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Speaker 2: Maining a live man like this man letting butterfly flapping
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cause the tree fall, letting five thousand miles away.
Speaker 4: Man, nobody see nobody else.
Speaker 5: You don't need no man, you don't like you followed
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Speaker 5: On the panel.
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Speaker 4: Man. All right, Jeremy Slate, Welcome to Jay Burton Show.
How are you doing? Man?
Speaker 5: Hey, I'm doing great.
Speaker 6: Man.
Speaker 5: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 4: Yeah. You and I got connected relatively recently on social
media and we're going back and forth and you sent
me another interview you'd done. And it's always fun when
you listen. You're listening to someone for the first time
and you're thinking, like, oh, he's this is good, but
he's got to mention to this, and then three seconds
later you bring it up and like, ah, my man,
he knows exactly what he's talking about. I mean, look,
that's how you should judge anyone. Do I agree with them, Yes,
they must know what they're talking about. But in all
serious disband it was a great interview. And so if
you could, could you introduce yourself to my audience? Well,
who are you and what do you do?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 6: So I'm the CEO of a company called Command Your Brand,
and for the past ten years we've been placing our
clients on high level podcasts. And then I guess, in
terms of what I've been talking about in the last
couple of years, my master's going back almost twenty years now,
is in early Roman Empire propaganda. I actually studied the
propaganda of Augustus, but in the in the last two years,
I've really been looking at a lot of trends that
have been happening, you know, in the US, in Europe.
And one of the major things I've looked at is
I've become very good at pattern recognition and I have
two different channels that I talk about this on. The
first is called Hidden Forces in History, and we look
at kind of the power structure behind history.
Speaker 5: We look at banking things like that.
Speaker 6: And my other channel is called the Roman Pattern, which
is really the main thesis. I talk about the three
main things that cause a civilization to collapse. And it
doesn't mean that you know, hey, we are Rome, but
it means that a lot of the same things that
they were doing. If you look at different civilizations collapsing,
they do a lot of similar things.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there are several things there. One i'd almost be
not to say more interested, but quite interested to talk
about your degree. I'd sort of dabble in the classics.
And one of the major conclusions from reading Virgil is
that the idea is it's kind of like the you know,
the internet meme, like we wis kings. You know, it's
sort of this like revisionist history to explain how we
actually not only is the Roman Empire super cool and awesome,
but also it's connected to the Trojan War. And okay, look,
there's a lot more to it than simply that, but
it is a very interesting element of that document that
isn't often discussed, at least in common circles.
Speaker 6: Well, the thing that's interesting about it too is if
you look at Augustus, you know, he's coming in as
the republic's kind of fading out, but he's trying to
convince people that a republic still exists because Rome naturally
hated kings. They traditionally, before becoming a republic, had seven
traditional kings, and so the idea of kingship was very
much hated in Rome. So he had to convince people
he was not a king but still put himself in
a very similar position. He kind of uses like a
really interesting word salad to do that. But one of
the things that he does is he puts a big
attention on literature and the ane. It is actually one
of the things that he commissions to be written, and Virgil,
when putting it together, actually towards the end of his life,
doesn't finish the Enea, and in his will he wanted
the work destroyed if it was left unfinished, and Augustus
actually manages to stop that because hey, he wants this
epic to show you know, just how important Rome is
and tie it to something great like the Trojan War.
But really it's a masterful piece of propaganda in order
to tie the Romans to something that existed long before
them and also tie themselves to like a royal lineage,
because the character of Eneas is very interesting. He leaves
the Trojan War with his father Ascanius on his back
and walks across Italy and ends up in a city
called Alba Longa, which is later going to found the
kingdom from which Rome comes from, because Romulus and Remus
are from Alba Longa. So it's a really interesting tie
in to kind of give this mythical East Ethos to
the Romans and what they're coming out of.
Speaker 4: Well, and the deep irony of that is you see
Roman itself become the founding myth for any number of
other societies, right, like the the Czars say, well, we're
kind of the Romans, like Kaiser Caesar like that. There's
the similar I say, Cope, I don't mean to say
that aggressively, but creative interpretation of history. You see with
the Germans and even.
Speaker 6: Even the Third Reich, right, the third exactly is the
Reich comes from the German word meaning kingdom. It's the
third kingdom. The first kingdom is the Roman Empire, the
second is the Holy Roman Empire. And Hitler thought the
third Reich would be the third great German Kingdom.
Speaker 4: Well exactly. And you're speaking about the patterns of history,
these foundational myths, Okay, sure, are they literal history in
the sense that you could find all the archaeological justification. No,
But functionally they are the thing which ties an empire
and nation together, the story you tell yourself about yourself.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 4: And one of the things that I've noticed about America,
and I think part of the reason why things have
gotten so weird and so crazy. Is that the most
recent version of our myth? There have been several, Right,
obviously you have the American Founders. There's sort of a
modification with Jackson. Then you know, the Civil War becomes
the kind of central founding of another republic, sort of
stacked on top. But really, for the last eighty years
it's been, you know, the story of World War Two.
And you see that echoed every time we pick a
fight with someone, right, slivanon Malasovich is, yeah, he's basically Hitler,
and Saddam Hussein he's basically Hitler. And you know that
myth was very powerful. It you know, sort of propelled
us through almost one hundred years. But as it sort
of starts to weaken, it seems as if there is
no really cohesive narrative about what we are coming into
you build on it or take its place. And so
I'm curious. One of the things that you were speaking
about your comments on Rome is you know that an
addition to currency debasement, which we will get back to,
one of the other things that sort of brought about
the end of Rome was the weakening of borders. And
so before we get into that, it's probably best to describe, well,
what is a citizen? So if you could, could you
describe what a Roman citizen was and how that's different
from our conception of citizenship and modernity.
