The Great Utopian Delusion - Paul Cleveland - (BWL POD #0136)

When I finally realized, they stopped looking for roots and berries and things like that. I put a trap door on that pin so everyone could get into that corn but couldn't get back out. I said I can catch any animal on the face of this earth. It will be up to me to receive a free handout and you know. It's a

great

story, it gets right to the point where you know that dependence on Washington DC is giving up your freedom, because anything the government gives, the government can take. And the government can't give you anything it hasn't taken from somewhere. place, that's why all socialism is nothing more than a system, a political system of theft, and it has its roots in that because it has its roots in Marxism and Marx had a criminal mind he wanted to steal everything uh and then you know that's um that's what he envisioned and that we're going to steal everything uh and really that's what they do, they've perfected it.

I mean, you know everything they do. I'm from Texas and I wish they would think about getting together every other year instead of every year, yeah, because there's really only two things they do when they get together and when they meet. they take away your property and your rights that's all they do that's all and they create fear I mean they're doing it again um I don't know when they're going to get over this greed thing I mean you know at this point okay , it looks like greed is here to stay so you know it's time to live with it just like you live with the flu, you know that's where we are, yeah if they need a new variant they'll just create it.

Well, I think once it's out of the bag, it's very, but in different ways, this might be more contagious, but it's less deadly. I think I saw the numbers, the latest numbers are all over the spectrum, uh, the new variant death rate. is below one percent, that's even for older people and remember that's what we were so worried about before because the mortality rate among older people with the original had been around five percent and then for younger people was inconsequential, but and that's That created a lot of fear from the beginning, but now I mean the death rate with greed is actually lower than with the flu.

They have used it to generate fear, there is no doubt about that, I mean, it is like a tool that is a tool. they depend on the sphere generated here, yes, that was one of Nelson's favorite terms for Washington DC, the peer factory, yes, fear factoring, well how do you know how the voters and mr. Pace are in danger down there? How did they receive that? I think I got the message, I mean, the message is not hard to miss when in a story like that right now, whether you like the message or not, you know, I mean, because you know we're all there, I mean, you know people, it's very easy. trying to get something for nothing and um and trying to justify that, so I think there are always people willing to do that, but if you're moral, you know morality would say no, that's not really the path we should go down. , so you speak. a little bit about morality in this book, the

great

utopian

delusion

, you know, governments at some level must exist, but they're full of people, they have potentially moral problems, sure, so if they're immoral, it means you're going to have a government Immoral, right?

And that's one of the reasons you want to limit the power of the government, you know, and make it very specific because the government has a role in allowing us to live in relative peace and order. so the hardcore evildoers need to be punished one thing our governments seem to want to get rid of is actually punishing murderers rapists and things like that but thats what the government should be doing they import them now this is the most crazy in the world, um, that's what you need the government to do you don't need it to provide governments can't provide anything that they can't provide you that there are institutions that absolutely depend on the citizenry for their existence and the question that should done is in a way, government is the collective use of force against evildoers, so the question then is when is it legitimate for an individual to use violence or force, if someone is attacking you, if someone is trying to mug you in the streets, then it's legitimate. so you can use force to stop them.

You know this gentleman in New York who operates a bodega and a thug comes in and harasses him shaking and his girlfriend stabs him and he takes a knife and catches the boyfriend who dies and the prosecutor. the winery owner is being charged with murder, that's crazy, that's crazy, self defense is legitimate so governments should be tracking down the woman who stabbed the owner, it was self defense in this man's terms . dying, I mean he was the aggressor and for someone to defend themselves, that's perfect, so governments should be working, you know, like the collective action of people to protect their lives, their liberty and their property, that That's all, and when we get further. which then we start moving towards a really ugly government because the government is just not well prepared to do other things, they are well prepared to blow things up, destroy things and all that, but they are not well prepared to, you know, have schools and you know everything else, yes, it's profitable for them to blow things up so they can make more profit by rebuilding them, right, yes you know, there has to be an end somewhere, well this is advice, unfortunately, that's how usually nations collapse, I mean, if you know the history, this is the way the Roman empire collapsed and really one of the big problems with the collapse of the Roman empire was due to its inflation, monetary inflation and we have a lot of that happening right now.

