And joining us now is our guest. He has as I mentioned at the
beginning of the program, he's a Chilean German lawyer with a master's and investments.
He is a director of the Friedrich Hayek Chair in Santiago, Chile.
He has been a visiting scholar in Stanford University's Hoover Institution. His opinions have
been published by The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Quillett Forbes,
Newsweek, Washington Examiner. But he's had a lot of influence in Latin America.
And when I saw this book here, the book that he's written is
called The Street Economist, best selling book in Chile, Spain and many other
Latin American countries, currently being published in five different languages, and now it
has been published in English. And when I saw that, I wanted to
talk to him about it, as it is The Street Economists, fifteen economic
lessons everyone should know. And I really as we look at this guy who
just finished in the Primaries and Argentina, Javier Malay, I thought, well,
you know, it's I wonder he was, you know, a Ron
Paul type of libertarian terms of his economics. And we got to get rid
of the Central Bank and the problems that it's caused anything. And when I
saw this, I thought, well, maybe he's one of the many,
many people in Latin America that have read this book. You know, when
the Wall Street Journal does a piece on Javier Malay, they just talk about
his hair snob. But I would like to know what was on his mind.
And regardless of whether or not he was influenced by this, this looks
like a very good published, a very very good book. So joining us
now is Alex Kaiser Barns von hohen Hagen. Thank you for joining us,
sir, thank you very much for having me. It is a very interesting
to see this, and we really do need to have some economic education in
all these countries, and I don't know, perhaps more so in America than
even in Latin America because we've been so miseducated and disinformed in our school.
So it's great to see something like The Street Economists. But let me begin
before we start talking about what's in the book. Do you have any idea
if if your book has had some influence with have your Malay, or if
I'm pronouncing his name correctly, or certainly perhaps with the people who voted for
him. What do you think? Well, actually, have you had me
late presented my book in Argentina last year? Okay, well that makes sense.
I could see the connection there. So he presented it right, and
he thinks it's one of the best books that has ever been written, aside
general Introduction to econics for general public. Okay, I have to make a
disclosure there. We are good friends, brothers, you know. I'm so
to speak. I've been doing the same thing in Chile and other countries in
America that he has been doing in Argentina, and he cites my books in
interviews on television and so on. So I now, how about actual in
Argentina as well? Well, then my hunch was correct. That's good.
I'm glad to know that, because I really would like to know what is
on his mind and not just how he styles his heir. That's that's the
Wall Street Journal. Don't you think that they would want to talk about his
economic theories? Because so they don't want to talk about his economic theories.
We're going to keep people on the dark about that. But you have much
to say about what is wrong with our centrally planned economy and why socialism is
so ingrained in the younger generation, and how do we fix that? More
importantly, how do we fix that? I think the problem is economic illiteracy,
and it has always been the problem. If we remember the great economists
a little bit von Missus in the early twentieth century, he was saying that
if people understood basic economics, you will have socialists around. Because in order
for people to believe all of this nonsensical ideas which sound very attractive, we
have to accept that you need ignorant people who don't understand anything. And you
know, I have spent a lot of time in the United States and most
German, and I have also been spending a lot of time in Latin America,
and I see the same problem everywhere. It's most people don't understand economics,
and especially young people, it's seduced by the messages they see on television,
by the Paul Kruckman's of the world, and by the Stiglits of the
world. By the way Stiglitz has done an awfully of Latin America, supporting
all our socialist dictators. It's unbelievable. I wrote an for the Washington Examiner,
and so I wrote the book because I thought, you know, I
have to do something that people can read about economics without the math, without
the graphs, without all of this Jergon. That's for specialists. And it
became a best setting book everywhere, and now even in Mongolia. They went
to publish now in Poland, now also in Russia and different countries. So
I think, I, you know, I hit a nerve, like we
say in German, because there was we were lacking something like this for explaining
very simple attempts to to the general public. Oh that's great, because you
know, growing up, even being in school fifty years ago whatever, they
never taught economics to us. We didn't get economics until we got into college.
And because you said, there's things like math involved in it. So
if you've got something there that is accessible to people without math, explains the
principles to them. I always had a big issue where we were taught and
when we had economics, we were not taught missus or high We were taught
Kanes. So Kanes, you know the idea that you know, the money
that the government spends, that there's no basis and reality that that it's never
going to come crashing down on anybody. But you know, you have to
manage your own personal stuff, but the government doesn't have to manage it stuff
that kind of nonsense. And then always never really set well with me,
even with all the math and the handwaving, that never set well with me.
But you're setting up with us. As you explained fifteen economic lessons,
everyone should know. It is really set up without a lot of math and
general principles. Is how I was explained, right, tell us a little
bit about that. Let's say, on positive economics, it means I describe
how how the world works with zero math and not even a footnote. So
it's in hundred and twenty pages. I explained, for instance, price theory.
