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Speaker 3: dot com Today.
Speaker 2: Maining a live man like this man letting butterfly flapping
Speaker 2: his wing. Dig down in the forest. Man, it gonna
Speaker 2: cause the tree fall, letting five thousand miles away.
Speaker 4: Man, nobody see nobody else.
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Speaker 5: the little story and you got dicted like that.
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Speaker 1: Man, no matter.
Speaker 4: Man. All right, Jeremy Slate, Welcome to Jay Burton Show.
Speaker 4: 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
Speaker 4: media and we're going back and forth and you sent
Speaker 4: me another interview you'd done. And it's always fun when
Speaker 4: you listen. You're listening to someone for the first time
Speaker 4: and you're thinking, like, oh, he's this is good, but
Speaker 4: he's got to mention to this, and then three seconds
Speaker 4: later you bring it up and like, ah, my man,
Speaker 4: he knows exactly what he's talking about. I mean, look,
Speaker 4: that's how you should judge anyone. Do I agree with them, Yes,
Speaker 4: they must know what they're talking about. But in all
Speaker 4: serious disband it was a great interview. And so if
Speaker 4: you could, could you introduce yourself to my audience? Well,
Speaker 4: 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,
Speaker 6: and for the past ten years we've been placing our
Speaker 6: clients on high level podcasts. And then I guess, in
Speaker 6: terms of what I've been talking about in the last
Speaker 6: couple of years, my master's going back almost twenty years now,
Speaker 6: is in early Roman Empire propaganda. I actually studied the
Speaker 6: propaganda of Augustus, but in the in the last two years,
Speaker 6: I've really been looking at a lot of trends that
Speaker 6: have been happening, you know, in the US, in Europe.
Speaker 6: And one of the major things I've looked at is
Speaker 6: I've become very good at pattern recognition and I have
Speaker 6: two different channels that I talk about this on. The
Speaker 6: first is called Hidden Forces in History, and we look
Speaker 6: 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
Speaker 6: is really the main thesis. I talk about the three
Speaker 6: main things that cause a civilization to collapse. And it
Speaker 6: doesn't mean that you know, hey, we are Rome, but
Speaker 6: it means that a lot of the same things that
Speaker 6: they were doing. If you look at different civilizations collapsing,
Speaker 6: they do a lot of similar things.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there are several things there. One i'd almost be
Speaker 4: not to say more interested, but quite interested to talk
Speaker 4: about your degree. I'd sort of dabble in the classics.
Speaker 4: And one of the major conclusions from reading Virgil is
Speaker 4: that the idea is it's kind of like the you know,
Speaker 4: the internet meme, like we wis kings. You know, it's
Speaker 4: sort of this like revisionist history to explain how we
Speaker 4: actually not only is the Roman Empire super cool and awesome,
Speaker 4: but also it's connected to the Trojan War. And okay, look,
Speaker 4: there's a lot more to it than simply that, but
Speaker 4: it is a very interesting element of that document that
Speaker 4: isn't often discussed, at least in common circles.
Speaker 6: Well, the thing that's interesting about it too is if
Speaker 6: you look at Augustus, you know, he's coming in as
Speaker 6: the republic's kind of fading out, but he's trying to
Speaker 6: convince people that a republic still exists because Rome naturally
Speaker 6: hated kings. They traditionally, before becoming a republic, had seven
Speaker 6: traditional kings, and so the idea of kingship was very
Speaker 6: much hated in Rome. So he had to convince people
Speaker 6: he was not a king but still put himself in
Speaker 6: a very similar position. He kind of uses like a
Speaker 6: really interesting word salad to do that. But one of
Speaker 6: the things that he does is he puts a big
Speaker 6: attention on literature and the ane. It is actually one
Speaker 6: of the things that he commissions to be written, and Virgil,
Speaker 6: when putting it together, actually towards the end of his life,
Speaker 6: doesn't finish the Enea, and in his will he wanted
Speaker 6: the work destroyed if it was left unfinished, and Augustus
Speaker 6: actually manages to stop that because hey, he wants this
Speaker 6: epic to show you know, just how important Rome is
Speaker 6: and tie it to something great like the Trojan War.
Speaker 6: But really it's a masterful piece of propaganda in order
Speaker 6: to tie the Romans to something that existed long before
Speaker 6: them and also tie themselves to like a royal lineage,
Speaker 6: because the character of Eneas is very interesting. He leaves
Speaker 6: the Trojan War with his father Ascanius on his back
Speaker 6: and walks across Italy and ends up in a city
Speaker 6: called Alba Longa, which is later going to found the
Speaker 6: kingdom from which Rome comes from, because Romulus and Remus
Speaker 6: are from Alba Longa. So it's a really interesting tie
Speaker 6: in to kind of give this mythical East Ethos to
Speaker 6: the Romans and what they're coming out of.
Speaker 4: Well, and the deep irony of that is you see
Speaker 4: Roman itself become the founding myth for any number of
Speaker 4: other societies, right, like the the Czars say, well, we're
Speaker 4: kind of the Romans, like Kaiser Caesar like that. There's
Speaker 4: the similar I say, Cope, I don't mean to say
Speaker 4: that aggressively, but creative interpretation of history. You see with
Speaker 4: the Germans and even.
Speaker 6: Even the Third Reich, right, the third exactly is the
Speaker 6: Reich comes from the German word meaning kingdom. It's the
Speaker 6: third kingdom. The first kingdom is the Roman Empire, the
Speaker 6: second is the Holy Roman Empire. And Hitler thought the
Speaker 6: third Reich would be the third great German Kingdom.
Speaker 4: Well exactly. And you're speaking about the patterns of history,
Speaker 4: these foundational myths, Okay, sure, are they literal history in
Speaker 4: the sense that you could find all the archaeological justification. No,
Speaker 4: But functionally they are the thing which ties an empire
Speaker 4: 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,
Speaker 4: and I think part of the reason why things have
Speaker 4: gotten so weird and so crazy. Is that the most
Speaker 4: recent version of our myth? There have been several, Right,
Speaker 4: obviously you have the American Founders. There's sort of a
Speaker 4: modification with Jackson. Then you know, the Civil War becomes
Speaker 4: the kind of central founding of another republic, sort of
Speaker 4: stacked on top. But really, for the last eighty years
Speaker 4: it's been, you know, the story of World War Two.
Speaker 4: And you see that echoed every time we pick a
Speaker 4: fight with someone, right, slivanon Malasovich is, yeah, he's basically Hitler,
Speaker 4: and Saddam Hussein he's basically Hitler. And you know that
Speaker 4: myth was very powerful. It you know, sort of propelled
Speaker 4: us through almost one hundred years. But as it sort
Speaker 4: of starts to weaken, it seems as if there is
Speaker 4: no really cohesive narrative about what we are coming into
Speaker 4: you build on it or take its place. And so
Speaker 4: I'm curious. One of the things that you were speaking
Speaker 4: about your comments on Rome is you know that an
Speaker 4: addition to currency debasement, which we will get back to,
Speaker 4: one of the other things that sort of brought about
Speaker 4: the end of Rome was the weakening of borders. And
Speaker 4: so before we get into that, it's probably best to describe, well,
Speaker 4: what is a citizen? So if you could, could you
Speaker 4: describe what a Roman citizen was and how that's different
Speaker 4: from our conception of citizenship and modernity.