I was just looking at the numbers. The other day, are you interested in some of these numbers? Maybe you'll bring them, right? And I think you already knew that Bob Murphy has done this in several think tanks, and so in 2008, when we had the real housing crisis the monetary base that is known as high power money, which is the dollar value of the assets held by the federal reserve, okay, so the federal government is in assets and it doesn't work exactly like that, but essentially it's the same thing that the federal reserve has. the power to create money out of thin air and buy securities and for a long time what the federal reserve was buying was largely US Treasury bonds, so its total asset holdings in August 2008 were 847.6 billion dollars, so we had the real one. housing crisis and by April 2009 their asset holdings had jumped from that to $1.75 trillion, double, double, yes, and this is considered high-powered money, so allow for securities, yes, I mean, if it comes out and commercial banking systems lend it. it could be a factor of 10. right, yeah, um and then we went through all the quantitative easing in October 2014, the monetary base was at four trillion dollars, in March 2020 it was down a little bit to 3.9 trillion, but okay, so that was the beginning of the pandemic right in December 2021, the monetary base had increased to $6.4 trillion by April 2022, so it was recently sitting at $5.9 trillion.

Now you would have thought that would be fine, we would have seen exorbitant price increases and of course, We didn't and I think Bob, you're probably familiar with this one, did a great job of explaining why, because overbooking increased a lot, because the federal reserve back in 908 started paying banks interest on their excess reserves, don't lend it. and so their excess reserves in July 2008 stood at $1.9 billion and around that, if you look historically around that two billion dollars across the entire trading system, that was pretty standard, it was virtually zero excess reserves. reserves in the system in December of those.

Excess reserves had increased from $2 billion to $767 billion in August 2014, it was at $2.7 trillion. Now, in January 2020, it had gone down a little bit, it was at 1.5 trillion, but it was still well up, but in June 2020, it went back up to 3 trillion and then if you look at the interest rates it was paying The Federal Reserve, they started at half a percent, but this is a big deal for the banks, so sure that they have money and excess reserves that they literally just gave them. by the Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve says, "Oh, we're going to pay you interest on this so you don't lend it out." Well, they kept having to raise it, so they raised it to three-quarters of a percent to one percent to one and a half percent at its peak, the Fed was paying 2.4 percent interest in 2019.

Now, Since then they have abandoned that game and it has gone down again, now they are only paying 0.15 percent on excess reserves to the banks, so the banks have started lending things again, just some numbers on monetary measures , so m1 is one of the measures of the money supply and m2 is a little broader and includes more things, so m1 in February 2020 stood at 4 trillion dollars, in July 2020 it was 16.8 billions. dollars in April 2022 was 20.6 trillion dollars per m2, which is a broader measure, in other words, it includes more things. The increase is not because it includes many other types of things.

It is not as big a growth as m1, but in January 2020 it stood at 15.5 trillion dollars and in June 2022 it is now at 21.7 trillion dollars, which represents an increase of 40% in the money supply, so with that kind of increase in the money supply you can imagine what money prices, what's happening with money prices and the current administration is just piling on by restricting production of various types and, you know, making making it more difficult to produce crude oil and things like that, those kinds of things have really exacerbated the situation, if you will, new regulations that increase the costs of all that. of things, you know, that's where we are, so we still have faith in the US dollar, although thank God, okay, well, I don't see, I mean, you know what other things they don't believe?

We are going to do business in other currencies necessarily, you already know cryptocurrencies. I don't consider that real money right now because you know that for something to be acceptable as money it must be easily accepted, it must have a stable value. Neither, so, and a lot of people don't think they really understand them at all, so I don't think they're a good alternative. I can't really see us trying to use gold and silver coins right now, um. You know, we might get to that, I guess at some point, but we'll have, you know, this hole that we've dug is deep and, but you know, our economy in general is pretty big and I think people need to do it.

I understand that the economy is still quite large and that all is not lost. My suggestion to people is to invest in what they know and by doing so, then they will know what they are experts in, try to be entrepreneurial, build a business. Outside of this, you know people, no matter where we are, we're all going to need things right, we're all going to need things and, uh, the only way to be successful at that is to trade correctly because I'm not good at everything. you know we're zooming here I have I have my Apple uh uh air macbook air here and you know we're zooming online I have no idea how it works well this I have a ninja av so I'm here yeah I don't know how it works either so I mean we need people, we need people to do things that we have no idea about and then what do I do, what do I really know?

