Yeah, 2 00:00:19.240 --> aN:aN:000NaN
I
love it when people have ivy league educations and big
personalities.
When those two things come together,
you're usually in for a good time and that's what we have with thomas Woods.
Tom is a well known social media personality that has this show that Tom would show
that has a great audience,
his flow of thinking,
his humor,
his way of presenting information,
looking at what's going on in the world today.
We could use a little humor sometimes,
but he also has very sharp mindset and
information that I believe you need to know to deal with the challenges that we face
in the world today.
So enjoy my interview with thomas Woods.
Tom thanks so much for taking the time to.
I'm looking forward to this conversation.
My pleasure Patrick.
Thank you.
So let's start with your background.
Maybe even your academic background,
You know what your education was,
like,
what you studied and then how do you got to be doing what you're doing today?
Well,
I have the educational background of the sort of person who spends his time destroying
civilization.
But I'm doing the opposite.
I'm trying to maintain,
I have an undergraduate degree from Harvard where I studied history and then
my PhD is from Columbia University also in history.
I have done some work in economics,
but I'm primarily a historian,
but I did learn something very important during those years,
which is that yes,
indeed.
I did learn some things in the formal instruction,
but I learned that if I really,
really want to learn things,
I'm going to have to find books that are not assigned in the classroom.
If I really want to know the full story or stuff that's been left out,
I have to dig around on my own.
And one of the nice things about being a Harvard was that you had the largest private
library in the world and all the books that I might want to
read.
Well,
no problem there,
always sitting there on the shelf,
ignored.
So I was able to give myself my own private education while I was there.
Well,
I am fascinated by the fact that,
you know Harvard Columbia.
I mean,
you know,
these ivy League institutions.
Uh,
your but as you said that you're you're reading the books that other people weren't that
interested in.
So how how did you get along in that environment
seemingly that you have maybe more of a shot called libertarian view as
compared to,
uh,
you know what the kind of indoctrination views are at the at these
institutions.
So what was that like?
Well,
it's kind of like the advice I give to young people in this situation which is to seek out the like minded
people.
So we had an alternative,
let's say,
student publication that I wrote for,
and we all got to know each other and we realized we were the dissenting voices on campus
and we helped to keep each other sane.
And this is why I get impatient with people who say to you or
to me that you're just preaching to the choir.
Well,
number one,
I don't think we are,
but secondly,
even if we were just preaching to the choir,
the choir needs to be preached to.
I don't know any church where the pastor says,
alright,
I'm about to preach to the choir,
can go out and have a cigarette.
They also need to be preached to like the people who were,
let's say the black sheep of the campus,
we needed to be kept saying.
And we did that by writing and by inviting dissident voices to speak on
campus.
So that was what more or less got me through it and history.
Why history?
Oh,
I'll tell you the exact reason.
I was actually planning to do some kind of math degree if you can believe that.
And then one day as a freshman,
I was heading to the dining hall and there was a group called the Friends of the Spartacus Youth
League hawking their newspaper there and and it was called the
something worker,
I forget what it was,
a workers vanguard,
it was called and they were celebrating,
I don't know,
something having to do with the bolshevik revolution.
And I thought the bolshevik revolution,
how do they not know?
You know,
all the atrocities and that,
you know that Lenin was having people shot and by firing squads that they were
already,
there were already camps With between 50 and 70,000 people and even
before Stalingrad,
like how do they not know this?
How do they not know that?
The the secret police Under Lenin was 16 times larger than it
had been under the Czars?
How do they not know?
Maybe they just don't know.
Maybe it's a lack of knowledge,
but don't worry about this.
All woods will straighten him out.
Oh,
naive old,
18 year old Woods went up to that table and started talking to them and it just seemed like
no matter what I said,
it just didn't matter dog on it.
So I became fascinated with these people.
Now,
normal people just went on to dinner.
Like they weren't even there normal people,
not all woods here.
I would I'd be sitting there through dinner and halfway through I'd be thinking,
what can I say to them?
And I've run back out talking.
So I started reading more II and this got me more interested in history,
because of the history of communism.
You know that.
So that was kind of what it wasn't my high school history teacher,
any of those sorts of stories,
It was dealing with these people in particular.
So then I went to one of their meetings.
I just had to see this.
So I went to one of their meetings,
this was 1991.
And they were passing around,
this is absolutely the God's honest truth.
They were passing around the collection plate asking for donations
to help keep the soviet union together.
You have to be making that Up.
That is absolutely true,
that I am happy to report to you,
Patrick,
that the $12.18 in that play did nothing to
keep.
This is great,
wow.
So,
and then you but then to get a PhD in history,
I mean,
so you just went all in on this?
I did because I decided I wanted to be in academia and then eventually I decided
I would much rather just be on my own as an independent scholar
and in the age of the Internet,
I'm able to do that.
I'm able to make a very nice living,
not having to deal with any bureaucratic politics,
not having to deal with envious co workers or or committee assignments or
anything like that.
But I did want to be in academia because I liked the lifestyle.
I couldn't believe I would get paid for reading books that I liked and
writing about things that were interesting to me and plus standing up in front of a
classroom,
I mean,
I had been in drama since middle school,
so I'm such a ham.
I mean,
I would,
I love to do that,
There's no problem.
So it was like the perfect job for me,
wow.
So then uh you you finished your academic career
and what did you do?
I for a while,
while I was paying off some student loans,
I went and taught at a community college on Long Island.
They actually paid the best of any job I applied for.
I was able to really get those.
Um it's some kind of scam going on Long Island.
The firefighters,
the police,
they all get paid these enormous salaries,
so I figure if you can't beat them,
join them.
So I took that salary while I was there,
I I got started paying down my debt and then I realized I got
it.
I had an opportunity to go be a resident scholar at something called the Ludwig von Mises
Institute named after the great economist Meses,
who was one of the most prolific and brilliant economists ever.
And I could go there and just work on what I wanted to work on.
They knew I was a hard worker,
I was churning out like a book a year,
a couple of them new york times bestsellers.
And so they said,
why don't you come down here and you can do whatever you want and and we're going to back you.
