I think most of you guys already know my perspective on the tariff issue. It's a very nuanced view. I'm somewhere in between. I do lament the fact that we've lost our industry, but I also understand that tariffs are taxes, and I am, as a libertarian, opposed to taxes. However, I also understand that the federal government needs revenue, and therefore, if the federal government's going to exist, I would probably prefer a tariff regime as opposed to an income tax regime.
So I'm nuanced to the point that I've upset everybody. So what do I do in these type of situations. Well, I invite on two people that can can battle it out and help me decide. I got guys Swan, who's more of the Austrian bent, and then we've got Alex Savetsky, who is essentially a mercantilist, as best I can tell, I'm just kidding, Uh maybe you are, I don't know, but we're gonna We're gonna get to the bottom of it. So yeah, opening salvo, gentlemen, Thank you for joining me.
Thanks.
I was gonna say A good way to have said that is like You've pissed everyone off, so now you want to like divert all of the hate and vitriol to two other ideas to take it on.
Don't be mad at me, be mad at them. Yeah, so, I mean, that's honestly my opinion. Though like I am, I am very much like I have all of the Austrian principles that still guide me. But then I also have very much a pragmatic sense of like, well, I'm not going to get sound money, you know, unless I just migrate to bitcoin, which I kind of have. But in terms of from like the economic fit, like the fiscal policy of our nation, we're not going to get there.
So what do we do in the interim? And I think that it's been very interesting to see this debate. I think in some ways it's been very good to have it happen because it's forced a lot of people to think about how global trade works in a way that I don't think people have and maybe ever anyways, I'm just curious where your thoughts are. So either of you want to start, I'd be happy to let you.
I'll just say mine probably is similar to yours. I haven't listened to you talk about this issue specifically yet, but I can guess by your your short little explanation
that it's probably pretty aligned with mine. My problem structurally, what I think the real issue is is that you can't, like I think there's a very specific reason why they shift it all in nineteen ten nineteen twenty from tariffs to income, social security and all of these things as the main taxes, is that you cannot you cannot play the tariff fighting game when you have a global reserve currency and a central bank, like I think you have
structurally undermined your manufacturing and you're trying to It's like it's like poisoning your liver and then taking a pharmaceutical like you've your problem is that you poisoned your liver. You're just trying to cover it up or get around it with the pharmaceutical. The central bank is, are we poisoned our liver and we have the global reserve currency, and then the pharmaceutical is the tariffs are going to fix it? And it's not like the problem is structural
to how our money works. And maybe maybe it can like put up a barrier, but I think it just means higher costs for everybody in the US and there's still a premium on the dollar and foreign trade unless we just stopped being the world was of our currency, and there might be enough pressure to do that.
I don't know. At all times.
I think had Trump maintained his threatened tariff policy, there's a distinct possibility that you would have seen such massive inflationary pressure in the US as as our global trading partners start to I mean, this was Trump's explicit goal. He wanted to sell He wanted to equalize trade. He wanted to have the same amount of trade from Vietnam into America as America into Vietnam.
And he wanted to have more and more of.
Our US dollars, which I think it's sixty percent of our fiat is circulating around the rest of the world. And he wanted to bring that money home. Well, if you bring that money home, don very very inflationary, very inflationary. And I just I just don't know, like I don't know. This is why I wanted to have Alex on because I hope he can steal man how this would have worked out, Because his best I can tell, he was running.
He was sprinting headlong into the trifin dilemma and he didn't seem to have an answer as to how to remedy that. So what are your thoughts?
All right, gentlemen? So I I think we all know he had that money printing is an issue. I don't think that's news to any of us, and I think people listening to the show appreciate that as well. I don't think, you know, guy, what you mentioned about, like you know, we moved onto income text and this and that sort of as a result of pure money printing. I don't know if that's like exactly true. I think
these things are always a little bit more complex. You know, there's you know, if a parasite can figure out a way to take your money, you know, whether the money printing or not. I think they're going to try and figure out how to do that. And you know, I'm fundamentally no fan of taxes and tariffs and all this sort of stuff, and I get the economic argument for me,
Like I've been battling with this. I just I just put a link to a sub stect that I just literally published five minutes ago, which tries to take a more nuanced view about this whole thing and what I basically distilled it down to is this, Tariffs are kind of like an economic handicap because you know, you just increase the cost, and you know the person profiting from the tariff is the whoever is charging the tariff, which
in this case is the federal government. To your point, Clinton, it's like, would you rather have an internal taxation regime or would you rather do a taxation regime where you tax imports and therefore give your own people an advantage. It's clear which one is better. So there's not I
don't think there's even an argument there. I don't think I think it's fanciful to believe that the federal governments going to disappear tomorrow, so if we have to sort of choose the lesser of two evils, there's that sort of evident. But the argument that I tried to make in this essay was the economics come second here, that this is no longer a matter of economics and materialism. This is a matter of doing, like sacrificing economics for
the purpose of preserving culture, people, and nation. And I had a bit of a sort of a beef with Canoot Swamholm on on Twitter the other day, and not a beef like we just sort of went back and forth, and he's asked him, I said, what's a Nation's what's a nation? And he said, oh, it's a made up construct by a bunch of parasites. I want to tax you. I was like, no, that's fucking stupid. You know, a nation, nation is it's people. The word nation derives from natio,
which is the Latin for shared birth. If you if you don't understand that concept, like it's it's sort of very difficult to have a proper conversation about this. Which the nation and the leader that is selected by the nation, whether through monarchy or whether through democratic principles, republican, whatever the case is, his duty is to his people first and right now, I think you know, I mean, it's
been very clear from the beginning. You know, Trump was all about make America great again, not make Wall Street rich and prosperous. Right Like, there's a there's a disconnect here, which I think is is very hard for some people to get their heads around. Like you can maintain the position that tariffs are not economically intelligent for anybody to do, probably less so than America, because you know, America's got some very interesting components to it. Like it's it's one
of the largest land masses in the world. It's the largest by fucking far consumer market on the planet. Like, I've sold many products with many businesses, and irrespective of what I've sold, what businesses I've ever run, seventy percent of all my sales or more have always come from America and thirty percent from everybody else combined. So it's not even like we're not even talking the same galaxies.
So America's got the land, it's got the population, it's got the consumer base, and it's got all the fucking money. Like once again, like that that's you know, everyone is everyone is a poor in comparison to America. So you know, seriously,
everyone's a poor. That's like literally what they are, right, So you you sort of you take that into account, Like, you know, if Salvador tomorrow was to imply impose a bunch of tariffs on all of their trade partners, like they would literally handicap themselves because they don't have any of those they don't hold the same hand. So anyway, coming back to my point is that there is an economic argument to be made, but there is also let
let's imagine, you know, you have this. Uh, you know a neighborhood, and you know, the neighborhood has like stopped producing anything internally because they just decided to buy everything externally and they've just become essentially consumers. Someone on the neighborhood decide, no, no, no, we should stop, we should invest. We have the money, we have the economic wherewithal to invest in ourselves for a little bit. So let's give ourselves an advantage and slap attacks on everybody else and
let's rebuild our own productive base. And I think there's an argument to be made here, which is America needs to put its culture, it's ethnos, it's people, and it's its own self before everybody else. And I think this is an effective way to do it, even more so, even more effective than Bitcoin or anything else at the moment, because like bitcoin is just as much as it is a stronger reserve currency superior to the US all this
sort of US dollar, all this sort of shit. Bitcoin is way too young to become the global reserve currency today. But bitcoin still needs a decade or two of maturity. It's not going to happen. This is a way of, I don't know, slowing down the globalist machine. You know, people will make arguments about, oh, look at the supply chain, blah blah blah. You know, you can't make a fucking
toaster in America, this and that. Like, when I hear all of that, that actually tells me that that's a fucking problem.
The fact that I was about to say, you're just recognizing that the one hundred percent on that agreement is that every time I hear somebody make that argument, I'd be like, do you not realize that that means that, regardless of your take on tariffs, something should be done, because that's a huge issue, you know, a hugely terrible, terrible thing that you've just explained. And the idea is that tariff's whether you believe that, believe it work or not, is
to try to correct that. You're just you're just basically showing me how bad the problem is. Not making an argument for against terrorifts in my opinion.
But so, you know, we've got this kind of like fake thin globalist economy at the moment, which has come about as a result of I think excessive free marketism at the cost of social national cohesion. Right, Like we've sort of it's almost it's funny, it's got a relationship to the communist sort of ideal is that you can
just imply that everybody is an economic unit. And I've sort of come to like, I don't know, scratch my head with the Austrian economic stuff here a little bit is that not like, not all cultures are the same, not all people are the same, not all norms are the same, not like, there is such a difference here that if we just look at the praxeological spreadsheet version of people, which is funny enough for communists do we might think that just making all global trade free and
all this sort of stuff is a good idea. But what you end up doing is you end up, i don't know, like turning the world into one big blob of gray gu and Starbucks, right like it just it turns everything into sameness. And I don't think that's I don't think that's a good thing.
