← Doug Casey's Take
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- [00:03]
A
All right. Good morning, Doug. It's been a long time since we've done a podcast. Last time we were, we had the Bosphorus in the back view, if I recall. Now you're in Argentina, I'm in Uruguay. There's so much to talk about. So I just want to kind of jump right into some headlines and get your responses to them. So here's what we've got for you. Number one, you know, we spent 20 years trying to fight Al Qaeda, and all of a sudden, sudden it seems like, did we win or lose this one? I don't know. What do you think?
- [00:33]
B
This. This is so bizarre. It's actually insane. I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that this is real. So this chap that's standing next to Trump is the Al Qaeda guy that recently had a $10 million. Is that the number? Yeah, bounty on his head. So not only is he apparently no longer a bad guy, but he's Trump's new bff. That's. That's amazing.
- [01:09]
A
I mean, it reminds me of George Carlin's It's Big Club and you're not in. Reminds me of the fact that all these politicians are. You know, I don't know. There's all the bad connotations one might have about all this come to mind.
- [01:24]
B
Yeah. What's going on in the world is that high government officials and people of that type, the elite, they hang out with each other, they like each other, they respect each other, they help each other, and we, the plebs, are just observers.
- [01:47]
A
It's a little worse. I think we're here to eat a sandwich.
- [01:52]
B
Yeah. Yeah. This has got to read, lead to listen. The internal optimist that I am, I've got to believe this is going to. This is like pre1789 in France. It's got to end with these people being guillotined or crucified or. Because it's. It's just too stupid and not right. Yeah.
- [02:18]
A
It's just shocking, actually. I mean, this guy is a legitimate head chopper. And here he is standing with Trump, big bright smile, standing next to him quite proudly, or sitting next to him quite proudly.
- [02:30]
B
I've long said that Trump is a person with absolutely no guiding central principles. He's a complete opportunist. And the more this evolves, the less I like Trump, notwithstanding the fact he's very entertaining sometimes. But this is all going to end so badly. We'll be amused by.
- [02:59]
A
Yeah, it is, but it's disgusting because they're like slaughtering Christians and what's that other minority group in Syria right now? This guy's responsible for that. I mean, like, it's. He's not a good dude under any circumstances.
- [03:15]
B
Now, entirely apart from the fact that, like, almost all the countries in the near east and Central Asia and Africa, Iraq is not a real country. It's a hodgepodge that was put together by after. After World War I. So eventually, Iraq is going to break up into a bunch of little satrapies.
- [03:39]
A
So. So next up for you, I've got this. South Korea president tells police and civil officials that hate speech and misinformation spread on social media must be considered a crime that goes beyond the limits of freedom of expression and must be severely punished as it is a threat to democracy. Now, does this sound familiar to you at all?
- [04:01]
B
So says. So says a complete criminal, who this guy obviously is, that he would say that when it comes to hate speech, it's, it's impolite, but I think it's a good thing, as I've explained before. And the reason I think hate speech, which I don't particularly advocate because it's unpleasant and I don't like unpleasant things, is that it allows you to see who you're talking to and what they feel. And if you attempt to suppress hate speech, then you don't really know what's on other people's minds. You don't know what they're thinking and what they're planning on doing. So this stupidity on this guy's part is. And it's all over the world, the Germans, the English, everywhere, hate speeches trying to be outlawed. And of course, what constitutes hate is arbitrary as well, but.
- [04:58]
A
Yeah. And in fact, a lot of hate speech isn't even hateful. It's, for instance, a woman in England who says, I don't want my tax dollars going to house migrants. That's hate speech.
- [05:13]
B
Yeah, it's. It's insane. It's a perfectly reasonable statement of a valid opinion. So all over the west, and you have to count Korea as well as Japan actually, as part of the west, is going in the wrong direction. So very bad, very bad news.
- [05:35]
A
Very bad. Very, very bad. And finally, you know, it's funny because you always joke about car loans and how ridiculous they are that they're seven years now and just leases. Well, Trump has a better idea. Fifteen years.
- [05:49]
B
I know, I know. Trump has absolutely no grip at, absolutely at all of economics. It's insane. 15 years for a car loan. Look, let me disclose something. The last Couple cars I bought. I've got one here in Uruguay, I'm in Argentina now. And one in Virginia. I bought a couple of 550 SL Mercedes, that's the two seat sports car. And I bought one, which is a pristine cherry car from a poker buddy in Aspen for $12,000. Now I don't, you know, I'm not crazy about driving anymore. Driving is not fun anymore with cameras everywhere and police everywhere and heavy fines everywhere and traffic everywhere. But $12,000 for a pristine sport.