So there's no reason to say no to that.
So I was able to do that.
But by 2010,
I for family reasons,
we we left there and went to live somewhere else.
And that's when I realized I couldn't.
And this,
by the way this is relevant to people now in this day and age,
wondering what am I gonna do?
We got crazy economic policies everywhere.
We got this crazy unchecked,
so called public health establishment running rough shot over every decent thing.
You know,
what,
what am I supposed to do?
How do I protect myself against this?
I realized after 2010 I was going to have to generate my own income.
Somehow I was going to have to,
I couldn't rely on anybody else.
I was gonna have to generate my own income.
Now I could generate that by running myself ragged giving speeches all over the country.
But I had young Children and I didn't want to be away while they were growing up.
So after I got some advice from somebody,
somebody said to me,
think about what it is that you're good at.
Why do people follow you?
Why do they like you?
What is it about you that has generated,
you know,
readers,
youtube audience blog readers like what has done that?
And the answer was that I would blast to smithereens the standard kind of
seventh grade textbook version of various historical events
and people just loved this because this is the standard seventh grade textbook will tell you
that the federal government is a wonderful progressive force and that what we need is more
centralization of power and that anybody who wants power more decentralized is
evil and wicked,
probably supports slavery.
Uh,
this is about as,
as,
uh,
charitable as they would ever be to anyone who disagreed with him.
And so there were certain presidents we were supposed to admire.
And when I was a freshman in college,
one bit of advice I got was to read a book by paul johnson called
Modern Times.
And,
and the person who recommended this to me,
this is a student said when you get to the american history chapters,
just be prepared because you're going to find that the president's,
you were told were terrible deadbeats were actually the best once and the ones you were told with the
great saviors were terrible.
I thought,
okay,
well sure,
I'll check this out.
And I just,
I never looked at the world the same way.
So I do that kind of thing.
So this person said to me,
you're already doing books,
you're doing this and that what if you did courses online,
you know,
in non Pc US history or economics or related fields and you made
like your own dashboard university out of that?
Well,
maybe yeah,
I could,
so I could work from home with something that I was good at and not have to fly all
over the country.
So in 2012 I launched what's called liberty classroom.
And you know what they say about new businesses tend not to last three years.
There's some terrible statistic about how few of them last nine years later.
That site still going strong because there are a lot of adults out there who feel like they
suffered from what I like to call educational malpractice.
So it was from that moment on that I realized it is possible now that we have the
internet,
even with all the restrictions and the the,
you know,
the D platform and all these problems that are very real.
It's still quite possible to make a comfortable living without
any,
without having to deal with any political bs from anybody.
Uh and so I've become kind of a master of that since then.
Well,
one of the reasons I was really excited to speak to you,
given your your background and your study of history and
um and you know what you know about economics,
I mean,
you have measles Institute is something I mean,
on human action.
I mean that the tree killer,
you know,
big book,
but uh you know,
a masterpiece.
Um yeah,
so you you sort of have a context um that allows you to,
I think in a very unique way,
see what's going on in the world right now.
And for me,
I feel like what I'm experiencing is unprecedented.
As you started to site,
um you know,
the censorship that's going on the,
you know what,
you know,
we've always had financially responsibility when it comes to government.
There was P.
J.
R.
Works that's like giving power to your politicians is like giving uh whiskey and
keys to teenagers,
you know.
Um but yeah,
but now I think it's gotten to a whole other level of
irresponsibility.
We look at the wealth gap widening.
We look at,
you know,
civil unrest that's going on a lot of our cities.
I feel like we're in an unprecedented circumstance here,
at least in my experience in my lifetime.
How do you see it?
Well,
likewise,
I mean,
obviously we've had periods in the past of great leaps forward in,
let's say government spending,
but normally those ratchet back,
you know,
so there's an increase in spending during the world wars,
for example.
But after the war is over.
Well,
you obviously can't be spending money on men who aren't overseas anymore.
So the budget ratchets back.
It may not ratchet back as far as,
you know,
to where it was before,
but it ratchets back.
But right now,
what we're seeing is an increase in spending that doesn't seem to have a built
in ratcheting back Aspect to it,
that there is no end of the war,
so to speak,
coming.
So we had,
you know what,
maybe a $4 trillion 2019-20.
Uh,
now it's like 6.5 trillion.
Maybe it will ratchet back to five trillion.
But even that,
I mean,
there's a 25% increase.
So our standard of living declines when command over
resources shifts from private hands that are looking to maximize
consumer welfare and into government hands,
where they're looking to maximize the demands of certain constituencies.
That that's not going to increase our our welfare overall.
So I'm concerned that that's just not going to stop and not to mention it's also being
fueled by so called modern monetary theory,
which at least leaves the average person with the implication
that there are no real resource constraints that we're up against,
that,
that the federal government can always just print the money.
Now,
some people may be caricature modern monetary theory,
but that's what most people are.
Are walking away with.
That's what alexandria Ocasio Cortez thinks it means.
So anytime you say to her,
how could we possibly have this green new deal?
You want to retrofit every single building in the entire country?
Any time you say that to her?
The answer is,
well,
you know,
we have modern monetary theory.
So you're you're absolutely right.
I can't imagine that there's been a time in history quite like this one,
so on that because I hear a lot of people use the term modern monetary
theory,
but I yet have anybody to really describe what that means,
except we can be completely irresponsible in our our debt and our
spending and,
you know,
in the way that we devalue the dollar and there won't be any consequences.
And it just doesn't make any sense to me.
I can't find any characteristics of it are argument for it,
that that had any sense or semblance of rationality.
Well,
what they'll say is that we don't deny that there could eventually be price inflation.
If you just keep printing,
like we get that,
that could eventually happen.
Their view is that there's just so much slack in the economy still to be taken up,
that all the new money will just bring that slack back into use.
And so it's not going to create price inflation.
But there are a million things wrong with that.
I mean,
how are you gonna you gonna direct the money to,
They're not gonna be able to direct the money to precisely the parts of the economy that have slacking them uh in
practice,
especially when handled by politicians who aren't exactly known for their appreciation of
subtlety.
