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want to welcome everyone back to the Pekingana Show. Ron
Dodson's back and probably couldn't have picked a better time
to ask someone who runs a hedge fun to come on,
are you doing Ron?
Speaker 2: I'm doing great. Thanks for having me again, Pete.
Speaker 1: So this is Monday, the what is today? The seventh? Indeed,
and apparently apparently we were supposed to see the cratering
in the market today. That didn't happen. Well, I mean,
I guess early on things looked really really bad and then.
Speaker 2: Well over overnight it was pretty weird. Overnight.
Speaker 1: It was weird when I woke up. I woke up
at three am and I checked a couple of stocks
and I was like, oh, here we go.
Speaker 2: Well, and I'd love to tell you I have a
crystal ball, and I do not. But it was interesting
to see us of what amounts to flat today, you know,
the the between the Dow, the S and P and
the NASDAC.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: You know, you had a little north of zero, a
little south of zero, and pretty much flat. You know,
the markets are going to move around. There's so much
much embedded value in the old system that if this
omelet is going to break some of those eggs.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: And but this is what we voted for. It, it's
what I voted for. Is and and you know every
ever so often the financial system does need to be reset,
and and that means that a lot of the systems
that are grown have grown up around the status quo,
which inevitably are parreto plus rentia plus leverage, are reset
in order to get back to just simple parado. And
and you know, I I I laugh because all of
us who are arguing for this get called uh you know,
was it? Eric Erickson I saw today on Twitter said oh,
look it does. You scratch a scratch a populist nationalist
and their Marxist comes out. I'm like, no, we're not.
I don't think any of us are arguing against parreto.
And for those of y'all who don't know, preto is
just the idea that that eighty percent of the capital
is generally going to be is going to be concentrated
in about twenty percent of the people. And that just
has to do because that's how God allocated resources both
you know, IQ and opportunity and capabilities and talents and
all those things. And you can't get away from that.
Speaker 1: Even even bitcoin works that way.
Speaker 2: It absolutely does. So you're gonna so parreto is just reality.
But if you have parreto plus rentia, which is just
the idea that because of my position, I can earn
income off the position that I've created, which is what
China and Europe has been doing to us for forever.
Oh you're the big We're going to scrape off the top,
so to speak. And then you add leverage on top
of that, some of us might call a usurious situation. Well,
now you don't just have pareto, you have these uber
elite who who it becomes a eighty percent is in
the of of capital and wealth is in the one percent.
And that's not healthy. That's not good. I don't believe
that's a Christian view of how the world should work.
So and it wasn't the situation over the vast you know,
the history of Christendom and so forth. So I think
we're right to oppose that. But getting called a communist,
those are fighting words. Pete.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I think nationalist would probably be a
better terminology for it. A nineteenth century nationalist too, I won't.
I won't use nationalism with any terms. It might have
been used in the twentieth century, but definitely nineteen definitely
nineteenth century. You know, it's amazing to me how I
had someone who promotes Austrian economics, which doesn't doesn't exist.
Is a theory has never been played out in you know, say,
oh Friedrich list was debunked decades ago, and I'm like,
by who and how? Yeah, that's the way the country.
That's the way the country. And then these are the
same people who will be like, well, the founders were libertarians,
but they seem to like tariffs, didn't That whole generation
seemed to like tariffs a lot, right, And this is yeah, so.
Speaker 2: Well, I know he's a polarizing figure among a lot
of folks on our side. But Jarvin had a good
piece on List just this past this past Would it
come out Saturday morning? I recommend it, you know, if
you can find a copy of it. Uh, it's it's
really worth reading because it kurt you know, and I'm
friendly with Curtis. I I uh we disagree on some things.
Uh but but Curtis and I had very similar reading lists.
You know, we're about to say, mate, he's a little
bit younger than me. Uh, but you speak of the Austrians.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 2: I was a member of the Lowig von Misas Institute
there at Auburn Llewellen Rockwell's deal for years and years.
But but Happa, who I think was kind of the
pinnacle of that, uh, you know, was said that you
had to have a national guaranteur in other words, a
king type of figure, in order to guarantee the liberty
that allows for freedom of arms length transactions within a
national unit. Uh. That doesn't sound like modern libertarianism. That
sounds more like what we're arguing for. And uh So anyway.
Speaker 3: I I I I think that von Misis and and
Hyak we're making more of an argument that I think
we would also agree with that economics is a social study,
not a hard science.
Speaker 2: It is it is. They had scientific they had scientific
arguments within that, but the move to making economics a
hard science. What that does is is that that assumes
the fungibility of human of human beings as opposed to
each human being created in God's image. From from my standpoint,
that's what I think, that that each person is worthy
of of of some modicum of respect and dignity. Well,
that's a that gets erased in a modern monetary theory.
Post Kaynesian economics is science kind of outlook because it
assumes freedom of international capital flows. And Nick Land has
written fantastic stuff on this, some of which I even understand.
I think, uh Nick's yesoteric. But you know, if you
have if you have complete freedom of capital flows and
the fungibility of humanity, then the destruction of individuals doesn't
matter because it's all about aggregate wealth, you know, gd
GDP measures and so on and so forth. And it
ignores these these distortions in this pareto what what I
was just talking about. It it moves towards an incredibly
over emphasized concentration of wealth UH and and the inability
for national leaders to have the best interest of their
own citizens at heart, because the capital flows can escape
the cultural norms and the UH and the jurisdiction of
those national leaders. I've got a strange example of this,
and I know we've kind of hit the ground running here,
But as a hedge fund manager, I used to have
a I still have a relationship with them, but they
used to be my prime broker, Goldman Sachs and for
all of Goldman's ills, and they are many, and we
would have major problems with a lot of them. They boy,
they can operate and uh, they used to have a
facility exactly what we're talking about where I could They
offered this to me, I did not take take them
up on it. Where I could overnight have all my holdings.
And and I'm an art I'm in volatility arbitrage, so
I sell a lot of options and then hedge that
risk out and a bunch of arcane stuff. And they
had they they had the facility to take that entire
book and sweep it to London overnight so that it
wouldn't be subject to US overnight margin rules. And this
is exactly what we're talking about. So so I may
disagree with with the sovereigns that I'm under, but that's
just escaping their jurisdiction, right, so that they can't they
can't if it's in the nation's interests, if it's in
the citizens interest for me not to do that, I
could just escape it, right, So and that and and
multiply that times every fund manager, every CFO, every whatever,
and and you get the situation that we're in. And
that's one of the things that's trying that we're trying
to I say we that that the folks we support
are trying to fix. We'll see if they're able to
do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've gotten to the point now where really the
support is over the money and the mostly because you know,
we there's a certain element we want running the world
and it's not China, and it's not you know, I
think I think we know what I'm talking about here, Yeah,
because I don't think you know, as we speak, net,
Yahoo's at the White House, and you know, to me,
that's that's more important. That that's more important in the
long run than anything else. Is decoupling that that relationship
right there. But yeah, what do you mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but what do you think is part of it?