Speaker 6: Well, so it changes a lot, and that's I think
Speaker 6: something that's important to understand because if you look at
Speaker 6: initial citizenship in Rome, and we're going back to the
Speaker 6: kind of the mid republics, we're looking like three hundreds
Speaker 6: four hundreds BC, and if you look at that, it's
Speaker 6: initially people that are in Rome and kind of the
Speaker 6: territories very close to that, and it's going to be
Speaker 6: a real issue for kind of the Italian states outside
Speaker 6: of Rome that they don't have citizenship. And if you
Speaker 6: get towards the Late Republic, this is one of the
Speaker 6: things that Marius, the great military reformer, is going to
Speaker 6: push for. He's going to push for citizenship for the Italians,
Speaker 6: and eventually that will get out to the point that
Speaker 6: it's called the struggle of the Orders, which kind of
Speaker 6: brings us to this citizenship for the Italians. So now
Speaker 6: citizenship applies not just to Rome and the territories are
Speaker 6: very close to, but also to all Italian states that
Speaker 6: are kind of part of Rome. And the way Rome
Speaker 6: expanded during the time of the Republic is it wasn't
Speaker 6: initially from taxes. It was we conquer you, we put
Speaker 6: a government in place, you give us soldiers, and we'll
Speaker 6: kind of leave you alone. So Rome was able to
Speaker 6: expand by bringing in these new territories that would fight
Speaker 6: for Rome, and by serving in the legions. It's initially
Speaker 6: twenty five years, it's in the later Empire it's going
Speaker 6: to be closer to thirty years. You could gain citizenship,
Speaker 6: and what that would mean is it's citizenship for you,
Speaker 6: your family, your children. So you would start to have
Speaker 6: more Roman citizenship in these territor tories. Now if you
Speaker 6: get into the mid Empire, so around like to twelve,
Speaker 6: Caracala is going to give citizenship to thirty million people overnight.
Speaker 6: It's very debated why he did this, but it's thought
Speaker 6: that the reason he did it is in order to
Speaker 6: be able to tax the inheritance of these new citizens,
Speaker 6: because anyone in a Roman territory paid about five percent tax,
Speaker 6: whereas a Roman citizen paid ten percent tax. Now you
Speaker 6: also got some goodies for that, like you know, if
Speaker 6: you look in the Bible of Saint Paul, one of
Speaker 6: the reasons he's able to travel so much is because
Speaker 6: he has Roman citizenship. It's kind of like having a
Speaker 6: golden passport in a lot of ways. And then there
Speaker 6: was also something called the grain doll that every citizen
Speaker 6: was allowed to have a certain amount of grain supplied
Speaker 6: to them by Rome. So you do get a lot
Speaker 6: of these benefits. And it's also the ability. This is
Speaker 6: going to change a lot in the Late Empire because
Speaker 6: around two eighty four the Empire becomes a lot more
Speaker 6: you know, hard rule, a lot more autocratic in a
Speaker 6: lot of ways. But in the early Empire you could
Speaker 6: redress your a grievances directly to the emperor, like it
Speaker 6: was something as a citizen you had a right to do.
Speaker 6: So citizenship did have a ton of value, but there
Speaker 6: were also various forms of citizenship. They would be citizenship
Speaker 6: with the vote and citizenship without the vote. So it
Speaker 6: was kind of a very interesting thing to be a
Speaker 6: Roman citizen. And it's hard to define really what makes
Speaker 6: a Roman and this is there was a big debate
Speaker 6: on X a few months ago between one of my
Speaker 6: favorite follows, by the way, go follow this guy if
Speaker 6: you're not a Roman helmet guy and Elon Musk about
Speaker 6: you know, what is romanness and how is that changing?
Speaker 6: You know, Rome had always been very cosmopolitan, and I
Speaker 6: guess that's the issue of how do you define what
Speaker 6: a Roman is? Because if Rome expanded into your territory
Speaker 6: took you over and you were there long enough, well
Speaker 6: you became very Romanized because people wanted to be like
Speaker 6: Rome because there was a lot of goodies you got
Speaker 6: for having that. So that's kind of one issue. Now,
Speaker 6: the thing you're going to start to see is as
Speaker 6: currency starts to break down in the late Empire, and
Speaker 6: as these generals that were declaring themselves emperor care more
Speaker 6: about their civil wars between each other than their borders,
Speaker 6: you start to get these enclaves developing on the borders
Speaker 6: that are living with the Roman territory. They're not really
Speaker 6: being Roman, and you start to have this kind of
Speaker 6: loss of a shared reality. So I think that's one
Speaker 6: of the major things that you're looking at as an
Speaker 6: empire breaks down, is there starts to be this loss
Speaker 6: of a shared reality and then people kind of aren't
Speaker 6: playing the same game.
Speaker 5: If that makes sense, well, definitely.
Speaker 4: And one of the other things my Roman history is
Speaker 4: a little spotty so I might be wrong on this
Speaker 4: plus or minus one hundred years. But one of the
Speaker 4: other things that I think is interesting looking back at
Speaker 4: Roman history is the relationship between effectively like ownership and citizenship. Right.
Speaker 4: You know, this is the you know, the I mean
Speaker 4: a lot of the controversies that led up to you know,
Speaker 4: the eventual birth of the empire. Right, But you have
Speaker 4: this founding idea, however, imperfect, that we are a collection
Speaker 4: of effectively kind of Yeoman farmers, right that you know,
Speaker 4: we are people who you know, certainly fight, but you know,
Speaker 4: a Roman is tied to a piece of land and
Speaker 4: that is sort of his right. You know, this is
Speaker 4: 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
Speaker 4: the British, I guess before they were even the British
Speaker 4: did as well. And it's one of those things that
Speaker 4: as that system falls apart, partially due to the influx
Speaker 4: of slaves, but also to let's be honest again, kind
Speaker 4: of the rise of you know, relatively speaking, high finance,
Speaker 4: that connective tissue goes away, and so you have we
Speaker 4: could say, like genetic Romans with really nothing, right that
Speaker 4: become these sort of like welfare sponges you have, So
Speaker 4: they have no tie to the land anymore. They don't
Speaker 4: really own a stake per se in the empire or
Speaker 4: even you know, the state of Rome past the Dole
Speaker 4: and an incredible influx of people who are looking to
Speaker 4: get a piece of that, right, And I mean you
Speaker 4: don't have to be a genius to look around and
Speaker 4: say like, wait a minute, I've seen this one before. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and so we've been talking about this a lot, So
Speaker 4: let's just kind of set the framework here. Where does
Speaker 4: this currency debasement come from? Like how was it done? Literally?
Speaker 4: And also like what what's the advantage? Why would you
Speaker 4: make your coins worthless?
Speaker 6: Well, I want to touch on the other point first
Speaker 6: before I jump on currency, because that's a really pertinent point.
Speaker 6: And if you look at you know, we talked about
Speaker 6: Rome being a kingdom, so it's traditionally in the West,
Speaker 6: because you know, the East, the Byzantine Empire, they still
Speaker 6: would have considered themselves Romans. It has three eras in time.
Speaker 6: It's a kingdom first in seven fifty three, then it
Speaker 6: becomes a republic in five h nine, and an empire sometime.
Speaker 6: This is debated, but sometime between thirty one and twenty
Speaker 6: three BC. So one of the things you're going to
Speaker 6: have change in the last one hundred years of the
Speaker 6: Republic is there's a guy named Gaius Marius, and he's
Speaker 6: a very famous military reformer of Rome. Actually, the Roman
Speaker 6: eagle standard is something that he creates. It's something that
Speaker 6: he actually adds to the Roman military. Before Marius, Rome
Speaker 6: had been very much a citizen soldiery. He actually starts
Speaker 6: to create more of a class of professional soldier. So
Speaker 6: that is very much a difference in how Rome is
Speaker 6: going to start to function. And he mentioned people not
Speaker 6: being tied to land after the Punic Wars and after
Speaker 6: the reforms of Marius. This is going to be something
Speaker 6: that's debated for a long time. And it's actually one
Speaker 6: of the biggest reasons that Julius Caesar in the Late
Speaker 6: Republic is a to get the support he's able to
Speaker 6: get because he wants to take land that Pompey has
Speaker 6: gained through conquest and give it to veterans, because those
Speaker 6: veterans would come back and they'd have nothing to come
Speaker 6: back to because their land might have been sold in
Speaker 6: the time they were gone. Because people might have expected
Speaker 6: they died, so you'd have a lot of these military
Speaker 6: men come back with no purpose, nothing to come back to,
Speaker 6: and Caesar thought we should give them land. So this
Speaker 6: is something that's actually debated quite often, is what do
Speaker 6: 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
Speaker 6: political class, create a struggle with Caesar's political class, which
Speaker 6: is the popularies or the kind of party of the people.