In a couple of pages, I explained what capital is and how capital
is formed, and why is it's good for society to have a lot of
capital en rich people, And on the other way around, I explain,
you know, free trade and why is it, why it's important, and
a theory of innovation. All of that with very very simple examples. It's
what miss is called us all economics. You start with the individual and you
know a party economy, and so you can explain, for instance that prices
are not formed because you have money, they are formed because you have exchange
and even in a right parttery economy, you would have prices. And so
this is a very basic idea that many people don't understand really because I mean,
no one teaches teaches these things and nowhere. I didn't learn anything about
economics at school or university. I had to learn it after I had you
know, I was you know, my masters and PhDs. So this type
of things have been have become very popular also among different social classes, which
is important as well. I'm unchilia. This book has sold over fifty thousand
copies in a year. It's it's the most old book in economy, I
mean economics book in history, and it contributed to create a reaction against our
current artist government. We have a communist government right now in Chile, and
it was crucial in defeating the constitutional experiment that we had last year on September
four. All these efforts that many people did, including me. And so
if you change how people think, then you change the politics of your country.
And the problem we have is at universities and media and all of the
different instances that you know, give credit to ideas are controlled by hardcore leftists.
And so what do you expect. I mean, of course, the
popularity of socialisms rising in the United States among the ends years, and also
in Germany and other countries. They don't nothing, They know nothing about the
history of communism, they don't nothing about socialism. I have been spending all
of my energy in the last ten years fighting against socialism in Latin America,
where you see Argentina with one hundred and fifty percent of inflation rate right now,
the ruined country that in eighteen ninety six it was a very liberal country,
had the highest per capita income in the world, and now it's it's
a it's a really an example of everything you wouldn't do. It's it's a
disaster, a complete mess, almost fifty poverty rate, and it's it's it's
one of the richest countries in the world that we can go on with men
Azuella and other country I mean. And so it's very very key thing for
people to understand, isn't it that it can happen to anybody anywhere, you
know, especially in America, would never happen here, and yet it is
happening here. As you pointed out, it's this different social class, and
I think it really goes back to Antonio Grahamsey's idea of the march through the
institutions and you know, taking over the institutions. And it's pretty clear that
they've taken over the institutions, educational, academic institutions and a governmental, corporate
institutions. They've all been taken over by these leftist, socialist Marxists, whatever
you want to call them. But it's also when you look at it,
it's like, you know, Pete Booty Gay which is my nickname for him,
our the Department of Transportation guy. His father spent his entire life pushing
the teaching of Antonio Gramsey, teaching it at Notre Dame. So these people
really understand what they're doing. We just don't understand what they're doing. And
they don't want us to understand the consequences of this. They don't want us
to understand economics. And that's a key thing. I think. It's interesting
you said that the book is only one hundred and twenty pages. Is that
correct? Yeah, it's correct. I mean I wrote it and purposely,
you know, a purpose very short, because people didn't read five hundred pages.
At one hundred and twenty pages, fifteen lessons each lesson like an average
of four pages that you can read, and so it's very very easy,
and it's at Fideli. I mean, it's also recommended by very important economists
in the United States are Casey Mulligan from Chicago University, Dedri McCloskey as of
from Chicago. Then you have Big Graham really loved the book, and you
have other Stephen Moore and other people recommending the book so well. I can't
wait to read it. Usually I read a book before I interviewed somebody,
But when I saw your bio there, I figured that you had to have
something to do with Javier Malaya unless you know, are certainly the people who
voted for them, you know, would have seen that. And that's the
key thing. You when we talk about being able to condense it to one
hundred and twenty pages, If somebody really understands a topic, that's the difficult
thing is condensing it and explaining it to people concisely. And if you really
do understand it, you can explain it concisely. And so that I think
that's a really powerful thing. That it's such a short book and so many
different lessons in that short book without math, accessible to everybody. It's something
that everybody out a half, especially homeschoolers, I think, should definitely get
this for their kids. Yes, I absolutely agree, and I see how
this is changing minds in Spain, in Latin American, Argentina, Chile,
Colombia and different parts. Now it's in Germany, it's being a success also
the book because it has been published in German, and so I think in
the United States it will make a crucial contributions for young people and other people,
you know, under basic economics. And it's part of the battle of
ideas that Hi was talking about all the time, and it's I've read Grumchy
in you know, I've spent a lot of time reading him, and I
am glad you're mentioning the Grumchy because not many people in the United States,
not even people who are trying to defeat the Left, knows about Grumchy.
And this is the most Lettle Marxist thinker that has ever existed, in my
opinion, because he really understood that it was not about the violent revolution like
Marx and Lenin thought. It was about, you know, colonizing people's minds.
And when you do that through the march, I mean using this long
march through the institutions. Then the system will fall apart on its own because
people will will not want to have the system in the first place. They
wanna, you know, will want to have something different. It's like what
you've seen now with the Woke movement, like the people trying to reply as
a national anthem, people hating the flag, hating the ideas of the founding
fathers. That's if they are successful with their cultural revolution, and then you
lose the United States. And if you lose the United States, the States,
you lose the whole West. There is no other place, you know,
where we can go or that could help, you know, countries that
are being ruled by socialists, and so I'm very worried about the United States.
For me, it's the key battleground. And that's why I was,
you know, so happy that it was published in English, because I want
to join the fighting. I want to convey this message. I've lived in
Germany and i know how socialist sin think in Latin America, and I've seen
so many countries being ruined by leftist ideas and eat Chile, which was the
most prosperous country in Latin America. Yes, thanks thanks to the Chicago School
you know of economics and people they're Friedman and Harburger and all of them.