- [06:53]
A
What year was it? What year is it, though?
- [06:55]
B
Well, I bought it years ago to start with. It's a 2000. That particular car is a 2001. And I bought it in 2015. I paid $12,000 for it, and it's pristine. And bought it from a rich guy and it was very well maintained. Was basically, you know, his wife liked to drive it.
- [07:16]
A
So you didn't take out a loan on it.
- [07:22]
B
$12,000, that's. I, I know the society has become bifurcated, but $12,000? What can you do with $12,000?
- [07:32]
A
Yeah, you know, I mean, when I, when I was, when I was a kid, I bought, my first car was a Renault alliance manual transmission, but reverse didn't work in it. And so you'd always have to park. Strategically, it's such a little light car that if you landed it was a flat parking lot, you could put your leg outside of the door and you could reverse it like that, you know, actually back it up with your foot. So it was fine, you know, but it was $400 and I drove the hell out of that car for a long time. And. But, you know, because of that whole cash for clunkers thing, they took all of those cars off the road and replaced them with all these super complicated cars that are all crazy expensive.
- [08:15]
B
Yeah. I asked myself, whatever happened to the original Bug Volkswagens? I had a bunch of them when I was just out of college. And in college, frankly, I was a big fan of those early Volkswagens. And you pay $500 for them and they ran forever. And if something broke, it was cheap and easy to fix. I mean, they were great, but they don't exist anymore. Today if you want to buy even a pickup truck, for God's sake, it'll cost you, what, 50, 60,000, $70,000.
- [08:49]
A
Yes. Yep.
- [08:51]
B
It's insane. So what happened to the $500 dumping but quite usable forever used car doesn't exist.
- [09:02]
A
It doesn't exist. And so the answer is, let's extend and pretend.
- [09:07]
B
Yeah. Oh, how this is Going to end so badly.
- [09:10]
A
Yeah, I thought you'd get a big kick out of that one. And of course he proposed the 50 year mortgages as well, you might recall. And he, he got a lot of backlash for that one because you know, you just do the math on it, you know, you get no principal paid in those extra 20 years. You know, I mean.
- [09:28]
B
Yeah, you actually will own nothing because maybe the house isn't going to last 50 years. Most people that are buying a house may or may not last 50 years themselves. So it's all, it's all the never let, never, never plan. A far cry from the days when people would save up and buy a house for cash when they could afford. And until then they rented.
- [09:54]
A
Yeah, well, and the reason, a big reason why the housing costs have gone up so much is anytime you get government and intervention into the markets, any market, right. When FDR, FDR is the originator of the 30 year mortgage, what other country in the world has it? It's, I think it's just us. Just the US and of course our housing prices have exploded because of that. You know, because everybody's concerned about monthly.
- [10:16]
B
Payment only in addition to the fact that 30 year mortgage in an unsound currency environment is, it's like asking, it's like the bank asking to be bankrupted. The dollars that it lent are not going to be worth anything 30 years from now. Who knows what interest rates are going to be. You can't make a 30 year consumer loan and that's what a house is. People think houses are assets. Yeah. But they're not. They're just like toothbrushes or a suit of clothes or a car. They just have a longer lifespan. They're consumer goods so.
- [10:58]
A
That's Right. Well that's why they gotta bundle that up, securitize it and sell it to pension funds.
- [11:05]
B
Yeah. One of many, many, many signs that the economy is like Wiley Coyote and the cartoon walking on air. Let's see what happens.
- [11:15]
A
Yep. And you know, controls on, on spending, you know.
- [11:19]
B
Right.
- [11:19]
A
As we were talking earlier, I got a call from my broker, longtime broker, who I was having some cash withdrawn from my brokerage account and in order to do so they wanted to do some additional anti money laundering check checks. As if I haven't been through it with these guys a number of times but before they sent the wire and just shows you the way these things are going. And the EU announces, you know, block wide a ban on cash transactions over €10,000.
- [11:48]
B
Yeah. You don't own your money and of course, the money that you have is just paper receipts from bankrupt governments. One more reason why everybody should have a significant stash of gold and silver coins in their own possession so that they don't have to use the government's money and Bitcoin as well, so you can transfer assets without going through the SWIFT system and using the banking system and so forth.