Well, I know a ton about history, economics, and finance, and that's what happens if I can build a business that provides educational opportunities for people to understand things in an easy way because people need to understand these things if they want to protect themselves properly. You can't protect yourself by being fooled by the idiots in Washington who don't want you to understand that's a technical term sir, I agree, I think people should invest in themselves and what they know. right, that's the best investment and then at the end of the day you know you should finance everything you're going to buy anyway and that's why I promote it.

You know the concept of infinite banking. Nelson's job because it's not going to change. I mean the federal government doesn't even have the ability to contain itself. It's not that he won't wake up one day and say, "We have too many employees, no way," but you know, you think about that, I already mentioned it. I started the business in 2003. Yes, yes, but I hadn't started IBC. I don't think that would have happened. Well, I mean, where did I get the right funding? and you controlled all the cash flow. You control your own banking. feature so you know I said there were no expenses so I took out a loan books printed books sold that paid off fun I love it and the people you know the listener will have the opportunity to buy your books in the notes you know below um, I think I think we have a couple of your books, several of your books, maybe all of your books, but we'll put your store there as well.

Well, at the end of the day, you know we have a huge empire here and they have the military industrial security complex to ensure that the world's reserve currencysome of them, yes, the heat. Hot, well, it was hot, I mean, it was like our typical day in the summer was, you know, between 95 and 100 degrees with 95 humidity, so you shower, you walk outside and you can't even tell yourself that you might as well come back . Back in the shower, well, 1980, it was hot, a record was set and then just walking out of the shower, walking outside, that's daily life in Houston, Texas, oh yes, absolutely yes, oh, and another season basically the same way, yeah, um, yeah, yeah, I remember one of uh, the wife of one of our classmates on the show, she was buying her car and she happened to put her knee on the console where they had some money, some coins so he got a tattoo he got brandon brandon yeah listen

paul

we.

I've been going for about an hour today and I could talk all day. I appreciate that for you and the way you think and the way you write and what you write you know, so anything to wrap up, do you want to cover or mention? I think you know we were just talking about the fact that I think people really need to be business-minded if we're going to take back the country that we have to embrace, I think it's very important to accept individual responsibility, that I'm responsible for my life and for how I live it and part of that is how I am going to interact with other people I want to try to enslave them through political means to achieve my ends that are not individual responsibility or I want to accept responsibility for myself to produce something of value for my neighbor and engaging in a voluntary business relationship with those around me that's mutually beneficial and so I think that's the starting point uh in my opinion um and I think part of that you know I'll come back to this and I don't know what other people would think, but I think part of doing it is embracing the message of the gospel because until I recognize my own defects and my own desires to live off of others in moments of which I have been guilty, I did it against my parents for years and I failed to grow, and so part This is what growing up is and part of growing up is going, you know, I have been less, much less than I should be before my creator and therefore let me accept on faith his solution because I don't have a solution that overcomes my flaws. beforehand and if you judge me fairly I would be in trouble and I think that's the first step to really taking responsibility for one's actions because it's just about overcoming, yeah, I like that, I like that a lot, so there really has to be some level. of care that I should have toward my neighbor, you know, I think that's the beauty of the gospel because it's a message from God God delivering but coming into the world the incarnate son of God coming into the world living the perfect submissive life that is God's standard. and then willingly sacrifice himself as an atoning sacrifice for sin and then if you put your trust in that instead of in yourself, then he will forgive you, that is grace, that is true grace, that is true mercy, that is the voluntary sacrifice motivated by love, so if I do that first, then I think I will be charitable to my neighbor.

I will go beyond just trading with them, but I will also be charitable to them and you know, that's where good communities are the government is never charitable, right? He has nothing to be charitable with and therefore he will never be able to produce a good society, he has no ability to do so, but you know, the socialists of our day believe that they are going to reach utopia through government and the law and that's not going to happen, they're going to end up with her in hell, so I would say that's where I'd like to end, there's not much I can add to that, sir, very good job, you know?

I appreciate it, as always, thanks Paul. I hope to see you again, which will probably be in October. Okay, that will work perfectly for me. Thanks James. Okay thanks. Have a great day. Okay, we appreciate it. for joining us in the pew with a live podcast, if you're watching on YouTube, make sure to like, subscribe and click that little notification bell; Otherwise, join us on Apple Podcast and Stitcher for weekly content.