They came, they made the reforms and until it became the most prosperous country
in Latin America. And now we have this Marxist regime again that is destroying
everything. So why would you do that to your own country in the United
States. And we can't afford to lose, to lose destination. So well,
it's a con and you have to know what you know where the things
are late. Let's talk a little bit about you. You talked about the
fact that in Argentina one hundred and fifty percent inflation that has happening there.
So what causes inflation? Well, it's very straightforward. It's the printing of
money in order to you know, found the physical deficit in Argentina. And
it's I think it's the same for it for every country. This is a
law of economics, and and of course you have it in the United States.
It's not the but in Argentina. But you know, the problem is
that they started to destroy their free market institutions a long time ago and solve
the problems that they were creating due to this new government intervention. They tried
to solve it with more government in their intervention. And what happened was that
the more problems the government tried to solve, the more problems were created.
And of the spiral of interventionism, and in the end you have a country
that this has completely destroyed its base with its productivity base, and then there
is no growth, and then you have more social problems, and then you
have to spend more, and then you you take a lot of debt in
order to give people things for free. And at some point people don't lend
you more money anymore, and so you have to go to a printing press
and you know they are running hot twenty four seven because you need to get
money from some place. And that's how you end up with fifty percent poverty
rate and one hundred and fifty percent inflation rate, and you have six million
people who are starving to death because they have nothing to eat in a country
that produces a food for four hundred million people. Because one it's probably the
most productive soil in the world. Yeah, and it's a huge bit.
But socialism ruins everything. And now Jabir Melay, what he's really attempting is
as sort of a revolution in the classical sense. Going back to the roots
of Albertian classical liberalist. Alberti was a founder of the eighteen fifty three constitution
in Argentina. He was a classical liberal who admired the founding fathers Thomas Jefferson
and James Madison and and and he was very much inspired. But they by
their ideas and following this American more of freedom, Argentina became the wealthiest country
in the world at some point. Kay, this idea was work everywhere,
and then you had Pern and the collectivists and the Keynesians and the socialists coming
in and then they destroyed everything. Yeah, and of course you have to
have part of the business lads profiting from this, because you know, they
get subsidists from government, they get brought us for import and exports, they
get, you know, all sorts of benefits from this crony capitalist system or
pseudo capitalist system, fascist system they have there. And they support the Paronness
and Kishners and this type of course people in the world. And this happens
everywhere, not only in Argentina. And you know, when I look at
American culture, what most Americans know about Argentina is Avida. You know,
they celebrated it as a like a Broadway musical, Don't Cry for Me,
Argentina. They made a celebrity out of these Marxists that destroyed that country.
And that's about the only thing that most Americans know about Argentina. And again
that's because you know, our institutions have been taken over by the Marxists,
and so they're going to celebrate other Marxists there, you know it kind of
it kind of reminds me. You know, you're a street economist. I
think you're kind of the Thomas Pain of Latin America. You know, as
Thomas Pain changed minds in America at the time of the revolution. Is common
sense and explain things. I think that's the power of a book, the
power of ideas to change things, it really is. Yeah, Thomas Pain
is a great inspiration. I mean, his common Sense a book or bauntlet
was so decisive in you know, igniting the American Revolution. And I really
believe in the power of ideas. I've seen it myself. We have created
a movement with a million followers in Latin America. I've become very popular in
different countries in Latin meericalls on Spain, and when I'm in Florida in Miami
walking around, people stopped me because you have all these this my event's coming
from it, as well as keeping socialism more Argentine, our different parts and
they all know me. And so it's fascinating to see how you can really
win this war if you have enough people fighting it. And you have you
know, you are engaging in this battle of ideas and and and that's why
I wrote this book. And we have many people on our side, on
our camp, but they write papers for journalists and no one reads so and
they don't go like That's why I like misdem Freatman so much, because he
would go to television, he would do free to choose, you know,
he would go and face all the socialists. And you have now very good
pre market economists, maybe not as charismatic as Freatman, but they prefer to
stay in the Ivory Tower and write these papers. And that I think is
not really contributing a lot to changing how people think. We need more public
intellectuals doing this stuff. And I know that, you know, professional economists.
If I wanted to get tenure my book would be useless for that.
But you know, I don't care about tenure. I get about I care
about having a world where we can live in freedom and we can have prosperity.
I've seen too many countries in my lifetime being ruined by socialism. Yes,
Venza is an example of that. I used to go to Venezuela when
it was still working and now look at it, it's horrible. And Argentina
the same thing. I remember going to Argentina when the peso was one to
one with the dollar and now like that, almost seven hundred pasos per dollar.
But the development it's massive. So this can happen very quickly. So
I hope that that countries like the United States and learned a lesson and don't
don't go down the wrong path. Yes, you were saying that, you
know, fifty percent party right. Do you have any idea what the median
income is in Argentina or even the average you know average? I don't.
I'm not sure, but I can tell you that, for instance, if
you are a lawyer working for a big law firm in is one of the
best law firms, you are made probably five a month. Wow. Wow.
Yeah, So it's very cheap. And I go to Argentina a lot,
and because they because they have capital controls, you have to bring cash
with you and so you exchange it in the parallel market, the black market.
They call it the blue market. Yeah, they call it the blue
market. It's very funny. And it's to pay for services is so cheap.
I mean, it's it's insane. Other things that are expensive, but
services people. You you can have someone a you know, a cleaning lady
or someone you pay like five dollars per hour, three dollars per hour.
