Ep 325 | We Have to Change Ourselves if We Want to Change the World | Guest: Ricardo Salinas

Summary

Podcast Summary: Ep 325 | We Have to Change Ourselves if We Want to Change the World

Podcast: Kibbe on Liberty
Host: Matt Kibbe
Guest: Ricardo Salinas
Release Date: March 26, 2025
Location: Mont Pelerin Society Meeting, Mexico City

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Introduction

In Episode 325 of "Kibbe on Liberty," host Matt Kibbe engages in a profound dialogue with renowned entrepreneur and libertarian advocate Ricardo Salinas. Filmed at the prestigious Mont Pelerin Society meeting in Mexico City, the episode delves into a myriad of topics including education reform, Austrian economics, the merits of Bitcoin over fiat currency, and the overarching struggle between individual liberty and governmental collectivism.

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Ricardo Salinas: A Legacy of Liberty and Rebellion

Salinas begins by sharing his deep-rooted connection to libertarian ideas, tracing them back to his family's intellectual legacy. His father, a businessman with a passion for writing and teaching, introduced him to a spectrum of philosophers—from John Locke and David Hume to Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. This early exposure fostered a rebellious spirit in Salinas, exemplified when he was expelled from the Technological of Monterey after challenging Keynesian economic theories during his studies ([03:22]).

Ricardo Salinas [03:22]: "I started asking him all sorts of insistent questions until he lost his cool and kicked me out."

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The Foundations of Liberty: Individualism vs. Collectivism

A central theme of the conversation is the contrast between individual freedom and collectivist policies. Salinas emphasizes that true liberty is anchored in respect for the individual and their property rights. He critiques modern society's drift towards collectivism, arguing that it stifles individuality and imposes conformity.

Ricardo Salinas [06:49]: "Respect for the individual and his freedom. I think that is the core value."

Salinas also highlights the inherent dangers of government-run charity and education. He contends that relying on state interventions undermines personal responsibility and compassion, shifting the burden from individuals to bureaucratic entities.

Ricardo Salinas [08:37]: "Government programs destroy compassion."

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Media as a Vanguard for Liberty

Salinas discusses how his media empire serves as a platform to propagate libertarian ideals. Despite facing governmental resistance, he leverages television stations to counteract state-controlled narratives. He notes the transformative impact of social media in democratizing information dissemination, allowing libertarian voices to reach a broader audience without traditional gatekeeping.

Ricardo Salinas [14:21]: "But it has been a big problem and we have made a lot of enemies."

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Government Overreach and Economic Implications

The episode critically examines government responses during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly lockdown measures. Salinas describes the economic and social fallout of such policies in Mexico, where the majority of the population lives hand-to-mouth. He argues that forced restrictions were not only economically detrimental but also an overreach of governmental authority.

Ricardo Salinas [17:02]: "How can you ask people not to go to work and not to eat? It's obviously ridiculous."

Salinas shares his personal experience of being deplatformed on Twitter for his outspoken criticism of these measures, underscoring the broader issue of governmental suppression of dissenting voices.

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Revolutionizing Education: From Private Initiatives to Institutional Change

A significant portion of the discussion focuses on education reform. Dissatisfied with the left-leaning ideologies prevalent in Mexican federal schools, Salinas founded his own educational institutions. Starting with a modest school of 40 children, his initiative has grown to encompass 800 alumni and continues to expand, offering an alternative to government-run education.

Ricardo Salinas [20:14]: "Now my grandchildren and my nephews and all go to that school. They're very happy as well as other people who can afford to pay for that."

Salinas underscores the importance of instilling libertarian principles in youth to combat collectivist indoctrination, fostering a generation that values personal responsibility and freedom.

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The Cultural Battle: Articulating Libertarian Values

Addressing the ongoing cultural struggle, Salinas references Justin Laje’s work on the necessity of taking a definitive stance in the battle for minds. He advocates for simplifying libertarian narratives to make them accessible to the general populace, emphasizing clear choices between freedom and control, innovation and stagnation.

Ricardo Salinas [23:38]: "You have to choose between being free or being a slave..."

Salinas highlights the role of effective communication through media and education in shifting public perception towards valuing liberty.