Also trying to decouple America, the American Jewish population, from
from having divided loyalties with with Israel. In other words, look,
I get if there was a Christian Switzerland, and I'm
just making something up, Okay, as a devout Christian, would
I want Christian Switzerland as a kingdom or whatever to
be prosperous? Yeah, but but I would. But if I'm
a citizen of America, I owe my I owe my
first loyalty to America. Right is part of this an attempt,
I don't I'm trying to be very gracious here, an
attempt to decouple some of those divided loyalties. Maybe that's
a wish, but I would like to see that the
same way as I would like to see a decoupling
of the divided loyalties among the Hispanic community that's here,
that that that have been here for multiple generations. I'm
not talking about the ones who we think should be
you know, deported, but the ones who've been here for
multiple generations but still might be sending money home. And
we know the ones who are here illegally are sending
a ton of money back there. There there should be
efforts made to decouple those divided loyalties and and and
I think that should be necessary for the American Jewish
community too, not to say that, hey, look, you know,
if you if you've got a piece of your heart
in San Francisco, so to speak, you know, in Jerusalem, okay,
but but your chief loyalty has to be to the
United States. And I would like to see some of that,
a bold measure made to to decouple some of that,
you know. And maybe that's a pipe dream, you know,
even saying it out loud, I think it probably is.
But i'd like to see that.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I think someone tried that, you know,
in the years of great silence. Just quoting the title
of the book by Professor Jay Out o'pohl, Stalin recognized,
I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, no, I was going to say, flesh that
out a little bit.
Speaker 1: Stalin recognized that having diaspora groups in your country was
dangerous to his control. And I think in some I
don't think it was one hundred percent selfish, but I
think a lot of it was, which led him to
basically destroy and kill half, you know, up to half
of some of those communities, Polish, German, Lithuanian, there are others.
Those are the biggest, and he didn't he didn't really
address the issue with Jews in the Soviet Union until
Israel became a nation, and then even in the beginning
he was friendly to them, but then he turned on
it turned on a dime, you know. And I'm not
calling for the murder and obviously not the murder of
the Osperg Group Center in the United States, but you're
always going to have that problem, you know. And I
think I think I shared a I shared a video
with you, and I can't even remember the gentleman's name
right now, but you know, he made the point that
if you have a multicultural society such as Russia. Russia
is is multicultural. I mean if people understand the Chechen
situation there when.
Speaker 2: Oh it's seven, when it's seventeen different ethnic groups. Yeah,
within and that's within modern Russia.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, you understand that basically prosperity as we know it,
which is just basically financialization that we don't have manufacturing
here anymore, we don't really, it's all financialization goes on
the back burner and security becomes the most important thing.
So yeah, I think that's the problem. I think that's
where we're at. I think that's the problem that we're
facing right now is we want to get the money.
We would love to see the money situation be fixed
after over a century of of insanity. But we know
what's more important? Is it security? When you have you
basically have foreign armies on, I mean armies that could
mobilize against you, against the population. So what do you
what do you do? You know it's I had Clay
Martin on here, and you know, Clay Martin was a
Tier one operator in the military. He said, look, we
got we have cells here that could be you know,
they could just go off in a second and then
we're in the middle. We're in the middle of a war.
So this well, yeah, getting.
Speaker 2: Money, Well it's going to say what uh, you know,
the it wasn't just Central America, you know, Mexicans and
Central Americans and South Americans that were pouring over the border.
Many many Chinese nationals were coming in.
Speaker 1: There's two hundred and fifty there's two hundred and fifty
thousand Chinese citizens in United States universities right now.
Speaker 2: And that's just documented. Yeah, and untold numbers were coming
in undocumented. And that's.
Speaker 1: Eighty percent of the Chinese. Eighty percent of ethnic Chinese
that are caught spying in the United States are not
first generation and are not are not here on a
visa or a student visa. There a second generation.
Speaker 2: I didn't I didn't know that stat that's chilling. Two things.
Number one, Pete just referred to a video he sent me.
It's well worth watching how Trump is reshaping the world
with Fearah's modad. He's on Peter McCormick show. Peter will
drive you crazy if you watch this. But fear Us,
who's this, Who's a Elebanese Christian thinker. I don't know
what he does for a living, but this was one
of the more impressive videos. I couldn't. I had to
finally stop watching it because we were about to start.
I got about two thirds of the way through it.
Absolutely fantastic.
Speaker 1: And then.
Speaker 2: Secondly you mentioned, you know, the the Russians. One of
the one of the real black pilling moments when you're
studying World War two and you're coming from accepting kind
of the American post war consensus telling of World War
two is when you come upon the Caton massacre and
h and you see what you know in that the
Soviets blame the Germans for this massive mask or twenty
two thousand Polish citizens. I don't know the number of
those one polls.
Speaker 1: It was done. It was done with bullets too, Yeah,
it was done. It was done with.
Speaker 2: Don't I don't know the number of those polls, what
percentage or Jews. I would assume a large percentage. And
that was and this is not some denial conspiracy theory.
This is something the Soviets later admitted to I think
in like way later admitted to nineteen I'd have to
look it up.
Speaker 1: I think it was in when the archives, when the
archives opened in the nineties.
Speaker 2: In the nineties. I think that's exactly right, Pete. But
you go, you know, and Kiton is spelled ka t
y n. You can go read about it yourself, and
it is you know, it's the first place I take
folks who who when I'm talking about, you know, not
even revisionist history, because this is history that's admitted to
by everyone. I say, hey, look, you know, just consider
the sources on some of this stuff and go look
up to Kate. And it's one of the first things
I send them to. Uh. Our buddy Darryl Cooper is
the first one to tell me about it. I didn't
know about it. I mean, this is just a couple
of years ago, and and and Darryl's like, go read
about this. You know, I kind of had my eyes
peeled back anyway, back to back to the monetary system.
You know. Ever so often the rules, the rules get
changed out of certain necessities we would love. I know,
it's it's it's all. It's it's it's the draw it's
My temptation is to be an ideologue as opposed to
love my fellow, my neighbor. Right, I want to find
an ideology that answers all questions as opposed to what
you know. For me, again as a devout Christian, the
Bible says search for wisdom, and that's way more complicated,
and that's a lifelong project. And you know, instead, I
want to find some kind of simple set of rules
that I can just code, hang everything on, that explain everything.