It's gonna turn out to be what I mean.
Even keynesianism the,
the,
the ideas of the economist,
john Maynard Keynes in the 19 thirties,
strictly speaking,
according to keynesian theory,
it's when the economic is the economy is in a downturn that you want
to increase spending and you know,
maybe increase the debt.
But when things are good,
that's when you pay down debt and you lower the spending back a bit.
But you notice how that second part never got implemented,
right?
So no matter what the theory is,
even if it's sound in the hands of politicians,
it will be deformed into its worst possible caricature.
Well,
and listen,
I'm not an economist,
but I have to imagine that when you're just printing money
without there being any correlating value creation to it
and uh,
and that you continue to just expand debt with no,
not even a faking the indication that you want to pay it off for you and
you want to eventually balance the budget.
It just can't be sustainable.
It's just a matter of time before the whole thing has to collapse.
Well,
it's easy to see if you just think about it.
A desert island.
It's you and one other person.
And uh,
maybe,
maybe it's three people,
one person's a storekeeper and two of your customers.
And on the shelf there are 10 grapefruit and,
and,
and there's $10 circulating the economy.
And then suddenly they say,
let's let's improve our prosperity.
We're gonna increase the number of dollars in the economy to 20 but there's still only 10
grapefruit in there.
So it doesn't matter.
So now the great,
it would be $2 instead of one.
So there's no way to.
I mean,
I know it seems like because our economy is much bigger than a desert island,
it's more difficult to see some of these effects,
but they're still there and sometimes the effect is that prices should be falling
In absolute terms,
but they don't,
they rise a little,
but they were falling all through the 19th century and into and into the
early 20th century a little bit,
they were falling.
So now sometimes if prices are more or less stable or inflation is one or
2%,
we think,
oh this is amazing.
But in the 19th century prices fell and there are all kinds of scare stories about deflation that you should
not believe for a second.
These are all people who who lose from deflation.
The average person gains because in the 19th century if you wanted to save for the
future,
all you had to do was accumulate precious metal coins when they circulated as
money.
That's all you do is accumulate them because they would hold or increase their value
today.
You can't do only an idiot would save for the future by just putting dollar bills in a bank account
because in 20 years he's lost one third of his value.
So now what do people have to do in the 21st century?
Well instead of in the stupid backward 19th century that were supposedly so superior to,
they have to like go into the stock market and they don't know anything about the stock market and buy bonds.
They don't even know what they're doing,
but they have to do this just to break even.
It is not immediately obvious that for the average person this is an improvement.
Yeah.
And this and this is the scenarios that staying in cash,
your cash is losing value every single day.
And and it's interesting and this is the point I used to make with my kids,
you know,
in talking about money,
the desert island scenario,
I used to say to them,
um imagine you have a billion dollars in cash
and you're on a desert island with just you,
what are you gonna do with the money?
It's got no value,
you know,
in and of itself,
you know what you can do,
you can leave it on the beach,
you're going to go look for some food,
you're going to go build some shelter.
You know,
the money has no inherent value unless there's something produced that you can trade it for,
which,
you know,
so just creating money doesn't create more value.
It just devalues each of the dollars there in circulation.
But the thing that concerns me and you know,
I'd love to see what your,
what concerns you most right now.
But one of the things I see that I think is uh,
an untenable problem is the wealth gap that's for me,
right?
And there's,
you know,
we're really losing the middle classes shutdowns,
destroying small businesses who are the freest people in the country,
um,
and now you've got,
you know,
a lot of wealth at the top and then a big gap and then a lot of people who are
very poor,
How do you see or what concerns you most?
We think the most threatening thing is that's happening right now.
Well,
thomas soul used to point out that that in fact if you look closely what's
actually happening was that the the middle class was more than not moving even
higher,
that that was where they were going.
But now with these,
these shutdowns and the and the destruction of so many small businesses,
I'm not sure what the trend is,
but I do know that there is a huge number like 10s and tens of millions of
Americans who are so alienated from everything and everyone that they're not going to believe
a thing authority tells us them anymore.
They've just lived through this enormous ordeal with cove in and they were
told you gotta stay six ft away,
you got to wear a mask when you're taking a jog um in in a lateral county here
in florida,
they came up with this rule for retail business.
It was something like you can have one person in your business for every 1000 square feet.
And when they were asked,
where did you come up with that number,
what scientific principle was guiding that the spokesman said,
well,
we just wanted the math to be easy for everybody.
So in other words,
we pulled that out of our,
you know where and I I have been tracking this pretty closely
and it seems to me now you can you can graph you can graph lockdown
stringent stringency or when mask mandates went into effect or any of
these other aspects of of the lockdown regime against health outcomes.
And the results are completely random there and they shouldn't be random florida should be a
giant florida shaped graveyard right now.
But it's not.
And and the thing is,
they don't even have an answer for this.
They don't have an answer that this guy Andy Slavitt,
who is this?
This bozo who'd been advising biden on Covid.
He went on MSNBC.
MSNBC's gonna throw him softballs nine times out of 10,
they asked him one tough question and he stammers his way through the whole thing.
They say,
well,
how come California and florida see me doing roughly the same And yet California was
insanely shut down in florida.
People are going to concerts and comedy shows,
what,
what's going on.
And his answer was,
well,
there are some aspects of this virus that are just a little bit beyond our ability to understand which by the way,
Patrick was all I was asking them to say all this time,
just admit it.
It's gonna take years to figure out what the heck just happened here.
But no,
no,
they've got all the answers.
You have to ruin your life and ruin your business and burn through your savings and we'll let you know
when they gave us that 15 days to flatten the curve thing.
I think a lot of people thought that's reasonable 50 it's a sacrifice,
but we're gonna pull together.
We don't know what we're dealing with.
Let's see if we can um take a pause and figure everything out and and
there was some emphasis on look,
we know we're asking a lot of you,
but let's just get through this and see what's what now around the world.
It's things like,
yeah,
we're going to have you in your houses for another three months,
we'll get back to you like this has been normalized.