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Austrian Economics and the Bitcoin Revolution

The conversation delves deeply into Austrian economics, with Salinas critiquing fiat currencies as tools of governmental manipulation. He extols Bitcoin as the pinnacle of monetary evolution, praising its liquidity, security, and efficiency compared to traditional currencies and even gold.

Ricardo Salinas [45:36]: "Bitcoin is amazing because in 10 minutes, you can transfer billions of dollars."

Salinas argues that Bitcoin embodies the principles of decentralization and freedom from state interference, positioning it as a superior alternative to both fiat currencies and other cryptocurrencies.

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Challenges in Electoral Politics and Corporate Responsibility

Salinas expresses skepticism about the efficacy of the current democratic electoral system, citing the inherent corruption in vote-getting and campaign financing. He references Milton Friedman’s critique of corporate social responsibility, noting that many business leaders are constrained from promoting libertarian ideals due to fiduciary duties and shareholder interests.

Ricardo Salinas [53:35]: "Any political position or charitable contribution he should not be doing because he is acting in the representation of the shareholders."

This institutional barrier, he suggests, discourages many potential business advocates from stepping into the libertarian arena.

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Personal Responsibility and Societal Transformation

Towards the episode's conclusion, Salinas emphasizes the critical role of personal responsibility in driving societal change. He advocates for individuals to first transform themselves, adopting values of freedom and responsibility, before attempting to influence broader political systems.

Ricardo Salinas [34:27]: "If you want to change things, you have to change yourself first and then make sure that the people around you change also."

Salinas believes that personal transformation is the catalyst for a larger revolution of free thinking and liberty.

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Conclusion

Episode 325 of "Kibbe on Liberty" offers a comprehensive and engaging exploration of Ricardo Salinas' libertarian ideology. Through incisive discussion and personal anecdotes, Salinas articulates a vision where individual liberty and decentralized solutions form the bedrock of a prosperous and free society. His advocacy for Bitcoin as a tool for economic freedom and his commitment to reforming education systems highlight the practical applications of his philosophical beliefs. For listeners interested in the intersection of economics, education, and personal liberty, this episode provides a rich and enlightening narrative.

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Notable Quotes

• Ricardo Salinas [03:22]: "I started asking him all sorts of insistent questions until he lost his cool and kicked me out."

• Ricardo Salinas [06:49]: "Respect for the individual and his freedom. I think that is the core value."

• Ricardo Salinas [08:37]: "Government programs destroy compassion."

• Ricardo Salinas [17:02]: "How can you ask people not to go to work and not to eat? It's obviously ridiculous."

• Ricardo Salinas [23:38]: "You have to choose between being free or being a slave..."

• Ricardo Salinas [45:36]: "Bitcoin is amazing because in 10 minutes, you can transfer billions of dollars."

• Ricardo Salinas [53:35]: "Any political position or charitable contribution he should not be doing because he is acting in the representation of the shareholders."

• Ricardo Salinas [34:27]: "If you want to change things, you have to change yourself first and then make sure that the people around you change also."

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This detailed summary captures the essence of Episode 325, providing listeners with a comprehensive overview of the key discussions, insights, and conclusions drawn by Matt Kibbe and Ricardo Salinas.

Transcript

[Kibbe]

Welcome to Kibbe on Liberty. I'm in Mexico City at the Mont Pelerin Society meeting speaking with the famous entrepreneur Ricardo Salinas, who is an education disruptor, an enthusiast of Austrian economics and just a hard nosed fighter for liberty. We're going to talk about everything from education to the Austrian theory of money to why Bitcoin is better than fiat currency, which is a shitcoin. Check it out.

[Unknown Host]

Welcome to Kibby on Liberty.

[Kibbe]

Ricardo, thank you so much for doing this. It's an honor to talk to you.

[Ricardo Salinas]

All right, glad to be here.

[Kibbe]

There's so much I want to talk to you about. Where you discovered your ideas and the values that animate you and why you've gotten involved in education specifically. But we should also acknowledge that we're at the Mont Pelerin Society and you just gave a lovely tutorial on Austrian economics theory applied to money and Bitcoin and maybe we'll get into that as well. And you mentioned something that I had never heard before. That goes to the first thing I want to learn about, which is how did you get turned on to the ideas of liberty?