Speaker 6: Well, so it changes a lot, and that's I think
something that's important to understand because if you look at
initial citizenship in Rome, and we're going back to the
kind of the mid republics, we're looking like three hundreds
four hundreds BC, and if you look at that, it's
initially people that are in Rome and kind of the
territories very close to that, and it's going to be
a real issue for kind of the Italian states outside
of Rome that they don't have citizenship. And if you
get towards the Late Republic, this is one of the
things that Marius, the great military reformer, is going to
push for. He's going to push for citizenship for the Italians,
and eventually that will get out to the point that
it's called the struggle of the Orders, which kind of
brings us to this citizenship for the Italians. So now
citizenship applies not just to Rome and the territories are
very close to, but also to all Italian states that
are kind of part of Rome. And the way Rome
expanded during the time of the Republic is it wasn't
initially from taxes. It was we conquer you, we put
a government in place, you give us soldiers, and we'll
kind of leave you alone. So Rome was able to
expand by bringing in these new territories that would fight
for Rome, and by serving in the legions. It's initially
twenty five years, it's in the later Empire it's going
to be closer to thirty years. You could gain citizenship,
and what that would mean is it's citizenship for you,
your family, your children. So you would start to have
more Roman citizenship in these territor tories. Now if you
get into the mid Empire, so around like to twelve,
Caracala is going to give citizenship to thirty million people overnight.
It's very debated why he did this, but it's thought
that the reason he did it is in order to
be able to tax the inheritance of these new citizens,
because anyone in a Roman territory paid about five percent tax,
whereas a Roman citizen paid ten percent tax. Now you
also got some goodies for that, like you know, if
you look in the Bible of Saint Paul, one of
the reasons he's able to travel so much is because
he has Roman citizenship. It's kind of like having a
golden passport in a lot of ways. And then there
was also something called the grain doll that every citizen
was allowed to have a certain amount of grain supplied
to them by Rome. So you do get a lot
of these benefits. And it's also the ability. This is
going to change a lot in the Late Empire because
around two eighty four the Empire becomes a lot more
you know, hard rule, a lot more autocratic in a
lot of ways. But in the early Empire you could
redress your a grievances directly to the emperor, like it
was something as a citizen you had a right to do.
So citizenship did have a ton of value, but there
were also various forms of citizenship. They would be citizenship
with the vote and citizenship without the vote. So it
was kind of a very interesting thing to be a
Roman citizen. And it's hard to define really what makes
a Roman and this is there was a big debate
on X a few months ago between one of my
favorite follows, by the way, go follow this guy if
you're not a Roman helmet guy and Elon Musk about
you know, what is romanness and how is that changing?
You know, Rome had always been very cosmopolitan, and I
guess that's the issue of how do you define what
a Roman is? Because if Rome expanded into your territory
took you over and you were there long enough, well
you became very Romanized because people wanted to be like
Rome because there was a lot of goodies you got
for having that. So that's kind of one issue. Now,
the thing you're going to start to see is as
currency starts to break down in the late Empire, and
as these generals that were declaring themselves emperor care more
about their civil wars between each other than their borders,
you start to get these enclaves developing on the borders
that are living with the Roman territory. They're not really
being Roman, and you start to have this kind of
loss of a shared reality. So I think that's one
of the major things that you're looking at as an
empire breaks down, is there starts to be this loss
of a shared reality and then people kind of aren't
playing the same game.
Speaker 5: If that makes sense, well, definitely.
Speaker 4: And one of the other things my Roman history is
a little spotty so I might be wrong on this
plus or minus one hundred years. But one of the
other things that I think is interesting looking back at
Roman history is the relationship between effectively like ownership and citizenship. Right.
You know, this is the you know, the I mean
a lot of the controversies that led up to you know,
the eventual birth of the empire. Right, But you have
this founding idea, however, imperfect, that we are a collection
of effectively kind of Yeoman farmers, right that you know,
we are people who you know, certainly fight, but you know,
a Roman is tied to a piece of land and
that is sort of his right. You know, this is
an idea that runs all the way through the West.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: Even the American founders liked this idea. You know that
the British, I guess before they were even the British
did as well. And it's one of those things that
as that system falls apart, partially due to the influx
of slaves, but also to let's be honest again, kind
of the rise of you know, relatively speaking, high finance,
that connective tissue goes away, and so you have we
could say, like genetic Romans with really nothing, right that
become these sort of like welfare sponges you have, So
they have no tie to the land anymore. They don't
really own a stake per se in the empire or
even you know, the state of Rome past the Dole
and an incredible influx of people who are looking to
get a piece of that, right, And I mean you
don't have to be a genius to look around and
say like, wait a minute, I've seen this one before. Yeah,
and so we've been talking about this a lot, So
let's just kind of set the framework here. Where does
this currency debasement come from? Like how was it done? Literally?
And also like what what's the advantage? Why would you
make your coins worthless?
Speaker 6: Well, I want to touch on the other point first
before I jump on currency, because that's a really pertinent point.
And if you look at you know, we talked about
Rome being a kingdom, so it's traditionally in the West,
because you know, the East, the Byzantine Empire, they still
would have considered themselves Romans. It has three eras in time.
It's a kingdom first in seven fifty three, then it
becomes a republic in five h nine, and an empire sometime.
This is debated, but sometime between thirty one and twenty
three BC. So one of the things you're going to
have change in the last one hundred years of the
Republic is there's a guy named Gaius Marius, and he's
a very famous military reformer of Rome. Actually, the Roman
eagle standard is something that he creates. It's something that
he actually adds to the Roman military. Before Marius, Rome
had been very much a citizen soldiery. He actually starts
to create more of a class of professional soldier. So
that is very much a difference in how Rome is
going to start to function. And he mentioned people not
being tied to land after the Punic Wars and after
the reforms of Marius. This is going to be something
that's debated for a long time. And it's actually one
of the biggest reasons that Julius Caesar in the Late
Republic is a to get the support he's able to
get because he wants to take land that Pompey has
gained through conquest and give it to veterans, because those
veterans would come back and they'd have nothing to come
back to because their land might have been sold in
the time they were gone. Because people might have expected
they died, so you'd have a lot of these military
men come back with no purpose, nothing to come back to,
and Caesar thought we should give them land. So this
is something that's actually debated quite often, is what do
we do with these people that don't have any land?
Speaker 5: And it's one of the major.