I don't see how people persist through this.
I I there are people whose lives have been ruined who can't tell their
stories to me.
That's the dangerous thing because if you tell your story then you're gonna be shamed.
Right?
Well what are you saying?
You don't believe dr Fauci what?
Like what what are you saying?
You don't care about old people?
No,
that's not what I'm saying.
You do fist.
I'm saying that there is more of concern in this world than simply one
virus.
There are entire societies,
there are other health problems that went undiagnosed because everybody was panicked about Covid,
there's a ton of problems.
There's,
there's a food shortages in parts of the world because of supply chain disruptions.
There's,
there's health problems.
We've got uh,
even the new york times said you're gonna have two million excess deaths from
tuberculosis HIV.
Um,
and other malaria,
because again,
supply chain disruptions and all sorts of problems in the developing world,
it's a fiasco.
And as you say here in the US with the shutdowns that obviously hurt the middle
class worse because wal mart and Target are doing just fine.
Amazon is doing just fine.
It's almost like they designed it that way.
I'm not saying they did,
but for heaven's sake,
if they were to design,
if they were to rig the system worse,
how could they do a better job?
What would they do differently?
So to me,
this is the big thing and any,
and you would be crazy in the next election not to make a direct
appeal to those voiceless people,
those voiceless people who had everything they poured their lives into taken away for
nothing.
None of these mitigation efforts did a did a darn thing.
You can't see any pattern anywhere.
You can.
In fact,
I have a little site where I call it pin the mask mandate on the country
chart and I want you to show me I would just pick where do you think the mask mandate went into
effect and you think,
oh,
it must be where the cases were really high.
Then they had masks and then they came down.
No,
it never is,
it's never that,
it's always some random spot or the midwest.
I have a pin thanksgiving on the midwest because of course we were told,
don't you misbehave.
Misbehave means visiting your family,
help.
You just behave by visiting your family at thanksgiving because we know what will happen.
Okay,
well,
here's here's what the midwest looks like.
It was like this.
Okay,
where's thanksgiving on that chart?
You think it's up here?
It's over here,
but no one's going to guess that because they've all been taught that bad behavior is what accounts for
what's going on.
It's this unbelievable hubris of what we laughingly call our public
health establishment,
in which which cares nothing about economics,
which thinks economics is just selfishness and greed and profit,
even though economics is what binds us together,
is providing for each other,
finding out what other people want and giving it to them,
and this amazing latticework of producers on each level of
production,
coordinating production until we have this amazing abundance of consumer goods.
It's an extraordinary example of global cooperation.
Yeah.
That's an extraordinary,
amazing thing that no kid in any school classroom is taught to appreciate their taught
how a bill becomes a law.
You know,
they're immediately taught how government works.
They're not taught how that ham sandwich gets on your plate.
But that's the incredible thing.
And that's the thing.
They think we can just discard and forget about and that's stupid and backward.
And the result has been they wrecked the economy and they have nothing to show for themselves,
health wise.
Yeah.
You know,
it's amazing when you said,
we just need two weeks to flatten the curve.
I remember that,
and I remember,
and and now I'm realizing,
man,
they really like did the boil Prague right?
They got you to do two weeks,
then they got to do a little bit more and they got to do a little bit more.
And next thing,
you know,
like if people are just accepting it to willingly.
Um and now we've got a really,
I think challenging and I think threatening circumstance.
So given this sort of chaotic scenario,
because and I say the only because um you know,
I'm seeing that there's a huge resistance to all this.
Also,
right?
There's uh there's a lot of people who are really upset about the censorship
about,
you know,
the loss of civil liberties.
Um,
and I believe that,
you know,
there's,
you know,
economic upheavals on the horizon.
So where do you think this is gonna go?
You know,
How do you think this ends up?
Do you have any?
I know you can't really say for sure,
but do you speculate about what you think might happen?
Well the thing is there are so many potential repercussions of this,
So some of them we won't even know were caused by what was done in 2020.
So for instance in the UK,
They are estimating that potentially 60,000 or more people will
die,
from preventable cancers um in in the future
because uh you know,
their their procedures were not necessary.
Let's say they weren't essential or because people were spooked into not going to
the hospital when they needed to go to the hospital.
But the thing is those people are not going to die in the next 10 minutes.
The point is instead of living another 20 years,
they're gonna live another three or four.
But when three or four years from now,
a bunch of people die from cancer,
no one's going to say this is because of the lockdowns caused by the control freaks.
They'll just say,
oh well that's a shame those people died of cancer.
So the thing is,
there's so many examples of this that it would we really need
like a book of documents,
whatever,
just to chronicle that alone.
But but also,
I mean you have a lot of very vulnerable people now.
I mean even before 2020,
there are a lot of surveys that you'll see on financial websites about,
If you had,
let's say a $500 emergency,
would you be able to pay it out of your own pocket?
And you're seeing results?
Like 40% of people would not be able to would not be able to cover that.
They have to go borrow the money from somewhere or work extra or whatever.
They don't even have that now.
Go through this,
You know,
now go through 2020 and you have people who they rely on a little business
that has very,
very thin margins and they've just been told to hang on and hang on and hang
on.
Or what if,
what if you own a small venue like here in floor,
even in florida,
that's been mostly open.
The problem is the small venues for music.
They need bands touring,
but it's great for governor to santa's to say you can open your venue.
But if there's no band that's going to perform that doesn't do you any good.
Imagine you poured your whole life into that and now that's taken away,
there would be so many.
And so there are bands out there that I know where they say,
some of the venues that were trying to book now for tours in the future don't
exist anymore.
Yeah,
So there's going to be a barren landscape in so many parts of our lives.
So I feel like it's a time for people of means
to help out those things that they love and that they don't want to see disappear like that.
There's a small venue here in florida and they had a go fund me.
I've never even been to this venue.
Maybe I'll go someday.
It's an hour from my house.
Maybe I'll go,
maybe I won't,
but I I feel better knowing that they exist.
So I gave him a pretty good chunk of dough because I didn't want them to close their doors.