[Ricardo Salinas]

Yes, it's a long story. It runs in the family. My father was always very much of an intellectual. He was a businessman, but his true calling was, I think was writing and teaching. And so he was very much involved in the ideas that got planted in my brain. When I was a young guy, you know, in the 70s and the 80s we had this culture clash. The hippies, the drugs, anti war, the Soviets, different era. And he introduced me to these philosophers and writers all the way from the classics, from Locke and Hume and Smith, all the way onto Mises and Hayek. And it was a very interesting thing because I was being taught at the same time a course of the London School of Economics on economic thought which is completely wrong. It's totally Keynesian theories and we had a ball tearing that apart. And of course that was not viewed very well in the academic circles. Actually it got me expelled from a school. And so I've always been a rebel at heart. I don't like people telling me what to do or how to do it.

[Kibbe]

So you got expelled from school for thinking the wrong ideas?

[Ricardo Salinas]

Yeah, from the technological of Monterey. I was in the economics and Carrera's career, I don't know, going for the title in economics and I got into a big discussion with a Keynesian professor. So I started asking him all sorts of insisting, insistent questions until he lost his cool and kicked me out. So that's why I switched to study Accounting. And I'm an accountant, but I'm an economist at heart.

[Kibbe]

He mentioned that your grandfather actually hosted Ludwig von Mises in Mexico city in the 40s.

[Ricardo Salinas]

My grandfather invited Ludwig von Mises for a series of talks and then he went off to Guatemala and some other place in South America. That was sort of the original spark of light that got into my family through my grandfather and then my father.

[Kibbe]

That must have been his visit to Francisco Marroquin.

[Unknown Participant]

Absolutely, yes.

[Kibbe]

So there's a strong strain of libertarian Austrian economics thinking throughout Latin America.

[Ricardo Salinas]

I think so. But now I'm not sure if this visit with Mises was. Because this was in the 40s. I'm not sure if Marroquin was existing.

[Kibbe]

Yes.

[Ricardo Salinas]

But I know that he did go then later.

[Unknown Participant]

Yes, yes.

[Kibbe]

What I've heard you also quote Ayn Rand.

[Ricardo Salinas]

I'm a big fan of Ayn Rand.

[Kibbe]

Yes, I am as well. Let me pitch you on this idea. I have. Ayn Rand sometimes I think gets turned into a caricature of someone that only cares about the individual and is sort of the rugged individualist that, that doesn't care about the rest of society. But every one of her novels, her heroes and heroines eventually risk everything to create a society where everyone can prosper. So even though that, that, that individualism is in there, but there's also that responsibility that comes with liberty to, to maybe help lift up your fellow man by introducing these ideas, turning them on to the potential to create and build.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Well, if you look at it, her characters, the heroes, are not money grubbing, profit seeking, greedy billionaires. Not like that at all. They have ideals and they're willing to risk and to put everything on the line for such ideals. Does this sound like a selfish, money grubbing individualist? No. The problem is that, you know, the modern society is conditioning us to be a collectivist society. And the collectivists hate it when somebody shows up with some individuality, they'll shoot him down immediately.

[Unknown Participant]

Yeah.

[Kibbe]

What are the. And you draw from the Austrians, maybe you draw from classical philosophy, from Ayn Rand. What do you think the most important values are? To guide individual behavior?

[Ricardo Salinas]

Yes. Because values are a different thing from economic principles. Yes, but. Yes. So respect for the individual and his freedom. I think that is the core value. Because, you know, when one looks at a picture of a slave, black people that have been put in a ship and are dragged in chains being sold in the market is such a disgust, disgusting image, such a revolting image. What principle is there? There's, of course, compassion there's pity, there's a sense of injustice, but what's it all about? It's about their freedom being taken away from so that they're made to use their time and effort for the benefit of somebody else. That is the most basic principle, which is freedom and property, to start off. And then from then you can elaborate, you know, some other good principles like compassion, empathy, the willingness to do something for others, which is a very natural human feeling, by the way. It's only recently that it's become to be seen as unnatural. And it seems that all compassion and help for the poor has to be done by the government, because they are really compassionate people, you know, working for the government, and they are really empathic in the government and they really don't care about their own interests.

[Unknown Participant]

Yeah.

[Kibbe]

Government programs destroy compassion.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Absolutely.

[Kibbe]

Because it gives us an excuse to outsource that responsibility for helping neighbors. Well, we already give so much in taxes, why should I help?