It's like, it's like it's very sad because young people are leaving in Argentina
and they are going to Europe. Many of them have Italian passports, so
they're going to Italy, Spain, and a lot of them are coming to
the United States. If you go to Florida, for instance, in Miami,
you goot all restaurants, many restaurants, you speak to people, and
there are all Argentinians who are working as waitresses or you know, bartenders or
whatever. They have started. They have to study architecture or law or economics,
and they are working there because they make more money doing that than working
in Argentina. Wow. So so it's very sad to see four generations being
destroyed by by these you know, very harmful ideologies. Yeah, when you
talk about the downward spiral of you know, the government comes in and it
creates a problem, and then people turn to the government to create the solution
of that, and it just that creates this nowward spiral. One of the
things that concerns me is what I've seen in my lifetime that used to be
a hallmark of the left, to think that the government is going to solve
our problems, that is now been embraced by conservatives and by the right as
well. And so you know, now with all this focus on you know,
it's this mindset of centralized control and we just need to It's not a
problem to have centralized control. We just need to have the right people pulling
the levers in Washington. So we need Republicans. We need Trump in power
instead of Biden or whatever. And that's that's what the Republicans have bought into.
And so you can't even have a discussion with people anymore about policies or
about the flaws of particular candidate or president because I said, well, who
do you want to be president? In other words, who do you want
to do centrally controlled command control economy, you know, And that's a very
scary thing. That's one of the reasons why book like yours is so necessary.
People have got to get out of this mindset that we're looking for the
benevolent dictator. No, we're not looking for a dictator at all. We
don't want to have a czar who's going to control our economy from Washington doing
Yeah, that's with you up in Russia either way, and like that.
And I think that's the problem because the lesson of the founding Fathers has been
forgotten. If they try to devise a system of government that would not enable
good people to do as much good as they wanted if they had power,
but that could prevent evil people or stupid people from doing all the harm they
could do if they had a lot of power. And this should be at
the heart of all you know, I would say conservative or classical liberal people
because or movement or philosophy, because as you say, this has been forgotten
and now we are in the in a world, in the worst world,
because you know, if you create structures that enable the concentration of power once
you are not in power, you have loaded the weapons for your enemies.
You know, it's unless you you think you are going to remain in power
forever, which is impossible. And even if you if you could do it,
it wouldn't be healthy, it would be horrible. At some point you
would generate problem into a tyrant. Then unless you believe that you will have
these weapons loaded for your enemies once they come into power. And so that's
why it's so dangerous, this mindset of centralized planning and control. And it's
getting worse and worse with the war against GOSH and the CB disease and the
new technologies of that are being put in place in order to control us.
All. We are resembling China more and more in the West, and no
one seems to care a lot about this. And and that's horrible because we
will end up living in a you know, sort of dictatorship, digital dictatorship
with a human face. That will be the difference will be in the end,
it will be the same thing. Yes, and you are yeah,
all these people pushing this agenda, the World Economic formul Al and other Yes,
I agree that that's the big threat. CBDC central bank, digital currency.
It is a it's not so much a form of economics as it is
an open air prison, which is the way they design it. But I
like what you had to say about a system that designed by the founders,
that a good person can't do as much good as they possibly could, but
it prevents an evil person from doing that. That's kind of a corollary to
what I've often said about the Justice department, a justice system, that you
want to make sure that whatever tactics you use against really bad people, you've
got to be careful about that because those same tactics will be used against good
people. Those two things kind of works as a corollary that that's a great
one. I've not heard that before about the power of the presidency, but
that is absolutely true. Talk a little bit about the idea of social justice,
because it seems to me like this is fundamental to the marketing of Marxism
today. I wrote a book many years ago, it's called The Tyranny of
Equality, which was a best selling book in different countries. It's only in
Spanish, but social justice. It's a mirage that that's the expression that used.
It's a fallacy and it's being used by politicians all over the world in
order to justify the growth of government that means the growth of their own power,
with the pretense that they're helping other people. It's a fallacy because it
is you know, it's based on the assumption that the results that you get
in a free market system where people make decisions on their own you know about
what, you know, how they want to spend their money, and where
they want to work and things like that, that these results are somehow how
unfair or unjust. But since justice is an attribute of human action, when
you have a spontaneous order like the market, producing certain results, the results
cannot be unjust by definition. I can be unjust if I attack someone and
I destroy someone's property, for instance, But if you have a lightning that
destroys your house, this is you can't say that that's unjust. You can
say that's that you know, bad luck maybe, but it's not unjust because
there is no human intention or action that created this or cost this destruction of
property. And it's the same with the market. It's a little bit of
complex idea, but social justice in the end is being used in order to
redistribute a lot of wealth and to make government grow and grow and destroy the
pre market system with the excuse that you are bringing furness and justice where you
cannot find it. And in order to do to achieve that, you have
to restrict economic freedom and personal liberties in the extreme. If you if you
go all the way with a social justice you know aim, you would have
a totalitarian system. Because and there are actually people who have written this,
how will you aqualize all opportunities? For instance, if you really argue that
it is andjust that you have an equal opportunities because some people have more money
to pay for better education and things like that, how will you equalize,
for instance, the inheritance that you have from your parents in terms of you
know, I was taught German since I was our kid, so I had
an advantage over other kids that weren't taught our second language. And this is
being studied by many now and neuroscientists that if you learn a second language since
you are a kid, you have an advantage cognitive advantage over others. How
would you equalize that? For instance? What about day There are actually some
scholars writing papers about the selection of partners that we shouldn't have the freedom of
selecting the partner that we are going to marry and having children because we tend
to select people who are like so elites tend to select people who are in
the elites and thinks and so on, and that creates an unfair advantage over
others. So if you go out of social justice, you end up destroying
freedom completely. Yes, and you have a total Darian system in the end,
and high one against this, and so I believe it's a fallacy.