You know,
this this is the kind of thing.
You know,
we these are the people who are in this together is somebody like me
and that venue owner,
we're in this together.
I'm going to help him out,
not by taking money from somebody else,
you know,
or or creating a lot of debt that somebody else going to have to deal with in the future.
Yeah,
I know that anyone can do that.
Government can do that really easily.
But but taking from my own consumption and saying here,
you know,
you and I are in this together,
you know,
and this is these things that they've done to us,
you know,
we're we're in this together.
So yeah,
so there's and so what,
so what do you,
how do you handle this?
Like what how does the average person move forward after this?
I mean,
I was worried that nobody would want to be an entrepreneur after this because if
you could be told on a moment's notice That you have to either be shut
down or operate at a laughable 25% capacity,
I think Disneyland is allowed to operate now at a 15% capacity,
two in state people and you're not allowed to scream on the rides
uh presents.
Is that that can't be true,
is that true?
That is true.
You can google California,
scream rides,
it'll come right up your screen,
I don't know how they're going to enforce that.
Why did you get that?
$100 fine?
I screamed on a roller coaster.
Crazy,
Absolutely crazy.
So,
I mean,
I first I thought no one is going to want to who would want to open a business,
especially a restaurant.
I mean restaurants operate on such thin margins,
you know,
I mean,
somebody gets his steak done this much wrong and they have to throw it away.
They operate on very thin margins.
Who would open one.
I have been surprised that actually entrepreneurship has
exploded during this time,
which which did surprise me partly because maybe they thought they could get some of these special benefits
through Covid,
I'm not sure people have to start thinking and realising no one's coming to
save you,
like there's nobody coming,
you got the,
got the stimulus checks,
That's it.
No 1's coming to save you.
The only person who can do you any good is yourself.
Like you have to start thinking of yourself in a different light from
how you've thought of yourself before now.
I I don't like these mindset courses,
you know,
you spend $497 to teach you that you're made of what it takes and whatever.
I mean,
come on,
like just stop it,
knock that off.
But I do think there is something to mindset that back when I was a college
professor.
The idea that I would create something and sell it to the world never entered my mind.
It never occurred to me that I would sit here and have a membership website
that generates regular revenue for me each time period,
so that I have,
I have some freedom.
I have some stability in my life.
It doesn't matter what's going on out there in the world.
I'm doing well.
That mindset shift.
Instead of thinking of,
I'm somebody who buys the things other people market.
And instead of thinking women,
those other people are not part of a different species for me,
right?
And there's no reason I can't also create something.
That's the way you have to start things.
So,
for example,
I bet a lot of people watching this have gone to a car wash where they say,
all right,
you can get your car washed for $8,
but for $18,
you can get all the car washes you want for a month.
You think well I'd be crazy not to get the $18.
That's exactly the model that I have where every month they know X.
Number of people are paying them $18.
And it takes away some of that anxiety of thinking okay I made one sale and I just
have to hope these people come back next month and you don't have to hope so for one
thing.
First thing that I like people to think about is yeah you could go into the stock market.
That's true.
I'm not not dissing that I'm in the stock market a little bit myself.
But sometimes stocks go down and they can stay depressed.
And if that happens at exactly the wrong window in your life that can be very
unfortunate.
So I don't want to put all my eggs in that basket.
I think Bitcoins is doing pretty well likely to keep doing well.
But at the beginning of the pandemic,
It felt like $6500.
You got to be prepared for that possibility.
So I have I have plenty of eggs in that basket,
but not all of them.
What the way I look at it is given the uncertainty of the future world,
given you know where the economy might go after all this beating that it's taken,
given that we have a public health establishment that's been allowed to run roughshod over
everybody and who knows what they'll do next time.
What I want to have is and is a Fauci proof
lifestyle.
That's what I want.
You're heading right where I want to go.
I'm very curious about the fact that Fauci proof lifestyle because that's really the whole thing.
I mean,
we're defining the problem for sure and it's,
it is disturbing and I think it's uncertain as to you know where it
goes and how long it sustains and you know and what the ramifications are.
I will just echo that.
I think there's every argument at this point that the cure is worse than the disease,
um you know,
and uh and more time is going to bear that out.
But now the question is,
what do we do and you're,
you're hitting upon it?
I think the explosion entrepreneur is um is that uh you know,
a lot of people,
we're out of work or maybe decided I want to take
responsibility for my own uh my own income,
as you said,
no one's coming to save.
My my my intellectual mentor was Nathaniel Brandon and uh the
second pillar is up,
the theme that he used to teach was self responsibility and he'd say no one is coming to save
you,
you have to take responsibility and and that I think is you know where
things can and should go.
So how do you create the to use your term,
the Fauci proof future where you're secure in uncertain times?
Well,
first of all,
we have to note that most people,
almost everybody coming out of K through 12 schooling Has no knowledge of how to do
this.
They they've been in the government schools,
most of them for 13 years and what they've been taught to do is how to
apply for college,
then college,
four years of that and then after that they've just been taught to sit and wait by the phone until somebody
calls you because they think you're useful.
Okay,
well that that that model does work and not everybody should be an entrepreneur,
so I don't mean to say that no one should do that,
but I do think that people ought to be given choices and they ought to be trained in how to
take advantage of these choices and coming out of traditional school.
Uh,
unless you were home schooled in,
in certain homeschool curricula,
you have no idea what to do,
like how to,
how to use any of these online platforms or how to build an audience or how to,
how to use an email list Uh,
to,
to make money.
And I mean there are all kinds of things that if you knew them when you were 18,
you would be on top of the world by the time you were 30 on top of the world and no one's gonna teach them
to you because the schools,
like all government agencies are stuck in like 1977.
you know,
so they're still teaching you whatever the heck they were teaching back then.
So there,
the way I look at it is if I were a stock maven,
maybe I could navigate the stock market in a way that would provide for me in
perpetuity and I know there are people who can do that,
but the thing is,
I don't have the time or the ability to to learn all that stuff and to be confident enough in
it to have that be my particular strategy.