[Ricardo Salinas]

Exactly. It's a very frustrating thing, you know, with our last president, Lopez Obrador, I used to be friends at the beginning, and we had a lot of talks. I figured out how he was taking advantage of me and lying to me all the time. But we had a big discussion at the beginning of his term, 2018, of how he could not possibly bear to have the private sector doing charity. It was all to be done through the central state. And he made a lot of changes to the legislation so as to impede the private individual from being able to donate and get a tax break or even for foundations to operate. It killed thousands of foundations that were doing all kinds of different work, some good, some bad.

[Unknown Participant]

Yeah.

[Kibbe]

It gets to who owns you.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Yeah. He wanted everybody to be subservient to.

[Kibbe]

The state by the votes.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Kibbe]

Control education is the same way education. Your daughter was on a panel this morning at Mont Pelerin with two other reformers, and the consensus seemed to be that, top down, centralized, one size fits all government. Education is not about education at all. It's about indoctrination.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Yes. And you mentioned also outsourcing. It's also a cop out on the parent side. You know, say, oh, we're going to outsource our education to the state because we can't afford anything else. Well, then you get what you pay for. I think that the responsibility of families, well, the whole institution of the family, mother, dad, children, is being destroyed by the state and by the collectivists. You know, it's not a secret that in the Soviet times, the children don't belong to the family they belong to the state. They were taken from them at an early age in order to be indoctrinated. So that was a bit rough. So the Stalinists decided to change tactics and declare universal education mandatory. And if you don't send them, you'll be subject to some punishments. Same idea, no?

[Unknown Participant]

Yes, yes.

[Kibbe]

So this, this, this idea of, of liberty as a responsibility.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Absolutely. The same coin, eh?

[Unknown Participant]

Yes.

[Ricardo Salinas]

On one side you have liberty on responsibility.

[Unknown Participant]

Yes.

[Kibbe]

That the burden you feel when you look in the mirror knowing that if you, you don't take that responsibility, you have no one to blame but yourself. This is what I get out of Ayn Rand is not. It's not the freedom to do whatever you want, it's the responsibility to do something useful with your life.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Absolutely. And to be able to stick it to these collective is to make you feel bad because you think differently.

[Kibbe]

So how do you survive?

[Ricardo Salinas]

Parasites.

[Unknown Participant]

Yes.

[Kibbe]

So on your X account, this is the limit of my Spanish. But you say the state is not the solution, it's the problem. And the second sentence says parasitos. And I assume you're talking about the government. Possibly.

[Ricardo Salinas]

The second says what?

[Kibbe]

Oh, how's my Spanish? Parasitos.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Paracitos. Parasites.

[Kibbe]

Yes.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Yeah, parasites. Of course, they're all parasites. They live off everybody else's work. You have no pity with them. You get them all fumigados. You know when you put the dogs with ticks in the tub. Insecticide. How do you call that?

[Unknown Participant]

Yes.

[Kibbe]

So you are a very successful businessman in Mexico. How do you survive as a businessman with these ideas that surely upset some of your political over overlords?

[Ricardo Salinas]

Yes. My business includes media, so we have television stations. And since a long time ago we were forced to take an editorial decision on what side we were going to be in. So that sort of has developed into our editorial line and what we stand for. And they don't like it, but they still have a hard time killing off freedom of speech. So that's the thing that's sort of protecting us. But it has been a big problem and we have made a lot of enemies. And if I was only concerned about business and making more money, I would not be doing what I'm doing precisely because I don't care so much about business and profits that I'm able to not give a damn.

[Kibbe]

Stick your neck out.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Well, they're going to try, but I'm pretty good at defending myself.

[Unknown Participant]

Yeah.

[Ricardo Salinas]

So we'll see. They haven't made it yet. Yet.

[Kibbe]

So your media empire helps you tell your version of the story and go around the political class.

[Ricardo Salinas]

However, and I have to say, the, the, the media business has changed dramatically, you know, in the past 10 years. Five, 10 years, because of social media. And now anybody can have access to his own platform and publish his own ideas. You just stick to it, you know. But this is something also very new. It used to be that if you wanted to publish ideas, you had to have the means. Well, now anybody can do it with a phone.

[Unknown Participant]

Yeah, dope.