Speaker 6: Reasons that the optimatees, which is the very high end
political class, create a struggle with Caesar's political class, which
is the popularies or the kind of party of the people.
So that's something that has been a problem for a
very long time and actually one of the things that
causes the Republic to become an empire.
Speaker 4: Well on that point, and sorry, sorry, I.
Speaker 5: Totally at the basement point, but I couldn't miss that.
Speaker 4: The problem is I want to get to it, but
we keep coming, we keep touching on things that are
really interesting. I'm sure the comments will be very kind
to us for it.
Speaker 6: But in all seriousness, always ripped me apart and tell
me I don't know anything about anything, but what are
you gonna do?
Speaker 4: But look, I've built a brand on not particularly knowing
anything about anything, so you know they're used to it.
But in all seriousness, one of the other things that
I think is an interesting parallel is the degree to
which slavery massively increased inequality in Rome. Now you could
look at that and say, no, shit, slaves are not
equal to a guy with a bunch of stuff. Sure, hey,
that's true. But also cheap labor effectively allows capital to
be much much more productive. Right when when you combine
that with credit, right, which is obviously helped along by
currency debasement, an unequal distribution of wealth that is becoming
more and more unequal, and then the cheap labor to
take that land and make it into something productive. Oh wait,
and also a massive scheme of you know, government contracts,
whether that's for grain or weapons or anything else. And
not only do you start to see the parallel, but
it's like, well, it's no shock that that created an
unstable system because that is going to massive Well take
an unequal system anyway. You know. Look, we're not communists,
but I think we can all say that, you know,
even at its most liberal, Rome was not exactly, you know,
not exactly an equal system.
Speaker 6: Well, it was more of an oligarchy if anything, because
about ten ten percent it's it's a republic, but like
ten percent of it is literate and it's about the
same you know, five to ten percent that's actually running things.
Speaker 5: So you're not wrong by saying that.
Speaker 4: Right, And it basically takes those contradictions or takes those
tensions and ratchets them up, right. So, I mean you
know that you have this system. Was it the lat
of Fundia, right, the kind of like these massive farm
abs into Yes, these like massive.
Speaker 6: Well because the rich would actually it wasn't even just that,
like you'd had a lot of fundia, but you also
had rich people. And this is one of the things
Caesar got upset about, which just start farming public land
because no one would stop them.
Speaker 4: I mean, at a certain point you always have to
like admire the balls it took to do it right,
Like like if you just set up a farm in
a public park, I don't know, it's not good, but
you know there's something at.
Speaker 6: That point in time, if you hold the power, who's
gonna stop you?
Speaker 4: Yeah? True, true, But I want to go back to
the specific currency and it's not just like my special
interest is, you know, not some gold buck or something.
But it matters more than it than you would assume
on sort of initial impression right, So if you could describe,
like one, what is the temptation in this why do
rulers constantly go to this option? Like what does it
get you? And then when do we really start to
see that becoming a problem in Rome?
Speaker 5: Well, why why do they do it? Because it's intoxicating.
Speaker 6: It lets you spend money that you don't have, which
is which is pretty incredible. And I guess a good
example of this is the denarius, and the silver denarius
was kind of the main coin that would be used
in most transactions. And as the denarius starts to devalue,
people are going to start hoarding gold and that becomes
a problem that there's not gold in circulation. So the
gold the silver coin of the first century in Augustus,
that's about ninety five percent pure. By the late third century,
in the two eighties, it's like five percent pure. This
is this here is a silver coin of the late
third century, very rare to find because there just weren't
as many. But this is Valerian who was actually captured
by the Persian shah Shahpoor the first and actually used
as a footstool the rest of his life. And then
this is a bronze coin of a relion. This would
have been kind of the standard. A bronze coin would
be used every day.
Speaker 5: So what would.
Speaker 6: Happen is they would basically add other base metals to
those coins, and over time you kind of got to
the third century where that bronze coin that I just
showed you would be bronze and kind of had like
a piece of silver foil over top of it that
would wear off in your hand over time. So how
did it happen. There's a few different things that kind
of lead to this that so I apologize for kind
of all the kind of back end work. I'm here
to kind of set it up. But if you look
at the you know, as we have the Great Fire
of Rome in sixty four a d and Nero needs
to pay for a lot of things, so he'll start
some currency to basement, So you're going to see the
value start to drop during Nero. It holds pretty stable
until the death of commonas in one ninety two. So
we went from sixty four to one ninety two, almost
one hundred and fifty years with a pretty stable currency. Now,
the thing that's going to change in that year is
it's the year of five Emperors and the last one
that comes in, because basically they'd cause the civil war,
they would declare themselves emperor. And you have it at
the last one, the second to last one, the fourth
one of those is basically going to buy the auction
by the empire and an auction from the Praetorian art
twenty thousand cissirces. He now owns the empire. So you're
going to have a military commander out on the Danube
named so timmya Severus, he's actually from North Africa who's
going to come in replace that emperor, declare himself emperor
and do it by military force. And the pattern he
uses is something that the emperors will after him will
pattern the rest of the empire. The thing that he
does is when a new emperor came in, he would
do something called the donative. It comes from the Latin
word meaning to give. And that donative was a gift
to the military. So he took from probably about twenty
years before Marcus Aurelius at that point in time, gave
the largest donative to the Roman military ever. So he
takes that and go is way bigger than Marcus Aurelius did.
So now he gives this giant gift to the military.
He also doubles military pay, and then he also doubles
the size of the allegiance. He takes the praetorian guard
replaces them all with his own men. And now that's
something that each emperor after him is going to do.
They're going to enlarge the allegiance, double their pay, and
give this huge donative gift to them when they become emperor.