- [12:20]
A
Is this not a capital control?
- [12:22]
B
Yes, it is. And we will get capital controls in the future that'll make it harder and certainly inconvenient and more expensive to transfer money outside of your home country. So this is another reason why you should execute a Plan B with a foreign residence and foreign. Foreign house and citizenship and so forth, so that you're not trapped like a lobster in your home country. Because we will get foreign exchange controls.
- [12:54]
A
And I often. And it's weird because you often don't think of these restrictions as capital controls because they're internal, not, you know, international. But they're just the same thing. They are capital controls.
- [13:07]
B
Yeah. Tells you what you can do with your money. Some people think they have a right to tell you what you can do with your money and your life. And the average person seems perfectly happy with that.
- [13:19]
A
Yeah, well, that's because only criminals would want to use this much cash. Right, of course.
- [13:24]
B
Or drug people. And of course, we can go off on a tangent about drugs. Hey, my body, I'll do what I want with it, including taking drugs, which isn't a good idea, I don't advocate it, incidentally, but drugs, what is it? Drugs? Climate change. And what else are the reasons for doing all these things in the popular parlance?
- [13:51]
A
Well, immigration is a big reason for it, or voter fraud in digital id. The many, many reasons for digital ID being implemented, they're coming up with a bunch of them. Immigration, voter verification. Also, digital ID is tied to actually climate control, because that gets tied to you consuming a certain amount of carbon in your diet. Apparently in the UK now, on a lot of packaging, it says how much carbon is associated with the products you buy in the grocery store.
- [14:26]
B
It's so totally stupid. It's so perverse. Carbon, the basic element underlying all life, is being outlawed as if it was U235 or plutonium or, oh, some deadly element. I mean, it's. We live in bizarro world.
- [14:48]
A
Well, the thing is, is that they're not interested in controlling stuff, they're interested in controlling people. And so carbon is the obvious choice.
- [14:58]
B
Yeah, well, if the population drops 90% over the next couple of decades, it'll Be easier, I suppose. This is. This is. This is as entertaining as any series on Netflix or hbo. More entertaining, actually, because it's real. Just can't wait to see what happens over the next 10 years. Or on the other hand, I guess I can wait.
- [15:23]
A
Yeah, it is, it is, but it kind of has the pacing of like, Downton Abbey or something. You know, it could really speed it up a little, little bit to make, you know, to keep the viewers interested, I think.
- [15:33]
B
Yeah. And one of the other problems with this is that most of the players, at least the ones that we see from day to day, are actually idiots and degraded and evil. I don't know if they're more fun to watch than good guys doing their thing or not. Well, every drama's got to have a villain.
- [15:52]
A
Yeah, you got to have a villain. You got to have despicable people. And, well, we've got a lot of them at least. So that's good. Yeah. And so the next one is that Trump announces that, well, the economy needs some stimulation. I don't know if you. Despite what Trump says, that there are no issues with the economy, he announced a 2000 tariff dividend for Americans because we're collecting in his, he says, trillions of dollars from tariffs. And so, you know, why shouldn't Americans get some benefit from that? So he's going to issue $2,000 checks, not to everybody, but to most, you know. And what do you think about that idea?
- [16:32]
B
I think it gets Americans in the custom of expecting the government to give them some cash that they can spend. It's actually insane. And it's a first step towards a guaranteed annual income, which lots of people are advocating because they think that after robots and AI take over the world, which incidentally, I think is not unlikely at all, they're going to have to give the plebs money so they. So the useless mouths can consider. Can continue eating. So there'll be more of this type of thing, for sure.
- [17:12]
A
Yeah. Well, as the government wants to protect itself, it's going to have to make sure its population is controlled, basically being like, it'd be a good boy and you still get your stimmy.
- [17:24]
B
That's right.
- [17:24]
A
This is the way of doing it. I mean, I think what people don't understand is that it's. When someone gives you money with. It is an implicit obligation. And are you sure you want that deal? Are you sure you want to cooperate?
- [17:37]
B
But it's actually much, much worse than that because, wait a minute, $2,000 per person times 100 million or however many, who knows where's the government going to get this money? It's running trillion dollar, multi trillion dollar deficits. They can only print it up. And anyway, maybe all the money that was taken out of Americans pockets to pay tariffs, creating a dog's breakfast in terms of trade and what everything costs and how you run a business, that's. This is, it's going to have to be sent back.