Speaker 6: So that's something that has been a problem for a
Speaker 6: very long time and actually one of the things that
Speaker 6: 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
Speaker 4: we keep coming, we keep touching on things that are
Speaker 4: really interesting. I'm sure the comments will be very kind
Speaker 4: to us for it.
Speaker 6: But in all seriousness, always ripped me apart and tell
Speaker 6: me I don't know anything about anything, but what are
Speaker 6: you gonna do?
Speaker 4: But look, I've built a brand on not particularly knowing
Speaker 4: anything about anything, so you know they're used to it.
Speaker 4: But in all seriousness, one of the other things that
Speaker 4: I think is an interesting parallel is the degree to
Speaker 4: which slavery massively increased inequality in Rome. Now you could
Speaker 4: look at that and say, no, shit, slaves are not
Speaker 4: equal to a guy with a bunch of stuff. Sure, hey,
Speaker 4: that's true. But also cheap labor effectively allows capital to
Speaker 4: be much much more productive. Right when when you combine
Speaker 4: that with credit, right, which is obviously helped along by
Speaker 4: currency debasement, an unequal distribution of wealth that is becoming
Speaker 4: more and more unequal, and then the cheap labor to
Speaker 4: take that land and make it into something productive. Oh wait,
Speaker 4: and also a massive scheme of you know, government contracts,
Speaker 4: whether that's for grain or weapons or anything else. And
Speaker 4: not only do you start to see the parallel, but
Speaker 4: it's like, well, it's no shock that that created an
Speaker 4: unstable system because that is going to massive Well take
Speaker 4: an unequal system anyway. You know. Look, we're not communists,
Speaker 4: but I think we can all say that, you know,
Speaker 4: even at its most liberal, Rome was not exactly, you know,
Speaker 4: not exactly an equal system.
Speaker 6: Well, it was more of an oligarchy if anything, because
Speaker 6: about ten ten percent it's it's a republic, but like
Speaker 6: ten percent of it is literate and it's about the
Speaker 6: 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
Speaker 4: tensions and ratchets them up, right. So, I mean you
Speaker 4: know that you have this system. Was it the lat
Speaker 4: of Fundia, right, the kind of like these massive farm
Speaker 4: abs into Yes, these like massive.
Speaker 6: Well because the rich would actually it wasn't even just that,
Speaker 6: like you'd had a lot of fundia, but you also
Speaker 6: had rich people. And this is one of the things
Speaker 6: Caesar got upset about, which just start farming public land
Speaker 6: because no one would stop them.
Speaker 4: I mean, at a certain point you always have to
Speaker 4: like admire the balls it took to do it right,
Speaker 4: Like like if you just set up a farm in
Speaker 4: a public park, I don't know, it's not good, but
Speaker 4: you know there's something at.
Speaker 6: That point in time, if you hold the power, who's
Speaker 6: gonna stop you?
Speaker 4: Yeah? True, true, But I want to go back to
Speaker 4: the specific currency and it's not just like my special
Speaker 4: interest is, you know, not some gold buck or something.
Speaker 4: But it matters more than it than you would assume
Speaker 4: on sort of initial impression right, So if you could describe,
Speaker 4: like one, what is the temptation in this why do
Speaker 4: rulers constantly go to this option? Like what does it
Speaker 4: get you? And then when do we really start to
Speaker 4: 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
Speaker 6: is which is pretty incredible. And I guess a good
Speaker 6: example of this is the denarius, and the silver denarius
Speaker 6: was kind of the main coin that would be used
Speaker 6: in most transactions. And as the denarius starts to devalue,
Speaker 6: people are going to start hoarding gold and that becomes
Speaker 6: a problem that there's not gold in circulation. So the
Speaker 6: gold the silver coin of the first century in Augustus,
Speaker 6: that's about ninety five percent pure. By the late third century,
Speaker 6: in the two eighties, it's like five percent pure. This
Speaker 6: is this here is a silver coin of the late
Speaker 6: third century, very rare to find because there just weren't
Speaker 6: as many. But this is Valerian who was actually captured
Speaker 6: by the Persian shah Shahpoor the first and actually used
Speaker 6: as a footstool the rest of his life. And then
Speaker 6: this is a bronze coin of a relion. This would
Speaker 6: have been kind of the standard. A bronze coin would
Speaker 6: be used every day.
Speaker 5: So what would.
Speaker 6: Happen is they would basically add other base metals to
Speaker 6: those coins, and over time you kind of got to
Speaker 6: the third century where that bronze coin that I just
Speaker 6: showed you would be bronze and kind of had like
Speaker 6: a piece of silver foil over top of it that
Speaker 6: would wear off in your hand over time. So how
Speaker 6: did it happen. There's a few different things that kind
Speaker 6: of lead to this that so I apologize for kind
Speaker 6: of all the kind of back end work. I'm here
Speaker 6: to kind of set it up. But if you look
Speaker 6: at the you know, as we have the Great Fire
Speaker 6: of Rome in sixty four a d and Nero needs
Speaker 6: to pay for a lot of things, so he'll start
Speaker 6: some currency to basement, So you're going to see the
Speaker 6: value start to drop during Nero. It holds pretty stable
Speaker 6: until the death of commonas in one ninety two. So
Speaker 6: we went from sixty four to one ninety two, almost
Speaker 6: one hundred and fifty years with a pretty stable currency. Now,
Speaker 6: the thing that's going to change in that year is
Speaker 6: it's the year of five Emperors and the last one
Speaker 6: that comes in, because basically they'd cause the civil war,
Speaker 6: they would declare themselves emperor. And you have it at
Speaker 6: the last one, the second to last one, the fourth
Speaker 6: one of those is basically going to buy the auction
Speaker 6: by the empire and an auction from the Praetorian art
Speaker 6: twenty thousand cissirces. He now owns the empire. So you're
Speaker 6: going to have a military commander out on the Danube
Speaker 6: named so timmya Severus, he's actually from North Africa who's
Speaker 6: going to come in replace that emperor, declare himself emperor
Speaker 6: and do it by military force. And the pattern he
Speaker 6: uses is something that the emperors will after him will
Speaker 6: pattern the rest of the empire. The thing that he
Speaker 6: does is when a new emperor came in, he would
Speaker 6: do something called the donative. It comes from the Latin
Speaker 6: word meaning to give. And that donative was a gift
Speaker 6: to the military. So he took from probably about twenty
Speaker 6: years before Marcus Aurelius at that point in time, gave
Speaker 6: the largest donative to the Roman military ever. So he
Speaker 6: takes that and go is way bigger than Marcus Aurelius did.
Speaker 6: So now he gives this giant gift to the military.
Speaker 6: He also doubles military pay, and then he also doubles
Speaker 6: the size of the allegiance. He takes the praetorian guard
Speaker 6: replaces them all with his own men. And now that's
Speaker 6: something that each emperor after him is going to do.
Speaker 6: They're going to enlarge the allegiance, double their pay, and
Speaker 6: give this huge donative gift to them when they become emperor.