[Unknown Host]

Thank you for joining me today on Kibbe on Liberty and for being part of our fiercely independent audience. Every week, my organization, Free the People, partners with BlazeTV to bring you this show. My guests bring smart perspectives on everything from current events to timeless philosophical debates. If you like what you hear, go to freethepeople.org kol and support Kibbe on Liberty so we can continue to produce these, these honest conversations with interesting people. Now, let's get back to it.

[Kibbe]

We discovered during government lockdowns, at least in the United States, but I think this was mostly a global effort by all authoritarian governments to censor anyone that was criticizing the government narrative.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Yeah.

[Kibbe]

And maybe, but for Elon Musk, we wouldn't even know all of these Alphabet government agencies.

[Ricardo Salinas]

How about that, huh? Yeah, yeah, I got, I got deplatformed on Twitter also at that time. And not only that, I was a very outspoken critic of the shutdowns, the lockdowns. So this is a total aberration. It's a travesty of justice. There's no. The government has no right to keep us locked up. Government has no right to order a man mandate of vaccines. And we were really public about that. Cost me a lot of enemies. And then with time, it all became what it is, you know?

[Unknown Participant]

Yeah.

[Kibbe]

So the government hated that message. But did you find an audience amongst the people?

[Ricardo Salinas]

You know, in Mexico, something different was happening because the vast majority of the population here lives hand to mouth and they don't have savings. And the government is not in a position to spend money that it doesn't have. It can't create it like the US with fake dollars.

[Kibbe]

Yeah, we printed it.

[Ricardo Salinas]

We can't print the pesos. We can, but then there will be a run on the bank and will be devalued. So the government here could not do that. So how can you ask people not to go to work and not to eat? It's obviously ridiculous. Now we had a very big pushback from middle class people who said, oh, these guys are super spreaders and they don't Cooperate and so forth. But it doesn't matter. You have to stand on principle. And the principle is freedom is the most important value that we have. It's not going to be put in jeopardy by some bureaucrat. No.

[Kibbe]

Yeah, I call them the laptop class. We have a very spoiled wealthy middle class in the United States.

[Ricardo Salinas]

And by the way, they ruined their savings, you know. By not working.

[Kibbe]

Right, by not working and by encouraging the government to spend trillions of dollars. It didn't have. Yeah, but it was, it was a, it was sort of a reverse. You know, the, the Marxists always talk about the haves and the have nots.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Oh, yeah.

[Kibbe]

And the class war. But here was the wealthy class sitting at home.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Yes.

[Kibbe]

Demanding that had someone bring them their Uber Eats to their front door. But they were still sort of dirty second class citizens because they were super spreaders.

[Ricardo Salinas]

And then they came up with this idea that some things were a vital necessity.

[Kibbe]

Yes, right.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Okay, but so what if you lose your. If your refrigerator conks down? Is it vital or not for you? It is. I mean, for somebody who has one, it's not. So what is vital now?

[Kibbe]

Yeah, we had a government agency determining essential workers and non essential workers.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Essential. Yes, of course.

[Kibbe]

Sounds like something.

[Ricardo Salinas]

It was a disgrace, let me tell you. The worst country of all was Peru. We had a very good business there with stores and banks and things. They shut us down and 12 months later we weren't able to open. So we had to leave the country and leave everything thrown to the dogs. It was amazing.

[Kibbe]

Well, this might be a nice segue into education. One of the upsides of the horrible government policies, lockdowns and mandating that people could not work and they could not travel and they could not work unless they had a vaccine. We also locked down our schools, and for the first time, a lot of American parents discovered two things. One, that government education was centralized, almost stripping young people of their hopes and dreams. And the curriculum was also garbage. So we have.

[Ricardo Salinas]

At least it was good for them.

[Unknown Participant]

Yeah.

[Kibbe]

So we have a bit of a revolution in the United States where a lot of parents are shifting away from government schools to alternatives to pod schools, to homeschooling to low budget private schools. All of that. Is any of that happening here in Mexico?

