a return for all the resources he's given us,

01:15:25 including those monetary resources.

01:15:28 So, yeah, cash is not—I don't believe cash is a Christian option.

01:15:33 I think that to have some cash as an emergency fund that's available 0.85

01:15:38 uh that you you know so if something happens you don't have to liquidate with certain penalties

01:15:43 that may be attached i think it's wise to to have some cash on hand for such an occasion

01:15:49 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 foolish decisions you can make yeah yeah i like what foxhound 21b commented by wealth production

01:16:05 assets farms building companies factories or mini factories obviously that's at a scale that's not 0.98

01:16:10 as accessible for most people but practically part of your portfolio being land being businesses

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

01:16:21 balanced to this that or the other david reese is going in and purchasing manufacturing businesses

01:16:25 that make a real product and saying i think that we can grow them so in as much as possible

01:16:31 ecclesiastes speaks highly of diversifying your investments right so it's not instead of cash

01:16:35 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 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 to that because of the amount that's been lost right you know there will never certainly be

01:16:49 more than that right even 19 million um yeah you just own something that is truly limited it's not

01:16:55 fiat currency so it's not directly controlled by the government it can't be inflated because

01:17:00 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 more easily transported um even when you think of like gold and things like that like

01:17:11 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 discovers you know just hits a literal gold mine and discovers oh my gosh we just have mountains

01:17:25 and mountains of gold and the way that god made the world it wouldn't actually surprise me

01:17:28 uh we discover things all the time you know whether it's oil you know or natural gases or

01:17:34 you know whatever it may be different resources or it's like okay well no we know there's no more

01:17:39 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 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 you know the entire core is made of gold there's a moon on jupiter that actually rains diamonds

01:17:57 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 so my point is that even these things i'm not against uh investing in precious metals but my

01:18:09 point is that even these things the reason why they've been good investments historically is

01:18:13 because of scarcity but there is the possibility that all of a sudden you discover a whole a whole

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

01:18:26 the system it's it's set to where um they'll never be more than what you said 21 million

01:18:30 even crypto though um well we should bifurcate crypto from bitcoin and there is a there's a

01:18:37 pretty substantial difference between you know bitcoin and fart coin you know so like this is

01:18:43 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 scams yeah crypto is filled with a bunch of scams um but there are uh some coins that like are

01:18:53 actually you know uh have function you know like a layer two you know blockchain technology or or

01:19:00 ai you know coins that have certain like so there actually are you know some coins that the um the

01:19:07 coding actually has like produces some kind of benefit it has some kind of functionality but

01:19:12 bitcoin has been around for a while now oh nine since oh nine and uh really has stood the test

01:19:18 of time and um and that could be i think a wise investment for someone i was gonna say and not

01:19:25 knowing who the creator is like ethereum has a governance board we don't know or if he's even

01:19:30 still alive who actually created it so there's not even an individual that could go in and say

01:19:34 at 21 million that was a little bit low for all practical purposes we don't think that person

01:19:39 exists and if he does he is most certainly not actively involved in his governance right yeah

01:19:44 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 steel man um fiat currency so essentially uh you know in the history of your pre-federal reserve

01:19:57 pre-national bank what you would see historically in the american economy is a basically a boom

01:20:04 bust cycle you're probably familiar this essentially every 13 years there was like a run on the bank

01:20:09 that would throw the entire economy in a severe recession slash depression for a number of years.

01:20:15 And so the concept of fiat currency was that you would be able to sort of arbitrarily ramp up

01:20:21 and ramp down money velocity, which would kind of smooth over the boom-bust cycle,

01:20:28 but sort of arbitrarily, arbitrarily and sort of in an artificial way.

01:20:34 It would be smoothing out boom-bust.

01:20:35 so there is a case to to be made i think still you have a problem of speculation boom busts

01:20:41 fundamentally are that cycle revolves around speculation and sort of consumer sentiment

01:20:47 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 bank that's literally where you get bank runs from and then you see that person running to the bank

01:20:56 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 got to get their money out of the system before there's there are the people that are left with

01:21:04 the short short end of the stick so uh there is there was even before the federal banking system

01:21:10 there was still a problem of speculation there was still a problem of consumer sentiment

01:21:15 um that that still will have to be dealt with even if you move into um other forms of currency so

01:21:23 that's the that's the the one thing that people should just note about that when they talk about

01:21:27 these things right the inflation problem is a much more especially the amount printed diluting

01:21:31 the value that's already there that certainly is a much more recent problem so i would not pretend

01:21:35 that for 200 years of our american history it was always just growth that was multiples it hasn't

01:21:41 been actually for a while and i root that in the people that america was made up of uh it would

01:21:47 actually as well as the government the quality the character of the men that were there it was much

01:21:52 more tame compared to i think doubling our money supply in something like five years or like 80

01:21:58 percent of our money has been printed in the last five years so it works but if anything the take

01:22:03 away from this episode there isn't a perfect system that works everywhere forever there's

01:22:08 always going to need to be whether it be the state or even the individual hey right here right now

01:22:13 our country's much bigger our country's much smaller much smaller this is going to be the

01:22:17 best way yeah and i love that as a matter of prudence and it's like hey you know man you

01:22:22 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 are things that you have to take the time to understand. You know, you talk about schools of

01:22:31 investing. You have value investing. This is like the Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham-esque

01:22:36 investing. I'm sure we'll probably do something a little bit more in depth on these things,

01:22:39 which is to say, when I buy a company, I pretend as if I'm an owner of that company.