And that's not reality. The reality is is it takes
wisdom and ever so and that means ever so often
you've got to tweak the system and change the rules.
You know, Nixon, You know a lot of on our
side say the worst thing Nixon did was take us
off of the gold standard. Well, it was really fdr
that took us off the gold standard way back, and
he had to do that in order to finance his
major social safety net three letter revolution that he did
his Imperial presidency couldn't have been done under a raw
gold standard. And Nixon and the system that came after that,
Bretton Woods had had shoehorn Nixon into a spot to
where we could not we we we we couldn't stay
on the last vestiges of it without basically defaulting on
some things. And so it really wasn't Nixon's deal. Nixon
was you know, I don't agree with everything he did.
Wage and price control is kind of weird, but but
he was a rightis easily the most right, the most
right leaning president we've had until you know, it's funny
because Trump is really I don't know what Trump is.
A populist he got, but he governs far to the
right right. But Nixon philosophically was was a right anyway
when he took us off the gold standard, you know that,
and and and kind of put torch to Breton Woods
seventy three to seventy four, which is things moved a
lot slower back then, or was a massive bear market
that really took forty to forty five percent of the
wealth out of the investment class. Well, but it also
set up the ridiculous. Without that, you don't get the
boom of the eighties and nineties and so on and
so forth. And we was the boom of the eighties
and nineties, perfect no, because a lot of people didn't
participate in it, and we could. You know, you've all
seen the graphs of how you know, certain GDP goes
straight up, but with the working class kind of levels
out after seventy one seventy two, so in that timeframe.
But anyway, these these these reorderings of the economics system
are going to happen, whether you like it or not.
Part of what's happening now that Trump, I think Trump
and I think his advisors absolutely see, is that the
US Navy is no longer going to be able to
police the trade the trades lanes of the world anymore.
Because shoot, just was it today or yesterday? The oh uh,
the copperhead underwater kamikaze drones were announced by andreil uh
and and other and China's working on the same thing.
The and we all know the advances in the drones
is all that means is I mean, look at the
Hooties have held up the number three UH commerce zone
in the entire world. The hoodies, I mean, the the
sect of you mini's. And that's just simply because it's
a lot cheaper to build drones and short short range
ballistic missiles than it used to be. And so the
calculus of being able to police this world trade system
isn't going to be possible for much longer. And so
you're going to see the a regionalization of spheres of
influence reality is going to take hold. Whether we like
it or not, that's just coming because the way it's
just going to be easy to blow up ships, easy cheap.
And so if that's the case, then you're going to
have to onshore. You're going to have to incentivize on shoring.
Whether you believe in all the things that we believe
in as a people, of the importance of citizenship and
all that, Hey, that's a bonus. It's just the reality
of the world is you're going to have to shorten
supply chains, make them much more agile and and local
because you're not going to be able to have long
supply chains. And that's beyond the concerns of hey, do
you really want your your global competitor to make all
your missine and make all your industrial products. Uh, I'm
you know, those are even bigger, more philosophical questions.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: And we're on one side of that. But but the
reality of just how conflict is going to be waged
is driving this as well. And that's that's why Trump,
I think is also pushing towards the Greenland and the
Canadian thing is is that you're going to have to
increase your You're going to have to increase your coastline
in order to have in order to have regional hegemony. Uh,
you know, and that's a that that will be a
more decades long process perhaps, But but all of these
realities are changing how the world has worked. It's like
I'm a pilot. I tried, I was a f sixteen
pilot candidate. So I'm really romanced by a guy wearing
a helmet sitting in a cockpit shooting down bad guys.
But that reality is done. I mean that the last
man fighters. We're going to see the end of that.
Maybe not in my lifetime, but soon after I'm fifty eight.
So let's assume I lived a eighty. You know, by
the time i'm eighty, that world will be over. So
and the same thing with how naval you know, how
naval security is handled. So I think a lot of
this is driven just by reality. And you can either
be the faction of the real or you can live
in this fake world of ideology. As you know what
Plato would say, living in the cave. And shadows don't
make very good fighters, Shadows don't make for a good economy.
Speaker 1: You're talking about bringing manufacturing home, which is basically what
Trump's been talking about. What you know what a lot
of the people that you know, who we're friends with
have been talking about. It's something. It's one of the
only ways that that you can truly be a sovereign country.
I forget, I forget who said it on somebody said
it recently and basically Lutwok laid it out in his
book Coupdettas is that if you do not manufacture your
own you know, your own weapons, you're a client state
of somebody else. And absolutely, you know, if we don't
if we don't manufacture our own prescription drugs, if we
don't manufacture our own you know, like Thomas was talking
about the other day on a on a show we did,
you know, China has a city where all they do
is apples. They have a city where all they do
is previe socks. Yeah, and so you you have these,
you have all of these things that are being made
in other places. Chips, nothing can nothing can survive, nothing
can operate without a chip nowadays, No, none of this technology.
All that's made in Taiwan.
Speaker 2: Thaw yeah, Taiwan semiconductor.
Speaker 1: Right. So basically you're not a sovereign nation if you
don't do this. So with that out of the way.
Can you talk a little bit about how how people
make money in this country? And you know, we talked
about it, talked about it a little bit texting the
other day. It's all financialization, it is all. And you
know you mentioned usury earlier. It's all it's all basically
manipulation of money. And yeah, just you go off on that.
Speaker 2: So huh, the the you know, people live and consume stuff.
I know, this seems very basic. One thing we do
have going for us is we have the world's most
fertile land and a river system that allows us to
transport that around very easily. But what we don't have
anymore is we don't We make very little steel. But
even worse if we there was a great video going
around last week. We don't make the machines, we don't
make the parts in order. Let's say you and I
Pete wanted to go build a steel mill, either in
Alabama or out here south of Dallas. Well, we would
have to go to Germany or I'm trying to remember where,
maybe South Korea. I'm trying to remember the places that
still build these massive smelting things that allow you to
with tremendous heat, take the ore, and make steel with
We don't even make that stuff. So you're talking about
a multiple steps where we're dependent upon other nations in
order to even make So let's say I don't think
this is going to happen, by the way, but let's
say China just declared war on us and we were
going to go. First of all, we wouldn't be having
this conversation because they could probably turn off our lights
in about thirty minutes, and we could probably do somewhat
similar although they have a national firewall and we do not,
so it might be a little harder for us. But
let's say we went to war and we wanted to
massively mobilize and build a bunch of stuff. Well, you
know what, that would be difficult. After about we ran
out of a certain amount of inventory that we have.