Speaker 6: I'm trying to remember the quote offhand, but when Severus
Speaker 6: is on his deathbed, he says to his sons Caracala
Speaker 6: and Gaeta, enriched the soldiers and forget all others. And
Speaker 6: that's kind of the pattern that emperors after them will
Speaker 6: continue to apply. So that's really the key thing that
Speaker 6: starts currency to basement is you have this new brand
Speaker 6: of emperor. It's not quite sever Its. It's going to
Speaker 6: get the name. It's a little bit later on in
Speaker 6: two thirty five you're going to have a guy named
Speaker 6: Maximinus Thras that's actually fit considered to be the first
Speaker 6: of what are called the barrack emperors or military emperors
Speaker 6: declaring themselves emperor. But it really is applied off this
Speaker 6: pattern that Severus creates and every emperor after him is
Speaker 6: going to create So in the period of the Third
Speaker 6: century Crisis, which is two thirty five to two eighty four,
Speaker 6: you're going to have like twenty six different emperors and
Speaker 6: they're each going to apply that same strategy of large donative,
Speaker 6: give a higher pay raise in large the legions, because
Speaker 6: that's where their power base comes from. And you're going
Speaker 6: to get to the point of two eighty four, when
Speaker 6: the crisis finally ends and a guy named Diocletian takes
Speaker 6: over that they're at fifteen thousand percent inflation, and that's
Speaker 6: really how they get there is just military spending. Now,
Speaker 6: all of these other things are going to exasperate it,
Speaker 6: like the grain dole or Caracala giving out citizenship to
Speaker 6: thirty million people in two twelve, So these things are
Speaker 6: going to exasperate it. But it's really that pattern that's
Speaker 6: created by Severus that emperors after him continue to apply.
Speaker 4: So one of the things that I'm I'm curious about
Speaker 4: is so friends of the show the Good Old Boys
Speaker 4: have been going through a long retrospective on HBO's Rome,
Speaker 4: which I might add I've actually never just rewatched.
Speaker 6: By the way I watched it, like twenty years ago
Speaker 6: when it came out. I literally just finished rewatching about
Speaker 6: two weeks ago.
Speaker 4: Well, well, fair enough, and I haven't watched it. It's
Speaker 4: basically just a podcast about Roman history with a thin
Speaker 4: veneer of talking about a TV show in the background,
Speaker 4: which I appreciate. But you know, in the background constantly
Speaker 4: through this, you know, because Caesar is returned from Gaul,
Speaker 4: are these these massive slave auctions and this represented obviously
Speaker 4: a huge influx of capital and money into Rome. So
Speaker 4: how and free of me this is no really broad question,
Speaker 4: but how do these conflicts in Rome affect the sort
Speaker 4: of like effective inflation rate? Because it seems as if
Speaker 4: there's so much money, there's so much value flying around
Speaker 4: that that would lead to asset inflation. Right if the
Speaker 4: conversion rate from a I don't know a house to
Speaker 4: a slave I'm pulling these numbers out of thin air
Speaker 4: was like two to one, Right, you could buy a
Speaker 4: house for two slaves. Well, if all of a sudden
Speaker 4: you've brought back you know, however, many tens of thousands
Speaker 4: caes are brought back, it seems that you know that
Speaker 4: ratio would change. So to what degree was there inflation
Speaker 4: simply from the sort of like spoils of war.
Speaker 6: So I don't really know the answer to that, but
Speaker 6: I can tell you one of the things that continues
Speaker 6: Rome to be able to expand as the continual military
Speaker 6: conquest and the Roman Empire is going to reach its
Speaker 6: furthest extent in one seventeen AD under Trajan, and you're
Speaker 6: going to have kind of smaller movements after that. But
Speaker 6: for the most part, the empire stops expanding. You know,
Speaker 6: Severus will spend some time in Britain trying to ensure
Speaker 6: things there. In the one twenties, you're going to have
Speaker 6: Hadrian builds the wall to try and keep the picks out,
Speaker 6: But for all extents and purposes, Rome stops expanding after
Speaker 6: one seventeen AD. There will be smaller territorial ads, but
Speaker 6: for the most part, this kind of machine that keeps
Speaker 6: kind of grinding up everyone, you know, further and further
Speaker 6: out stops. And I think that's a really key point
Speaker 6: because one of the things that allows Rome to do
Speaker 6: what it does is it is continually bring in more
Speaker 6: territory and more wealth. Once that stops, that's going to
Speaker 6: be a major change in how things operate, right, because
Speaker 6: you're no longer bringing the gold and the silver. You know,
Speaker 6: you have your silver mines in Datia which are kind
Speaker 6: of out towards the Balkans, but those silver mines actually
Speaker 6: go dry I think in the third century, in the
Speaker 6: early third century. So now you have this ability to
Speaker 6: get wealth changes dramatically. So I think that's a really
Speaker 6: key point. Is I don't know as much about how
Speaker 6: slavery would cause inflation, though you know it is something
Speaker 6: that continually to come into the empire. But I can
Speaker 6: tell you that the territorial expansion ending in one seventeen
Speaker 6: is a major major point of no longer continue to
Speaker 6: bring in new wealth.
Speaker 4: All right, fair enough so, And honestly, look, man, I'm
Speaker 4: 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
Speaker 4: this show was what's your schedule tomorrow? Right, Yeah. So
Speaker 4: one of the things that we mentioned earlier I want
Speaker 4: to actually get into is the way in which inflation
Speaker 4: increases sort of the power of the moneyed interests, right,
Speaker 4: And you know, part of that has to do with
Speaker 4: who gets the newly inflated money first. Also, you know,
Speaker 4: if your wealth is stored in liquid assets, Inflation is
Speaker 4: much less of a problem for you than if you
Speaker 4: just own a house or a farm. So how does
Speaker 4: this sort of inflation that we see, whether in Rome
Speaker 4: or you know, in the West, affect normal people? Right?
Speaker 4: How does it sort of shift the balance of power
Speaker 4: in a society.
Speaker 6: So that's the one problem we have with history, and
Speaker 6: I'm going to be totally honest with you here. We
Speaker 6: don't know as much about what regular people are doing.
Speaker 6: And that's one of the real struggles because the people
Speaker 6: writing the history are the people that are educated and
Speaker 6: the people that do have wealth. So we can surmise,
Speaker 6: but it's hard to know exactly what their life is like.
Speaker 6: And I think when you're looking at even when Rome
Speaker 6: quote unquote falls, it really just transitions. It doesn't fall
Speaker 6: in four seventy six. The life of someone living in
Speaker 6: four seventy six and five hundred in Roman.
Speaker 5: Territory is a poor person. Their life wouldn't have changed
Speaker 5: that much.
Speaker 6: You know, when Rome goes from republic to an empire,
Speaker 6: the regular person, their life wouldn't really have changed that much.
Speaker 6: So I think that's something to understand is you have
Speaker 6: to look at the things they would have cared about.
Speaker 6: You know, disease is a huge problem. There'll be plagues
Speaker 6: continually sweeping through. You have the Antonine plague in the
Speaker 6: one sixties that kills about ten percent of the Empire.
Speaker 6: You have the Aciprian plague in the mid third century
Speaker 6: 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
Speaker 6: a lot because people would earn money and they'd lose
Speaker 6: it in the either a chariot race or something like that.
Speaker 6: They're worried about their children dying. You know, death rates
Speaker 6: of children were extremely high. The family of the two
Speaker 6: Grochai brothers in one thirty three, I believe their mother
Speaker 6: had eleven children and the two boys were the only
Speaker 6: ones surviving. So death rates of children were really high.
Speaker 6: So for them, they're just worried about survival. For them,
Speaker 6: it wouldn't have changed that much.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 6: One thing I can tell you is as currency debasement changes,
Speaker 6: the marketplace itself is going to change. So what you
Speaker 6: do start to see is people not being willing to
Speaker 6: at first take the correct number of coins because they
Speaker 6: know the coin is worth less, so they're going to
Speaker 6: require more. They actually get off coinage and they start
Speaker 6: trading in a barter system. So that is something you're
Speaker 6: going to see in regular people, is when they know
Speaker 6: the coins lack value, they know they can't buy what
Speaker 6: they should, they're going to start bartering. And one of
Speaker 6: the things that Diocletian is going to do as part
Speaker 6: of his famous reforms from two eighty to three h
Speaker 6: five two eighty four to three oh five is he's
Speaker 6: going to issue something called the Edict of maximum Prices,
Speaker 6: because he doesn't want people overcharging for things which price
Speaker 6: controls them. They always work, trust me. And the other
Speaker 6: thing that he does as well is he tries to
Speaker 6: issue new coinage, but people still don't trust it because
Speaker 6: the purity of the coins have gone down so much.