I get that it works for some people and I have nothing but but praise for them,
but for the average person who might feel a little hesitant to take that step,
the way I think of it is,
in my case,
what I want to do is just generate income streams,
just generate.
So another instead of saying,
well I'm going to save for my retirement by doing X and Y,
I want to generate income streams that are kind of independent of the fortunes
of the stock market.
So for example,
so I have a whole bunch of them.
I have a podcast,
the podcast has advertising,
but that's not the main way I make my money.
I also have that membership website I told you about um I promote Ron
paul,
homeschool dot com,
which is a great home school program and I have a lot of different things that I'm that I,
I do.
So for example,
I'm not,
I have an investment property,
but I'm not super knowledgeable about real estate.
I just know this property is going to do well.
One way to think about how to have additional income streams is to look up uh
john Xiaobo,
S C H A U.
B.
And he has a series of seminars,
what his strategy is.
Uh he,
he locates good locations,
he buys a house there,
he has a tenant,
be a renter,
the rent pays the mortgage payment every month for you so that there's not that much out of
pocket and then once the mortgage is paid off now you have an asset
that's going to generate income for you free and clear in perpetuity.
So now imagine if you had not one but 10 of those.
So that's one type of strategy you can pursue.
Another.
one requires a much bigger mentality shift and it's the one I was hinting at
before.
It's thinking of yourself as a producer.
Like I actually have,
there's an interview of me from years and years ago where I said I didn't have an entrepreneurial bone in my
body and then I'm glad I'm just getting a salary from this college.
Oh my gosh,
am I mortified by that?
My income now is so far beyond the paltry sum I earned
as a college professor.
You know,
and it was because I allowed myself to think of myself differently as somebody who makes
things,
It doesn't have to be anything physical.
I can't make anything physical.
If my life depended on making anything physical,
I would have been dead decades ago.
Okay.
I'm not asking that.
I'm saying that in this day and age,
we have tools in front of us that people 50 years ago would have
would have killed for.
So for instance,
I gave the example of this membership site,
I have people sign up,
uh,
you know,
for an annual subscription and then if they like it,
they just automatically continue for another year and another year,
another year.
So I'm selling them something,
but it's not like I'm selling them a $5 product and then just cross my fingers.
I hope they want another $5 product next month or next year.
I don't think I could.
That would make me crazy.
I would hate that.
And I certainly don't want to sell them physical products in a in a retail store these days with
the margins so thin and the Fauci is everywhere.
I wouldn't want to do that.
So instead what I do is,
you know,
I've already said I I sell courses,
we'll think of other ways.
There are memberships all around you because they work,
they work,
netflix is a membership and maybe you don't like netflix cause you don't like some of the movies.
That is not the point amazon has prime,
that's a membership.
And then once you have prime,
they're offering you a membership with HBO and a membership with their horror movie thing and its
membership after membership,
it's all over the place.
Disney has a membership.
Why are they,
why are these huge companies doing that?
It's not because they don't work?
You know,
it's because memberships are where it's at.
And so these days I'm on kind of a of a kick on memberships,
The expert on this,
you can look him up as a guy named Stew McLaren,
he created some software that makes it easy for people to run a site based on
something that they know or a hobby that they love passionately or something they know from their
work and they teach it to people and and people people stay and renew
month after month.
So yeah,
they make the sale once,
but that one sale brings in income regularly so that you're not having a heart
attack all the time,
month after month after month.
And you can imagine how this can be done.
So,
for example,
there are people who do this for divorced women who want to learn how to
manage their money.
There are memberships on how to navigate the real estate market,
their memberships on,
on crocheting.
There are memberships on things,
you know how to be a better guitar player and whatever you can think of.
There are communities where there's somebody offering lessons or some
content or there are people who help you overcome grief and it's a membership
and what you have to do is just think of yourself and think about what am I,
what do I know,
what am I good at or what am I at least passable at?
For example,
there's an excellent,
very profitable membership run by a youth pastor
who writes out outlines to his sermons.
Were there a lot of youth pastors out there and they're terrible at writing sermons.
So they join his membership in every month,
they get all the sermons they need or there's a math teacher who has to
make math lesson plans anyway.
So she puts them up in her membership site and other math teachers joined that site
and every month they get math membership.
I mean math lessons.
So in other words,
it's almost anything you can think of.
Maybe some,
some of you have been to those things where at night you go out and there's an
artist in front of the room and it's a paint night and you're all painting with,
that artist is painting and you're having wine and it's a lot of fun.
It's a paint night.
Well,
there's a woman named Heidi easily and so she doesn't teach you online how to paint,
what she's teaching is future business owners how to run a paint night
business because she's an expert at that.
Well,
she you would think that is such a niche market.
There's no way she could have a profitable membership doing that.
But she does.
She has thousands of people on there.
Now.
Imagine,
imagine if that costs only $10 a month,
That's at least $20-$30,000 a month.
Doing something she loves and has experienced and knows about.
So Heidi easily did not come from mars these other people have described,
do not come from another species.
So the thing becomes,
what is it that I have to share with the world?
So,
you know,
I have a libertarian podcast audience and a lot of libertarians like to talk
about capitalism,
the free market,
how great it is.
It gives free rein to human creativity,
unconstrained by bureaucratic red tape and by small
minds who don't see the merits of innovation.
We love to theorize about how wonderful that is.
But when push comes to shove,
very few of us have the guts to actually jump in and do it to be part of,
instead of just theorizing about it,
Jump in and do it creates something,
share your content with the world.
It's that mentality you need to get into in the 21st century
unless you want to be a nervous wreck all the time.
So,
I think the global messages,
relying yourself for income is the safest place you can be.
And,
uh,
I guess you could say,
I can't say no matter what happens,
but when adverse things happen,
you're a much higher probability scenario to be able to be fine economically,
as compared to if you are in a business that's gonna get shut down,
You know,
uh,
you know,
a retail business or,
um,
you know,
business that's maybe not immune to,
uh,
you know,
government edict destroying it.
So thank you for that.
Let me,
let me ask you this if I'm gonna have you put your,
your historian hat back on just to kind of maybe summarize here.