I'm trying to remember the quote offhand, but when Severus
is on his deathbed, he says to his sons Caracala
and Gaeta, enriched the soldiers and forget all others. And
that's kind of the pattern that emperors after them will
continue to apply. So that's really the key thing that
starts currency to basement is you have this new brand
of emperor. It's not quite sever Its. It's going to
get the name. It's a little bit later on in
two thirty five you're going to have a guy named
Maximinus Thras that's actually fit considered to be the first
of what are called the barrack emperors or military emperors
declaring themselves emperor. But it really is applied off this
pattern that Severus creates and every emperor after him is
going to create So in the period of the Third
century Crisis, which is two thirty five to two eighty four,
you're going to have like twenty six different emperors and
they're each going to apply that same strategy of large donative,
give a higher pay raise in large the legions, because
that's where their power base comes from. And you're going
to get to the point of two eighty four, when
the crisis finally ends and a guy named Diocletian takes
over that they're at fifteen thousand percent inflation, and that's
really how they get there is just military spending. Now,
all of these other things are going to exasperate it,
like the grain dole or Caracala giving out citizenship to
thirty million people in two twelve, So these things are
going to exasperate it. But it's really that pattern that's
created by Severus that emperors after him continue to apply.
Speaker 4: So one of the things that I'm I'm curious about
is so friends of the show the Good Old Boys
have been going through a long retrospective on HBO's Rome,
which I might add I've actually never just rewatched.
Speaker 6: By the way I watched it, like twenty years ago
when it came out. I literally just finished rewatching about
two weeks ago.
Speaker 4: Well, well, fair enough, and I haven't watched it. It's
basically just a podcast about Roman history with a thin
veneer of talking about a TV show in the background,
which I appreciate. But you know, in the background constantly
through this, you know, because Caesar is returned from Gaul,
are these these massive slave auctions and this represented obviously
a huge influx of capital and money into Rome. So
how and free of me this is no really broad question,
but how do these conflicts in Rome affect the sort
of like effective inflation rate? Because it seems as if
there's so much money, there's so much value flying around
that that would lead to asset inflation. Right if the
conversion rate from a I don't know a house to
a slave I'm pulling these numbers out of thin air
was like two to one, Right, you could buy a
house for two slaves. Well, if all of a sudden
you've brought back you know, however, many tens of thousands
caes are brought back, it seems that you know that
ratio would change. So to what degree was there inflation
simply from the sort of like spoils of war.
Speaker 6: So I don't really know the answer to that, but
I can tell you one of the things that continues
Rome to be able to expand as the continual military
conquest and the Roman Empire is going to reach its
furthest extent in one seventeen AD under Trajan, and you're
going to have kind of smaller movements after that. But
for the most part, the empire stops expanding. You know,
Severus will spend some time in Britain trying to ensure
things there. In the one twenties, you're going to have
Hadrian builds the wall to try and keep the picks out,
But for all extents and purposes, Rome stops expanding after
one seventeen AD. There will be smaller territorial ads, but
for the most part, this kind of machine that keeps
kind of grinding up everyone, you know, further and further
out stops. And I think that's a really key point
because one of the things that allows Rome to do
what it does is it is continually bring in more
territory and more wealth. Once that stops, that's going to
be a major change in how things operate, right, because
you're no longer bringing the gold and the silver. You know,
you have your silver mines in Datia which are kind
of out towards the Balkans, but those silver mines actually
go dry I think in the third century, in the
early third century. So now you have this ability to
get wealth changes dramatically. So I think that's a really
key point. Is I don't know as much about how
slavery would cause inflation, though you know it is something
that continually to come into the empire. But I can
tell you that the territorial expansion ending in one seventeen
is a major major point of no longer continue to
bring in new wealth.
Speaker 4: All right, fair enough so, And honestly, look, man, I'm
that was a question I was curious about the answer to.
Speaker 5: But I don't know something.
Speaker 4: No, I appreciate it. Look, my preparation for you on
this show was what's your schedule tomorrow? Right, Yeah. So
one of the things that we mentioned earlier I want
to actually get into is the way in which inflation
increases sort of the power of the moneyed interests, right,
And you know, part of that has to do with
who gets the newly inflated money first. Also, you know,
if your wealth is stored in liquid assets, Inflation is
much less of a problem for you than if you
just own a house or a farm. So how does
this sort of inflation that we see, whether in Rome
or you know, in the West, affect normal people? Right?
How does it sort of shift the balance of power
in a society.
Speaker 6: So that's the one problem we have with history, and
I'm going to be totally honest with you here. We
don't know as much about what regular people are doing.
And that's one of the real struggles because the people
writing the history are the people that are educated and
the people that do have wealth. So we can surmise,
but it's hard to know exactly what their life is like.
And I think when you're looking at even when Rome
quote unquote falls, it really just transitions. It doesn't fall
in four seventy six. The life of someone living in
four seventy six and five hundred in Roman.
Speaker 5: Territory is a poor person. Their life wouldn't have changed
that much.
Speaker 6: You know, when Rome goes from republic to an empire,
the regular person, their life wouldn't really have changed that much.
So I think that's something to understand is you have
to look at the things they would have cared about.
You know, disease is a huge problem. There'll be plagues
continually sweeping through. You have the Antonine plague in the
one sixties that kills about ten percent of the Empire.
You have the Aciprian plague in the mid third century
that kills an enormous amount of people.
Speaker 5: So they're worried about disease.
Speaker 6: They're worried about gambling, which was actually something that happened
a lot because people would earn money and they'd lose
it in the either a chariot race or something like that.
They're worried about their children dying. You know, death rates
of children were extremely high. The family of the two
Grochai brothers in one thirty three, I believe their mother
had eleven children and the two boys were the only
ones surviving. So death rates of children were really high.
So for them, they're just worried about survival. For them,
it wouldn't have changed that much.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 6: One thing I can tell you is as currency debasement changes,
the marketplace itself is going to change. So what you
do start to see is people not being willing to
at first take the correct number of coins because they
know the coin is worth less, so they're going to
require more. They actually get off coinage and they start
trading in a barter system. So that is something you're
going to see in regular people, is when they know
the coins lack value, they know they can't buy what
they should, they're going to start bartering. And one of
the things that Diocletian is going to do as part
of his famous reforms from two eighty to three h
five two eighty four to three oh five is he's
going to issue something called the Edict of maximum Prices,
because he doesn't want people overcharging for things which price
controls them. They always work, trust me. And the other
thing that he does as well is he tries to
issue new coinage, but people still don't trust it because
the purity of the coins have gone down so much.