Speaker 6: So the one thing I can tell you is that
Speaker 6: 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,
Speaker 4: inflation and these sort of economic terms are to be blunt,
Speaker 4: deliberately obfuscated. Right. There was a post that went viral
Speaker 4: and x a while back, and it was funny. He
Speaker 4: was making a point where the guy had calculated the
Speaker 4: 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
Speaker 4: Copenhagen and thirty out six AMMO and like a few
Speaker 4: other things, right, and he basically came to the conclusion that,
Speaker 4: judging off of those assets alone, inflation was much much
Speaker 4: higher than sort of what it says on the tin right,
Speaker 4: the rate you would get from Wikipedia, for example. And similarly,
Speaker 4: I remember very distinctly during the Biden years when I
Speaker 4: was in school, the definition of what a recession changed.
Speaker 4: They just changed what words meant, and.
Speaker 5: So they also changed the definition of war too. That's
Speaker 5: been a fun one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, what Honestly, when you think about it, Putin
Speaker 4: with his special Military operation right in Ukraine, he was
Speaker 4: 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
Speaker 6: did a video about every war since World War Two.
Speaker 6: Like the different name they came up for it, oh
Speaker 6: is special military action was police action. It was this
Speaker 6: we haven't liked declared a war since World War Two,
Speaker 6: but anyway, continue.
Speaker 4: No, no, and so I if you could, you could,
Speaker 4: I guess you speak to the kind of modern instantiation
Speaker 4: of of currency debasement, Like how dramatic of a problem
Speaker 4: is it? Is it simply the three percent a year
Speaker 4: you're told to assume, like when we actually dig into this,
Speaker 4: like what's the real story?
Speaker 6: So I think the hard part about that, And I
Speaker 6: don't know what the industries off are off hand, but
Speaker 6: when they calculate that inflation number, there's things like I
Speaker 6: think building materials is one of them that they don't
Speaker 6: include in the inflation number, Like things that would make
Speaker 6: it look really bad they don't include. So I think
Speaker 6: that's a really important point. And they're they're only looking
Speaker 6: at year over year. They're not looking at kind of
Speaker 6: a long term where we're at. And I think a
Speaker 6: really easy example of that is I went to the
Speaker 6: grocery store the other day and it was like nine
Speaker 6: to ninety nine for a pack of like the crap bacon,
Speaker 6: Like that shouldn't be the case. You know, that was
Speaker 6: two ninety nine, four years ago, right, So I think
Speaker 6: when you're looking at it for the regular person, it's
Speaker 6: how you feel in the grocery store. But if you
Speaker 6: want to kind of get into the economics of it,
Speaker 6: the FED likes to call it quantitative easing, you know,
Speaker 6: QI one Q two. What that means is, hey, we
Speaker 6: printed more money, and the dollar in your pocket is
Speaker 6: now worth less. So it's like a tax you don't
Speaker 6: actually pay. It just means they increase the amount of
Speaker 6: money in circulation, but doesn't mean they actually ever printed
Speaker 6: any money. Like Romans would have loved this, that you
Speaker 6: could just go into computer create more ones and zeros
Speaker 6: and now more money exists. So I think the actual
Speaker 6: problem that we're dealing with is not quite the same
Speaker 6: as what Rome dealt with and how inflation works, because
Speaker 6: we have something like the Federal Reserve, which isn't federal,
Speaker 6: doesn't hold any reserves, and can kind of just change
Speaker 6: the amount of money in circulation and change the interest
Speaker 6: rate whatever they feel like. So our economy is very
Speaker 6: controlled in a lot of ways. And I think to
Speaker 6: me that's the major concern is most people don't feel inflation.
Speaker 6: They just think things cost more, and in the grand
Speaker 6: scheme of things, costs don't really change. It's the value
Speaker 6: of your money going down that make you feel like
Speaker 6: things cost more. So I think if you look modernly,
Speaker 6: that's the scary part. And even there's a story during
Speaker 6: the Weimar Republic of you right before World War two
Speaker 6: of some are I'm sorry, right before World War two,
Speaker 6: but somebody going with a wheelbarrow full of money to
Speaker 6: go buy a loaf of bread. By the time they
Speaker 6: get there, that wheelbarrow is not enough to buy the
Speaker 6: actual loaf of bread because inflation is moving so quickly.
Speaker 6: When you kind of get to that point from inflation
Speaker 6: to hyperinflation, somebody can't keep up, and that starts to
Speaker 6: become a real problem. And I think the way we
Speaker 6: do it now is more covert and almost more criminal
Speaker 6: in a lot of ways, because people don't feel it.
Speaker 6: It's not a physical coin in their hand that they
Speaker 6: can see is getting some or they can see the
Speaker 6: silver and bronze content is changing. It's something that they
Speaker 6: just go to the store and things cost more, and
Speaker 6: all of a sudden, their salary that they're getting can't
Speaker 6: pay for it. So I think that's modernly. The real
Speaker 6: problem is most people don't understand because they're so far
Speaker 6: removed from the process.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, and this is something it's always interesting to
Speaker 4: speak with with older people about this. You know, I
Speaker 4: had a buddy over last night who's you know, got
Speaker 4: an economics degree, very financially literate, and he was talking about,
Speaker 4: you know, conversation he had with his grandfather, right, someone
Speaker 4: in their mid eighties from kind of you know, rural Virginia.
Speaker 4: Not I mean, not to say a dumb person at all,
Speaker 4: but not really like a finance guy, to put it mildly, right,
Speaker 4: And in that conversation, you know, it came up that like, oh,
Speaker 4: you know, some social acquaintance you know, is making six
Speaker 4: figures a year. And he was floored. He's like, oh my, this,
Speaker 4: this guy's a superstar. He's amazing. You know, this is
Speaker 4: like a record setting event at some point, and we'll
Speaker 4: be making that kind of money, and especially if you
Speaker 4: live in an urban center. And look, that's still decent money,
Speaker 4: but that is not at all what it was twenty
Speaker 4: years ago, let alone ten. Right, And again the combination
Speaker 4: is for wage earners, you are behind the curve, right,
Speaker 4: you were hoping that your wages keep pace with inflation.
Speaker 4: We'll kind of understand that, not really because again, how
Speaker 4: that number is derived, and so proportionally you are getting poorer.
Speaker 4: You have the secondary condition, which is if every dollar
Speaker 4: at every moment is becoming less valuable, the incentives to
Speaker 4: hold on to cash are almost none. So it creates
Speaker 4: asset inflation because even if someone doesn't need the asset itself, well,
Speaker 4: they need somewhere to park their money.
Speaker 6: Are they're going to buy land or something that actually
Speaker 6: inflates in value and not a whole currency.
Speaker 4: Exactly, which creates a large demand for assets, some of
Speaker 4: which people need to live. So it's sort of this
Speaker 4: double edged sword where they kind of get you coming
Speaker 4: and going.
Speaker 6: Well, you even look at somebody like Bill Gates and
Speaker 6: he's putting most of his money into farmland because that's
Speaker 6: going to hold value and it's something that is going
Speaker 6: to produce more money for him because you've got to
Speaker 6: feed people, right. So I think that's one of the
Speaker 6: major issues is you look at where are rich people
Speaker 6: putting their money right now, and they're not putting it
Speaker 6: in currency. They're putting it in things that are physical
Speaker 6: things that if the economy crashes, they'll be totally fine.
Speaker 6: It's the rest of us that have our money and
Speaker 6: dollars and everything else. You know, Obviously, I don't put
Speaker 6: every dollar I have into gold, but we do buy gold,
Speaker 6: right because that is something that has been a store
Speaker 6: of value for a really long time, and if the
Speaker 6: economy does crash, we have something of value. And I
Speaker 6: think there is something to be said about that gold
Speaker 6: price is the way, I don't know if you've watched
Speaker 6: this at all, the way they've been going up over
Speaker 6: the last.