And it's interesting you mentioned this because because Mila and Argentina, he openly speaks
against social justice in the media on television. He has been doing so for
fifth for five years already, I mean already end and he says, it's
the excuse that all addicitions use in order to control people's lives and to steal
a lot of the money that they are also you know, confiscating via taxation
in order to redistribute it. But in Argentina it's extremely corrupt. This happens
everywhere, right in Argentina is extremely corrupt, corrupt, so you give the
money to your friends or to the interest groups that are helping you. So
I think it's it's a myth and we have to get rid of it all
together because it's a fallacy and it's creating a lot of harm, and it
sounds really it's it's a we call it in German accomp griff. A comp
it's like a fight, and the griff it means concept. It's a it's
a fight concept. It is very useful for the left in order to destroy
your arguments and to move forward with their power agenda. But we have to
fight it back because it's it's it's creating, it's creating enormous, you know,
harm to people, especially the poorest people in American They're very clever about
the terms that they use, and they confuse it in people's minds. They
talk about equity versus equality, you know, and so you know, you
can talk about equality of opportunity. They want to talk about the equity of
results and redistributing it. And it's taken a lot of different forms. You
talk about a fight concept and all they got reparations And of course a lot
of that goes back to the mid century Marxists like Bill Ayers, who started
pushing this white privilege thing because they realized as the old school Marxists and as
opposed to you know, the Gramsey guys they they wanted to have a conflict.
They were not having success with class warfare, so they wanted race warfare.
And so that's a big part of what is happening in America. I
don't know if that is. Is that something that's been done in Latin America
different people groups, pitting them against each other by the government, I imagine
it has It seems like that would be a technique that the tyrants would use.
Yes, but you know, we don't have this race issue, despite
the fact that we had even more slaves in Latin America than than you know,
in Northern It's not that it's not an issue in Brazil, for example,
and they had I think only Brazil had more slaves in the United States,
and no one cares, No one speaks about this, and so so
traditionally in Latin America, the divide that the populace tried to create, this
between the wealthy and the rest, you know, and oligarchs and the rest
not so much along along this identitarian type of of issues, which I think
are even worse because once you establish that the relevant I think is not the
content of your character, and that you know, I jact you by your
action and the continent of your character. Then you create a tribalist society,
which is completely I mean, it's incompatible with the promise of the Declaration of
Independence and the Founding Vows and the whole American experiment, because because the United
States is about one idea, basically, which is moral equality. We have
the same dignity as human beings, and we are all equal in the sense
that we are we are all individuals who share the same dignity, and we
have each one has a consciousness, and we are responsible for our own,
you know, decisions and acts. And so I can't speak with someone who's
black or who is gay or whatever, and I see someone who's equal to
me, because I can see that thisspite the fact that we have these obvious
differences, we are the same in terms of dignity and in terms of the
way we we behave in the world, in the sense that we have a
consciousness and that we are responsible for all for our own decisions and acts.
But the minute you say it's not relevant that you are an individual with your
own consciousness, but the color of your skin is the relevant issue, then
you create tribes, and these tribes are in existential opposition to the other tribes.
So it's blocks against the white people and against the Latino's. Basically,
the white heterosexual guy pressing everyone else's. That's more's the idea. And when
you start with this rhetoric, then of course you end up hating everything that
white does the heterosexual people have created historically, which is basically question civilization,
including American experiment and so. And curiously enough, this was the way that
cal Schmidt, the famous legal scholar from from you know that was close to
the Nazis in Germany, define politics. He defined politics as a conflict between
enemies and friends and basically as a tribal thing where you would see the other
group as someone who would threaten your existence and you would have to get rid
of the other group. And this is the return to fascism. And people
are not aware of this. And if you cannot have a diverse society like
the American society unless you have a powerful story that unifies everyone, unless you
have, you know, common principles upon which everyone agrees on. And that's
why Martin, Luther, King, Frederic Godless, all of them said,
yes, the principles of the Constitution and the collection of independence are the right
the right principles, but we want them to be real also for us,
which is a quically fair and and and it's an obvious development of the ideal
of freedom. But once you now you have all these people telling you that
these principles in themselves are racists and have created systemic racism in the United States.
And therefore equality before the law is just an illusion. It doesn't work
because you because you have all of this, all this invisible ways, that
the system is racist. And therefore you have also to get rid of equality
before the law because it's giving you the impression that the system is fair.
So it's deceiving you while the system is really unfair and systemically racist. And
when you start down that road, you destroy a country completely, You destroy
the American experiment, and you end up in civil war or you end up
in insperiment, strife between groups, and the destruction of any elation of freedom
I mean of diverse American society will never work with identitarian politics and an identitarian
philosophy. It would it would collapse into chaos. I assure you that.