I think I would say, we would I would check that in the concept that it's like I actually agree with your entire reasoning there, but that it's a sense of free marketism that's being unless you just mean it kind of in like the mental like people think that that's what it is.
When we're opening.
Up trade networks and all of this stuff, and that everybody just becomes like the same gou Is. I would argue that is actually again going back to the structure of our money. It's it's it's an issue with the dollar economy and the outflows of wealth from a central location that like we're becoming all American guized from a global perspective. So I do agree, But I think that a a free market actually means more walls, more like cultures that actually stick to their culture, and and where
you have communities that are strictly their communities. The scale of these things just separate and divide into a thousand rather than one hundred.
You know, I think I think it.
I think it means more explostic competition and more people literally saying, no, this is how we do things here, this is our culture, and and you know, we're literally gonna put up a fence around our neighborhood and and you know you're not allowed in. Like, if people have the choice to segregate, I think they will people like people who think and talk like them. That's not an evil thing, that's like this common sense. Even the people who say it's evil will do the exact same thing.
They just pretend that they're better than that, and so they think that the assumption of their conversation means that they don't do it, when every single time it comes up in the context is because they are doing it worse than everybody else.
Like let me, let me, let me prove this out, because you said you think that they'll do that.
No, no, no, they do do it all the day. They do exactly Martha's Martha's Vineyard.
If you these are some of the most you know, pro immigration voters in the in the country, maybe in the history of America. If you go to fucking Martha's Vineyard, don't expect to see a bunch of you know, Mexicans and Haitians and shit like that. Like, that's not what it is. So this is this is a lie. And I just want to fire back a little bit against what you were saying, Alex, is that like what you're
describing as egalitarianism. And I think that you know, all of the libertarians that I run with are not a galantarian. They fight back against that instinct very heavily. I think what you're really describing is the left right divide within libertarianism that there are left libertarians that believe in full open borders and the states of fiction and it doesn't matter.
And then there's the right libertarians that say, no, like property rights still matter, even though yes, the state is a fiction, but the state does own that land, and therefore you have to treat it with the same respect of the voters as if they are kind of a proxy for the ownership of that land, and therefore they do get to dictate who's able to cross that land,
you know. So, like, I think that that's really the divide you're describing it, and it's it's frustrating because I am constantly on the defensive against these accusations of, you know, being open borders, despite the fact that I'm not, and I've you know, made very adamant claims to the contrary
over the past couple of years. Because I also recognize that even if you do believe the states of fiction, this immigration crisis is a product of the state that you have been robbed to fund it through the NGO networks to the tune of billions of dollars a year, not to mention the fact that it's the United Nations, one of the biggest globalist enterprises in the history of
the world. That's responsible for funding and literally orchestrating the invasion from the third world to the first world, not just in America but also in the UK and all throughout Europe, probably Australia too. It's like this, this is a globalist plot using your money, extracting against your will, and then flooding you with you know, foreign invaders. There
is just no libertarian argument for that, none whatsoever. Sorry, that was just a crazy rant, but I just wanted to make all that point so.
Very true, very true. I think. I mean the I think the flooding does also go beyond just you know, sort of third world people in labor and biomass. It's also like third world pitty fucking plastic products and you know consumerism, right, And I think this is this is a you know, we can talk about like the ears
and the ord and all this kind of stuff. But to sort of tie it back to guys earlier thing, it's there were mistakes made over the last hundred years with not not only around like money printing and you know, just sort of opening up borders economically and you know,
physically speaking and all this sort of stuff. But you know, it sort of brought us to the point where America's you know, kind of like hollowed out its industrial base and its productive base, like it's it's excel like it's almost like some blend of a like a degenerate or actually what I should say is like a consumerist fucking heroin junkie like who just can't get enough of buying shit that they don't need, mixed with a degenerate gambler
who has to trade everything and like bet on everything. Right, So you know, then that's why like these days, like everything is financialized, so you kind of like when you financialize, and this is the obviously money printing has a big
role to play here, is that you print money. Everyone uses the American dollars the reserve currency, you know, they you know, you get these deficits, you get all this sort of shit, and you know, America sort of becomes the beneficiary of that in the short term, but the long term it sort of hollows itself out. And lest that be sort of like reversed in some capacity, which at the moment, honestly I look at it, I think
terifs are a fucking great way to do that. I don't see actually a more powerful tool right now to like just hit right at the heart of this excessive consumer's behavior. Because when I when I was speaking to Knute, like I challenged him and said, okay, so what's the worst case that happens here in this character is like, eah, everything gets more expensive. I'm like, okay, so what does that mean. It's like, well, you know, people are gonna pay more for the stuff that they buy from overseas.
I'm like, okay, so people become less consumers. And see, hoah, that's a bad thing. Ninety percent of the shit that people are buying in America is fucking useless anyway. You know the the they have enough energy, they have enough food locally, maybe you know that they also.
I was about to say, I want to head off.
I can already hear somebody saying that you can't eat an iPad like you're just like you're just saying everybody should be poor. And I but I agree with your art. I agree with actually the logic that you're playing here, because we're not gonna have a problem with food.
Foods that are gonna be we can grow.
We have the bread basket of America, we have better farmland than anybody in the world. Basically, like food will not be the problem. It will be the cheap crap that's easy to ship from overseas and from China. Like it's just a bunch of it is literally just a bunch of like, Oh, we have too much money, and we're the world reserve currency, so we have so there are foreign premiums basically on the dollar, and so we
can just buy all this cheap crap. Every time I need something to just pop up on Amazon, just just order it here the next day.
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join crowdhealth dot com code lockdown. This is an interesting argument, though, and I'd like to actually basically take it from Alex and ask you it directly, guy, because basically what he's describing is forced austerity, and like libertarians broadly oppose force, so like we broadly opposed this this entire framework. But I do agree toy, yeah, but we do agree with all yeah exactly. So, so like, how do you have a better option? He said, I can't think of a
better option, can you? And I think both of us would instantly argue, well, you probably have to go back to sound money and the like.
We could listen to things.
No going to the idea of like we've poisoned our liver and we're taking a pharmaceutical. Is that like, well, whatever problem we're living with, it's probably better to cover up the symptom. But the idea is fix the liver. But that means in the FED. And if we're not gonna end the FED, then maybe tariff's balance that out.
You know, it is something that would they would hit Wall Street worse than it hits Main Street because it's it's not critical things that are being and and when you're looking at the reverse is the foreign premium on our money's specifically something that benefits Wall Street and Washington, DC and destroys the middle class and working classes in
the manufacturing base. So like in the in the context of an artificial imbalance that has done harm, this would technically, I think from an economic game theory perspective, this would be an artificial harm that swung it back in the other way. So I don't think it's entirely a terrible idea, but I don't think it's still not a solution.
You know, it's just the whole thing is just a mess.
Let me let me pull on that thread a little bit further. So the the you poison your liver. I don't think right now, fixing the environment and taking the you know, natural approach of stop poisoning liver is going to save you because I think the patient is terminal and they need they need, seriously, they need something.
There's a potential argument there, I'm not.
I'm telling you it's like this is actually you need the pharmaceutical to save your life and kind of come out of the terminal spin and then start living healthy again in kind of the way that you know, let's
say cancer has got your ass. And as much as we can sit here and bag out like chemotherapy is bad and all this sort of shit, chemotherapy actually does save people and give them enough of a chance to, like, so you kill the fucking cancer and then go and sort out your life and sort out the ship that brought the cancer on in the first place. And the necessity of that is as a result of America having played its cards wrong for the last fifty years and probably longer.
Right.
So I think it's at that point where the you know, because because the ultimate as we've said, the ultimate solution here is have a hard money and all this stuff. But unfortunately we don't have that choice. As much as we fucking want to Bitcoin is just not ready yet. And as much as we want to end the FED, that's a fucking much bigger problem you end the FED.
Like people are talking about, oh my god, my life's coming to an end, twenty percent down on the stock market, and the FED tomorrow by the STOCKMUK get's going down. Motherfucker is gonna be jumping out of buildings and shit straight away. So like this is like seems to me the best.
Let me, let me give an analogy for the audience, because I think this will help explain it. Libertarians have this tendency to just say like, yeah, shit's all fucked, Like we all agree shit's all fucked, right, but but the Libertarians have a tendency to go, well, the issue is is that you drank for the past eighty years,
you know, and you shouldn't have done that. And then and then Alex is like, okay, but like now their liver is failing and they need a transfusion or they need this, or they need that, and the Libertarians are like, you shouldn't have fucking drank.
Yeah, pretty well, you shouldn't have fucking drank.
Yeah, And it's like it's like, yeah, you're right, but like, okay, and now what And I think that's that's the question of now what? And and the answer of like a transplant, which is what Guy and I are prescribing, isn't on offer. You don't have the transplant offer on hand, So now what? And you're basically saying, well, chemo transfusions, this that, and yeah, So I just wanted to give an analogy to like understand a lot of people have frustrations that's.