But maybe let's gaze into a crystal ball.
So you're seeing the confluence of
circumstances that are emerging right now.
Um,
you,
and it's,
it's not just the United States,
but this is a global thing.
And we're seeing really,
I think disturbing relationship between Silicon Valley
tech platforms,
the pharmaceutical industry,
our government and,
uh,
and then maybe even world organizations like the World Health Organization and all this stuff is
starting to,
it's like these very conflicted unholy alliances
and,
and support systems being set up to kind of,
to me,
it seems like they're taking control of things.
And people where do you think this this heads?
I mean,
is this eventually degenerate into,
you know,
really,
uh,
troubled times where we could have a lot of civil unrest and rebellion
and so on?
Or do you think,
uh,
people,
uh,
it passes and we both the bums out of office,
uh,
because right now,
you know,
prepping is at a,
you know,
it's exponential and growth.
I mean,
people who never would have thought about it before,
they're thinking about it now.
And,
uh,
and it could be those circumstances,
it could be the grid,
you know,
which is vulnerable.
We saw what happened in texas not that long ago.
Uh,
yeah,
we we were minutes away from losing the grid there for three months,
which would have been a really,
really bad scenario.
So,
you know,
you've,
you've done enough looking back.
How does that allow you to look ahead?
I think right now we're in a transition phase.
I was naive enough to think That platforms,
like when I look back at what I was saying about the Internet 10 years ago.
it seems so hopelessly naive.
I mean,
it's still,
I mean,
let's face it,
it is still an overwhelmingly liberating force,
even with the big tech problems that we face.
The fact that you can distribute this series to in principle,
practically anyone anywhere on Earth is an extraordinary thing that it makes Gutenberg
look like a lazy bum,
so we need to appreciate and be grateful for the things we do have.
But I,
you know,
I I did not anticipate the kind of crackdowns that we're seeing on
independent voices.
And so what I think where I think this transition period takes us is
toward a world in which people who see the world differently,
have their each have their own platform.
You know,
there isn't gonna be,
I mean,
there'll still be a general facebook,
people will still like that and they still want to keep,
you know,
most of their high school friends will be on there and they want to see that this guy turned out to be a bum or,
you know,
whatever happened to me,
they'll still want to be on facebook for this or that reason,
but they'll be there increasingly already.
And yeah,
they are,
they have some speed bumps,
but they're overcoming them.
Some alternatives to facebook.
I mean,
odyssey O D Y S E is an outstanding uh
advance on Youtube.
And they're,
they're not looking to shut you down to the contrary.
They want to feature any voice at all,
not just alternative voices.
Any voice at all.
So I think,
you know,
in principle,
I think a lot of us who think that reason ought to bring human beings together because
reason is the characteristic feature of human beings.
It's the thing that distinguishes us from all other creatures as our reasoning ability.
And so you would think that reason,
you know,
as as the ancient greek philosophers thought reason is is since it is our
our unique characteristic,
it ought to be the characteristic on which we,
according to which we live our lives.
And we ought to be able to all rally around it and come together along making rational arguments.
And it just seems like that's not the case anymore.
So I think it's much more likely that,
well,
frankly we're gonna live parallel lives.
And what that could also mean.
It could mean politically parallel lives.
It could mean that ideas that are not even on the table right now,
that seemed toxic to some people right now could emerge onto the table.
It could be that people of goodwill on both sides.
And when I say both sides,
obviously the world is a variegated place with more than just two ways of thinking.
But when I say two sides,
I mean people who think quote the experts should be in
charge and people who think,
you know,
I'll listen to what so called experts have to say.
But I know there are a lot of dissenting voices who are just as expert as the first ones.
And you know,
the people,
the doctor Fauci of the world and the resistors that these are the groups I'm thinking about.
I think that what we may in fact see is that people of goodwill on both of those
sides may say,
look,
you don't agree with the way we want to run society and we don't agree with the way you want to run society.
Now,
we can keep doing this.
And every four years in the US,
we can have a low intensity civil war over who gets to ram his ideas down the throats of the other
half of the country.
Or we could just say,
well,
this is juvenile.
I mean,
what,
why are we treating this arrangement?
Which is obviously the United States is a utilitarian practical arrangement.
It is not some mystical,
self justifying goal.
It's a thing that if it works great,
if it doesn't work,
we'll try something else.
That was Jefferson's attitude,
thomas Jefferson.
So your problem isn't with me.
It's with thomas Jefferson,
he said repeatedly that this,
you know,
if this works,
that's great,
but if not maybe we need to United States or three or whatever,
why don't we say you live your way and I'll live my way?
And it's so interesting to me that that is not even considered when you
look on the tv news and all the opinions that they allow us to hold.
Oh they'll they're perfectly happy If we're arguing about whether masks should be
worn indoors only or indoors and outdoors,
that's the kind of debate they love or whether the top marginal tax rate should be
39.5 or 37.
There couldn't be happier we're having a debate like that.
But if we ask a simple morally compelling question,
like if you have two antagonistic forces who look at the world differently,
who look at the same video clip and see two different things going
on,
why should they be forced to live with the way the other one wants to see the world?
Why shouldn't they just live in peace apart from each other?
Why don't they just say,
well,
look,
we'll live here and you live there will still trade with each other,
We'll still wish each other the best.
But maybe we shouldn't be trying to force our worldview on each other.
You know,
why don't we lay down our arms in this little civil war?
We've been waging seems to be eventually somebody has to stumble upon that common sense
response.
Well,
the thing that you might be a little bit more optimistic than I am around some of these
things,
because I don't believe that there's a live and let live,
um,
orientation,
uh,
you know,
I think the libertarian side is live and let live,
right.
The free market side is live and let live.
But when people want to force you to wear masks,
force you to shut down,
force you to do bill in the blank.
Uh,
that's not a you can live your way.
I live my way.
That is it's you're gonna live my way.
If you if you even try to descend vocally,
we're gonna censor you were gonna d platform you,
uh,
you know,
we're,
you know,
we're at a point where,
and,
you know,
you talked about,
you know,
us getting our series out.