So we have to be very careful and fight back against this woke left,
which, by the way, I all inspired neo Marxist ideas coming from France
and Germany, right from the own Frankfort School in Germany. It's all Marxism,
cultural Marxism basically. Yes, yes, that's a big part of the
Franklin School and entertainment the rest of that. You know, as you're pointing
out that really has been that idea of equality, and it's very well said,
you know, the idea that we're going to take that principle and we're
going to expand it to everybody what Frederick Douglas and Martin Luther King wanted.
And yet we have Joe Biden. The one thing I remember about him going
back decades when it was a confirmation hearing is the Clarence Thomas. Joe Biden
was absolutely outraged Clarence Thomas would have written about natural rights, which is the
fundamental basis of this. You know, from Thomas Jefferson to Martin Luther King,
it was about natural rights. And so you know, Joe Biden has
been an authoritarian, he's been opposed to those fundamental principles of America for decades.
I don't know who's running his administration now. It doesn't seem to be
like he's running it, but you know he he's the perfect person for this
because it is what they are using to pull down America. The pillars that
have held us up have been the ideas of individual liberty and equality before the
law, and equality of opportunity, that type of thing. You know,
when you talk about the it'll pull America down into civil war? Are you
familiar with the works of Strauss and how in terms of the Fourth Turning and
things like that. In terms of the guys who coined the term millennial,
they see that they had predicted back in the nineties that there would be you
know about they went back a long time through history about every eighty years,
about every four generations, that'd be a major restructuring of society. So they
went back to you know, World War two and the Great Depression. Prior
to that, they had the Civil War. Prior to that, they had
the American Revolution. But they went back like five hundred years and identified this
pattern. They predicted that the mid two thousands there would be some kind of
a worldwide economic crisis and then it would start this chain that we were all
essentially at this point in time, we're all sync together and globally and the
same cycle that it would kick off, this global push that would be completed
just before twenty thirty. I've always thought that it was very interesting that they
picked the year twenty thirty for this, And I think they're very cognizant of
this cycle of history. And you know, you look at what people are
doing in Silicon Valley, pushing universal basic income, pushing central bank digital currencies,
and all the rest of this stuff. It seems to me like they're
cognizant this, and they want to have this kind of chaos that makes it
easier for them to restructure society in the same way that things happen with the
industrial revolution or the grarian revolution. What do you think about that in terms
of time where times that we're in, You know, I'm not sure because
you have so many technological innovations coming, like artificial intelligence, and you have
a criptual spear, and you have all of all of those in robotics.
No one is really sure what is going to happen. Is artificial intelligence going
to be able to control us all is? It's it's a debate we're having
now. So it's very hard to make predictions in that sense with a time
framework. Although some people like ill Mask, I think I've read that he
said in five years or seven years, we will have artificial general intelligence and
it will take over. If I'm not it will be the end, the
end game for us. Probably, I'm not sure. I hope it doesn't
come to happen, but but what I think it will happen for sure is
that polarization will increase. And now we have the new technologies where you have
the deep fakes, and so you can't even know if someone who is I
don't know really now, I couldn't know if I'm I'm speaking to you,
because you could be about our artificial intelligence. You know, it happened the
Major of Berlin in Germany that she believed that she was some years ago.
She was speaking to to the major of of Kiev in Ukraine if the Kliko,
the former boxing champion, and when she left the meeting, her advisors
came and told her it wasn't Klipko and he was speaking with It was the
same voice. It was everything the same in Russian because she spoke Russian.
And you know, so so this is going to we have dramatic effects on
the public sphere, and it's going to polarize. I think even more the
our society is like social networks like Facebook and Instagram, and in Twitter,
I played a huge role in creating a divide that didn't exist before. So
not everything has been positive, and I think this is going to be to
get even worse. And that's why I worry so much that the immortal and
eternal principles that inspired the American independence and experiment you want to call it like
that, remain alive because the only thing that will save us, it's people
with clear ideas in their heads and the and the right values. Otherwise,
you know, all these different factors will play a role in destroying us and
or turning turning us into something like China or Russia, because if you have
an out took right, probably it's easier to control everything. So yeah,
you know, when you George Gilder has looked at the technological people in Control
and Silicon Valley and he's referred to them as neo Marxist, and I think
it's not a coincidence that these people are pushing universal basic income. When we
had Michael Bloomberg running for president, he made that same statement. He said,
Look, you know, we've had people used to do farming. We
can replace them with machinery and technology. Then we had the industrial revolution,
and then he says, now the smart ones of us are looking at how
we're going to take everybody's job, and now we've just got to figure out
how we're going to pacify people to keep them from grabbing guillotines. That's what
he had to say, keep them from grabbing guillotines and coming after us.
So there is a sense that, you know, they want more and more
centralized control, and that's why it's so important for us to you understand the
importance of decentralization and understand as your book points out, economics and human values,
and not accept these substitutes. I mean, we look at how artificial
intelligence is being used. Perhaps we need to change it from artificial to authoritarian
intelligence, because it's increasingly being used to monitor and to spy on people,
and now it's being weaponized for censorship in real time. So these are just
tools of bad human nature, and I think we have to fight that with
understanding human nature, understanding the systems, and understanding why things are set up
the way the word in America because human nature hasn't really changed our tools have
changed radically, but human nature has remained the same, and the nature of
tyranny and the nature of freedom has remained the same too, hasn't it out?