- [18:17]
A
Yeah, this is the thing is that the Supreme Court is ruling on Trump's tariffs. And based upon the oral arguments and polymarket, it seems as though Trump is going to lose the case, invalidating these tariffs, which means they're all going to have to be refunded to the importers who paid them and then passed along those charges of course to consumers when they could. And so there's going to be an extra trillion that must be conjured out of thin air to supply these $2,000 checks to parents, sorry to Americans and, and frankly, they do need to get more money in circulation. Their goal is to devalue the dollar and wash away the debt as much as they can. So they're looking for excuses to print. But the most sinister part of this story, I think with the refunds of the tariffs is the fact that early on, very early on with the tariffs, Lutnick, the buddy of Trump, the next door neighbor of Epstein, through his company Cantor Fitzgerald, was actively raised a fund to actively purchase from importers the rights, assuming the legal opportunity would arise to receive the refunds, and they were buying them from importers for 20 to 30 cents on the dollar. A couple friends of mine have filed Freedom of Information act request to try and figure out exactly how much Canor Fitzgerald is going to profit from this entire ordeal. But isn't it strange that Trump's buddy was doing this from the very beginning with the tariffs? And so, you know, it's just like it's just a grift all around.
- [19:58]
B
You know, the opportunities for corruption are just blossoming everywhere. It's incredible. So, you know, it used to be, it's an old saying, of course, the rich get richer while the poor get poorer. I in principle never believed in that. And in the past someone could elevate himself from the I did well and I did too, but by a more circuitous route, I think. But the thing is these people that have, that are in the elite are entrenching themselves, but not just to the a small grift of a few million dollars. We're talking about billions, tens of billions of dollars that they're they're stealing from the general populace. And of course, Trump is complicit in this too, with his totally worthless Trump coin. And Melania has a totally worthless Melania that serves no useful purpose. What whatsoever, except acting as a great way to further feather the Trump's. The Trump family's nest.
- [21:12]
A
Yes. And this is the tip of the iceberg. This one thing that people are aware of. I mean, there's another thing there. The Trump family's World Coin, Now World Coin there was, through a Middle east backer, bought World Coin, which is their stable coin. Okay. Now them owning the stable coin means they're able to take that money and buy treasuries and earn about $60 million a year on it. And that whole arrangement was facilitated by that Chinese founder of Binance, who was arrested, prosecuted, serving jail time, but received a pardon from Trump.
- [21:54]
B
It's wonderful.
- [21:56]
A
Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it?
- [21:58]
B
It's a get out of jail free card. If you have, if you have enough money, it's. But you know, maybe the answer or the solution is that video that you've got playing for us. I guess everybody can see.
- [22:10]
A
Yeah. I did want to show you this. This one I hadn't played because I didn't know if you'd seen this newest robot.
- [22:16]
B
It's marvelous. It is. It is a total robot who's indistinguishable from a well coordinated female walking.
- [22:26]
A
Yeah, they have a male and a female version. It's by a company called xpeng. It'll be. I think the leaders were Xpeng and Tesla is like the runner up in this. But it's actually remarkable when you see this thing walk. It. It walks like a Runway model. It's actually quite extraordinary. People didn't believe it was real and so live on stage, they cut off the bottom part of a leg to show that it wasn't a human in a suit. Because people didn't believe it. So. And.
- [22:55]
B
And there are dozens of Chinese companies that are developing humanoid robots like this. So here we are. The next step is to have flesh like coverings and AI working within the.
- [23:12]
A
So it already is. They already have AI built in.
- [23:15]
B
Yeah, yeah. We're not, we're not. We're not far from not being able to tell the difference on first glance or first conversation or maybe not even then between meet like robots and real people.
- [23:29]
A
Right. I can't. I just can't wait to get my army here working on the farm. Honestly, I'm super excited about it. So there's that. I wanted to show you. I also. This is because this is something you had long predicted. I just had to bring it up. We thought that this Somali mayor, mayoral candidate from Minneapolis was a sure win because of the. All the Somalis that have kind of taken over Minneapolis and voting as a solid bloc. But as you've always said, there are extreme tribal divisions among these groups that Americans really can't understand. And in fact, the reason that this guy on the right did not win, instead, the incumbent last name Fry, can't remember his first name. He won was because of the tribe that Ilhan Omar is not in, the one that is opposed to her. And this mayoral candidate voted as a bloc against her and are actively working to get her out of Congress. Congress, because she's the other. That whole tribe is the other. And you can imagine how you've been talking about these things can erupt between these tribes in ways we can't even imagine.