So the one thing I can tell you is that
a barter economy becomes a really big part of it.
Speaker 5: It starts to form more of a black market.
Speaker 4: So moving to sort of more more modern examples, UH,
inflation and these sort of economic terms are to be blunt,
deliberately obfuscated. Right. There was a post that went viral
and x a while back, and it was funny. He
was making a point where the guy had calculated the
Redneck CPI where since nineteen seventy he basically.
Speaker 5: Tracked the price grade game by the way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, of like a full sized pickup truck, long cut
Copenhagen and thirty out six AMMO and like a few
other things, right, and he basically came to the conclusion that,
judging off of those assets alone, inflation was much much
higher than sort of what it says on the tin right,
the rate you would get from Wikipedia, for example. And similarly,
I remember very distinctly during the Biden years when I
was in school, the definition of what a recession changed.
They just changed what words meant, and.
Speaker 5: So they also changed the definition of war too. That's
been a fun one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, what Honestly, when you think about it, Putin
with his special Military operation right in Ukraine, he was
just ahead of the curve, you know, right there.
Speaker 5: Was to you later there was Andrew.
Speaker 6: I can't forget to remember his last name, but he
did a video about every war since World War Two.
Like the different name they came up for it, oh
is special military action was police action. It was this
we haven't liked declared a war since World War Two,
but anyway, continue.
Speaker 4: No, no, and so I if you could, you could,
I guess you speak to the kind of modern instantiation
of of currency debasement, Like how dramatic of a problem
is it? Is it simply the three percent a year
you're told to assume, like when we actually dig into this,
like what's the real story?
Speaker 6: So I think the hard part about that, And I
don't know what the industries off are off hand, but
when they calculate that inflation number, there's things like I
think building materials is one of them that they don't
include in the inflation number, Like things that would make
it look really bad they don't include. So I think
that's a really important point. And they're they're only looking
at year over year. They're not looking at kind of
a long term where we're at. And I think a
really easy example of that is I went to the
grocery store the other day and it was like nine
to ninety nine for a pack of like the crap bacon,
Like that shouldn't be the case. You know, that was
two ninety nine, four years ago, right, So I think
when you're looking at it for the regular person, it's
how you feel in the grocery store. But if you
want to kind of get into the economics of it,
the FED likes to call it quantitative easing, you know,
QI one Q two. What that means is, hey, we
printed more money, and the dollar in your pocket is
now worth less. So it's like a tax you don't
actually pay. It just means they increase the amount of
money in circulation, but doesn't mean they actually ever printed
any money. Like Romans would have loved this, that you
could just go into computer create more ones and zeros
and now more money exists. So I think the actual
problem that we're dealing with is not quite the same
as what Rome dealt with and how inflation works, because
we have something like the Federal Reserve, which isn't federal,
doesn't hold any reserves, and can kind of just change
the amount of money in circulation and change the interest
rate whatever they feel like. So our economy is very
controlled in a lot of ways. And I think to
me that's the major concern is most people don't feel inflation.
They just think things cost more, and in the grand
scheme of things, costs don't really change. It's the value
of your money going down that make you feel like
things cost more. So I think if you look modernly,
that's the scary part. And even there's a story during
the Weimar Republic of you right before World War two
of some are I'm sorry, right before World War two,
but somebody going with a wheelbarrow full of money to
go buy a loaf of bread. By the time they
get there, that wheelbarrow is not enough to buy the
actual loaf of bread because inflation is moving so quickly.
When you kind of get to that point from inflation
to hyperinflation, somebody can't keep up, and that starts to
become a real problem. And I think the way we
do it now is more covert and almost more criminal
in a lot of ways, because people don't feel it.
It's not a physical coin in their hand that they
can see is getting some or they can see the
silver and bronze content is changing. It's something that they
just go to the store and things cost more, and
all of a sudden, their salary that they're getting can't
pay for it. So I think that's modernly. The real
problem is most people don't understand because they're so far
removed from the process.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, and this is something it's always interesting to
speak with with older people about this. You know, I
had a buddy over last night who's you know, got
an economics degree, very financially literate, and he was talking about,
you know, conversation he had with his grandfather, right, someone
in their mid eighties from kind of you know, rural Virginia.
Not I mean, not to say a dumb person at all,
but not really like a finance guy, to put it mildly, right,
And in that conversation, you know, it came up that like, oh,
you know, some social acquaintance you know, is making six
figures a year. And he was floored. He's like, oh my, this,
this guy's a superstar. He's amazing. You know, this is
like a record setting event at some point, and we'll
be making that kind of money, and especially if you
live in an urban center. And look, that's still decent money,
but that is not at all what it was twenty
years ago, let alone ten. Right, And again the combination
is for wage earners, you are behind the curve, right,
you were hoping that your wages keep pace with inflation.
We'll kind of understand that, not really because again, how
that number is derived, and so proportionally you are getting poorer.
You have the secondary condition, which is if every dollar
at every moment is becoming less valuable, the incentives to
hold on to cash are almost none. So it creates
asset inflation because even if someone doesn't need the asset itself, well,
they need somewhere to park their money.
Speaker 6: Are they're going to buy land or something that actually
inflates in value and not a whole currency.
Speaker 4: Exactly, which creates a large demand for assets, some of
which people need to live. So it's sort of this
double edged sword where they kind of get you coming
and going.
Speaker 6: Well, you even look at somebody like Bill Gates and
he's putting most of his money into farmland because that's
going to hold value and it's something that is going
to produce more money for him because you've got to
feed people, right. So I think that's one of the
major issues is you look at where are rich people
putting their money right now, and they're not putting it
in currency. They're putting it in things that are physical
things that if the economy crashes, they'll be totally fine.
It's the rest of us that have our money and
dollars and everything else. You know, Obviously, I don't put
every dollar I have into gold, but we do buy gold,
right because that is something that has been a store
of value for a really long time, and if the
economy does crash, we have something of value. And I
think there is something to be said about that gold
price is the way, I don't know if you've watched
this at all, the way they've been going up over
the last.
