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