- [24:40]
B
Oh, yeah, let's import many, many, many millions more of these strange people with completely alien beliefs and ways of thinking. But it's funny that you say, well, wait a minute, these Somalis, shouldn't they stick together against the natives, the white people? Well, they're all socialists, or almost all, of course, because that's the culture they come from, a collectivist culture. But it's much like the socialist movement itself. Nobody hates a Trotskyite as much as a Stalinist, and nobody hates a Leninist as much as a Social Democrat, but they're all socialists. And it's pretty much the same thing in the tribal world. They consider Native Americans, the white people, kind of a nuisance that'll be washed away. And the real enemy is within their own ranks. Much like the socialists.
- [25:49]
A
Right. And it's funny to see this play out in the political world now, but you can imagine as things deteriorate, that it becomes, you know, that these conflicts become a lot more obvious in the physical world, you know, potentially with warring factions or whatever. So it's.
- [26:06]
B
And this explains. This explains, for people that are wondering, the rise of Nick Fuentes and for that matter, Charlie Kirk and, well, for that matter, Mandami. All three of those to pick three people are young males who are really lost at sea at this point in an atmosphere of growing economic and political and social chaos in the U.S. yeah.
- [26:41]
A
We'Re gonna come back to that in a second. But first, I wanted to show you that, you know, this. There's lots of threats have been on Venezuela for a long time, but it's like, it didn't make if they're gonna attack Venezuela, it didn't make sense until their aircraft strike group got in the area. They're finally there, apparently. And it does seem like my most optimistic take on it would be that perhaps this dominant threat in front of Maduro, that they work out a deal where he leave this wonderful Nobel Prize winner, you know, a stooge of the US essentially ascends to power and we get control over the apparatus of the Venezuelan state without having to fire a shot and Maduro goes and retires in southern France or something like that, like that's the best case scenario. But if they want to attack, it's coming soon now that they have their assets in place.
- [27:34]
B
Yeah, you're right. That's the ideal scenario. And frankly, you know, since Maduro is just a grifter and not a very smart one either. But if he's smart, he'll grab a billion dollars, no problem and go off and retire in luxury and be a pundit and that's what he should do. Is that what he's going to do? It's so hard to predict because we're dealing with aberrated personalities. But this whole thing with Venezuela is quite interesting. It's never been known that country, it's known for oil, frankly. That's the central honeypot that everybody steals from is oil, maintains the government, but it's not ever been known for drugs. That's other countries in South America. But Trump has been trying to. What's he, what is he sunk? Dozen.
- [28:33]
A
Yeah, more than a dozen. And well, maybe you haven't gotten the memo, Doug, but clearly the threat with Venezuela was narco terrorism. It's not oil based. I don't. Maybe you haven't gotten the memo, but.
- [28:45]
B
Narco terrorism doesn't exist in Venezuela. Really. I mean most of their criminals have migrated to the US and other places.
- [28:58]
A
And if we want to look at the, the suppliers of drugs from South America, I'm not sure that Venezuela, it's certainly not in the top five. It might not be in the top 10.
- [29:07]
B
Yeah, it's very odd that starting out with a high speed boat, the type of thing that might be used for run. That was the first one was running across the Caribbean. It couldn't possibly make it to the US that's out of the question. So we know it wasn't going to the U.S. it's not within range. It had seven or eight people in it. That's not what you. You don't load a drug boat with seven or eight people for all kinds of reasons. And the US just blew it out of the water. And they've done this in a dozen other instances. This is actually wholesale murder. Are the people in these boats and a few semi submersible submarines, which is suspicious, but that's beside the point. You shouldn't just go around killing people without stopping them and asking them questions and seeing if they're doing something that they shouldn't be doing. But. So this is. This is. This is further evidence of the US Government being on tilt. They think they can send out the military, and the military is complicit in this. Just blowing people out of the water, no questions asked, suspicion, whatever this is.
- [30:19]
A
What is that? What's that tiny little country that's right next to Venezuela? Trinidad and Tobago. Or is it.
- [30:25]
B
Yes, it's Trinidad and Tobago is off offshore. I mean, next door to them.