We couldn't do the World War two thing where every
auto plant and every you know, we just made eight
thousand and long range bombers and tanks and or whatever
it does. We wanted to build, but you know, big drones,
we couldn't do it after a while. And then you
mentioned medicine. We don't make the vast majority of our
of our medicines. That's a real problem. We're just subject
so so you know in the in the issue of
of of making money, you how how we do things today.
So this really we're subject to what's called Dutch disease.
And this this is kind of our cane. But but
I'll try to make it very simple. It's named after
obviously the Holland uh in the late sixties I believe
it was, might have been early seventies, some territorial waters
of halland they found all kinds of natural gas reserves
and within a very short amount of time, the entire
economy of Holland, which was traditionally farming. You know, traditionally
Europe was part of the bread basket of Europe. Was
was the was Dutch farmers, but the vast majority of
the Dutch economy became all about natural gas. And uh
so they're smartest people. Instead of going into all these
diverse ways that the Dutch provided for themselves, all went
into natural gas. And so the Dutch disease was this
this monster that took over the entirety of the Dutch economy.
And then when the natural gas reserves kind of went up,
they were in trouble. You know, and and Holland had
a real problem getting out of that. Well, the US
has a similar problem. And what's what? And yes, we
produce natural gas, and yes we produce a ton of oil,
especially in my state. I'm in Texas. But the real,
the real export of the United States is the dollar itself.
And so what does that mean? It means that all
the smart people go into finance, not all, but a
vast majority. What are the instead of going in and
being boy, the best at robotics or the best at
at producing uh, you know, the best chip designers or
the best whatever it is. Uh, the smartest people go
and become hedge fund managers or hedge fund trading analysts
and uh and so and I'm pointed at myself, you know,
I mean, I'm part of this. And what you do
is you figure out ways. I mean when I was
when I came out of grad school and I went
to work for my first hedge fund, my entire job
was to look for companies that were producing cool stuff.
I would love to tell you that was the case. No,
I went and looked for money that was laying around
in inefficiencies so that I could arbitrage that out and
lever up the arbitrage opportunities. And so I mean, you know,
treasury bonds, for instance, I wrote, I wrote black box models.
This is what this was used to be called. And
there were tremendous inefficiencies in the way treasury bond futures
were traded because the this was before green Span and
the FED really controlled that market. And so I mean
I had a black box model that was generating for
every contract of risk that we put on was producing
you know, and these were ten thousand dollars denominated contracts
were producing two thousand dollars of income. So you can
do that math on what a year of that would be.
And because treasuries, because futures only hire a small amount
of capital, they have imbued leverage. Well, we could lever that.
I mean I was able to I was able to
trade up my own personal account enough to where I
could retire for a little bit and go do some
fun things and then open up my own hedge fund job.
Now the point is now multiply that across an entire economy,
and now you have and by the way, futures and
derivatives have a role in allowing people to do insurance
and protect themselves and all these things, but you can't
have an entire economy built around that. You saw the
same thing happen with high frequency trading of stocks, was
the same kind of thing to where the bid ask spread.
That was a way for specialists in stocks to manage
the risk of the entire market and provide order. Got
traded way by these computers that would bounce those trades
back and forth one hundred times a second. Well maybe
not one hundred, but but you know, very very quickly,
and because there was no tax on those trades, basically
ran the specialists out of business. In an earlier version
of high frequency trading, basically the that's what led to
the flash crash. When that got turned off, then you
saw this cascading event. So the point is is the
smart in the financialization you begin to look for not
ways to produce things, but ways to because you have
this immense tool called the US dollar, the ways to
lever these small inefficiencies to thirty forty x in order
to basically just suck dollars out of the system and
produce huge returns. And that really isn't You're not really
making I mean, I'm making money for my investors. But
you're really not making anything. Again, I'm pointing at myself here.
Now I don't do a whole lot. I don't do
that as much anymore. I'm do a little bit different
version of this. So how does that, how does that?
How does that Dutch disease in dollar terms? How does
that explain itself over an entire an entire ecosystem. Well, this,
this creates the dollars reserve status because it is in
and of itself, this tool that can be exported via
euro dollars across economies. So in Europe they create dollars
out of thin air called euro dollars and do the
same exact thing. Well, where does so that incentivizes the
US government to print beyond So so so we spend
way more than we take in in taxes, and we
we export that inflation. Normally you would just have to
print those dollars to make up the difference. You print
those dollars, those dollars go stay on our economy, and
now we have massive inflation because it's twenty percent, it's
a it's a vast amount that that that is goes
above and beyond what we take in. We spend. Well,
if you have this reserve Dutch disease currency. The rest
of the world soaks that up, soaks up those extra
dollars by because they purchase the treasury bonds that that's
made up, and we don't have big inflation. Well, the
problem is eventually that's got to come home. And you
saw when the when when Putin invaded UH Ukraine and
by Iden enacted all these all these uh you know,
basically UH sanctions against against Russia that embargoed those dollars.
And part of the inflation problem that we had was
those dollars didn't have nearly as near as many places
to go to get soaked up the sponge. We we
basically cut off a big piece of the sponge, and
so those dollars had to stay here, and we had inflation.
And who does that hurt? Does that hurt the the
investment class. No, that hurts the average person who now
is paying way more for eggs, or way more for
their fast food, or way more for uh you know,
rents went way up. So anyway, this is a long
way of saying that in the modern world of of
of financialization, it's just a way for it incentivizes the
US government to do things that are against the interests
of its medicines. Number one, in printing, in debasing their savings,
those savings, that that that that debasement is just a
transfer payment to the elite because it tends to inflate
the value of assets. And then when you reverse that,
which is what they're trying to do, you see those
assets come down, and it's it's just a mess, but
you've got to fix it somehow. Anyway. I've been talking
for way too long. It's a it's a complex arcane system.
But the main things to remember are if the dollar
is our chief export, and it is, then the entire
economy is going to be dominated by that export. And
the attempt that is trying to be done here is
can we have a balanced It's okay to have a
strong currency, or at least a fair valued currency, but
that needs to be balanced by making stuff so that
our entire economy isn't isn't doesn't create these weird incentives
to prop that up. So can we can we have
a diversified economy of exports so that everything isn't it
isn't distorted by this Dutch disease. I just wrote on
this If you go to my substack, the Eyes of Abilities,
Ron Dodson at sub Substack. You can. I wrote an
article this weekend about this about how this works if
you really want to get you know, ourcane about things.
But that's what they're trying to fix. And it will
create habit because all of these structures are built around this,
this system. But it's coming. It's going to come to
an end one way or the other.