A relationship, Like I don't see that as an unrepresentative of the situation.
Yeah, I think there's that. Let me let me finish what I was saying before in terms of like the worst case and worst CAAs and best case. The worst case, as I described earlier, is like oh shit, okay, fucking iPads cost ten thousand dollars now apparently, which fy for anyone who thinks that shit, they're fucking morons because Apple has a big margin, and guess where that margin is
going to Wall Street. So like worst worst, worst, worst, worst case here is like Apple loses some margin and they will sell the phones at the same fucking rate, right, And the best case here, the best case scenario here that could happen is that you get some austerity. You you know, we we limit some of the mindless, stupid consumerism.
In fact, Bitcoin is talk about this when when we talk about deflationary money, we say the bar will be raised higher as to what sort of products and services we've purchased.
So this this went to a sound money standard, this would actually happen, like some kind of similar consequence would be exactly yeah, sorry, exactly.
So so this is a way for us to get that before the sound money is ready, right, because it's not ready. It's still baking, it's still in the oven. So you get that. The best case scenario actually, and this is very very important for America in my opinion, is that you open the opportunity. Like if we are
going to argue that humans react to incentives. By doing this and by let's say Trump also follows through with abolishing you know, internal regulations and internal taxation regimes and everything. If he does that, bro, he fucking opens up the innovative capacity city of his own people and gives them an advantage. And it's not the consumers. He gives the
producers an advantage. Because then if you're a producer, and you're thinking about American You're like, oh, fucking just build here, Oh innovate here, I'll create he So the best case scenario is that you you divert, you create a problem. Yes, things go up in price, but you Again, the Austrian argument is that praxiologically speaking people will adapt to an incentive,
and the incentive here changes. And this isn't like I said at the beginning, this isn't El Salvador with five million people where the average IQ is sixty, like you're talking about America with very high average IQ, the most innovative part of the fucking world. I don't care like the concept of a modern entrepreneur comes from America. I'm not even American, and I'm here kissing both of your asses, like Americans are the.
Most as you should be.
Seriously, you motherfuckers are Like all of this shit we're talking on microphone phones and internet and all this sort of shit came from America. If America can't fucking figure out how to build shit themselves, we've got a bigger problem. So and honestly, if we continue down this path for another five or ten years, I think all the people who know how to do anything. They're gonna fucking die anyway, or they're gonna be broken all this sort of shit,
so then America will be up shit creek. So I feel like this is such a necessary like dirty medicine that we got to take, and particularly for America because it also like this is again, you know, I'm a bit of a Trump fanboy, I think, because I just love the fact that this guy just comes in and just like literally just shakes a bunch of shit and everyone fucking loses their mind.
It is entertaining, It is entertaining.
It is so good. It is the troll of the century. But he comes in shakes a bunch of shit up by by creating an advantage for America and sort of like moving America towards our nation first, he's actually going to force other nations to do the same for themselves,
and it's gonna create more of a multipolar world. It's going to create these what we discussed earlier guy about like having you know, nations kind of respect their own enclaves a little bit further and be like, you know what, we're going to take care of ourns so we get more walls, we get more real diversity, people giving a shit about themselves first more than anything else. In spite of Trump. That's the whole fucking beauty of this thing.
He is the reason they're like, oh, yeah, you know what, fuck you, We're also going to be more nationalists. It's like, yes, that's true.
I got to point this out because just yesterday there was this viral video in Canada where the strawberries from US production were half the cost of the Canadian produced strawberries, and the Canadian produced strawberries were gone and the US produced strawberries which were cheaper. They were all still sitting there because the Canadians are so you know, enraged and now embracing nationalism that they are buying Canadian produced goods.
And I just thought that was so that this is such a perfect example of what you're describing, is that these are like the ultimate globalist, open border psychopaths, and they're like, fuck that, we're all about Canadian production. We're national as hard as hell. It's so what you just said is so true.
He's fucking fried all their brains. And that's why I love it, because it's like it's it's literally deforming them in real in real time and they don't know what the fuck to do with themselves. And the result of all of this, honestly, I think, takes us to a bitcoin standard much faster, because it's gonna start getting nation states,
it's gonna start getting everybody thinking about themselves more. And while you're thinking about yourself, and while you're thinking about how do I get back at the US and the US dollar and everything like that, guess what alternative there exists? Oh wait a minute, this think called bitcoin. You know what? We should start stacking some of that shit because this asshole, fucking Trump is doing it so like it literally by getting the whole fucking global economy and then playing like
he is a muster. Like people think he's a chess play He's not. He's a fucking poker player. The guy's are brilliant at like he's he sits down, he sees the hand that America has been dealt, which, as I described earlier, three hundred and fifty million people, lodgest land, mass innovation, it's got all the fucking money, it's the consumer base of the world. Like, it's got all of that, and he's actually playing it hot and he's got all
He's got the fucking chips. So he's now like going all in every single time, and motherfucker is a folding left, right and center, Like that's the way the hand needs to be played.
I just I got I gotta interject because my episode that aired just a few hours ago, at which people will watch that and then they'll watch this. The exact analogy I made is that is that in poker, you
have to know who has the chips, who has the cards. Basically, Trump sitting down to the table with a trillion dollars of chips and everybody else is sitting down with a couple thousand, and he's just like all in every hand, all in every hand, and he can lose, He can afford to lose hands for fucking days because he's just got such an advantageous position.
Totally, totally, and this is this is this is the tragedy of what's happened with America, particularly the last twenty years, as the sort of the democratic left and the and the retard neo cons sort of have been running the show, is that they've like they've played the hand so fucking poorly, they've played it like retards, that they've weakened every single element of the US, and now who's paying for it?
It's main street because these idiots are like, oh, fuck, all right, let's just import third worlders, let's just fucking import cheap goods, and let's print a bunch of fucking money, and let's just burn this bitch while we still can. We got five years left. Let's do it from kind of like literally by two millimeters. And this is the like I end this essay on this, it's like trust
the fucking plan. Like God, somehow, you know, blew the bullet like two millimeters and like put us in an ultimate dimension like we should have been, you know, cloud, we should have been claud Schwab eating bugs like all this sort of shit by now and somehow, like fucking action of a microsecond looking at some chicks tits on the other side, whatever it was doing, like missed the god damn fucking bullet and Hulia playing Poka on the world stage, and it's poetic nationalism.
It's even more poetic.
He was looking at it at a chart of immigration, of a legal immigration, so he got yeah, I mean that's that's literally true. That's what he was looking at was when he turned his head to look at that chart, and the bullet grazed is here as a consequence of that. So that's the only reason he's alive is because he's against immigration. So that tells you something. I guess if you believe in God, my goodness.
Dude, I uh ah.
I have such a hard time letting myself get any hope about this because it seems ridiculous. But one of the things you actually started out with that that line of thinking was that if you could balance, if you could swap it with a different if you could push from internal taxation to external tax taxation, basically make a trade, and then openly talking about the idea of getting the getting rid of the income tax. I will take one hundred percent tariffs everywhere if you get rid of the
fucking income tax. The income tax is so horrifically poisonous. It is tariffs all day over.
The income tax.
My problem is that I think we have tariffs and the income tax at the end of this. So I have and I am not gonna let myself get my hopes up there now. I will say, there is a tiny, tiny little bit of optimistic guy like that really wants this to happen and thinks and goes and looks at the map and sees Gulf of America and thinks.
Maybe it actually can happen.
But I just it's really hard to go there. I'm older than I used to be.
Let's just let's just I mean, instead of just dealing with our own jaded nature, which is justifiable I might have, let's just do it on math. How the fuck do you maintain the federal spending off of a tariff based UH income for the federal government? Like, I don't think you can do it. I mean, they're they're spending six to seven trillion annually. I do not think based off.
Cut too much.
Yeah, you have to, you'd have to cut.
You'd have to cut federal spending and then and then simultaneously, just to kind of pour water on Svensky here, you know, Trump pushed the The only reason the Continuing Resolution got pushed through, which continued the spending levels of the Biden administration, was because Trump demanded it, and he also called for Thomas Massey to be primary because Massey was like, I'm not going to continue the spending of the Biden administration.
This is bankrupting us.
So there's there's really significant mixed messages. Now I will I will try and give Trump his due and say, look, maybe his plan is I need to have the same level of spending me because I'm I'm making dramatic swings here and I can't. I can't deal with uh, you know, layoff mass layoffs of federal employees, all of the economic damage that that creates, plus this tariff battle, which is going to create a downward pressure on the stock market, plus this, plus that, plus this, plus that. So I
need this cushion for the next ten months. And I do intend to actually cut federal spending dramatically and migrate away from the income text to a tariff based income. Like but these are all such dramatic swings. It's just like you have to be so optimistic to think that all these things are going to happen, and it sounds as if you are.