Speaker 5: Not even couple years.
Speaker 6: It's the last year has been insane that the value
pronounce I think is it's over close to five thousand dollars,
and they're saying, hey, by the end of twenty twenty six,
it could be over six thousand dollars an ounce, which
is insane. So I think, to me, that's the real
indicator of how things are going is how quickly are
people putting their money into physical assets versus actual US
dollars or money markets or things like that. And for
the regular people, you know, I think a good example
too of looking at incomes across the country. In the US,
they've they've started to put in these laws of higher
minimum wages, which are a little insane. Where I think
here in New Jersey, I think by twenty twenty seven
we're supposed to be at like around twenty dollars an hour,
which for an entry level job, businesses can't afford that.
And what starts to happen is you push businesses then
have to either use AI to replace people or go
outside of the US in order hire people to actually
run a business. You know, I remember, I'll be forty
in year. When I got my first job out of college,
I was making like seven to twenty an hour or
something like that, And it just shows you how inflated
rates are now that that twenty bucks an hour really
isn't worth much, and you start to have give business
as a decision of do I hire more people or
do I find ways to automate or not use them
because I can't afford them. So it's once again the
middle to lower classes are the ones that suffer by
inflation because businesses have to run and businesses have to
try to figure out how to make a profit well.
Speaker 4: And honestly, it's an interesting parallel to the to the
Roman example, because we have our own solution for cheap labor,
and it is to legal immigrants, right, and you know
those systems are similarly exploitative, right, I wouldn't particularly want
to be, you know, an illegal from Honduras, you know,
working in a meat packing plant, probably not getting paid
or treated particularly well. But again, in times of inflation,
and when you have this mass store of cheap labor, right,
even if it's not morally correct, it's an understandable conclusion
someone would reach. You can sort of map it out.
And I think that it's another thing that sort of
tilts the sort of the balance of power, if we
could say that away from someone who's primary asset is
their labor, right, someone who makes money through that, well,
they are competing against the world. The wages for which
they are working are decreasing in value. And yeah, sure
that hits everyone to a certain degree, right, things are
more expensive, But if you are primarily you make money
from money, you get hit less because your debt. And
you know, I'm by no means the most financially literate person,
but I'm sure you're aware just being around rich people
that they use debt in ways that you and I cannot.
Debt is easier to repay, their money is in inflating assets,
and so those are not necessarily problems for that class
in the same way they are for you and I. Yes,
the feature not a bug from that perspective.
Speaker 6: Well, I think that is the really difficult part, right
because and I guess the tough part of that is
like it's not like I hate rich people, right, but
I think at the same time, it hits small businesses
I think the most because those small businesses and small businesses,
I believe is like anything. There's like thirty thousand of
them in the country, so there is a lot of
small businesses out there. Those are the ones that suffer
the most because they can't pay that entry level work
that they want to pay. It's kind of the larger
conglomerate multinationals that it doesn't it actually makes the money,
right because they'll figure out how to go to China
or you know, go to other places where their money
is worth more. So I think the struggle of it
is it continues to hurt the minimum tower, middle to
lower class a lot more because they're work can be
replaced much easier, they're not as specialized, and that kind
of you know, creates a problem that cascades and if
you look at for a lot of us, we don't
have the type of discretionary income we be able to
trade in debt like people with a large amount of
capital can do. They're kind of you know, the going
from paycheck to paycheck a lot of times. So it
does hurt your regular person a lot more.
Speaker 4: Well. And to that point because again, like I have
nothing against rich people, which people are an important part
of society. And I mean you see this in Rome, right,
that there were certain expectations placed on the wealthy.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: Okay, sure, you know, maybe you put on a game,
you put on a you know, an elaborate set of games.
You know that the bread and circuses, right, just to
seem cool to your friends. But I mean, you know
that's at least something mildly pro social to do with
your wealth. So there's, you know, something to be said
for it. But one of the things that I've been
really interested in as someone who has been kind of
digging through the Epstein files, and I problem, I promise
this connects more than it might initially see.
Speaker 5: It probably connects more and you think it does.
Speaker 4: But go ahead, is is that effectively the the rules
that you and I were taught in high school or
how this system works, you know, what are the rules
of the game that It's not true at all? Right,
it's a completely different operation. And you know, regardless of
your individual particular take or interpretation of Epstein, the conclusion
to me was, oh, okay, this is how government works, right,
this we were watching sort of the sausage being made.
And a particular figure I've been tracking through the Epstein
files is Pete Mandelson, right, this kind of British version
of a swamp creature. Right. And obviously you know there's
salacious stuff in there, you know, he's incriminating photos. But
what's particularly interesting about this is what he was at
actually up to with Epstein, the kind of business side, right,
not the personal stuff, which was basically massive insider trading,
specifically as regards you know, the sale of British gold
reserves and you know the the Greek bailout right, where
these massive events, which were incredibly destructive were basically treated
as sort of an opportunity to make some side cash. Right,
those kind of massive course corrections in the world economy
were effectively by the man making the decision used at
an opportunity to enrich themselves personally. Yes, and I think
that was sort of an interesting or sort of revelatory
bit of information. It's like, oh, Okay, So all the
stuff about why we needed to do this, why it
was a good idea to sell off, you know, these
gold reserves or to bail out Grease, It's like, well,
those may or may not have been true, but also
you were making a lot of money from that decision.
So I don't necessarily believe you when you tell me
this is why we had to do it. And so
I'm curious, would you look at either Epstein or other
kind of you know, major decisions like that, how much
emphasis do you place on just the kind of naked
fraud of it.
Speaker 6: Well, I guess the struggle for me is I'm somebody
that I look at the front side of what you're
being told and I never believe it's what you're being told.
And this kind of comes from, you know, the things
I study on my other channel, which is hidden forces
in history. And if you even look at the you know,
kind of break up under Martin Luther when kind of
the Protestant churches come out. The one of the big
changes that happens there is you have Pope Leo the Tenth,
who's a Medici pope, and he comes up with this
strategy because Saint Peter's has been unfinished for many years.