- [30:33]
A
Because I've heard that there's a lot of, like, smuggling between those two countries. Like, like, not. Not like cigarettes and stuff like that. You know, there's. There's just a lot of just getting around customs between, you know, within that country. And that much of it could probably be ascribed to that type of smuggling, not even having to do with the drug trade.
- [30:53]
B
Could well be. That's right. We don't know and we'll never find.
- [30:56]
A
Out because it doesn't matter.
- [30:59]
B
No, it doesn't matter. You can't ask those people questions because they're dead.
- [31:05]
A
They're dead. And the ones that, in. The ones that survived, they repatriated to Venezuela.
- [31:12]
B
Yeah, no. No questions asked there either. And there's no questions asked anywhere in the US it's like the government can do whatever it wants on any basis, anywhere.
- [31:26]
A
And this is because I think Americans have lost their moral compass.
- [31:31]
B
They don't have. They don't have any. Well, they say. And of course, once again, it's hard to tell that something like a quarter of the American population are on psychiatric drugs, SSRIs and so forth that cl their minds, so they can't think these questions out. Anyway, more. More and more Americans are worried about how they're going to meet their credit card bills this month. Forget about.
- [31:55]
A
That's true.
- [31:56]
B
What's happening. That's true.
- [31:58]
A
I mean, that is legitimately and honestly more pressing for people, and I understand that. But still, this is, you know, if you see something wrong and you don't call it wrong, I don't get it. I don't. I don't understand that.
- [32:11]
B
I don't understand that either. I mean, it's your obligation As a, as a free man with any sense of ethics that if you see something out to call it out or if you can do something about it. But there's nothing that we plebs can do about stuff. Maybe it'll all bubble over with a revolution in the years to come. Which is not something I look forward to because revolutions and civil wars are just notoriously unpleasant and people in a small minority, such as us and our listeners are as likely as targets. Targets. Scapegoats. Right. So I guess I better zip it.
- [32:52]
A
And stay in the, say in the Southern hemisphere.
- [32:56]
B
Well, that part's for sure. Yeah, it is.
- [33:00]
A
Okay, just a couple more things for you here. One is this. So apparently. Is this the last one? This might actually be the last one. Yeah, it's the last one. So 70% of college grads are not working a full time job in their field of study. You know, Amazon just laid off 30,000 workers. They announced that they are not going to need to hire and or replace 600,000 people over the next several years with robotics. The future for young people is bleak. I mean, many of the jobs that people might be. If you're a freshman in college today studying, you know, to be an accountant, you know, a tried and true profession at least, or go into finance, one of the most lucrative of the last 30 years. These jobs are not going to exist by the time these people finish college, let alone for the people who are studying just simply liberal arts, gender studies or whatever else. And it's going to get desperate for these people. It's already. I mean, the unemployment rate among recent college grads is high. Higher than any other subgroup that's out there today. Underemployed as well. It's bad. And this gives us an opportunity to plug our book, which I think is very important.
- [34:19]
B
Yeah, it does. Poor young people, they have no experience, but it's worse than not having any experience or any skills. And they've been totally corrupted by going off to college and indebting themselves. So they're permanent serfs. And of course, that's what this book is about. It's. Yeah, let me make, let me make a plea to people that are listening, that have kids or grandkids. Buy this book and read it yourself.
- [34:51]
A
Read it yourself first. You'll get something out of it.
- [34:54]
B
Yeah, it's your duty. It's your duty to try to do something to save the next generation because they're just in big trouble.
- [35:04]
A
Yeah, we spent this and so we spent, I don't know how long we've been talking. We spent the entire time talking about problems. And there are a lot of problems. We haven't scratched the surface of the problems that exist today. But this is our best attempt to deliver a solution. And I think it succeeds in doing that. And I have, you know, kind of, to use a bitcoin term, some proof of work in my own son, who was not in a great place at 17, right on the cusp of 18, trying to figure out what to do with his life, feeling extremely demoralized, very anxious, and even semi depressed about the future. And compare that to what he is today two years later, after following what we outlined very specifically in the book. He's a different. He's a wholly different human being. He's a wholly different human being. And it doesn't take much. Young men know inherently or desire inherently to be somebody. And to be somebody, they know. They know that they have to do something worthy in order to be somebody. The problem is, is that nobody gives them any worthy pursuit. The best case scenario is you go to a college and you might get a job that can pay your rent and you'll live in a cubicle for the next 50 years. I mean, that's not something people can be very excited about. And you wonder why kids spend their time on their cell phones and are all dejected and all this shit today. It's because nobody's pointing out a way, a path forward for them. And as a lot of the commenters about the book have suggested, that this is the first legitimate option that's actually ever been articulated cleanly and clearly for people to take. So if you have a young man, especially in your life, whether it's the neighbor kid, your own son, or anyone else, I encourage you to get this book. There's no money in books. We're not doing it for the money. We do make some money on it, but we're not doing it for the money. We don't need the money. The money isn't even the issue. The issue is that we really want to try and address this problem. And I come at it as a father with a son with that exact same problem. And it is the most important problem in my world to try and solve. And this is our best attempt to do it.