01:22:44 And so I care about the fundamentals. What's its EBITDA margin? What's its sort of,

01:22:49 there's Porter's Five Forces analysis. What is its barrier to new insurance? How defensible

01:22:54 is the business? Does it have a moat? So on and so forth. Then you have the school of technical

01:22:58 analysis. These are, you know, what the kinds of skills that day traders exercise. Can I identify

01:23:04 a trend in a stock price? Can I understand, you know, the different sort of variables like price

01:23:09 to equity ratio, so on and so forth. And those two schools of thought actually both work. And

01:23:15 they've made a lot of people a lot of money. I mean, just knowing when to apply them, knowing

01:23:19 how to leverage those, those different, uh, investing philosophies, uh, is important and

01:23:24 it's worth, uh, it's worth us talking about and it's worth people going out and investigating on

01:23:28 their own. Yep. Um, I think we have at least one super chat for the day. Nathan, can you pull that

01:23:33 up? Here we go. This is from Quinn Peterson, $10 from Quinn. We appreciate it. Thank you. He said,

01:23:39 you guys are killing it. Uh, thank you once again for your consistency and hard work. I have a large

01:23:45 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 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 to my comment last week about the uh jb jordan book okay yeah um jim jordan the reason i asked

01:24:06 about it is because much of what he claims seems to coincide perfectly with the things you guys

01:24:12 often say. He builds the case that history cycles through eras of the Father, the Son, and the Holy

01:24:19 Spirit. He defines the timelines of the cycles he sees in history through the Old Testament, and he

01:24:27 believes we've nearly made it through one full cycle since Christ brought the new covenant. He

01:24:34 predicted that we would continue to sin against the Spirit by rejecting the proper order of loves

01:24:40 and destroying marriage in our culture, and at that point, judgment and grace would begin a new

01:24:48 cycle as the West deviates from the globalization being attempted, and we break out in tribalism.

01:24:56 But that crisis will ultimately occur, so the church can grow by appealing to people

01:25:02 with the local community and kinship we offer. What do you think of that idea? By the way,

01:25:08 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 similar idea to professor mark taylor he's one of my professors when i was in school and he would

01:25:22 probably he wouldn't consider himself a christian he would ask well what do you mean by being

01:25:26 christian but brilliant guy and there's been a lot that have made this identity this identification

01:25:31 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 Christian history, the transition that has happened through it. And it's kind of been this idea of the

01:25:41 death of God, that God is prominent in a culture and he rises. And Francis Schaeffer speaks about

01:25:46 this, of the arts and the beauty and everything it creates. But then a process happens where it

01:25:51 collapses in on itself. But then what happens paradoxically is the Christian faith is again

01:25:56 reborn. And in the macro, so not just talking 100 year cycles or 50 year cycles, but talking 2000

01:26:03 years, I think it would be applicable to say I haven't read the essay, but it sounds like some

01:26:07 great reading and I'll see if I can find it. But I think it does sound applicable that there's

01:26:12 something about an end of an age that's happening right now, that just the apostasy that the West

01:26:17 has undergone, nuclear war being a possibility, that we could significantly wipe out large regions

01:26:25 of the planet to be uninhabitable, capitalism in the sense of we may be interplanetary at some

01:26:30 point with people living on Mars that have never, you know, stood on earth, touched grass, so to

01:26:38 speak. So I find it a very compelling idea that something is ending, the first age of first

01:26:43 Christendom and something else is beginning. And he's not the only one, James B. Jordan, whether

01:26:47 it's Fukuyama, kind of in the political, the cultural sense, or religious, Karl Barth and

01:26:52 others, they've all kind of sensed something happened around the mid 20th century, the mid

01:26:57 1900s that kind of something ended and we're seeing the birth of something new yeah for better

01:27:03 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 of bridgewater associates he's a billionaire he's talked a lot about economic cycles in the same

01:27:14 vein i think um as you go through powers of sort of like he basically has created an economic theory

01:27:21 that mirrors america and rome and how economies grow and they become empires and then those

01:27:27 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 on its face i'm amenable to the idea that you can an interpretive lens of history is a series uh

01:27:39 like you could think like an analogy like course correction on a on a vehicle right or lane

01:27:44 correction like once your vehicle like tack like tactically it's felt it's gone too far and over

01:27:50 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 We're going to go to the other side, I would course correct to the middle.

01:27:58 And I think that you could interpret history that way, that there are ditches on both sides

01:28:02 of the road, so to speak, and that we know, like, tactically, given biblical anthropology

01:28:07 and human psychology, what those ditches are, and we can kind of evidence in history the

01:28:13 thresholds at which man says, you know, you think of the hard men create, you know, good

01:28:18 times kind of cycle.

01:28:19 Like, we know the threshold at which enough hard men say, this is enough.

01:28:24 this has gone too far and we've seen that time and time again in history and we can create some

01:28:30 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 some of these other guys you were talking about wes um interesting at the at the at the least

01:28:42 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 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 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 here that's what i can almost guarantee you we can almost guarantee it we say if the lord wills

01:29:03 you never know for sure but uh barring some kind of disaster i guess i mean it's you know somewhat

01:29:09 plausible we almost got washed away with uh with the floods um georgetown uh was pretty bad man

01:29:16 some of i saw some of the drone footage and yeah pretty gnarly uh but yeah we'll uh hopefully see

01:29:22 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 but um we have some some really big things in the works so be uh be praying for wisdom

01:29:33 uh for us but we're gonna be uh kind of unveiling some some pretty large projects and endeavors

01:29:40 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 people who are mad but um but that's that's always the case so uh lord willing we'll see

01:29:50 you guys on Monday. Go to church this Sunday, and the Lord be with you. God bless.

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The NXR Podcast - July 18, 2025

THE LIVESTREAM - Where Did We Go Wrong With Capitalism？

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