Yeah, And I believe that's why freedom is more important than ever that
we all endorse this cost for individual liberty because technology just make it very easy
for centralized authority to get to destroy our freedoms. I mean, if you
if you really read the classical books and fiction like Always nineteen eighty four or
d Ray Bradberries Fahrenheit, you know, Aldosaxley, Brave New World, these
are all dystopias, totalitarian dystopias where technology plays a crucial road. Without technology,
you couldn't have these surveillance states, you know, absolute control over people's
lives. So I'm very worried because I see a trend in the West of
using these technologies in order to destroy privacy. In the center, the government
will know everything. I mean, the last thing that we I mean that
they will come up with is like putting cameras in our bedrooms and things like
that. It's just is the only thing that you know they have not done
yet, But at some point they will have a big data working on us
and they will know exactly where we are at any minute, you know,
and what we're doing, what we are buying, what we're selling, what
illnesses we have. Everything, they will know. And that's the minute when
we have lost our freedoms, Yes, because it will be very easy for
them to control us when they have all the information, and the machines will
do that for them, and we have to stop it somehow. Now,
let me ask you so and so you know, and and you know what
we're talking about liberty and we're talking about economics. Of course, the crux
of that matter is the push for central bank digital currency, and we know
that's being pushed in every country of the world is some level of development.
And you know, a couple of questions. First of all, what is
the status of that in Chile and Argentina, Brazils in America? What is
the status of central bank digital currency there in those areas well. The Chilean
Central Bank has come out with a project in order to create digital peso.
So I've been told that this is just a plan, and they were not
they are not going to do it, but I don't I'm not sure.
Once cancer, the European Central Bank wants to do this, and when they
start doing that, all the central banks will follow because they all meet every
years the Presidence of the Central Banks in the world, and they went all
to m T. Harvard or the school. So they are sort of from
the same you know, background and their friends more or less, and they
need and they push the same agenda everywhere. Are there issues to deal with,
but I'm sure that at some point it will be also something that they
wanna They will wanna cry there or there. But if the United States States
does not get on board with it, because there are states like Floria saying
no, we are not doing it, then it's harder for the whole world
Western world of these two to implement the central bank digital currencies. There will
be countries I will do it. I think Europe will do it, but
Europeans don't really appreciate freedom so much, so they don't care. And some
lackers will try to do it, but not all of them. But if
the United States gets on board with this, and you have a digital dollar
and so on, and then I think the whole world will follow, it's
very hard to stop it. Then, yes, it sounds like they're telling
the people the same type of thing that they're telling us that, you know,
don't worry about it, even though we call it said now, it's
not really happening now. It won't happen until Congress gives us say okay or
whatever. And as you have people who tried the other part of it is
we know what they want to do, regardless of what they say. We
know what's really in and their plans and in their heart. But the other
side of this is the awareness of the people. And that's the thing that
concerns me about it. When we have polls in America and they ask people
about CBDC, there's not really a lot of opposition to it. But if
you go down the list and you talk about the different things, you know,
rationing people's food usage based on their carbon credits and all the rest of
the stuff, stopping people from being able to buy stuff, reemptively tracking everything
they do, being able to confiscate money, putting time limits, putting geolocation
limits on where they can spend money, and all the rest of the stuff.
People hate it when you explain it bit by bit, but there's not
much awareness of the thing itself. And even when you had DeSantis taken on,
as you mentioned and said, well, we're not going to allow it.
We're going to prohibit it being used in commercial transactions by changing the UCC
code and saying that BDC is not going to be allowed. Not an American
CBDC, not a foreign CBDC. He does this press conference, calls a
big brother digital money, and the mainstream media at the end of the press
conference, all they want to do is ask him questions about Trump's indictment.
So I mean to shut this stuff down. That are the key issues.
And so I guess that's a question. Is there any awareness, because there's
not enough here in America about the evils of CBDC. Is there much awareness
in Latin America by the population there about the CBDC. You know, I
think ninety ten people have no idea what CBDCs are. And this is even
in Europe or United States. Latin America more or less the same. No,
because we have not developed as much. It's harder in Latin America to
get rid of cash altogether. You have huge sectors of the economy that are
informal. People live out of you know, being able to pay with bills,
physical bills, and so it will be hard for them to get rided
in Mexico, for instance, or in Colombia or even in Chile, to
completely get rid of physical money. And that's an advantage of not being as
advanced, probably, But in Sweden, for instance, they have've already gotten
rid of cash more or less. I don't think they have a CBDC,
but it will come, I'm sure, oh yeah, yeah. And so
we have to explain this because people are not aware and most people don't even
know really what money is all about. And I have a lesson about that
in the book. You know, by this money and how it comes into
existence. But we have to speak about this again and again. I think
the scientist is doing a great job, but we have to, you know,
bring more people into this because only that change, only CBDCs, if
that we're successfully introducing the United States, would destroy most of your freedoms.