Speaker 5: Not even couple years.
Speaker 6: It's the last year has been insane that the value
Speaker 6: pronounce I think is it's over close to five thousand dollars,
Speaker 6: and they're saying, hey, by the end of twenty twenty six,
Speaker 6: it could be over six thousand dollars an ounce, which
Speaker 6: is insane. So I think, to me, that's the real
Speaker 6: indicator of how things are going is how quickly are
Speaker 6: people putting their money into physical assets versus actual US
Speaker 6: dollars or money markets or things like that. And for
Speaker 6: the regular people, you know, I think a good example
Speaker 6: too of looking at incomes across the country. In the US,
Speaker 6: they've they've started to put in these laws of higher
Speaker 6: minimum wages, which are a little insane. Where I think
Speaker 6: here in New Jersey, I think by twenty twenty seven
Speaker 6: we're supposed to be at like around twenty dollars an hour,
Speaker 6: which for an entry level job, businesses can't afford that.
Speaker 6: And what starts to happen is you push businesses then
Speaker 6: have to either use AI to replace people or go
Speaker 6: outside of the US in order hire people to actually
Speaker 6: run a business. You know, I remember, I'll be forty
Speaker 6: in year. When I got my first job out of college,
Speaker 6: I was making like seven to twenty an hour or
Speaker 6: something like that, And it just shows you how inflated
Speaker 6: rates are now that that twenty bucks an hour really
Speaker 6: isn't worth much, and you start to have give business
Speaker 6: as a decision of do I hire more people or
Speaker 6: do I find ways to automate or not use them
Speaker 6: because I can't afford them. So it's once again the
Speaker 6: middle to lower classes are the ones that suffer by
Speaker 6: inflation because businesses have to run and businesses have to
Speaker 6: try to figure out how to make a profit well.
Speaker 4: And honestly, it's an interesting parallel to the to the
Speaker 4: Roman example, because we have our own solution for cheap labor,
Speaker 4: and it is to legal immigrants, right, and you know
Speaker 4: those systems are similarly exploitative, right, I wouldn't particularly want
Speaker 4: to be, you know, an illegal from Honduras, you know,
Speaker 4: working in a meat packing plant, probably not getting paid
Speaker 4: or treated particularly well. But again, in times of inflation,
Speaker 4: and when you have this mass store of cheap labor, right,
Speaker 4: even if it's not morally correct, it's an understandable conclusion
Speaker 4: someone would reach. You can sort of map it out.
Speaker 4: And I think that it's another thing that sort of
Speaker 4: tilts the sort of the balance of power, if we
Speaker 4: could say that away from someone who's primary asset is
Speaker 4: their labor, right, someone who makes money through that, well,
Speaker 4: they are competing against the world. The wages for which
Speaker 4: they are working are decreasing in value. And yeah, sure
Speaker 4: that hits everyone to a certain degree, right, things are
Speaker 4: more expensive, But if you are primarily you make money
Speaker 4: from money, you get hit less because your debt. And
Speaker 4: you know, I'm by no means the most financially literate person,
Speaker 4: but I'm sure you're aware just being around rich people
Speaker 4: that they use debt in ways that you and I cannot.
Speaker 4: Debt is easier to repay, their money is in inflating assets,
Speaker 4: and so those are not necessarily problems for that class
Speaker 4: in the same way they are for you and I. Yes,
Speaker 4: the feature not a bug from that perspective.
Speaker 6: Well, I think that is the really difficult part, right
Speaker 6: because and I guess the tough part of that is
Speaker 6: like it's not like I hate rich people, right, but
Speaker 6: I think at the same time, it hits small businesses
Speaker 6: I think the most because those small businesses and small businesses,
Speaker 6: I believe is like anything. There's like thirty thousand of
Speaker 6: them in the country, so there is a lot of
Speaker 6: small businesses out there. Those are the ones that suffer
Speaker 6: the most because they can't pay that entry level work
Speaker 6: that they want to pay. It's kind of the larger
Speaker 6: conglomerate multinationals that it doesn't it actually makes the money,
Speaker 6: right because they'll figure out how to go to China
Speaker 6: or you know, go to other places where their money
Speaker 6: is worth more. So I think the struggle of it
Speaker 6: is it continues to hurt the minimum tower, middle to
Speaker 6: lower class a lot more because they're work can be
Speaker 6: replaced much easier, they're not as specialized, and that kind
Speaker 6: of you know, creates a problem that cascades and if
Speaker 6: you look at for a lot of us, we don't
Speaker 6: have the type of discretionary income we be able to
Speaker 6: trade in debt like people with a large amount of
Speaker 6: capital can do. They're kind of you know, the going
Speaker 6: from paycheck to paycheck a lot of times. So it
Speaker 6: does hurt your regular person a lot more.
Speaker 4: Well. And to that point because again, like I have
Speaker 4: nothing against rich people, which people are an important part
Speaker 4: of society. And I mean you see this in Rome, right,
Speaker 4: that there were certain expectations placed on the wealthy.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: Okay, sure, you know, maybe you put on a game,
Speaker 4: you put on a you know, an elaborate set of games.
Speaker 4: You know that the bread and circuses, right, just to
Speaker 4: seem cool to your friends. But I mean, you know
Speaker 4: that's at least something mildly pro social to do with
Speaker 4: your wealth. So there's, you know, something to be said
Speaker 4: for it. But one of the things that I've been
Speaker 4: really interested in as someone who has been kind of
Speaker 4: digging through the Epstein files, and I problem, I promise
Speaker 4: 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
Speaker 4: that you and I were taught in high school or
Speaker 4: how this system works, you know, what are the rules
Speaker 4: of the game that It's not true at all? Right,
Speaker 4: it's a completely different operation. And you know, regardless of
Speaker 4: your individual particular take or interpretation of Epstein, the conclusion
Speaker 4: to me was, oh, okay, this is how government works, right,
Speaker 4: this we were watching sort of the sausage being made.
Speaker 4: And a particular figure I've been tracking through the Epstein
Speaker 4: files is Pete Mandelson, right, this kind of British version
Speaker 4: of a swamp creature. Right. And obviously you know there's
Speaker 4: salacious stuff in there, you know, he's incriminating photos. But
Speaker 4: what's particularly interesting about this is what he was at
Speaker 4: actually up to with Epstein, the kind of business side, right,
Speaker 4: not the personal stuff, which was basically massive insider trading,
Speaker 4: specifically as regards you know, the sale of British gold
Speaker 4: reserves and you know the the Greek bailout right, where
Speaker 4: these massive events, which were incredibly destructive were basically treated
Speaker 4: as sort of an opportunity to make some side cash. Right,
Speaker 4: those kind of massive course corrections in the world economy
Speaker 4: were effectively by the man making the decision used at
Speaker 4: an opportunity to enrich themselves personally. Yes, and I think
Speaker 4: that was sort of an interesting or sort of revelatory
Speaker 4: bit of information. It's like, oh, Okay, So all the
Speaker 4: stuff about why we needed to do this, why it
Speaker 4: was a good idea to sell off, you know, these
Speaker 4: gold reserves or to bail out Grease, It's like, well,
Speaker 4: those may or may not have been true, but also
Speaker 4: you were making a lot of money from that decision.
Speaker 4: So I don't necessarily believe you when you tell me
Speaker 4: this is why we had to do it. And so
Speaker 4: I'm curious, would you look at either Epstein or other
Speaker 4: kind of you know, major decisions like that, how much
Speaker 4: emphasis do you place on just the kind of naked
Speaker 4: fraud of it.
Speaker 6: Well, I guess the struggle for me is I'm somebody
Speaker 6: that I look at the front side of what you're
Speaker 6: being told and I never believe it's what you're being told.
Speaker 6: And this kind of comes from, you know, the things
Speaker 6: I study on my other channel, which is hidden forces
Speaker 6: in history. And if you even look at the you know,
Speaker 6: kind of break up under Martin Luther when kind of
Speaker 6: the Protestant churches come out. The one of the big
Speaker 6: changes that happens there is you have Pope Leo the Tenth,
Speaker 6: who's a Medici pope, and he comes up with this
Speaker 6: strategy because Saint Peter's has been unfinished for many years.