I think there's optimism, and there's also patients. I think it's very like we have been so out our relationship to time has been so warped over the last five years, like that we've been locked inside and now we're all on social media and everything, like, you know, I think we forget that Trump's been in power for like what less than three months. That's not a lot of time. Like,
it's literally not a lot of time. And these sorts of changes, like to bring in tariffs to figure out like, first of all, you've got to play chicken with everyone. You've got to figure out who's your ally, who's not your ally. You've got to like go and shake up things first, right before you decide who you actually will apply tariffs to, like who is actually a bad actor, who is who is an adversary, and who is an ally? And I think this first stage is figuring that out.
And you know, you figure out, Okay, fucking China my adversary or not, because I can guarantee you China as an adversary and they care more about China than they care about America, you know, hands down. So you kind of figure that shit out first. Then you know where you actually stand with the tariff thing. And then you can actually figure out, Okay, are we going to bring money in from tariffs or not? Then what do we do?
Then you can move to the next stage, which is figuring out what to do with the internal taxation and then that maybe that is looks like abolishing the income tax, or maybe that looks like some sort of lowering of the income tax and making it ten percent across the board.
I don't know what the you know, the machinations there are, but it's a fucking giant job, like and it sort of has to be taken in stages and honestly to turn around a shit storm the size of what the US has become, which has so many entrenched powers that don't want to see this happen, whether it's Wall Street, whether it's the central banks, whether it's the fucking deep
state and all this sort of shit. To try and like navigate all of that and to do it in like six months, which is what every libertarian wants it to happen, it's fucking fantasy land. Like if he after four years able to sort this shit out and drop the income tax or you know, like like if that was the one thing he did in the four years
alongside releasing Ross, this would be a massive win. But like I think, you know, he at least from what I've seen now, like the way he's approached this versus his first term is night and day like that, there's not even you know, the first term he sort of came in. I sort of envisioned as like a as an entrepreneur who's used to you run a business, you
tell people what to do, and shit gets done. He comes into this sort of swamp, is like, I know what we're doing, tells people something, and then the opposite fucking happens and people backstating and all this sort of shit, and then he gets fucking thrown out out of things. So he's sort of come back this time with better team, better understanding of what to do, and taking like a
blitzkrieg approach, which I think is absolutely necessary. And you know, sure, I am definitely more optimistic, but I'm also forcing myself to be a little bit more patient in these things, recognizing that this is going to take some time. Like the most important thing is he's actually opened up the discussion about abolishing the income tax that spread, Let that
seed fucking spread. People are gonna at some point normalize that in the same way as we started normalizing the discussion about let's change the fucking immigration laws, let's change this,
let's change that. We've started talking about all these things which were complete taboo, like two years ago, no fucking body other than three libertarians, you know, us, three idiots on this call, we're talking about abolishing the income tax, like fucking nobody now normal people are talking about, shit, we could maybe abolished income.
Tax, like President Trump said it on Joe Rogan. I mean, it's the biggest platform that you can possibly say that message. Believe me, I am I this was I voted for Trump, so I was I was persuaded that there's there was at least a you know, a puncher's chance going with this guy, that that he could could he could create, you know, dramatic changes that are to our benefit. Here's the thing, like if he wants to buy additional patients from people like me, which you know he doesn't have
to if he doesn't want to. But here's here's how you get me. Trump, give me the fucking Epstein client.
List, give me that.
Start start to actually demonstrate that you're prosecuting some of the most corrupt, evil people. How about you, how about you actually open up investigations in the FAUCI because you've said that the pardons were signed with auto pen and therefore,
blah blah blah. Why is RFK talking about anti semitism when he ought to be talking about the bioweapon that you that was funded by you know your guy, uh, like, these are these are these are conflicts in the messaging that that give me pause as his legitimacy.
They are they are. I have no response to that other than these things are hard and complicated, and I guess it's a it's a game of I can imagine the people that are behind these things also carry a little, you know, quite a lot of power and quite a lot of influence, and maybe you need to build up a certain amount of power or momentum or something before you can go and steamroll someone. So it's like a course, yeah, yeah, you don't know how much of that stuff.
And yeah, my steelman is I completely agree. I am in Clint's camp for how I feel about all of that stuff. But my steelman one I'm arguing with myself about it is if they're actually if they actually want to take a case to court and they want to win, they want to smash it, especially when it comes to the country divers around all of this stuff.
They want to absolutely.
Win, like not like a sort of win a you are so lost, like embarrassing.
I think that the and that would take time.
Yeah, no, and I'm with you on that.
I think that the key thing to to kind of reframe people's mentality is, like they say, like, if you come at the king, you best not miss. A lot of people think Trump's the king. I don't think Trump's the king, like not in this fight. And I think like there's a lot of other you know, equally or even more powerful people that you may not even know the name of, that actually do run shit in a way that's extraordinarily powerful. And he's up against a whole
bunch of them. Assuming, assuming that our best impressions of Trump are legitimate, that he's actually fighting on our behalf, well, he's up against the most you know, deeply entrenched powers interests that have ever existed. I mean like really really
big time stuff. And the truth is he's probably in bed with some of the deeply entrenched powerful interest too, because the only way you have a chance of winning this fight is you have to take you have to take some entrenched powerful interests and wage war with their assets and their their media influence operations and everything else, because you can't just go after these people, uh, you know, full full speed without allies. So to point to add to your claim here, Alex, is that like what what
he did yesterday was he dropped the tear. He said, do not do not respond to my tariffs. No reciproc reciprocity. Who did he get reciprocity from? Well, China was the only one that actually increased above what we increased, like or or I think it was.
I think it was above.
And then he fired back at one hundred and four percent, which is fucking insane.
But but the.
Other the other nations that also responded were Canada, the EU, and I think Mexico. So those are the four nations. So your point about like I have to figure out who my allies are, Well, he just loyalty tested the whole world and he just found out Canada, Mexico, the EU, and China those are the those are the four big blocks that are actually against us. So now he can actually reorient his tactics.
I just wanted to point that out.
It's very true. I think these games, these games are very complex, and you know he's got a very I mean, the approach is both hilarious and it's very effective, which is come in raging Bull, shake everything up, play all fucking in like play play poker heart, which is what we were basically saying before and basically just like dislodge because I think this is also the swamp metaphor or
you know, the the entrenched, the word entrenched. That metaphor here is very important, is that things are so entrenched the only way to un entrench them is to shake shit up by doing stuff that seems on surface extremely extreme, which this is like that there was a funny mean that's that's in the essay that I that I just published, which it's kind of like leftists trying to make fun of of the Trump supporters and the MAGA where it's like, you know, he says, I'm adding tariffs, and then the
it's got like a maga MPC saying oh, this will create jobs, and it's like I'm pausing tariffs, and it's like, oh, it's out of the deal. I'm adding tariffs. Oh it's going to raise jobs. I'm pausing tariffs. It's the out of the deal. So it's like making fun of like
the MAGA people. But to some degree that's true of everybody because as much as the nature of poker is that there's there's an element of luck and there's an element of chaos in it as well, So you know people come in that are good players, and we can sit here and pontificate all the all we want about what's happening, but we actually don't know how many of
this is going to play out. But the fact that it is playing out, in my opinion, is a very good thing, because you need to shake up the like the situation has become stale, like it became bad game.
I think it's better than where status quo is taking us. I don't make people realize how close to a cliff we were, and I don't I still think we're kind of headed in the direction of the cliff, but the course is doing this now, so the we're not We're not straight gas on.
The pedal towards that direction.
There is movement, which if we ever hope that a turn is going to be in our future, we need to not be barreling straight down in one direction. So I kind of agree that just causing chaos so that people have to work out, like actually think about how anything works and reconsider why we are making decisions. Causing chaos is a better alternative because it forces that it forces a perspective on what's going on.
But I also think that the key thing here is that you can't. And I keep telling Hiss this because when the market was tanking, a lot of them were celebrating saying these, Look, we never were able to fucking afford a house. I had to work three jobs. I'm I'm struggling to stay alive. I don't have a fucking wife, I don't have kids, no picket fence, no future, no pension, no no this that So fuck you, you boomer, piece
of shit, you ruin my life. I'm like, there's this, there's this vengeance element within the populist maga, particularly the zoomer and millennial class that I like, I'm very sympathetic to. Like I totally understand the anger. So let me be very clear about that. But also that energy is not productive like that is that is a that is a just like basically, cut off your nose despite your face,
destroy everything because I have nothing type of mentality. That is a that is a kind of a communist revolution as opposed to a liberty oriented revolution. And I'm I'm very nervous about how that energy is funneled. And I think that Trump coming in as a chaos agent and just shaking shit up then not leading to you know, productive gains and and increased industrial capacity. But like, if he doesn't do that, well, then he's just a chaos agent alongside his his supporters who want to watch the
world burn. Like I want to save this country, you know, So I just hope that I hope that he has a vision. I hope he has a plan, and I hope he can deliver on it, and I hope it's to the benefit of you know, this country, to his supporters, everybody. And it's just I just don't want to I don't want to green light chaos for the sake of chaos, is what I'm saying.