I mean,
you know,
our last series,
no social media,
they've taken down within seconds on any social media platform,
uh,
you know,
including Youtube,
we had we had to create our own video hosting services to be able to
take control of it so we could send it out.
So,
yes,
the internet still provides that force on,
but but I will tell you that any platforms that are out there are,
you know,
basically antithetical to free think free speech and thinking at this point and
that's where um my concern and and you know,
I'm not and I might be wrong and I actually I hope I am wrong.
But what happens is,
you know,
with more and more you have to speak the party line,
otherwise,
you know,
we cancel your voice.
Um I the the good news is is that you know,
I smell that smell I see and observe rebellion and that uh
that the more that we tried,
you know,
we are getting shut down,
the bigger audience is growing.
You know,
the that literally uh you know the polarization is creating,
it's creating large audiences in one camp or the other,
but at the same time I'm with you,
I wish people would just put that aside,
but they're forcing the polarization.
Yeah,
I hear that.
And you're giving voice to really the two voices in my own head.
Because the other voice says there's one side of this that might be willing to do that,
but there's another side that recalls my days on a college campus that brings us full
circle.
We would bring one or two dissenting voices to campus per year.
Every other voice would utter the same predictable platitudes.
And we already know,
why would you even go here?
These people,
we already know what they're gonna say about everything.
We would get one or two dissenting voices and that and the campus would go berserk.
And I thought my gosh,
you people have any idea what it's like to be me on your campus,
You can't endure one or two speakers,
I have to endure all your craziness 24 hours a day.
And I remember thinking,
good thing,
these people aren't in charge of anything now.
They've grown up and they are in charge in charge of everything.
Yeah.
But the way I think of it though,
Patrick is this,
I mean,
and I just feel like there's no,
there's always been,
I don't like the glib answer,
oh,
go start your own social media.
But I mean,
I don't like those glib answers,
but at the same time we have in this country,
I would say a solid,
A solid 80 million deeply alienated people
easily.
That is a profit opportunity for somebody,
80 million people.
Nobody wants to cater to,
oh no,
they're going they're going to get catered to and that's what I see.
There's gonna be now to facebook's to Youtube to,
but it just furthers.
But what that does to your point earlier,
it's almost like there's there's two countries cohabitating
and and uh you know,
what will happen when,
you know,
the bolsheviks get upset about the fact that people are splitting away,
right?
I mean,
you know,
we're gonna see,
you know,
I'm saying that based on,
you know,
the story you told earlier is that,
you know,
this this could get ugly.
And I think that's the reason why people are starting to prep and starting to say,
you know,
this this this could turn to something that's that's,
you know,
not uh yeah,
that's that's pretty ugly,
pretty damaging.
And uh and you know,
now,
what do I do to try to be responsible and see that that might be a not rising and I hope it's wrong.
I hope we're all wrong.
But but I can say that there's there's a lot of storm clouds forming that are very disturbing
to me.
Well,
let me just say one more thing.
Um,
there's a fellow named Harry Brown,
and don't hold it against him that he ran for president as a libertarian.
I remember Harry Brown,
your 2000 and,
I mean,
look,
I I'm a libertarian libertarian party has has some very decent people
and also some crazies.
But Harry Brown was a very impressive person on many levels.
He wasn't just like a professional libertarians.
He was an amazing,
uh,
speaker.
He was an incredible salesman.
He wrote a book on sales and just very,
very convincing and he could just sit there.
And he was so he was well dressed.
He was well put together.
I mean,
I feel like I'm describing the opposite of everybody I know in the libertarian
world,
but but he was just he was just a very impressive person.
And and he could you would have some objection,
and he would have some pithy response that just took the knee,
took you out of the knees with your objection.
He was so impressive.
And he wrote a book called How I Found freedom in an unfree world.
And a lot of times,
people think the way for me to find freedom is to make sure that
somebody I like,
gets elected to some office.
And what he was trying to say in that book,
which is not primarily about politics at all,
is that in the colloquial sense of freedom,
what it means to be free to live the kind of life you want to live that's fulfilling
with as few constraints on you as possible.
Can be done even in politically very trying times,
that you should not allow yourself to look,
even if you don't have to be naive,
but you but you shouldn't allow yourself to let a catastrophic
situation destroy the one life you get that.
Well,
I guess there's no point in trying because everything is going down the tubes.
There are a lot of ways in your own life that you can live more more fulfilling
life.
And that involves relationships um involves your work and whether you find that
fulfilling,
there are a lot of things that you can do.
You have you and I have no control over what the U.
S.
Senate is going to do tomorrow.
There's nothing that you and I can do over that about that.
But but what you and I do have control over are things in our own lives.
And some of the things that I've been describing in our conversation that you can do starting tomorrow.
I mean,
I worked on Ron paul's home school program,
I created a bunch of courses for that.
And and that was the thing that I could do for other people
actually,
because that thing doesn't just teach them history and and and reading and
all the typical subjects,
but it teaches them things like how to build your own home business or how to be an effective
public speaker or how to write effective advertising copy,
which by the way,
if you have that skill,
you will never be poor.
And that gives people an unfair advantage.
Now that does not involve politics at all,
I didn't have to vote anybody into office to do that.
I had to just do it.
I had just seized the opportunity and do it.
And so there are ways that you can improve things for yourself and others
that do not involve waiting for political solutions.
So don't allow the dark times that we seem to be in
uh to snuff out your spirit because there's still so
much to be done.
Well,
I'll just say is tom your your your spirit is abundant and evident and
uh you know,
it's not just the ideas that you share,
but the passion behind them that I find really engaging.
So I want to say thank you so much for for taking the time to share those
ideas.
I love the fact that you're out there broadcasting in the varying ways that you do.
Your your ideas in your mind is something that certainly needs to be uh
disseminated throughout the Populist.
So,
thank you very much for being here and thanks for doing what you do.
My pleasure Patrick,
thank you that completes my interview with thomas Woods really great to
have smart people with great academic backgrounds in the world today that
are sharing their thoughts and their mindset so that we can all benefit