Speaker 1: Well, a lot of people want this to happen overnight,
and it's impossible, you know. I think about we talked
about like the Mesa's Institute and libertarianism, and one of
the things that they really promote is entrepreneurship. One of
the books that I read on my show was zero
to One by Peter Teel and just be yeah, just
because it's whatever you think of Peter Teel, it's a
different way of thinking about things. So you push, you
talk about entrepreneurship, you talk about people who can create something,
come up with a new idea. Okay, and that's great
and it may even benefit us, but it's being built
in India, it's being built in China, it's being built.
So this entrepreneurship, sure, it may make our lives easier.
It may make a couple people wealthy. We may even
become wealthy if we get in early enough the stock
or you know, we we do we do well with it.
But it's still not strengthening the country. It's still not
strengthening the people because it's not being built here. And
that's that's the biggest problem I have with like Austrian
economics and anarcho capitalism things like that. It's globalism. It's
I'm going to you know, labor, labor becomes now just
becomes another another thing to negotiate. And if if you
can get cheaper labor somewhere else, you do it. If
you can import cheaper labor, you do it. Or if
somebody else in another country will do do the labor cheaper,
and even with shipping it back. Is I mean, it's
just basically globalism. You cannot have you can't have a
strong country because your country then just survive, is just
surviving on this financialization because because you may be benefiting
by using an iPhone, which I mean, where the hell
was this made? Yeah? But okay ching dou yeah, okay,
So how how does that benefit our economy other than financialization?
Other than it being all about money, which it can
be printed into oblivion, can be arbitraged into ali. I mean, yeah,
well what does an what does an entrepreneur mean? If
it's it only benefits you as a consumer and not
as somebody who not as a society, not as a people,
not as a vulcan who benefits from also manufacturing it.
Speaker 2: Well, think about if we in the in the in
the old way of doing things, the the the in
let's say, in the in in Royal England, back in
the old days of of where there was royalty and
uh and because they were landed and people work the
land and those those oh even I think the video
we mentioned talked about this a little bit where the
people were loyal to the lords because of this nobless
a belief that they owed it to the people who
surround who were around them in their village and their towns.
They owed it to make sure they were taken care of.
And in response, I mean, this sounds very hobbsy in
but that doesn't make it untrue. Uh and as a
as a as a response, they were loyal when conflict
inevitably came. And but but what we've lost is this
idea of nobless a beliefe. So all that means is
is that if I am, if I am wealthy, I
owe it to my community to make sure my community
is blessed, is able to feed themselves, is able, And
that is really only possible in an enclosed and I'm
not completely enclosed. I don't think anybody's trying to do
away with completely do away with trade. But if it's
if suddenly I don't do international investment. But let's say
I could hire a thousand Indians in Beau Paul to
do something cheaper than a hundred of the people who
live around me, because all I cared about was arrow
going up. Then I've considered the that's somewhat evil. You
know that I wouldn't care first for the people, that
I wouldn't take a lesser return to care for the
people around me than somebody an ocean and two continents away.
I mean, there's something very perverse about that. But that's
what frictionless capital And again, remember capitalism is a term
of Marx. What we believe as traditional rightist, you know,
is Christians is the idea of you know, Jesus talked
about one another and you know, loving one another and
there's there's part of that that's embedded in the free
arms length transaction. Hey, hey, Pete, I have I'm not
using this fridge over here, and I see I haven't
seen you use your leaf blower in a while. Hey,
you want to swap, wouldn't that'd be cool? We're both
better off and we both say thank you, and we
are both blessed by that. Or I go down to
the local, you know, hardware store that my friend Frank
owns and runs, and I buy this. I go to
buy something. He goes, hey, man, don't buy that. Buy this.
I know it's a little more expensive, but buy this
this American made tool. It will let you'll give it
to your grandkids. Oh thanks, thanks Frank. That's what we
believe in the idea that I can skip over my
neighbor to somebody ten thousand miles away and and and
forget about the obligation that I have to love my neighbor.
Is that's perverse. And I know that in what we
do is we couch that ability in freedom. Well that's
not really freedom, because this, this frictionless movement of capital
erases it not only erases borders and erases distinctions by
the way, which are the all those I don't want
to turn this into a theology podcas cast because that's
not what this is. But think about think about the
cool thing of you know, way back in the Old Testament,
and whether you believe it was literally true or not.
I mean I do, but but let's but you don't
have to the Tower of Babel. And all the languages
were confused because they were trying to build a pagan
ladder to God, right, this massive Zigarai right and and
and then you get to Acts chapter two and and Pentecost,
and that's reversed. That that that curse of every body's
language being confused is reversed. But isn't It isn't conversed
by God miraculously giving everybody the same language. No, the
miracle is in the hearing in their own distinct languages.
And so there's something cool and and and and uh
and part of God's economy in these distinct ethne these
distinct and that's just the Greek word for nation, these
distinct nationalities doing their own thing. But this cool king
of kings who can bless through still can reverse the
curse of Bible through that. But Christianity and some people
are perverse about how they say. This doesn't erase national distinctions.
It's just a it's a blessing that can overcome the
curses that sometimes come from those national distinctions. So all
that being said is, I'm supposed to love my neighbor, right,
I'm supposed to love my family first. I'm supposed to
take care of mom and dad and my wife and
my kids, and then my neighbor, and then my community.
And then if I've got something left over, maybe I
can give to some charities that where there's special needs,
and those first are to the people of my who
are Christians for me, And then I can worry about
the world that large, right, and and and so this
this frictionless, borderless capital, it destroys that. So I'm okay
with some level of being able to, you know, invest
in the world, but it's got to come at a
cost so as to not destroy that ordered you know,
the the Ordo of Morris, the ordered loves that are
part of Western civilization. Because if you live in a
in a donut preference, then your community that's where we
get destroyed. Communities high crime and nobody gives a pardon me,
Nobody gives a crap because we're just gonna We're just gonna, uh,
because my dollars are free to invest wherever. And that's
perverse and it's wrong, and I God bless the current
administration for putting it, trying to put a dagger through
the heart of that. And that's not freedom. It destroys freedom.
Freedom is my ability to go to Pete and get
his leaf blower and him get my refrigerator. That's freedom. Sorry,
I get a little I get worked up about this
because we've lost what makes Western civilization, Christendom, what made
it was the most unbelievable engine of blessed prosperity in
the history of the world. And we have created a
system that is destroying it. And uh, that's a that's
not just a shame, it's evil. Okay, I'm going to
be less preaching.
Speaker 1: Now. Well, we saw the Silver Christmas with the H
one B thing, right, So you know, there's a lot
of towns that I've been to, you know that I've
been through here in Alabama, and you're just like, Okay,
what happened to this town? And think about this. If
I was to you know, if you were to finance,
say we wanted to open up a steel plant, and
you were, you were helped, you were helping me finance this,
and I was in charge of it. And we're up,
we're getting ready to go up and running, and all
of a sudden, we just started putting ads through the
H one B thing and we're like, okay, we're just
going to We're just going to hire people from India.