Yeah, let me let me let me riff on that for a second, because I think that's you make a very good point there about the the both the the energy where some of that stuff comes from, and then the chaos. So it's very easy in a world where we're sort of desensitized with with social media and like wars happen on our phone these days, and you know,
we're all sort of like, you know, really desensidized. The only time we're really affected is if our portfolios go down and everyone fucking freaks the hell out because you know, we lost ten grand or twenty grand or whatever. Right, So the reality of the fact is the world is at war, and I think this is very easy to forget. There are like I mean, we got a war on Twitter for Fox's sake, but you know, there's like there's
there's wars happening at many, many different levels. And in my opinion, modern warfare is waged in a in a political and economic sort of frame. These days. It's not as kinetic as it used to be. And I think we should be glad about this.
Because yes, it's it's.
Network based, yes, or all that. But I guess where I'm going with this is one Trump is a chaoe agent. Yes, I think he's a very measured chose agent as we've described, like there's probably other men that could have been taken. But I think this the way he's approached the tariffs, the way he's like testing people, the way he's playing and everything, I think is actually very intelligent chaos creations.
So there's definitely evidence to that. But for me, the most important war, that the thing that we are fighting for in the world today more than anything else for me, is the is the spirit of the West. And the spirit of the West has been under attack by globalists, by fucking adversaries of all kinds, like the trader merchant I shouldn't call it the merchant class, the trader parasite
money change of class. Right, That class, whoever the fuck that is, has been looking to destroy the productive spirit and soul of the West in any way that it can, weaponizing everything from Chinese to fucking Indians, the central banks to everything. Right, and if that war can be fought without dropping fucking bombs and fought in a non ca manna through economic means, that is the win of fucking wins in the history of humanity. Like and this is where again, like I, I mean.
That's what we talk about with where bitcoin is taking this right, is that it limits theet It actually puts costs in the right place, which means that everything comes back to in economic war as controlling where the costs go. And if you can actually separate the medium from the politics. And I think this is a lot of what we.
Have going on.
Why I mentioned networks is I think what we're seeing is there's an identity problem and there is a political problem. So you're seeing political networks fight each other with their monetary walls. But then you're also seeing this cultural separation because internet networks are fighting television networks like you're you're seeing literally a build up of narrative and worldview that is separate depending on where you like, which network is
your dominant network. And so you have kind of like this this up up like top to bottom network battles because we have communication platforms and communication networks that never existed before, and we can build our own opinion and then yell up at the top. And then the political networks are fighting each other at the exact same time. And the one of the big monetary networks right now is kind of in in an unstable position.
Is it about to shrink heavily? Is it about to grow? You know?
So, I mean, like you said, there's war, is I think we have war at every level because everything is nothing is static anymore. Nothing is untouched now from the Internet, from the digital age, from the AI age, from the bitcoin age, like every layer right now is in What the hell is gonna happen in ten years? Because nothing is stable anymore.
But the question is can can all of these kind of soft power wars and some of it's kinetic obviously Israel Palestine, Russia, Ukraine. Like, there's a lot of people dying, so I don't want to downplay some degree.
There's gotta be kinetic, you know, from.
But but but can we keep it can we keep it connectic to the point that it's not existential? And that's that's the question that I have, is like, this is why I probably actually not probably definitely the biggest reason I voted for Trump is because he was the only guy that was on offer that was like, I'm going to negotiate peace with Russia. And I was like, yeah, the nuclear war, yeah, exactly, unbelievable, an unpopular opinion. Well
from a libertarian camp. They were furious with me because I was there like choosing the better of two evils, blah blah blah. I still get you evil. It's like, dude, if we all die, none of this fucking matters, Okay, So like I'm.
Gonna the the enemy of progress Like that kind of retardation drives me crazy. Yeah, but I did.
I did want to point out one other thing, because you're talking about the the you know, different wars at all these different levels, and how it's information war, it's internet war, it's communication war, it's network war, like the other thing that people need to be privy to. And this is kind of a tangent, so you don't feel like you need to, you know, add on to this
particular and just take it wherever you want afterwards. But like there's big controversy yesterday because Tim Poole met with net Yahoo in private, kind of in private, and like there are attempts to infiltrate the independent media space, buy us out. Who knows, blackmail us. I don't know what the fuck's next, but like as our influence increases, it's it's only gonna get more aggressive, and as as the circumstances become more existential for the powers to be, like
they're going to take the gloves off. And I think that the the civil litigation against Alex Jones. I think that the rape charges that seem like bs but maybe they're not. I don't know, with Russell brand Tate Brothers shit like that. Like there's there's gonna be increasingly hard power to the point that like you could see assassinations of independent you know, communicators that have some of these biggest audience is like like Rogan for instance, like he's
really in danger and I don't know that people. People will probably laugh me off at saying this, but like the fact that he has on you know, the Dave Smith's of the world and all these other dissident people to talk to ten to fifteen million people is so damaging. It's so fucking damaging to the establishment that like there's just no way that they would not prefer this guy
not to be around anymore. So sorry, that was just a random tangent, but I just I just want people to be aware, like if you are in this space with us, like they're going to be trying to undermine you. They're going to be trying to buy you out, to blackmail, to do all these things. So it's going to take like really principled, high character people to survive and thrive in this world. Sorry for the random tangent.
That and with a bit of luck, if they've got tariffs to worry about, then takes the heat off hus there you go, it's like cover. But I mean, look, my yeah, I get that. I'm not gonna riff anymore on that because I think that the point is the point that you've made, and that is that is part of the kind of warfare that we have entered. And I mean, my whole book that I just wrote, and that guy I just read is you know, talks about this.
Like it opens the opening quote is it's better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war. And that's like, my book has a lot about war in there. And it's not because I think that we need to go and start stabbing each other and all this sort of stuff. That's not like, I'm not a warmonger, And I think.
He says that explicitly in the book exactly chapter four.
The you know, people sort of sometimes get me wrong there. They're like, oh, you know, and you just want to see people get a war and all this sort of stuff. It's it's not the case. I think the people who are most appreciative of the virtues of war are the ones who are least woar going to war because they know that they've actually been exposed to the damage and to the to the bloodshed that it can create. And that's why most of the time when you see warmongers,
they're the people who will not fucking bleed. They're the ones who actually find a way to profit from it. So they just want a bunch of fucking people to go and die for them and for me. Once again, I really credit what Trump is doing here is like in World War Two, you know, there was a kinetic war that was an attempt to fight for the soul of the West, right, And I'm not going to go into what happened there, but you know, something strange happened.
Now you know the soul of the West is, you know, there is an attempt to bury it again, and it could well turn into a kinetic war or it could
be an economic war. And I think this is the best way to wage modern warfare, honestly, Like, if the result of this war is that we have to pay five hundred dollars extra for a fucking iPhone or whatever the case is, beautiful, well like that that is an excellent outcome if the goal here is to preserve the ethnos, the culture of the West, the people of the West,
and start to rebuild the local domestic economy. As I sort of mentioned before, like there's a in the essay, I've got this analogy about building a cathedral, right, and you know Europe is full of these beautiful cathedrals that made absolutely no fucking economic sense to build like if if an accountant or economists sat there and looked at it and be like, why the fuck would you build
this thing? It wasn't economic. It was about expressing the beauty and the grandeur of what the West represented, the values, you know that, the spirit of its people. And I think there comes a point in a society when it needs to like pure, like measuring everything off the back of pure economics and making that you're one and only rationale.
You will trade culture, nuance, like beauty. You will trade a bunch of that stuff because oftentimes doing what is economically expedient, like for profit or for bottom line or for margin. And this has taken this has been very hard for me to come to terms with being an Austrian economist and libertarian for so long. But sometimes you do that and you turn your neighborhood into fucking lego land instead of you know, the center of Milan where
you've got this beautiful cathedral and stuff like that. Sometimes the economically expedient thing is not the right thing to do. It is the right thing to do to take your money and to invest it in creating something beautiful or creating you know, doing something for your people like it's a it's a reinvestment in yourself. And that's actually a lower time preference behavior because you're thinking, coming back to the cathedral, you're building the cathedral for the people of
the future three hundred years from now. You're going to fucking die well before the cathedral is built. But you're doing it not for economic reasons, but for a higher spiritual you know reason, whatever, whatever you want to sort of frame that as. And I think for you know, libertarianism, Austrian economics, free markets, all these sort of principles don't just appear in a vacuum, you know. They came out of the West. They came out of the high period
of Europe and America for a reason. And if we destroy Europe and America for the goal of GDP go up and free fucking markets tomorrow, the future generations won't have a fucking free market. If you make America India, for example, there is no fucking free market. Libertarianism or any of that sort of shit is not going to work there. So to me, this is very important. I think this is a price, it's an economic price to be paid. And then this is how I view this
whole thing. At the moment, there's an economic price we made. There is going to be things that seem economically insane to be done, but that will strengthen the roots and the soul and the productive base of America, and it's people which will pay dividends five, six, ten generations from now when America is still America and hasn't become like Canada's become fucking India at the moment. So so that that to me is very important. So I kind of want to throw that up.