[Ricardo Salinas]

Well, I wouldn't say so, but you know, in my case, I have three children from my first marriage and three from the second. So the first three I outsourced the education to private schools in Mexico. And on the second three I said, I think I can do better than that. So I started our own school and from a very small thing with 40 children now it has about 800 alumni. So there's clearly a demand for that, even though it's a very expensive school because it has expensive teachers and materials and location and da da, da. But that's the way I solved it for myself and my families. Now my grandchildren and my nephews and all go to that school. They're very happy as well as other people who can afford to pay for that. Now the problem is, of course, for people who can't afford it, what's the option? And it's very unfortunate the way that our federal government which runs the schools in Mexico, has been managing the system with extremely radical left wing ideology in the books.

[Kibbe]

Yeah, yeah, we have the same problem.

[Ricardo Salinas]

And the collectivism is everywhere.

[Unknown Participant]

Yes.

[Kibbe]

Well, the irony of all of these leftist promises that education, government education is sold as the way to make sure that poor kids have equal access to education. But it's a lie.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Yeah. And by the way, social polarization, because we're good and you're bad and we're poor and we're good and you're rich and you're bad. And so this is how you start the civil war, with social strife across rich and poor, man and woman and old and young and blacks and whites and so forth. You know, instead of looking for confidence in each other as people. Oh, you have to be labeled with some kind of tag that makes you an opponent. It's very bad politics.

[Kibbe]

It's the currency.

[Ricardo Salinas]

It's good. Electoral politics.

[Kibbe]

I was going to say it's a currency of politics. Right?

[Ricardo Salinas]

Of electoral politics.

[Kibbe]

Yes, electoral politics.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Yes.

[Kibbe]

And they love to divide us. But I wonder if you have optimism. You mentioned social media, you mentioned your media empire, ways to communicate directly with people. The education investments you've made. How do we flip that narrative?

[Ricardo Salinas]

Yes, yes. Well, we have the whole subject of the cultural battle. There's a very interesting book out by Justin Laje, Argentinian guy, Cultural. And this is what it's about. We really. First, we have to be conscious that there's a battle going on for our minds. You have to be conscious of it and then you have to be prepared to take a side and to take a stance, hopefully in favor of liberty.

[Kibbe]

Yes, right.

[Ricardo Salinas]

And we need to simplify the narrative so that people, normal people who are not intellectual geniuses can understand that. You can understand that you have to choose between being free or being a slave, between having your own stuff or having collectivist policies that disallow private property, between Having innovation which comes out of freedom, or having stagnation which comes out of top down management and eventually having competition because everybody copies everything that we have, or having monopolies imposed by the government and that eventually lead us to prosperity, which is good things for all and. Or lead us to misery like we see in Cuba, Venezuela and everywhere. It's not so difficult, you know.

[Unknown Participant]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ricardo Salinas]

You just have to be able to articulate.

[Kibbe]

Yes. We've all read all of these books, you know, we've read Human Action, we've read everything by Ayn Rand. And my theory is that sometimes we're so book smart we don't know how to communicate at all.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Yeah.

[Kibbe]

We can't translate those ideas.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Well, that's. Social media is so important because we need spokespersons that can articulate this vision in social media and we need to stick together.

[Kibbe]

Yes, yes, my project. I love the book by Adam Smith, the Theory of Moral Sentiments.

[Ricardo Salinas]

That was even before the wealth of Nations.

[Kibbe]

It is the basis for the wealth of nations because it's.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Very few people talk about that book, but it's a very important thing because you can't. I mean, we were discussing that in the other session. The political system is all well and good, but if you don't have the values and the morals, what. Yeah, what are we looking at now?

[Kibbe]

But we could demand that Everybody read the 700 pages in old English of the Theory of Moral Sentiments. But I thought that I could boil it down to a tweet which I probably stole from your mom, which is don't hurt people and don't take their stuff.

[Ricardo Salinas]

There you go, that's very good.

[Kibbe]

Keep your promises, work hard. And when you say it like that, everybody understands those, those values.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Absolutely. Now people would say, well, you're appropriating the culture, you know, and patriarchal supremacy. This is Judeo Christian cultural supremacy, I think is a watchword for that.

[Unknown Participant]

Yeah.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Because my culture is as good as your culture. And why should you say that is good? No, no, no, no. There are objectively good and bad cultures because of the results that they give. So those sentiments that you expressed have led to the rise of liberalism and this unleashed this enormous creative number of enterprises that have given us all this material wealth and progress and science and da da da, da. And the other cultures, the cultures that take away from you that don't like somebody sticking out, they give us what is present in many African countries.