We're going to hire people from wherever. We're going to
pay them sixty percent of what we would pay in Alabama.
And I mean, you're an evil motherfucker. I'm sorry, you know,
sorry for the language, but you're you're an evil son
of a bitch. And I mean, really you should. The
people should the people should burn down my factory. That's
what they should do. The people who live there should
burn down my factory.
Speaker 2: I lunched today, aggressive young man. I mean I say young.
He's thirty eight years old, young to me, twenty years
younger than me, who is an engineer, structural structural, mechanical engineer,
very bright guy. And I'm I immediately think, you know,
man if I and the and the talking to him,
because he's you know, they've they've in his firm, they've
hired some h one b's and all this kind of stuff,
and so he's disillusioned, you know, because and I'm thinking, man,
if if we could open up a steel mill or
some shut it would take It wouldn't take six months
for this guy, because he's sharp to become an expert
in whatever it is. Because you learn, people forget you're
not buying. I learned what I do, so the first
six months when I started in the hedge fight, and
what I do with some complicated stuff, a lot of
calculus and all this stuff programming, and you know, the
first six months, I sat in a windowless office and
I was given a stack of books to read. I
wasn't expected to know all this stuff. And I had
a master's degree in derivative finance. I mean it was
an NBA, but it was really in derivative finance. But
I was given a stack of books. I was getting
paid to go learn to what God had given me
with an inquisitive mind and the ability to take in information.
And I was paid for six months to basically do nothing.
I wasn't doing nothing. I was learning. Do you think
this guy had lunch with this brilliant young guy couldn't
in three to six months learn whatever it was. Or
let's say let's say we were going to manufacture clothing.
Let's say we were going to re start making denim here,
you know, some cool genes or nice suits or whatever
it is. He could be an expert. He would know
everything there is to know within six months. But instead
what we do is we go jump over him to
somebody who we and guess what. And I've worked and
I don't have any hatred for anybody who was you know,
had the is born in India or whatever. I don't
have any hatred toward anybody. But I'm just supposed to
love my neighbor first. And there is untold talent waiting
to be tapped to go do cool stuff here. We've
just got unlock it and incentivized doing it. And uh
and the the inability to see that is kind of disgusting.
I mean, look, who has has musk brought in some
h one b z y. I know he has. But
I've got friends, friends of friends who are in his
operation down in Bocachica and he's employed a ton of
smart America who are doing other stuff. And we're like, oh,
we can learn how to do this they did know
how to build rockets when they were doing other things.
There is untold potential in America that is waiting to
be unlocked. Guys who are doing financialization things, you know,
who could I'll tell you, Guys who are spending ridiculous
hours figuring out people's income taxes or programming. What a waste.
If we really went full Manti on this Trump deal
and we replaced our income tax, if we quit taxing
for productivity and taxed consumption and the ability to sell
goods here, did away with the income tax, the talent
that would be unlocked by people who are just working
on the on taxes, and that entire ecosystem is untold.
My next door neighbor, sweet smart lady. She works for
the irs. She should be doing something productive, not that
she's I mean, I'm not a big fan of of
of women giving their life away to working instead of
having kids, but some are gonna choose to do that,
and she could be you know anyway, I know I'm
beating a dead horse here, but we have got to
we have got to be supporting our telling our representatives
to support Trump in this effort to unlocking American talent.
An American opportunity because it's right and it's there, and
people are gonna I think the ability to generate wealth
is greater here than shipping it, shipping those dollars elsewhere.
I really believe that.
Speaker 1: The argument that you're going to get is what you're
going to trade for. That is you're going to trade
at higher prices.
Speaker 2: Well not in the people don't understand, so so so
terriff people saying tariffs are are inflationary. No they're not.
They're actually deflationary. And the reason everybody, that's the reason
everybody's throwing an absolute hissy fit, is because we are
so levered to the gills. What deflation destroys anybody who's
levered because suddenly their deaths just increasing and increasing and increasing.
So that's why people are freaking out. The people who
are rewarded are savers, which we used to understand in
in Western civilization or the bedrock of any civilization. Are
the people who get this this this sounds crazy, who
spend less than they make. That's that's your salt of
the earth people. The people who are actually who are
tied to their to the generation who went before them
and the generation who is after you want to know
the real fascism, to be afraid of the fascism of
the living people who are not tied to the to
the people who came before them and the people who
are coming after them, and that that's that's that's what
should be you should scare you is people who only
live for themselves. That's that's. Uh, those people will do
untold evil. But uh so anyway, tariffs, because of the
elasticity of demand, are deflationary. That's why we've seen, uh,
treasury bonds go up. That's why I'm getting a long
treasury bonds. That's why I've seen them, to a certain
degree extent the market come down. It's it's your you
eventually punish those levered real relationships. And it's way more
complicated than that. And uh but and there, and there's
the medium term. The medium term impact is different than
the long term impact different yet but uh, it doesn't
have to be inflationary, and I don't think in the
short term it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's one thing that I'm talking to Stormy really
he helped me to understand is the people.
Speaker 2: What did me say, Did Stormy agree with me? I
hope so start.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he said he said, people, people who are leveraged
to the hilt are the thing that fear. They fear
the most is deflation, thank you, because yeah, yeah, deflation
helps people like us. But the people who are you know,
within this system and uh, you know, married to the system,
wed to the system, where every bit of their wealth
is wed to the system in a certain way, deflation
is going to destroy their wealth. And yeah, that's that's
why they don't want to see prices go down. So
you have this trope out there of oh, tariffs are
just attacks, it's just going to raise here, you know.
And then then you ask a question like, well, if
tariffs are so bad, how come like every other country
in the world uses them, And people are like, well,
if every if every other country in the world punched
themselves in the dick, would does that mean we have
to It's like, well there, yeah, I mean folks, yeah,
I mean, I mean Austrians are free, marketers are some
of them are absolutely insane. You can have conversations anarcho capitalists.
Speaker 2: I don't think, you know, let's let's go back to
Adam Smith, who which is where a lot of this
originated in theory originated. Again, I think It goes back
to just the idea of free price discovery and the
ability to have free the freedom of arms length transactions.