I know, I think that's a very fair argument, and it's one that I've made, or it mirrors my own when it comes to immigration. You know, like a lot of libertarians still are right or die open borders, and I'm just like, look, guys, we are being conquered on
two fronts. Ideologically, you have Academia, which is spitting out Marxists as fast as it possibly can, and then you have immigrants that come in, which, yes, some of them are very much still with the ethos of Americanism and freedom and free markets and everything else, but the majority are not. So how are you going to how are you going to expect to have America still if you have this this dual pronged attack that is converting Americans into Marxists and also bringing in uh you know, non
American uh you know thinkers. And it's just like you're not going to win. You're not gonna win that fight. So you got to you got to pick and choose how you're gonna take this battle. And I'm curious what you think, guy.
Yeah, I think the whole libertarian means completely open borders take is making the same logical mistake as the Because you have the freedom to speak, you're not allowed to say anything wrong, but you're not allowed to like be mad about somebody's opinion or say that they're stupid, you know, like you're supposed to just like like if I think weed should be legal, that means I have to like weed, you know, like or I have to like cocaine because I don't think you should be put in a cage
about it. Like that, I think is the whole the logical excuse me, the logical disconnect when it comes to immigration for libertarians is that like the.
Fact that we think that.
Like there should be a degree of freedom of human movement doesn't mean that I don't own my property and I can't put a fence around it, and that we can't own this this area together, and we can side whether or not we want to put a fence around that, you know, like it's it's not they are not exactly
the same thing, and cultures are a thing. And I don't actually have not had the interesting point that you bring up Swetsky is about like, as an Austrian or Austrian leaning, you kind of had an issue when it came to the separation of economics versus culture or doing things that are not economic, And I think that's actually
a conflation of two things. That's the difference between economics the science and economizing the verb is that is that the science or the idea of understanding the organics of free markets is actually about setting up stable rule systems for property and for money so that the human values
can be the focus. Because only if the rules are not being played with, Just like if you can play the ref and you can change the rules of football in the middle of football, you're not playing football anymore. You literally you're literally vying to see which ref can give free points to the other team because their shirts are blue and the sun is glaring, and so like they get a free touchdown like that becomes the game.
So if you have a hard set of rules for the game, and you have a hard set of this is exactly what the referee has to adhere to, and that is strong. Now you're playing football, and the team that wins is the team that plays a beautiful game of football. That is what free markets do is that they open up the fact that we can now think about what we value as humans rather than fight over who gets to control the thing that prints more points. And then we become this society of like more point
is better, and that's it. That's all it is. We're trading, we're speculating. Only fans pays more than a a mom.
You know, like I mean this argument. Yeah, I mean this argument. I know I've been making the exact same people.
I just want to drop a shout out because he brought up his book. I absolutely love this book and the whole stuff about war is way more nuanced than I had thought. And it has been I have not done nothing but think about it, like I've I've literally walked away from the book and then been thinking about it and then it come back to try to like record a little a little bit of the book. And I don't completely agree with it, but it's a it's
a fascinating read. I'm I'm I'm really, I'm really loving if Fatsky you killed it with this one.
I appreciate it, man, I appreciate it. I think I want to so I agree with what you said about the economizing and you know, economics and and I get that. Where I was sort of mentioning before, is you need a he needs some sort of crucible or structure or framework. Two. You know, you need something to allow for that game to be played right and to be played as best
as possible. And I think my hypothesis here is that there's a reason why the culture of early America and you know, High Europe and all this sort of stuff fostered that versus why the culture of and again, you know, it sounds like I'm picking on Africa, China and all this sort of stuff here, but they have different cultures.
They didn't foster that. It's very different. And the reality of the fact is that, you know, what sort of Clint said earlier is that you know, I mean, immigration is one issue here, and whether it's legal or illegal immigration, both of them are a challenge because you when you start to change the numbers of people and the voters and who has power and all this sort of stuff, and you start to mix all the interests, you get a situation where the framework or that crucible that enables
you to have free market economics, particularly locally. I think free market economics has to happen within some sort of protected bound you you start to undermine that. So so I think that's that's one thing I want to I want to say that. Secondly, is as much as we want to believe that every single territory can just trade with each other and be friendly and all of that sort of stuff, I think it's it's naive because there are adversaries, like at the at the I mean, Americans
fight against Americans, let alone Americans against whatever right. So so every that the adversaries at multiple levels, and trade is not just a tool for making money, but trade is a tool for you know, competing with that who is your adversary. And this is where I sort of have come to reconcile tariffs in some capacities. It's not
as simple as taxation is death. Tarists are bad, you know, that's a very simplistic view, it's almost an NPC view because you might have someone who is an adversary and let's just use China in this example, is like kind of loves the fact that they can sell shit to America, sell useless shit and actually pull in money from America, strengthen their industrial base and plan for a thousand years, while America is sort of like being a junkie and
you know, just like consuming shit they don't need, like
they fucking love that. And if you can sort of wake up from that and realize that you're actually the buyer, so you actually provide the demand, and you actually can potentially buy from family instead of the you know, the stranger or the adversary down the road, you might even though it's economically you know, I guess incorrect in the beginning because it costs more and all this sort of stuff, like, you might do that because the reality to the fact
that of the world is that there are adversaries, and at the geopolitical level, he is one preference.
This is a time difference argument. Yes, you're essentially saying that, yeah, sure you can get the cheaper iPad today, but what about tomorrow? You know, what about ten years from now? What does your country look like like. It's a very interesting debate. And I just wanted to point out because I lit Gillespie on fire for this tweet, but he and this ties in perfectly to what you guys were talking about. Nick Lesbie posts this chart of I guess
his stock. I don't even know. There's no fucking X and Y axis, so I don't know how much it's down. But he says, I'm sixty one and over the past two months, my four oh one K has lost twenty five percent of its value. I'm always happy to contribute to the greater but good, but can someone please explain to me how this helps anyone? And it's just like, first off, you're sixty one, Why are you still in growth stocks?
Why are you.
Taking a full maxical hit of twenty five percent loss as you're like on the cusp of retirement.
That's fucking bizarre.
Now, on top of that, you're a libertarian who has advocated and strongly railed against the terif regime, which, by the way, Trump campaigned on for the past fucking year and basically his entire life. That he was going to roll this out, you should have known that the market was going to get hit. Why didn't you edge, Why didn't you go to money markets? Why didn't you fucking change your risk exposure? You didn't do any of that. You have no fucking sense of personal responsibility in any
of this. You're just a fucking like a total NPC. All of my life savings is just invest in this market, and all of your you know, lectures that you give to the world is that you understand this shit better than anybody, and this is why you're able to advise. Well, clearly you're not living that way. So I don't fucking take you seriously anymore. Sorry for like this crazy rant, but like I just I just really think that it's like reprehensible to just post that chart and just cry.
It's like, yeah, man, when I see it, the fuff. Yeah, when I see this stuff, I want to go down another eighty percent, because like when I see people who's like entire economic or entire financial, I should say philosophy is that shit should just should just go up into the fucking riot, Like I just want to see it all fucking like see you later, just like burn it to the fucking ground, because.
Every single libertarian knows that this market is a house of cards that it's billed off bullshit, so like when it drops, you can't act surprised or hurt or caught off guard, like.
What are you doing? So I don't know.
I just think it really was indicative of kind of the blue pilled libertarian mindset where like they they read the books, they lecture, well, they give you the one on one answers to everything, but they live like fucking idiots, like they're not actually applying our worldview to anything. Because if you are, that didn't happen to you.
Sorry, that's it. That's all I got to say about it.
Fuck you, Nickola.
I think that's like a thousand percent fair point on that, And it seems like really like when it comes to the whole stock stuff, is that like if we ever took like if you if you move to a sound money standard, that's what's going to happen, like the financial and stock market exactly. Dude, he's so bloated, like it would fall by probably sixty percent in capitalist that is applicated like applied towards that system, like it's so bloated,
like normal people wouldn't invest in it. But it would make no sense because it's not going to just go up seven percent every single year.
But guess because the money.
Printer Nick Nick and company would still advocate for ending the FED and they would expect that, I mean.
The stock market would go up somehow.
Yeah, I mean, I I don't know. I don't know.
But my point is like you just cannot base your analysis off of number go up, number go down like this is. This is much more complicated, and any libertarian worth anything understands that. And I think that that was my big frustration with it. It's just such a basic, bitch, whiny, total lack of personal responsibility, mentality, And it's like no one should listen to you after that, Like you shouldn't be taken seriously if that's your fucking world view and you knew this was coming and you just.