It started under Julius the Second, but he wants to
do this massive upgrade of it. So he has to
come up with a way to make money. And what
does he do. He sells indulgences and that's what indulgences were,
basically these tickets out of purgatory, and that was one
of the major things that was a motivating factor for
Martin Luther's ninety five Thesiss. So if you look at
kind of the power behind power, these are often the
things that we don't talk about and throughout history, a
lot of times it's banking interests, a lot of times
it's geopolitical interests of a particular person, not of a
particular country. So I think if you look at that,
I'm always interested, well, what's the real story, right? Because
they want you watching this hand. What's this hand doing?
And I think that's the thing you really have to consider.
Because even Mike Ben's has been talking about the Epstein
network and kind of the monetary side of it a lot.
You know, people hear about, you know, the sex scandals
and everything else, and that's kind of I guess some
of it's a distraction. But at the same time, if
some of it is actually a currency that Epstein used, right,
because he could get you to do a deal because
you wouldn't want your information out there, right, I think
that's something to take a look at even.
Speaker 4: Well, and honestly, yeah, like one other element I think
about this, and this is sort of dark to say,
but like it's also a phenomenal way to get access
to people. Like we go back to Bill Gates and
by the way, I have to give Bill Gates credit
or in their emails being such a piece of work
that you make Jeffrey Epstein look sympathetic, you know, by comparison. Yeah,
you know, you read the background and of course there's
the salacious stuff about him, you know, trying to dose
his wife and all that stuff. You realized that these
guys together are basically going on like jet setting, like
sex tourism trips, and like, you know, okay, that's not
really something I'm into, but like he was a party guy, right,
And that's the phenomenal way to meet people and also
ingratiate yourself when you're giving them access to something that
is rare and difficult to access a little.
Speaker 6: Bit in that sense, even makes the point of like,
can you imagine, like some of these guys would likely
be very good at making friends, and somehow they're getting
some of the most beautiful women on the planet. Right,
So I think if you threaten somebody, you're gonna take
that away from them. Well, all of a sudden, you
get the political or economic decision you want in your favor.
So I think it is really not that I think
Epstein is a great guy, but like what he was
doing is deviously ingenious, right, He's to kind of get
access to the circles, you know, he's kind of like
the guy bringing the drugs to the party, and he's
he's able to get what he wants. And I think
that's a really kind of interesting way to mess with
world politics certainly.
Speaker 4: But sorry I interrupted you, Jeremy.
Speaker 5: I don't remember where I was going.
Speaker 4: This is wonderful podcasting, right, just like three levels deep
of interruption. Uh, but we.
Speaker 5: Got pretty far off the points, so I don't know
where I am.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 4: Do you remember an hour ago when we were talking
about Rome? But in all seriousness, right, we were talking
about that sort of these hidden forces in history, right
where the stated narrative sort of what it says on
the ten and what's actually going on are two completely
different things. And I mean it does again sort of
go back to what we were speaking earlier about the
kind of foundational myths, you know, something like Virgil, which
obviously it has a great deal of artistic merit. You know,
it is part of the Western canon for a reason.
But you know he didn't just write that to write that, right,
there was there was another way. Yeah, there's a.
Speaker 6: Purpose to it, and even if you want to I
think a great example of this too is the Holy
Roman Emperor Charles the Fifth. The way he actually becomes
Holy Roman Emperor, there would be these seven prince electors
that would basically decide who the next Holy Rome emper
is going to be. So Charles the Fifth has this
guy behind him. His name is Yokan Johann Fuga or
Jacob Fuga, and Jacob Fuga is he starts as a
kind of like mercantilist, but becomes becomes more of a
banker lending money. Well, he actually bribes the seven prince electors,
gets Charles the Fifth elected, and then every strange decision
you don't understand in Charles the Fifth's life was something
that was a benefit to Jakob Fuga, And I think
that's the thing to understand when you look at power
behind the power and you don't understand why a politician's
doing what they're doing, you need to know who's behind them.
And I think that's what it really comes down to,
like who put them there. One of my favorite writers
you see since passed on is a guy named Jim Mars,
And Jim Mars would say about George W. Bush when
you look at kind of like how did you get
an office? He said, In Texas, we have a saying
called the post turtle, where somebody's trying to play a
joke and they put a turtle on top of a
fence post, and you say, like how'd they get there?
He said, George Bush was a post turtle. You don't
know how he got there, but you just want to
help the creature down. And I think when you look
at politicians, a lot of times you get these people
that aren't the best of us because they're more easily corruptible,
that get in a position because they have people behind
them that want to use them as the means to
their own end.
Speaker 4: Well, perhaps the most pertinent example recently, in my mind
is the rise of President Obama. Right, this guy who
appears out of nowhere, bemingly out of nowhere, with no
real history, you know, sort of parachuted into this role,
and you know, as an Illinois State senator, he's giving
a you know, a keynote speech at the DNC. You know,
even before he you know, went past that, you're like, wait,
I'm sorry that cut.
Speaker 5: Out for a little bit you did, but we got
you back.
Speaker 4: Cool, Cool, I'll edit that out. I might edit that out.
But point is again, right, it's the post turtle phenomenon.
It's like, wait a minute, this doesn't make any sense
on first viewing. Another great example is my favorite figure
in American politics, former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who again
is just kind of an unfortunate woman on multiple levels,
who seemingly right, should have no chance in a city
like Chicago. And then you realize, oh, wait, she was
friends with or she was sort of handpicked by the
Obama DJ. Right, they basically dropped her in to you know,
play some games they wanted to play. And once you
know that, you're like, oh, this makes sense because on
first viewing, you're like, who would vote for this woman.
She seems to be, even by the standards of Chicago politicians,
not particularly bright, not particularly charismatic, and plainly corrupt. And
then you have that bit of information and you're like, oh,
okay again. It's that gap between how you were told
the system works, the sort of schoolhouse Rock version, and
how human nature interacts with these sort of you know,
complicated systems.