[Unknown Participant]

Yeah, yeah.

[Kibbe]

So this may trigger you, but I consider myself a libertarian populist.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Yeah, me too. Because unfortunately libertarian is by definition. But populist if you don't make it simple, not going to work.

[Kibbe]

If it's not popular. What are you doing?

[Ricardo Salinas]

What are we doing? Unless we're going to check out of the democratic electoral system, which by the way should be put on the table.

[Unknown Participant]

Yeah.

[Ricardo Salinas]

When you look at what happens in the Emirates, for example, where they have the same seven emirates and each emirate has a ruler, they're united as emirates but they don't have elections and they're doing pretty good.

[Kibbe]

They have a rule of law.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Yeah.

[Unknown Participant]

Yes.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Which is good.

[Unknown Host]

If you made it this far into the show, it means I must be doing something right. Kibion Liberty is just one of the amazing products we created. Free the people. We tell emotional, emotionally compelling stories and produce educational videos for the Liberty Curious. Our award winning documentaries personalize all things liberty, independence, creativity, hard work, integrity and perseverance. After the show, check out our [e-mail] and if you like what you see, donate to support what we do. That's freethepeople.org now back to the show.

[Kibbe]

I'm still a Democrat in the sense that I love the marketplace and I love the fact that each one of us is constantly choosing voting, if you will.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Yeah.

[Kibbe]

What we want, what we don't want, what we want to do, what we don't want to do.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Absolutely.

[Kibbe]

And I think any culture that any government structure, limited or otherwise, that is worth, worth looking at is going to depend on people sharing those basic values.

[Ricardo Salinas]

So the talk before this where they were speaking about Denmark and how this Nordic culture is a very solid culture that creates wealth and cohesion and da da, da. And yes, we have a joke here. You know, our ex president used to say that we would have a health system like the one in Denmark. That was seven years ago. We're not only waiting for it, but it's gotten worse than ever. So Denmark for us is a kind of a sore spot. But my immediate reflection was Denmark has 7 million people. Just one suburb of Mexico has 7 million people. Mexico City has 23. The country has 130 million people. How in hell can we have cohesion and education at a general level that makes this reasonable? It's impossible. Impossible.

[Kibbe]

Yeah. The Denmark myth, that if you have sort of a, a monoculture, you can then create a useful welfare state I think is precisely the wrong way to go. Like you need decentralized solutions to everything.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Yeah. It seems to me that Denmark is kind of one of those gated communities that you have in the States where you Pay to get in and you pay a lot. And then you pay for maintenance and to take the trash and take the water and everything. So you're paying for it, but you're getting the service. Right. So you extend it a little more. And now in the Danish model, you get the education and the health care and the judicial protection. But the thing works. For whatever reason. I don't know how, maybe because it's small, but the moment you turn around here in Mexico and Latin America and many places in the us it doesn't work. We don't have the basic thing, which is security. Our lives are in danger. If you walk out, you can be murdered. This is terrible. Why should we bear that kind of thing? And the law will change by the minute. Tomorrow the lawmakers get together and change the law and say, the sun is not going to rise tomorrow. It's against the law. It can do it. And we're supposed to respect that law.

[Kibbe]

And this is why, like, politics corrupts everything. I'm enough of a politics.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Let's say money, because at the end of the day, electoral politics or vote getting is about who controls the money. And it's a lot of money.

[Unknown Participant]

Yeah, a lot.

[Ricardo Salinas]

A lot, lot, a lot. Way more than any individual can even start to visualize in terms of money.

[Kibbe]

All of our US Senators start off broke when they're elected, and now they're multimillionaires.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Oh, but just. I must be just speaking engagements, I assume.

[Unknown Participant]

Yeah.

[Ricardo Salinas]

USAID and one or another little trading tips.

[Kibbe]

Yes.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Oh, it's pathetic.

[Unknown Participant]

Yeah.