Yes, I mean, it would become really a surf of the state,
and we can't allow that to happen. And as I say, if the
United States States doesn't do it, and it's much harder for other countries to
follow to do it because the financial system, the core of the financial system
is the United States, the reserve currency of the world is still the dollar,
so it will be harder for our central banks in other parts of the
world to do it. It's not impossible, it will be harder. But
if the United States does it, then automatically everyone would do it. I
agree. Yeah, let's let's talk a little bit about the state of the
black market economy, or as I call the market economy, you know,
because that is the sort of thing that I think increasingly Americans who are concerned
about this, who do understand about CBDC, we look at it and we
say, well, you know, what is our fallback position if we lose
politically in this, and that's really a black market economy, a black market
economy where will there be paper cash? Is that how it's operating? I
presume in Latin America as gold and silver is at a factor there in Latin
America for people to or is it? You know, how do they give
us some idea of what the black market of the blue market economy looks like?
It works? It really worked with a dollar everywhere it's it's in Venezuela,
it's the dollar, and Venezuela has a dollarized economy basically now and not
officially, but you know, everyone, and we use the dollar. Argentina
as well. Actually, Argentina's have I think it's the second entry of the
world with more dollars in cash after the United States, because everything is dollarized.
You go, you buy a house and you bring of course you do.
You do not declare real value that you are selling it for because then
you have to pay very high taxes. So you declare a much lower value
that is paid to you in passive about eighty percent is paid to you and
and and cases with dollars and so you get like a million dollars and you
have it under a mattress at home and this is this is literally the case.
You have it well in a safe at home or whatever, but you
have the cash. But that's because the dollar is still working and and it's
you know, it's not a CBDC has not become a type of currency.
The day it becomes a cypityc type of currency, probably we will start using
gold or something like that. I get bilver, and the same will happen
maybe with people in the United States. I mean you would have your own
currencies in different states. Problem based on silver, like going back to the
past, like it used to be the case, because I don't see away
around that. You don't want politicians to control how you spend your money,
when and where, and to know everything you are doing. Like you will
not be able to buy a you know, something from a pharmacy without the
government knowing that you are ill, you know of cancer, for instance,
or you know. I mean, they will know everything like and so I
guess there will be a reaction and against it, and probably it will be
a big issue in terms of states versus the federal government. So it can
be dangerous as well. That is a key thing I think for Americans because
Americans have never had really much experience with a black market economy at all,
and so we're at a disadvantage. I've taught to people who've lived in other
countries and it's like, oh, yeah, you know, they there's always
this underground black market economy of barter or you know, American hours and things
like that. Jim Rogers years ago wrote a book Investment Biker, and he
went around the world on a motorcycle and talked about what he saw. And
he said one of the ways that you could measure the corruption and a given
government was by the difference between the official exchange rate and the exchange rate on
the street. So I imagine that's pretty big in Argentina, right, the
difference partners to exchange rates, right, yeah, yeah, one hundred percent
different or more difference or more. It's like it's insane. Yeah, but
this this is true. We are used to in Latin America. We are
used to I call the official economy, which is the politicized economy where politicians
make rules and interview all the time. It's the politicized economy. And so
we we go around that and and and we use the Argentina is very funny.
It's like, I mean, it's stats on the wee end, but
it's very funny on the other hand, because you you go to the pest
hotel in Argentina and you hey in cash like chunks chunks of cash, like
really a kilo and peso because the highest I mean the highest the nominated build
they have is like a thousand pesso, which is like two dollars. And
so if you go to a good hotel and you you stake it for a
week. I've done it many times, and you have to pay like two
thousand dollars in the end. For instance, you have to call for a
guy who operates in the blue market. He comes to the hotel in the
guise and he brings you the cash. You give him the dollars, so
you have like a ton of pesos and you go to the to the reception
at the hotel and they have these machines where they can count the pesos like
in the banks, you know, and you don't pay with your credit card.
So everyone, and this is even at the Four Seasons, like it's
you know, everyone accepts the fact that you cannot play by the rules of
the game because otherwise everything would be destroyed, and so everyone tries to survive.
And we are people who we are survivors in Left to Mary Goat to
some extent, so we are more used to that. But I wonder what
will happen in the United States used to doing that, and also in Europe,
what would happen when you have politicians controlling everything in the end? Would
you would you just say, oh, it's okay, like now, like
a Chinese citizen, I don't care. I don't think so I think there
will be a rebellion. So it's going to be very difficult because people have
been weaned under this idea that we're just gonna play past pay with plastic for
everything, and you know that is and that's what's happened with Sweden. They
just wanted, you know, not carry cash at all. Once you start
going down that road to cashlessness, that gets to be a really dangerous thing
because now you don't have the option of that. But yeah, that's pretty
that is amazing. That's an amazing story about what that looks like. It
has been so interesting to talk to you. Thank you so much. And
again, the book is The Street Economist, fifteen economics lessons that everyone should
know, only one hundred and forty pages, no math and it folks,
this is a book that everybody needs to educate themselves on because this is how
they exploit us through our ignorance. Alex Kaiser Berens von hoe Haagen Dyer say
your name correctly, is that Greig? Yeah, it's pretty close. Okay,
Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure talking to you, and
I hope people do pick up this book. We really do need that education
here in America desperately. Thank you so much, sir, very much.
Thank you. The common Man they created common core and dumbed down our children.
They created common Pa, asked track and control us their commons project to
make sure the commoners own nothing and the communist future. They see the common
man as simple, unsophisticated ordinary. But each of us has worth and dignity
created in the image of God. That is what we have in common.
That is what they want to take away. Their most powerful weapons are isolation,
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