I personally think that is the freedom that absolutely must
be protected at all costs. And you've seen erosions in
that since well, the Civil Rights Act has eroded that
because I can't you know, freedom of association has been
somewhat destroyed, and that erodes that the ridiculous amount of
regulation that you have to fish through in order to
open up a business, but has eroded that. But that's
the that is what absolutely must be protected. But Adam Smith,
in Wealth of Nations and in general, was what did
he assume when he was talking about the freedom of
trade and capital flows? Was it in the modern state? No,
he was talking about within Christendom, where you shared presuppositions
and in other words, you were held to everybody understand
good that we may disagree, we may go to war
over the different flavors, but we ultimately are serving the
same God, and we we know that we're going to
be held in judgment if I violate these certain you know, uh,
these certain transcendental rules, uh, the the the certain trans
transcendent ideas of what is right and wrong, which uh
and so Smith understood. He would laugh at China being granted,
you know, uh, free access of of uh, because they
don't share our basic view of how life in the
world works. Uh, or you know, or Vietnam for that matter.
You know where all the Nike shoes are made. Boy,
Vietnam came to the table.
Speaker 1: Click, didn't they?
Speaker 2: That was funny? Uh? No, do you think that? Do
you think the acting CEO of Nike made a phone
call to the president of Vietnam? Hey, you know, I
got some good news and some bad news.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know everybody they had they had ninety tariffs
on us, and people are Okay. Do you think how
many cities are there in Vietnam right now? Do you
think that are worse than like the South side of
Chicago or Camden, New Jersey, or you know, pick pick
a ghetto, pick a ghetto, any ghetto. Yeah, do you
think they do? You think they have those? Oh, but
they're punching themselves in the deck by charging us ninety
shut the I'm serious, man. And then you know what's funny.
They're like, they're like, where did this question come from?
Where did this question of if everyone else can charge tariffs.
How can we look I don't I don't care if
it came from Benjamin and Yahoo answer the fucking question. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the reason every country generally has some type
of gating mechanism at the border is because, you because
they understand that the chief loyalty of any state is
to its own citizens. We're the only I mean, how
many other countries have birthright citizenship or you dilute your
own You can have, you know, hey, vacation to America,
drop a kid and have a brand new citizen who
is going to get Social Security benefits forever. I mean,
who else does that? We there was a point in
time where we had to fill the western half of
this country up because if we didn't, Spain or the
French or the Brits or somebody was going to and
we had to you know, did we go too far?
Or we had to fill this place up. And we
understood that that was generally going to be with people
from Europe who looked and talked and believe the way
we do. They might have a different, you know, linguistic
spin on it. Some might be Catholics, some might be Protestant,
but generally it was going to be that, and hey,
we got to fill this up, so go come over
here and take some land so that the Spanish won't
or the Mexicans won't or the French won't. Right, and
so I get that now we filled it up. So
so this idea of birthright citizenship that dilutes our own
our our you know, our own franchise. I'm talking about
in the citizenship sense of franchise. It's crazy, but we do.
Speaker 1: We do that.
Speaker 2: This is our government does not. Our government's chief loyalty
is to the dollar. It is not to you and me, Pete.
It's just not. Now we're seeing that change and people
are screaming bloody, and I'm like, don't you understand what
this what's being changed here? That we're We're at least
moving back to the political reality that Hobbes understood that,
Carl Schmidt understood that that that that I am protected
by the state. Therefore I'm willing to sign up for
the draft or pay whatever taxes. That's the trade. If
you don't give me this, why the why would I
ever do this? What there just because there's a flag waving,
I'm supposed to have loyalty to this? No, it was
based in Covenant, because, as Schmidt said, every political reality
is just a secularized version of what we how we
view God, and God says, hey, look again, I'm not
trying to turn this into a theology podcast, but this
is where we get our understanding of the state from
is from the idea that God says, hey, look, i'm
gonna you're you're gonna be I'm gonna be your God,
You're gonna be my people. And then the new Covenant, Hey,
it's even better. I'm gonna send a king and to
show you how much I love you, he's gonna die
for you so that if you just pledge your loyalty
to me, I'm gonna take I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm
gonna take care of you.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: So our understanding of the state is that's the role
of the king or the government is they take They
don't take care of me in the sense of they
provide for some ubi or any of this, or you know,
state medicine or anything. They're gonna make sure that generally
there's peace. I'm free, I can walk my own the
streets of my neighborhood without fearing for my life or
being mugged that I'm generally at peace from foreign invaders,
and that if I have a dispute with my with
my with my neighbor, that if it gets bad enough,
that we can go and have somebody who's righteous judge
and decide our disputes. And so you provide me those things,
and I'm going to be loyal to you. I'm going
to be I'm going to follow the law. That's the
trade that we make, because that's a secularized version of
what God offers us. This is Carl Schmidt one on
one book called Political Theology. Go read it. It will
blow your mind. And if somebody says how he was
a Nazi, look it's a lot more complicated than that.
Number two. It doesn't make it not true. It doesn't
make it not true. Here's brilliant.
Speaker 1: What's that the I don't care anymore about that?
Speaker 2: Well, I know you don't. But there's going to be
people who you know, who listened to who's gonna swing
by this and go run. Why are you quoting that?
Go read it? And later Schmidt, in his book called Laws,
said that the basis of all this that he got
all the because of his understanding of his loyalty, and
Schmidt had a complicated relationship to the church, get it.
But he said he understood all this because of his
loyalty to Christ and that the role of that that
that civilization societies are built upon shared ways of life,
which and we understand that because that's what that We
understand that from our understanding of God. And so that's
not Nazi or anything. That's just basic you know, Christian
Western civilization. Okay, I get so tired of having to
defend this stuff, but anyway, it is what it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, I don't have a problem with talking with
theology because I've gotten to the point where I've read
enough yacky and you know, once you once you dive
into hag enough and you start getting into Spangler. You
can't have a conversation with somebody really if you're just
talking about Yeah, the thing that one of my pet
peeves and I won't even I won't even entertain it anymore.
Is anybody who wants to talk about in the interwar
years like ninety nineteen nineteen to nineteen thirty nine, who
wants to talk everything as a black and white issue, evil, bad, good, good?
You have You're not even aware ye, I mean read
Spangler social social Opprussian socialism. What is he talking about?
In the beginning, he's saying, there everyone who is running
around calling themselves a socialist, and no one can no
one can define the term. He's like, these people, they
were throwing stuff at the wall to seeing what was stick,
see what was stick. Ideology was gone. They were just
trying to figure out how to survive in most cases.
And then you read somebody, you know, you read someone
like Yaki, and it's like, okay, well, I mean and
then you read Hegel and it's like, if there's no
if you're not even going to entertain metaphysics at a
even at a base level, how do I have a
I can't have a conversation with you. Politics is not
black and white, you know, Continental philosophy is not black
and white. It's a philosophy, and you can't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, uh, it's interesting that you know Hegel. Everybody,
the the the conservative approach to Hegel has judged him
by the fruits of the Neohegelian so Marx and so forth.