Kept long all the way long, you lost twenty five percent. Jesus Christ. Sorry, I gotta stop ranting about this guy. I don't know why that bothers me so much, but it really does.
I will tell you everything about like my faith or expectations with this. I will say, if there's a subset of things that if you wanted the US to basically take every chip on the table. You did the tariffs, you got rid of the income tax, you supported stable coins with no KYC, and you bought bitcoin, and you went hard into having a domestic tech sector, like really fleshing that out and manufacture and moving manufacturing on board.
The US would have all of the every one of the chips, like if they actually do that, Like, I don't think getting rid of the income tax would be such like like a multi generation generational profound unlock.
Oh and it would alter and it would alter.
Building of innovating. It would be unheard.
Of, and it would alter time reference sickness in such a dramatic way.
Yeah.
I think of all of them, the income tax are the most important, more important than bitcoin, honestly my opinion, because I just don't think we need to. I don't think it's reasonable to even think that the current regime. I think bitcoin becomes something long after Trump's dead. So you know, ideally, like the best thing for America would be that Trump becomes king and he doesn't like get removed until he dies, so he's in there for another fucking fifteen years, and that gives it enough time to
just change things. And because these things take time and in that time, as you say that he keeps tariffs with the adversaries and no tariffs with his friends, you know that's perfectly sound reasonable behavior. You abolish all the income tax and all the local regulations because because it's not just income taxes that are internal, but there's a bunch of other shit that is in the way of people being able to innovate domestically. So you want to like remove and cut away as much as that shit as.
Possible, shatter the regulatory state. My god, dude, he does that, and even if he doesn't get rid of the income text, but he drops it, say, say, people making less than half a million, if he could get rid of it for those people, like just to just to re reinstill a belief that like you can be middle class, you can actually have a family, you can get married, you can have kids, you can survive. Like that is that is, in my opinion, as big a threat to this country
as our national debt. Like the fact that people are hopeless, the fact that young men are hopeless. If you don't fucking fix that, well, then just prepare for revolution because it's coming. And I think that's where we're at. And like you've got to take some dramatic swings. And this is why I've been willing to accept some unlibertarian maneuvers because I understand like we are on the precipice of really dire things totally.
So that was, you know, My point is basically, I think there's a I think the Bitcoin win is a longer term win, and I think it's something that occurs when Bitcoin naturally reaches something like one to ten million. Somewhere in that range, you're probably closer to the ten million muck, which means, yeah, I don't think it could be done artificially.
So even from an investment perspective, if you on shore that wealth, the wealth unlock it would have for the middle class would be huge.
But I completely.
Agree it's twenty years for the unlock of what bitcoin actually does and the fundamental thing that bitcoin solves. Because actually, in the talk I did at bit block Boom, I was trying to illustrate this is how far we are away from what bitcoin does. And the problem is not in the retail and e commerce world exactly. Your problem is just not there. I'm a cipherpunk through and through. I want peer to peer payments for everybody. All that good stuff, and that is one thousand percent the end goal.
But the problem is the two point seven quadrillion dollars in exchange that is nothing but printed loan buying, printed loan buying, corporation buying land, buying property by like everything under the sun that happens in swift and you do not go from three point four trillion in settled value on bitcoin today to two thousand and seven hundred trillion
in two years exactly. That's all we're talking about. So, yes, that is a twenty year timeline, that is a forty year timeline realistically twenty year at best, you know, yes.
Yeah, yeah, So that's why I think, like right now, the I guess, I guess it all comes back to why I'm you know, pro this approach. Like worst case this is you know a bunch of brinksmanship whatever, you know, and we end up like figuring out who allies are, who's not an ally blah blah blah, and all that sort of stuff.
You know.
Best case this, you know, opens the door towards moving sorry, removing irs income text or lowering it and then cleaning up the local domestic and all this sort of stuff. But overall, like directionally to me, this is like, I
couldn't think of a more accurate direction. And this is why, like, if there's bitcoin is listening to this, you know, the tired argument or I mean it's tired argument to me, right, but it's the whole thing is like, oh, you're a communist because you're supporting tariffs and Trump is an asshole, and we should the solution is bitcoin. Bitcoin fixes this. Like to me, it's just so fucking immature because they're
not living in the real world. They're still like when coupled with what you just said, you know, bitcoins decades away from being ready anyway, there's no like bitcoin fixes this tomorrow, even if we wanted it, Even if Trump turned around tomorrow and said we are going to make bitcoin the reserve currency of the fucking world tomorrow, not going to fucking happen. Still like, it's just going to
take way too long. And you know, if that if that was to happen, it would also like just fy to all the people who want to see bitcoin help the rest of the world. It would crush the rest of the world because nobody on the planet will be able to fucking afford any bitcoin. Like talk about like inequality, like so so that that's a whole other thing. So you know, it leaves you with what are the moves
that you have to make? And I think the current moves, the current layout, the current things that have been done, I think are great. And when you couple in the fact that we are at war, we're fighting for the soul of the West. Do we want a kinetic war or should we take another approach? This is another approach, and this actually strengthens the West. It ideally lowers the amount of money we're sending out and increases the amount
of productivity at home. Like if it creates this sort of an incentive mechanism and starts to get people locally in the West and in particular the US starting to think about how to innovate locally and domestically and build
and do all that sort of stuff. And as we said earlier, is if it creates a situation where other nation states also start to think, well, fuck you, we're going to think about ourselves like all of this sort of like mishmash of things, that's an interesting positive side effect.
Yeah, I gotta clarify a point because otherwise I'll get I've got like phone calls and emails and dms from gene Epstein when I say this, and he lectures me and gets mad at me.
But when I.
Said that if you end the if you keep these tariffs really high and you have a bunch of US tollers flit home, I said, it would be inflationary. Clarify, price inflationary, not monetary inflation. The monetary inflation occurs with the actual creation of the currency units. I'm talking about price inflation. You bring home trillions of dollars that are circulating all over the world, and you now have them circulating within the US. Well, easy supply demand type of
calculus there, you're going to have prices skyrockets. So that's what I'm talking about. And the trim home, Yeah, exactly. It's not you know, creation of money. It's just all of money that isn't in uh, isn't on the demand here that would be suddenly. So there there's real consequences from these actions, and people need to be aware of them. And I and I think, well, Trump probably isn't. I know some of his economic advisors like Scot Assent probably is.
So these are really interesting, you know, additional variables that people have to consider with prescribing things because I don't think I don't think people think this through on a deep enough level. A lot of people are you know, very one oh one where they're just like I just I just want pain and punishment of my enemy.
So like that's all there is to it.
Yeah, there's just a ton of nuance. So this is why I wanted to have you guys on is because I think having a very you know, well rounded panel to to analyze all of the sides of this thing is is necessary because I mean, this we're talking about, really, what we're talking about is centrally planning an economy, like which is totally counter to libertarian ethos, but like we don't have the option of not having es centrally planned economy.
So now we're just debating over how it's centrally planned. It's kind of how these things go. But it's it's really challenging, and there's gonna be you know, fits and starts. There's gonna be like, you're gonna have setbacks in this. So I I am I'm willing to be patient with Trump, but he could demonstrate a lot to me by you know, cutting ties with some nefarious actors, bringing prosecutions against some nefarious actors, not getting us into a war with Iran.
Things of that nature, would would make me believe he's the real deal, actually negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine. Like, these are all things that that I need to see to be confident that he's actually head in that direction, because what he did in twenty twenty was h pretty fucking catastrophic and I just want to make sure that I'm not being sold out, and that's my concern.
Yeah, I will say there's a lot of really interesting, like you know, the whole art of the deal thing, Like every time somebody brings it up, I just kind of laugh because it's like he does something you don't like or whatever, and it's just part of the deal. He does something you like, and he's a genius and he's like he's just gonna do it, you know, and
so it like kind of cracks me up. But I see some of the things he does and I'm like, there's no way he just he just has this one playbook and it keeps working like he did it with this strategic bitcoin reserve. Is that he comes out and he tweets about Solana and Cardono and then suddenly all of the like the the who's who of crypto come out and be like, this is not a good idea.
He should not be putting Like coin base Brian Armstrong comes outs like, we should not be this is gonna be very difficult and we're gonna have a bunch of equities. Bitcoin is different, you know, And now everybody's like arguing for a Bitcoin only and then he just kind of like okay, strategic Bitcoin reserve and then it's like signed, and everybody's like whow. And I just all I can think is that like everybody was arguing, how what a terrible.
Idea this was, and now everyone is relieved.
And it's because I think it's like Trump does I actually if I want to believe he's a genius, if I want to steal man, the fact that he is just playing this game and he's good at he's just
good at poker. Like the thing like the Gulf of America, I think is such a perfect example of it doesn't really cost anything, but it just makes everybody at the table think you're crazy and that you might just do the next like, you know, it's like it's like putting a blind bet where you didn't even turn over your cards and you've just got to a heart and he's like, yeah, one hundred thousand.