Speaker 6: It started under Julius the Second, but he wants to
Speaker 6: do this massive upgrade of it. So he has to
Speaker 6: come up with a way to make money. And what
Speaker 6: does he do. He sells indulgences and that's what indulgences were,
Speaker 6: basically these tickets out of purgatory, and that was one
Speaker 6: of the major things that was a motivating factor for
Speaker 6: Martin Luther's ninety five Thesiss. So if you look at
Speaker 6: kind of the power behind power, these are often the
Speaker 6: things that we don't talk about and throughout history, a
Speaker 6: lot of times it's banking interests, a lot of times
Speaker 6: it's geopolitical interests of a particular person, not of a
Speaker 6: particular country. So I think if you look at that,
Speaker 6: I'm always interested, well, what's the real story, right? Because
Speaker 6: they want you watching this hand. What's this hand doing?
Speaker 6: And I think that's the thing you really have to consider.
Speaker 6: Because even Mike Ben's has been talking about the Epstein
Speaker 6: network and kind of the monetary side of it a lot.
Speaker 6: You know, people hear about, you know, the sex scandals
Speaker 6: and everything else, and that's kind of I guess some
Speaker 6: of it's a distraction. But at the same time, if
Speaker 6: some of it is actually a currency that Epstein used, right,
Speaker 6: because he could get you to do a deal because
Speaker 6: you wouldn't want your information out there, right, I think
Speaker 6: that's something to take a look at even.
Speaker 4: Well, and honestly, yeah, like one other element I think
Speaker 4: about this, and this is sort of dark to say,
Speaker 4: but like it's also a phenomenal way to get access
Speaker 4: to people. Like we go back to Bill Gates and
Speaker 4: by the way, I have to give Bill Gates credit
Speaker 4: or in their emails being such a piece of work
Speaker 4: that you make Jeffrey Epstein look sympathetic, you know, by comparison. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, you read the background and of course there's
Speaker 4: the salacious stuff about him, you know, trying to dose
Speaker 4: his wife and all that stuff. You realized that these
Speaker 4: guys together are basically going on like jet setting, like
Speaker 4: sex tourism trips, and like, you know, okay, that's not
Speaker 4: really something I'm into, but like he was a party guy, right,
Speaker 4: And that's the phenomenal way to meet people and also
Speaker 4: ingratiate yourself when you're giving them access to something that
Speaker 4: is rare and difficult to access a little.
Speaker 6: Bit in that sense, even makes the point of like,
Speaker 6: can you imagine, like some of these guys would likely
Speaker 6: be very good at making friends, and somehow they're getting
Speaker 6: some of the most beautiful women on the planet. Right,
Speaker 6: So I think if you threaten somebody, you're gonna take
Speaker 6: that away from them. Well, all of a sudden, you
Speaker 6: get the political or economic decision you want in your favor.
Speaker 6: So I think it is really not that I think
Speaker 6: Epstein is a great guy, but like what he was
Speaker 6: doing is deviously ingenious, right, He's to kind of get
Speaker 6: access to the circles, you know, he's kind of like
Speaker 6: the guy bringing the drugs to the party, and he's
Speaker 6: he's able to get what he wants. And I think
Speaker 6: that's a really kind of interesting way to mess with
Speaker 6: 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
Speaker 4: of interruption. Uh, but we.
Speaker 5: Got pretty far off the points, so I don't know
Speaker 5: where I am.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 4: Do you remember an hour ago when we were talking
Speaker 4: about Rome? But in all seriousness, right, we were talking
Speaker 4: about that sort of these hidden forces in history, right
Speaker 4: where the stated narrative sort of what it says on
Speaker 4: the ten and what's actually going on are two completely
Speaker 4: different things. And I mean it does again sort of
Speaker 4: go back to what we were speaking earlier about the
Speaker 4: kind of foundational myths, you know, something like Virgil, which
Speaker 4: obviously it has a great deal of artistic merit. You know,
Speaker 4: it is part of the Western canon for a reason.
Speaker 4: But you know he didn't just write that to write that, right,
Speaker 4: there was there was another way. Yeah, there's a.
Speaker 6: Purpose to it, and even if you want to I
Speaker 6: think a great example of this too is the Holy
Speaker 6: Roman Emperor Charles the Fifth. The way he actually becomes
Speaker 6: Holy Roman Emperor, there would be these seven prince electors
Speaker 6: that would basically decide who the next Holy Rome emper
Speaker 6: is going to be. So Charles the Fifth has this
Speaker 6: guy behind him. His name is Yokan Johann Fuga or
Speaker 6: Jacob Fuga, and Jacob Fuga is he starts as a
Speaker 6: kind of like mercantilist, but becomes becomes more of a
Speaker 6: banker lending money. Well, he actually bribes the seven prince electors,
Speaker 6: gets Charles the Fifth elected, and then every strange decision
Speaker 6: you don't understand in Charles the Fifth's life was something
Speaker 6: that was a benefit to Jakob Fuga, And I think
Speaker 6: that's the thing to understand when you look at power
Speaker 6: behind the power and you don't understand why a politician's
Speaker 6: doing what they're doing, you need to know who's behind them.
Speaker 6: And I think that's what it really comes down to,
Speaker 6: like who put them there. One of my favorite writers
Speaker 6: you see since passed on is a guy named Jim Mars,
Speaker 6: And Jim Mars would say about George W. Bush when
Speaker 6: you look at kind of like how did you get
Speaker 6: an office? He said, In Texas, we have a saying
Speaker 6: called the post turtle, where somebody's trying to play a
Speaker 6: joke and they put a turtle on top of a
Speaker 6: fence post, and you say, like how'd they get there?
Speaker 6: He said, George Bush was a post turtle. You don't
Speaker 6: know how he got there, but you just want to
Speaker 6: help the creature down. And I think when you look
Speaker 6: at politicians, a lot of times you get these people
Speaker 6: that aren't the best of us because they're more easily corruptible,
Speaker 6: that get in a position because they have people behind
Speaker 6: them that want to use them as the means to
Speaker 6: their own end.
Speaker 4: Well, perhaps the most pertinent example recently, in my mind
Speaker 4: is the rise of President Obama. Right, this guy who
Speaker 4: appears out of nowhere, bemingly out of nowhere, with no
Speaker 4: real history, you know, sort of parachuted into this role,
Speaker 4: and you know, as an Illinois State senator, he's giving
Speaker 4: a you know, a keynote speech at the DNC. You know,
Speaker 4: even before he you know, went past that, you're like, wait,
Speaker 4: I'm sorry that cut.
Speaker 5: Out for a little bit you did, but we got
Speaker 5: you back.
Speaker 4: Cool, Cool, I'll edit that out. I might edit that out.
Speaker 4: But point is again, right, it's the post turtle phenomenon.
Speaker 4: It's like, wait a minute, this doesn't make any sense
Speaker 4: on first viewing. Another great example is my favorite figure
Speaker 4: in American politics, former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who again
Speaker 4: is just kind of an unfortunate woman on multiple levels,
Speaker 4: who seemingly right, should have no chance in a city
Speaker 4: like Chicago. And then you realize, oh, wait, she was
Speaker 4: friends with or she was sort of handpicked by the
Speaker 4: Obama DJ. Right, they basically dropped her in to you know,
Speaker 4: play some games they wanted to play. And once you
Speaker 4: know that, you're like, oh, this makes sense because on
Speaker 4: first viewing, you're like, who would vote for this woman.
Speaker 4: She seems to be, even by the standards of Chicago politicians,
Speaker 4: not particularly bright, not particularly charismatic, and plainly corrupt. And
Speaker 4: then you have that bit of information and you're like, oh,
Speaker 4: okay again. It's that gap between how you were told
Speaker 4: the system works, the sort of schoolhouse Rock version, and
Speaker 4: how human nature interacts with these sort of you know,
Speaker 4: complicated systems.