And that's unfair to Hegel because Hegel was really trying
to wrestle with the fact that Progressivism ended up out
of thesis antithesis. Synthesis was not Hegel. Hegel was just like, look,
this is how, this is how, this is how history progresses.
Progressivism is the thing is is the abomination that added
on top that that arrow always goes up.
Speaker 1: That was not.
Speaker 2: Uh, that was not that was not parton that. That
wasn't the bedrock of what Hegel was trying to say.
Hegel was really trying to understand. Look that that time
moves one direction. Okay, you can't go back. Nostalgia will
kill you because you can look to the past for
for for perhaps we did things in the past that
were better. But you can't go back to the past.
History moves forward. And Hegel understood that. But to judge
him simply by the Neo Hegelians is unfair to his project.
It's like judging Calvin based upon the five points of
Calvinism and the and in the later case, and again
I'm a Presbyterian, I'm a Calvinist. But but Calvin would
of kind of looks giving you side eye at the
fire that that came later, So you you it's more
complicated than that. That's number one and number and and
and you know I haven't read I have I just
have to admit I haven't read yacky, so so I
can't speak speak to that. But but uh, but the
the the philosophy, the whole point of philosophy is to love.
It is to love wisdom, and wisdom goes all the
way back to just right and wrong. That that that
wisdom is the apply look at the at the at
the proverbs. That the idea is to pursue the understanding
of what is good and evil, and then so and
and politics is a layer on top of that, which
is in applying wisdom understanding good and evil to make
the better or as Plato would say, the just or
as Paul would say, using the same exact word, the
righteous city. And so and then grand politics are national
politics is how do we as a civilization unite these
cities together in the pursuit of this goal? And and
and so, philosophy and politics and religion are all tied
together in this pursuit of what is good and right,
of understanding good and evil. And there is good and evil.
There just is. And if you abandon that, you're then
that's what's going to lead to I'm just I'm just
a fungible economic unit, and we're going to have a
the United States is just going to be an economic zone,
and we're going to have free flow of capital. And
you know, an Indian who's not a citizen is just
as good as Tom next door. And why use Tom's
Why use Tom's human capital? When I can get whatever
human capital down we keep beating up on India. It
can be whoever. You know. Uh, that's how you get
all this. And it all goes back to is there
good and evil? Which I know Hegel did talk about,
and uh, and how do you pursue the study of
wisdom philosophy? And how do you apply that to the
city politics? And in tying it all together in national
you know, nationalism or national politics, that's all nationalism is
is are we united together in pursuing what is good
and right and the blessing of our neighbors. That's all
nationalism is. The state has its first loyalty to its
own citizens in the pursuit of what is good and
right and their blessing. It is not some scary where
it can get scary because if the hey look in Germany,
there were roving in that period. You're talking about the
interact the period between the Wars, and I know you're
friends with you know, we both know Darryl and he's
going to really expose a lot of this stuff, and
I think in his upcoming series. But that period between
the Wars was civilization itself had broken down and it
was roving gangs of violence and chaos. And I'll tell
you what. You can say whatever you want about about
good about all this stuff, but that's evil. When I
can't walk out, when I can't feed my family and
I can't walk out my front door for fear of
my own life, for the ability to make a living,
and all my savings have been destroyed, and I got
to you know, all of that, that's evil, that's chaos.
And if you want a German who speaks cogently about that,
you go back to Martin Luther. Martin Luther said, hey,
there's got to be peace. Peace is the first first
duty of the king.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I read a book on on my show
called Blockade, The Diary of a middle class Austrian Housewife
by Anna eisen Manger. Someone resurrected it some years ago
and she talked about that in nineteen twenty to twenty
one Austria was Austria suffered the worst from the blockade,
and she had visited a relative's farm. She risked traveling
by road to go to that farm, and what she
experienced in that going to that farm was roving bands
of psychopaths destroying farms, stealing everything. And they were from Russia.
She clearly says, you know, they had come in from Russia,
so you know, you can just imagine what they were
who they were, And yeah, I mean that is people.
People need to understand that civilization is and I know
we have to end, but civilization is like this close
from falling apart. And yeah, I think a lot of
what we discussed today and a lot of what we
critique today gets us closer to that civilization falling apart,
and a lot of what we're advocating for brings us
together because then we understand that we're all in it together,
and hopefully we have leadership and elites that help us
and back us up in that. So, yeah, I think
that's what we can hope for.
Speaker 2: I hope, so, I hope so, and I hope. Look,
dislocations of capital absolutely have collateral damage, and so if
the chaos that this is hopefully short and causes a
minimum of that because look, if you know, it's not
you know, the the the financialization that I that the
ridiculous levels of financialization that I hope are brought to
brought to heal through all this, the in the in
the middle to long run have built up these ecosystems,
and I don't want undue suffering among people who are hey,
just try Oh look I'm good at accounting. I can
I can service all these things that are products of financialization.
That's you know, that's not if you know Frank who
built that business, I don't want his life destroyed. That's
not that's that's that's not the point. So so we've
got to, you know, think through solutions to to help
people out in this. But but make no mistake, this
system is going to get destroyed. And it's either going
to be destroyed on our terms, which is what we're
trying to do, or it's going to be just you know,
what I think we're staring at is as a conflict
possibly with China in the fall, in the in the
lauter part of the year, because we are really going
to hurt them through this. And it reminds me a
lot of what we did with Japan in the lead
up to World War Two when they invaded into China
and we blockaded all their fuel sources, and that's what
led to Pearl Harbor. And you can disagree or agree
with all of that, that's not the point. The point
is is if you corner an animal into into a corner,
you good chance of getting a bit. So does that
look like an invasion of Taiwan later in the year,
does that look like a blockade of Taiwan? I don't
I don't know. I would probably come on the side
of blockade. And does that force our hand into something
that that do we get stoopid? I mean, is is
Taiwan worth enough for us to get our lights turned
off and our you know where China can can dictate
the terms of our surrender. I mean again, I don't
know what that looks like, but I do know that if,
if it needs to be, we need to be out
ahead of this. And so I'm fully supportive of the
President and the Vice President and Bessent and team of
trying to do these this this this change on our
terms and not waiting for the inevitable change at somebody
on somebody else's terms.
Speaker 1: All right, what's the name of that substack again?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 1: Let me.
Speaker 2: It's the Eyes of Apilles, but it's just Ron Dodson
dot substack dot com. R O N d O D
s o N that's uh dot substack dot com.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll link to it in the in the notes.
Thank you once again. Hopefully next time we talk it'll
be we'll have some something to celebrate.
Speaker 2: Sounds good. Thanks for having me on, Pete H.