Why not?
And so everybody actually thinks, like I thought the Greenland thing was a troll.
Me too.
Now I don't know.
Yeah, now I'm not sure.
I gotta I gotta point this out real quick, because I think that Trump's success in negotiations is so indicative of the feminizing of the world, because because he approaches trade negotiations and just deal making as any red blooded, testosterone infused man has throughout the past two hundred years. But but he's such it's like it's such a dying breed in this country. It's just like it's it's it's received as if you're you know, watching an angel Land
or something like. It's just so like no one can fucking believe what they're seeing. It's like, this is just negotiation, one on one.
You you have.
The cards, you have the chips, you ask for everything that you want and more, and then you settle where you want. Like this is fucking simple shit, and people are like genius. I'm like, what like the way he mogs other leaders where he fucking handshakes them, brings them in tight. It's just like pure alpha negotiation ship. This is not genius level stuff. This is like I don't know, but I guess I guess it's rare enough that it is.
Now, well, it's it's I think I'll say proof of the rule, right, yeah, yeah, the exception is proof of the rule. But I think it's also like it requires a level of charisma and character to kind of pull that off, you know, because the people are just like, yeah, exactly, But.
That's what I'm saying with the feminization of men, that's like, yeah, just the fact that he's confident and he walks in there and he owns the room, and he fucking he browbeats somebody, and then he fucking hugs another, and he compliments another, and then he talks ship to another. It's like you're just being a dude.
You know. This is I mean, this this is why, like I had this talk with someone a couple of weeks back. It's like the juck is more important than the nerd because that the juck is like just naturally like that that's the person who is the natural leader, and it's the natural pecking order. And Trump Trump has and always will be a jock, and he doesn't need to be a fucking eight D genius who's like got
all this sort of stuff. It's just like, this is what we're doing, and everybody else is just yeah, that's well.
And I think I think the reason that it's so important right now is because we just have too many nerds. I mean, we have a bunch of people that are like not even in the game, and then you have like the people that are in the game or tons of nerds and almost no jocks. And I like, all the people in the fucking eu vonderline, all these scumbags, like they're not even they're not even nerds.
They're just like, yeah, just horribly In my opinion, in the picture that I paint in my head, it feels like horribly insecure people with power and they become defensive and vindictive and they think you have to listen to them, and then they do just horrible things because they're like, I'm powerful, I can get away with it. It's just a massive amount of insecurity because with a massive amount of power.
It's it's it's wielding vengeance because you were stuffed in a locker, you know, whereas the jock didn't have that experience, Like Trump's been wealthy and famous and had all the hottest women, and it's just like so he doesn't need that level of gratification, he doesn't need to actually punish people viciously. Once he gets his way, he's just like,
I got my way. We're good, Like now we can go back to regular relationships, whereas the EU leadership is like, no, we're gonna lock you in your fucking house for the rest of your life, and we're gonna, you know, put carbon tariffs or taxes, and you know they're gonna be They're.
Just retrained into the proper way of thinking.
Anyways, I gotta I gotta wrap here, So let's do closing comments from both of you guys, and then we'll head out.
Thank you man, No got you go fus Okay, yeah, uh basically on on just kind of the big picture is I will I will say Svetsky, you actually have much more nuanced opinion.
And I have been on the fence about it and I still on the fence about it. But it's it is really it's just really interesting, like politics is different now, like the scope of what is like going back to your point of like shaking it up. It's definitely shook, you know, and it at least gives me some sort of hope that things will just start to like maybe we don't specifically go down this course or or down
this course. Maybe we just kind of separate a little bit and balkanize and start figuring out our own little shit, you know, like like stop with all the political in piece, like everybody becoming like the average of everything, and like, okay, actually you have your opinion and you go do your thing, and I'll have mine and I do mine, and maybe we actually come up with a solution in the mix of us actually trying to be active about our decisions and not just kind of like going with this blah
of the status quo, which was a horrible, horrible trajectory to be on.
So I'm I'm entertained. I'm entertained CAUs cautiously optimist.
Yeah, maybe maybe a little there is there is definitely optimism.
That's where with the entertainment.
Yeah, yeah, I'm just like cautiously optimistic. I'm I'm not a true believer. I don't have I don't have faith in Donald Trump, which gets people furious with me. But I'm just being honest. I don't have faith in sorry, but I have seen enough for him to give him a chance, and and I will continue to do so.
But in the meantime, I'm going to hold his feet to the fire and continue to demand everything that he's promised and everything that is slow rolled, and just keep keep putting the pressure on because I think that, like, that's the one thing about this White House it's totally different from any other in my lifetime, is that these fucking people are absolutely paying attention to what trans online, and as insane as it is, I have enough reach that,
like I know my shit circulates in that world. And like, if you're constantly beating the drum, where the fuck are the Epstein files? Like they they respond to that. Dan Bongino came out yesterday saying, Hey, just because you don't know what we're doing, doesn't mean that.
We're not working.
Like everybody, everybody chill out like they're feeling the pressure. And I think that's what I implore Trump supporters to do, is like, sure, trust the plan, have faith whatever, whatever, but please please let them know you expect delivery. And I think that'll help them. Sorry, Alex, go for it.
Man. Nour's my my. My comments are I'm glad we did this, first of all. Second of all is I'm probably the most obviously optimistic here. I'm I'm a and as guy will know having read the book, I'm a I'm a student of the great Men theory of history, and I believe that history is shaped by unique individuals who have the capacity to be so to the status quote that they literally bend the ark of eternity towards them.
And whether that's an Alexander or a Napoleon, or a Hitler or a Steve Jobs or you know, Trump or whatever, like, these people change, like history shifts because of them. And I think Trump genuinely belongs to that group. I think he's got the aura, he's got the charisma, he's got the fortitude, has got that about him, and I think that's very unique in the modern world, which every single quote unquote leader is just the fucking bitch and he just has that presence. And for me, that is very
that is very uh. It gives me a lot of hope for the West. And you know me, I'm a total fucking you know, you know, European Western maximalist in the sense that I want to see our people prosper and we fucking built the world and we have no right to we have no need. Sorry to be a bunch of guilty bitches, you know wherever tries to make us feel like, you know, we're the ones that did everything wrong to the world, and we actually fucking built everything. So I think Trump is a force for good in
that direction. I think the moves that are being made
are in the right direction. And my final message I guess to people is to yes, what what Guy and Clint said, like hold to the fire, but also put your energy behind the movement and reinforce it, because what matters here is not to be like a fucking Lobertarian like, oh, I don't want to do anything, sit in on the sidelines and just criticize like that person doesn't fucking do anything, and they're just like just in the fucking way, Like get on and roll or get the fuck out of
the way. And when you're on side, yes, keep people around you and everything like accountable. That is very important, but roll fucking with it because this movement needs momentum, like.
I agreed, and let me just to the other thing. That I do that A lot of libertarians don't. Is I applaud I applaud Trump when he does things that we like, And I think that there's a tendency for people not to want to do that because then they get accused of.
Being, oh, you're fucking mago Trump.
Support, Like who gives a ship like is he delivering you what you want or not? When he is fucking say so man, like, that's okay. That adds energy, that ends.
Us things that I've come.
On, I was like, holy crap, this is kind of wild.
So so like if he's been there and you know, and that could that could get very ugly. I don't know, but I I just want to say just a kind of closing comment. I I agree with you, like great men throughout history do change the the arc of humanity and how things play out. And Trump has the capacity to be that guy. I'm just saying he's not that guy yet, Like you could, like he's already accomplished things
that are fucking unbelievable, There's no doubt about that. But if you want to actually change the trajectory of human history, he has that power right now. He has that opportunity. Don't fucking don't sleep on it. Don't take it for granted. Fucking take swings. You're in your I don't know, eighties or whatever. He is like, You've got a decade, maybe twenty years if you're lucky left, Take fucking swings. Act
with courage, do what's right, salvage Western civilization. Donald Trump that you have that at your fingertips, But you cannot be sold out to donors. You have to act with courage, and you have to do so fearlessly. You've already fucking almost died. So I'm not saying you lack courage. You clearly have some. But this is gonna take even more than you've already given.
Do you have that?
And then one more point to his supporters. Even if you trust the plan, even if you think he's that great man and he's already accomplished enough to change the arc of human history, that doesn't mean that you can't also become that. That doesn't mean that you can't also be a change agent that changes the trajectory of humanity in your own right. So don't always just look to
heroes and leaders to fucking save you. You What if he fails, I guess is what I'm saying, like, we all have to be in the position of changing things as best we can in our day to day even if that's just starting a family and having kids and raising them right. Like, whatever level you can change these things, do that too. Don't just wait for Trump to fix everything.
That's it.
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