Speaker 6: Well, and that's why I think always finding the funding
Speaker 6: behind somebody is always the more interesting part. You even
Speaker 6: look at a lot of these nonprofits, there's a form
Speaker 6: that they have to fill out every year called a
Speaker 6: Form nine ninety, and that's kind of fun to see, well,
Speaker 6: who's giving the money to this nonprofit because it really
Speaker 6: kind of explains your world a lot more than you
Speaker 6: would understand. And I think if you look at kind
Speaker 6: of understanding your world is you want to know the
Speaker 6: forces behind things because what you're seeing really is play acting,
Speaker 6: 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
Speaker 6: at you know, emperors in Rome, the Praetorian Guard was
Speaker 6: responsible for protecting the emperors in Rome, but the man
Speaker 6: that was in charge of the Praetorian Guard, called the
Speaker 6: Praetorian Prefect, is really the most powerful man in Rome
Speaker 6: because seventeen, it's somewhere around seventeen emperors actually die because
Speaker 6: they're killed by the Preetorian Guard. Now that's going to
Speaker 6: change after Constantindi bans them in the three hundreds and
Speaker 6: creates something new. But it is really interesting to understand
Speaker 6: the power behind the power. I wrote a thread about
Speaker 6: a year ago trying to describe Obama kind of as
Speaker 6: the new Praetorian Prefect because that was the point in
Speaker 6: time when they were trying to annoy Kamala Harris's as
Speaker 6: kind of the next person, because it's like she came
Speaker 6: out of nowhere. Obama picked her. Okay, he said, she's fine,
Speaker 6: you know, now she can go on. But I think
Speaker 6: it's really interesting to understand, like who is the force
Speaker 6: behind what you're actually seeing. And if you even look
Speaker 6: at the second Emperor Tiberia, this is where you're kind
Speaker 6: of like Epstein connection comes in. He's a very creepy dude.
Speaker 6: At a certain point in time, he doesn't really want
Speaker 6: to rule Rome anymore. He goes off to the island
Speaker 6: of Capri and he has prepubescent boys nakedly swimming in
Speaker 6: a pool with him. He would call his little fishes
Speaker 6: and his praetorium prefects. To Janus is basically ruling Rome,
Speaker 6: and once Tiberius catches onto this, he has Jane is killed.
Speaker 6: But this is something that is really interesting when the
Speaker 6: power kind of peaks its head out.
Speaker 4: So if people are interested in this sort of information.
Speaker 4: Junto Magazine, who I've written for before, I know the
Speaker 4: guys who started it, have a really interesting series of
Speaker 4: tools on Junto dash Intelligence or intel rather, I'll link
Speaker 4: it in the description, But in it, not only do
Speaker 4: they have kind of a briefing right of what's happening,
Speaker 4: the kind of stories behind the stories, they also have
Speaker 4: a massive collection of different resources, whether that's like a
Speaker 4: scatterplot mixed with donations, FEC filings and so it's free, right.
Speaker 4: I'm friends with these guys. They're not paying me to
Speaker 4: say it. It's a very interesting website to spend some
Speaker 4: time on because one, it breaks down information that in
Speaker 4: a way that someone who's not particularly intelligent can understand,
Speaker 4: which I appreciate. But also because you start to see
Speaker 4: those networks, you're like, oh, these two organizations that I
Speaker 4: was I would have assumed had nothing in common. Oh well,
Speaker 4: they both got two hundred and fifty thousand dollars from
Speaker 4: the Koch Brothers. And regardless of your opinion on the
Speaker 4: Koch Brothers, you're like, oh, okay, that makes sense because
Speaker 4: when I see those two institutions saying the same things
Speaker 4: or pushing the same direction. Yes, you don't have to
Speaker 4: go tinfoil hat. You just look, oh well, they both
Speaker 4: got a fat check from the same guy, right, and
Speaker 4: you it sort of mass it sort of pulls the
Speaker 4: mask back from politics in that way. And you know,
Speaker 4: it's one of those things that I think that framework
Speaker 4: is very helpful or analyzing politics, analyzing current events, because
Speaker 4: it's one of those things that it will drive you insane,
Speaker 4: very very easily. It's so tempting and on certain level
Speaker 4: satisfying to get pulled into the kind of headline game
Speaker 4: right the like XYZ is mad at this and mad
Speaker 4: at that. But that information isn't actually particularly useful to you.
Speaker 4: Doesn't tell you how the world works, It doesn't inform
Speaker 4: your decisions in any meaningful way. But if you can
Speaker 4: step back, look at the system, look at how money
Speaker 4: and power flows. You can actually have a functional understanding
Speaker 4: of this system, because that functional understanding was not explained
Speaker 4: to you in Civics class.
Speaker 6: Well, I think that's the bigger part is history is
Speaker 6: actually in the ledgers and the checkbooks and in the records.
Speaker 6: It's not in you know, what people actually did, It's
Speaker 6: in what's behind them. If you even look at Joyus Caesar,
Speaker 6: you know Caesar did a lot of the things that
Speaker 6: he did is you know, he's born into a patrician family,
Speaker 6: so he's born into a family that has a great name,
Speaker 6: but his father lost all the family's money, so he's broke.
Speaker 6: So his entire career there's people like Marcus Crassis that
Speaker 6: are funding him. And a lot of the decisions that
Speaker 6: Caesar makes is because if I screw up here, I'm ruined.
Speaker 6: And if you look at that in history, a desperate
Speaker 6: man will make a lot of decisions that a brave
Speaker 6: man might not make. And I think if you understand
Speaker 6: the power behind things, you'll understand your history so much
Speaker 6: better than just kind of reading the history and taking
Speaker 6: it at face value, well one hundred percent.
Speaker 4: And I don't want to go back into a discussion
Speaker 4: of HBO's room. But like that, that trend is sort
Speaker 4: of brilliantly exemplified right when Caesar's sweating bullets and then
Speaker 4: they recover the Roman treasury, like, oh great, awesome, I
Speaker 4: 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
Speaker 6: 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
Speaker 6: can keep a lot of the stuff there while you're
Speaker 6: not going to be broke anymore.
Speaker 4: Oh one hundred percent. So, Jeremy, we are fast approaching time.
Speaker 4: This has been a really interesting discussion. Where can people find.
Speaker 6: You so they can find me, I'm at Jeremy Ryan
Speaker 6: slay on x. My company website is command your brand
Speaker 6: dot com. And then my two channels that I have
Speaker 6: We're both on YouTube and rumble. We're Hidden Forces and
Speaker 6: History and the Roman pattern.
Speaker 4: Well, thanks, man, this is a ton of fun. I'll
Speaker 4: have to have you on again, maybe for a more
Speaker 4: structured conversation.
Speaker 5: Over the place.
Speaker 4: Look, man, that's what we do here. But as far
Speaker 4: as my stuff, the Jay Burdon Show, Apple, Spotify, YouTube,
Speaker 4: anywhere you listen to podcasts. This is what I do
Speaker 4: full time. If you want to support me, you can
Speaker 4: throw me a few bucks a month on Patreon, Substack
Speaker 4: or gum road. You hit the episodes early in ad free.
Speaker 4: I know the ads are irritating, but as we said earlier,
Speaker 4: thinks for getting expensive. So I do need to eat
Speaker 4: and ten ninety nine Bacon is not making it any easier. Also,
Speaker 4: you can check out our sponsor, Axios Remote fitness and
Speaker 4: coaching flues.
Speaker 3: Done.
Speaker 4: Lost a whole lot of weight back in the gym,
Speaker 4: certainly lost some progress there, but JD's programming is excellent.
Speaker 4: You should support him anyway because I like him and
Speaker 4: he has a good product. Again, Jeremy, there's a ton
Speaker 4: of fun. Man, Everyone at home, keep your head out.
Speaker 4: Good night,