- [37:22]
B
Yeah, I couldn't underline that more solidly. This is a huge opportunity for young men who are surrounded by cucks and losers and all their compatriots are depressed. If you get a young man that onto this program, he will transform himself into a winner, a success. It's just good karma. It will change his life. And insofar as there's any hope to reverse the downward trend of what's going on in the west, this is the only way to do it, quite frankly.
- [38:06]
A
Yeah. And we might not be able to save the west, but we can save people we love. You know, that's the thing. We definitely can. And I think the thing is, is it's not just about a set of assignments for your. For. For your son or, you know, people you care about to follow. It is something that will inspire them, that will encourage them, that will call to their sense of adventure. It'll. It'll give them what they all crave, which is a hero's journey. And in the process, they will become a man that they can't currently even imagine. I mean, it's not something you have to shove down their throats. It's something they're begging for and no one will give them.
- [38:43]
B
That's right. It's. It's something they really. If they knew it existed, they'd all want it. They just need to be nudged in the right direction. And that's what this book does, I think, very effectively. So that's my part of the commercial.
- [39:00]
A
Yeah, yeah, go get it. You can get it on Amazon.com today. We also have a website where we. Where we share the experiences of young people who have picked up and started running with it@the preparation.com. and if you want to see the proof of work, my son has been documenting for two years, everything he's done, which started off very rudimentary, just listing what he got done that week. And over time, he's actually become a reasonable writer. He's become. He's become skilled in that, among many other things along the way. And you can follow him@maxmsmith.com it's a substack as well.
- [39:37]
B
Why didn't I have that book when I was in high school?
- [39:42]
A
It would have made a big difference for all of us, I think.
- [39:44]
B
Yeah, exactly.
- [39:45]
A
It would have saved me a decade. No doubt about it. You know, I've been really successful, but it would have saved me a decade.
- [39:52]
B
Likewise. Likewise.
- [39:55]
A
So anyway, if there's a young man you love, get him the book. And by the way, it's not just for kids that are 18 to 22. I have to say this. I could have started this much earlier with my son. I wish I had. He would be. There's many of the things in here he could have done at a much younger age and he would be better for it. He was homeschooled for at least the last five years. He was homeschooled. But he would have been way better off if we'd been following a program like this versus what we were doing. So it's not that they Too young wouldn't be my major concern and too old would definitely not be my concern. We have a friend of ours become a friend because he is a subscriber to Crisis Investing who is 56 and is currently doing one of the cycles in the book, the Builder Cycle, where he is gone to Maine and is learning to build a house, to design and build a house in three weeks at the Shelter Institute, which is one of the things that's in the book. So he at 56, is doing it. I had somebody write me the day who's 26, it was afraid that it was too late for him. I'm like, no. In fact, it might even be better for you now because you understand a lot more about the world. You understood you went through the college thing, you realized it didn't do what it was supposed to do and you probably are in a better position to take it more seriously than you might have might have at 18. So it's not age restricted. It's designed to solve the problem that this specific problem to prepare a young man for this world that is about to fall into crisis and at the same time is being hit with AI. These two converging forces that's going to leave them stuck in the middle of it all. It's designed for that. And I think because of that we're all going to have to go through it. So I think it's good for all ages.
- [41:46]
B
Yep. I'm glad that the book was written. It was like pulling teeth trying to put it down on paper. But it's there, so take advantage of it.
- [41:57]
A
You're right. You warned me for years that writing a book was a lot of brain damage. And once again, you were correct. So we'll leave it at that. Thank you very much, Doug. We'll be back on Friday with questions. If you have questions, ask them in the comments. If you're a file member, you can ask them on Substack or in file co and they will get the priority. But we love questions. So submit your questions and we will answer them on Friday. And until then, Doug, thank you very much. We'll see you then.
- [42:25]
B
Thank you, Matt.