Speaker 6: Well, and that's why I think always finding the funding
behind somebody is always the more interesting part. You even
look at a lot of these nonprofits, there's a form
that they have to fill out every year called a
Form nine ninety, and that's kind of fun to see, well,
who's giving the money to this nonprofit because it really
kind of explains your world a lot more than you
would understand. And I think if you look at kind
of understanding your world is you want to know the
forces behind things because what you're seeing really is play acting,
really following the money and really going.
Speaker 5: Behind it and seeing, you know, who benefits.
Speaker 6: I think that's the bigger story because you even look
at you know, emperors in Rome, the Praetorian Guard was
responsible for protecting the emperors in Rome, but the man
that was in charge of the Praetorian Guard, called the
Praetorian Prefect, is really the most powerful man in Rome
because seventeen, it's somewhere around seventeen emperors actually die because
they're killed by the Preetorian Guard. Now that's going to
change after Constantindi bans them in the three hundreds and
creates something new. But it is really interesting to understand
the power behind the power. I wrote a thread about
a year ago trying to describe Obama kind of as
the new Praetorian Prefect because that was the point in
time when they were trying to annoy Kamala Harris's as
kind of the next person, because it's like she came
out of nowhere. Obama picked her. Okay, he said, she's fine,
you know, now she can go on. But I think
it's really interesting to understand, like who is the force
behind what you're actually seeing. And if you even look
at the second Emperor Tiberia, this is where you're kind
of like Epstein connection comes in. He's a very creepy dude.
At a certain point in time, he doesn't really want
to rule Rome anymore. He goes off to the island
of Capri and he has prepubescent boys nakedly swimming in
a pool with him. He would call his little fishes
and his praetorium prefects. To Janus is basically ruling Rome,
and once Tiberius catches onto this, he has Jane is killed.
But this is something that is really interesting when the
power kind of peaks its head out.
Speaker 4: So if people are interested in this sort of information.
Junto Magazine, who I've written for before, I know the
guys who started it, have a really interesting series of
tools on Junto dash Intelligence or intel rather, I'll link
it in the description, But in it, not only do
they have kind of a briefing right of what's happening,
the kind of stories behind the stories, they also have
a massive collection of different resources, whether that's like a
scatterplot mixed with donations, FEC filings and so it's free, right.
I'm friends with these guys. They're not paying me to
say it. It's a very interesting website to spend some
time on because one, it breaks down information that in
a way that someone who's not particularly intelligent can understand,
which I appreciate. But also because you start to see
those networks, you're like, oh, these two organizations that I
was I would have assumed had nothing in common. Oh well,
they both got two hundred and fifty thousand dollars from
the Koch Brothers. And regardless of your opinion on the
Koch Brothers, you're like, oh, okay, that makes sense because
when I see those two institutions saying the same things
or pushing the same direction. Yes, you don't have to
go tinfoil hat. You just look, oh well, they both
got a fat check from the same guy, right, and
you it sort of mass it sort of pulls the
mask back from politics in that way. And you know,
it's one of those things that I think that framework
is very helpful or analyzing politics, analyzing current events, because
it's one of those things that it will drive you insane,
very very easily. It's so tempting and on certain level
satisfying to get pulled into the kind of headline game
right the like XYZ is mad at this and mad
at that. But that information isn't actually particularly useful to you.
Doesn't tell you how the world works, It doesn't inform
your decisions in any meaningful way. But if you can
step back, look at the system, look at how money
and power flows. You can actually have a functional understanding
of this system, because that functional understanding was not explained
to you in Civics class.
Speaker 6: Well, I think that's the bigger part is history is
actually in the ledgers and the checkbooks and in the records.
It's not in you know, what people actually did, It's
in what's behind them. If you even look at Joyus Caesar,
you know Caesar did a lot of the things that
he did is you know, he's born into a patrician family,
so he's born into a family that has a great name,
but his father lost all the family's money, so he's broke.
So his entire career there's people like Marcus Crassis that
are funding him. And a lot of the decisions that
Caesar makes is because if I screw up here, I'm ruined.
And if you look at that in history, a desperate
man will make a lot of decisions that a brave
man might not make. And I think if you understand
the power behind things, you'll understand your history so much
better than just kind of reading the history and taking
it at face value, well one hundred percent.
Speaker 4: And I don't want to go back into a discussion
of HBO's room. But like that, that trend is sort
of brilliantly exemplified right when Caesar's sweating bullets and then
they recover the Roman treasury, like, oh great, awesome, I
can actually.
Speaker 5: Pay all I have money. We're in good shape.
Speaker 6: You know, if you look at why he goes into
gall he goes into gall because he's broken.
Speaker 5: He needs to make more money.
Speaker 6: And if you conquer a bunch of land and he
can keep a lot of the stuff there while you're
not going to be broke anymore.
Speaker 4: Oh one hundred percent. So, Jeremy, we are fast approaching time.
This has been a really interesting discussion. Where can people find.
Speaker 6: You so they can find me, I'm at Jeremy Ryan
slay on x. My company website is command your brand
dot com. And then my two channels that I have
We're both on YouTube and rumble. We're Hidden Forces and
History and the Roman pattern.
Speaker 4: Well, thanks, man, this is a ton of fun. I'll
have to have you on again, maybe for a more
structured conversation.
Speaker 5: Over the place.
Speaker 4: Look, man, that's what we do here. But as far
as my stuff, the Jay Burdon Show, Apple, Spotify, YouTube,
anywhere you listen to podcasts. This is what I do
full time. If you want to support me, you can
throw me a few bucks a month on Patreon, Substack
or gum road. You hit the episodes early in ad free.
I know the ads are irritating, but as we said earlier,
thinks for getting expensive. So I do need to eat
and ten ninety nine Bacon is not making it any easier. Also,
you can check out our sponsor, Axios Remote fitness and
coaching flues.
Speaker 3: Done.
Speaker 4: Lost a whole lot of weight back in the gym,
certainly lost some progress there, but JD's programming is excellent.
You should support him anyway because I like him and
he has a good product. Again, Jeremy, there's a ton
of fun. Man, Everyone at home, keep your head out.
Good night,