[Kibbe]

And this gets back to educating people and having a broad population that appreciates where the rule of law comes from and where cooperation comes from and where wealth comes from, because they're perhaps the only counterbalance to corrupt politicians. And right now, so much of politics is driven by, I'm going to give you more things for free.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Yeah. I think bottom line is you really have to go back to the moral sentiments. You know, especially in America. The moral fiber has been utterly corrupted. It's erasing the distinction between men and women and making it believe that this doesn't matter. Of course it matters. This is a reality. How can you make. It doesn't matter. The concept of the family. You have some kids, you know, maybe they'll have a mom and dad, maybe not. They live somewhere else. They get kicked out of from home at 18. There's very little responsibility in the American value system. And I think that is reflective on politics. So I guess we have the things that we deserve. As I said before, Estamos comos tamos or ques homos, comos homos. We are like this because this is what we think, this is what we, we breathe, this is what we internalize. It's our problem. So if you want to change things, you have to change yourself first and then make sure that the people around you change also. And then you can start talking about votes. Yeah, first you have to change your mind, and then we'll talk about votes.

[Kibbe]

This is why I talk about Ayn Rand so much, because I think she, she has a better version of self help philosophy, this pop culture idea that you got to make your bet, as Jordan Peterson would say. But Ayn Rand has this hopeful idea that if you are willing to work, if you're willing to take responsibility for yourself, that the future in your life is a beautiful thing. And I think that's what we turn people onto.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Yeah. When people say, why do you work so much? I'm not working, I'm creating. I'm having fun every day of my life. And I'm very lucky because I get to do the things that I want. It's really very, very once in a while that I have to do something that I don't like it, but I have to do it. There's some things like going to the dentist, but yeah, you have to do that. But in general, the happiness comes from the freedom to create and to do the things that you're good at, like structuring a business deal, creating a new product, finding a way out of this problem. This is a very challenging, intellectual job, and it gives me a lot of, of pleasure in that. Of course I make a lot of money, but that's not what's driving me. It's because I love what I do.

[Kibbe]

It seems like that's a philosophy that undergirds your philanthropic efforts in education as well, to treat every student as an individual.

[Ricardo Salinas]

That is a central point because we're so unique and different. And that's why, you know, the collectivists have the word equality. I hate equality. It's the worst word. And it's so vulnerable to criticism because we're obviously unequal. Everybody is unequal, thank goodness. Otherwise we would be just robots, you know, looking the same, acting the same, thinking the same. Of course not. It's our unique individuality that gives us a personality and the possibility to do something outstanding or mediocre or really bad that is amazing, this amazing thing of humanity, how different we all are. So we should run away from the equalitarians, egalitarians, as fast as possible. And be careful because they try to shoot you, you know, aggressive people. They want to make you equal down in the ground. In the ground, equal in dirt.

[Kibbe]

We're actually the philosophy of diversity and.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Individual rights start with number one, the individual.

[Unknown Participant]

Yes.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Human rights start with the individual right.

[Kibbe]

And this is something that, you know, Hayek. My two favorite philosophers, if you will, are Friedrich Hayek and Ayn Rand. And she's the individualist and he's the one explained that it can explain how free people with all of that diverse knowledge and different skill sets and different desires and different goals, how they can come together and create something bigger and more beautiful than any one individual creature could have built. But you can't do it without individuals.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Of course, because everything that we see around ourselves and everything that I do is certainly a product cooperation of working together as individuals united with a common vision, a common purpose. And then this amazing thing comes to pass. This is not an individualist type of job, you know.

[Unknown Participant]

Yes, yes.

[Ricardo Salinas]

It's unlike an artist who maybe would create a sculpture on his own. Modern day creations are much more a collection of different talents with the right leadership. Absolutely. Because talents without leadership will go in different directions.

[Kibbe]

Last time I was in Mexico City, I had an opportunity to speak to some of the new students at the Universidad de la Libertad. And that culture of both individual responsibility and cooperation was so obvious and they were so animated with this energy.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Well, we have our experiment there with the university. It's very young. We're barely a year and a half old. We only have a few hundred students. But, you know, the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. And the next best time is today. So we start today. Right.

[Kibbe]

Did you do this because you were pissed off about getting kicked out of university?

[Ricardo Salinas]

No, I did it because I need to know. I need to have the cultural battle. The battleground for the. For the culture war will be in the universities, in the media, in the social media. And I need to have these places or I can bring people from other places and be part of this battle. That's why I did it.

[Kibbe]

You have other education experiments?

[Ricardo Salinas]

Oh, yes, of course. We have Humanitarian, which is the kindergarten to 12th grade, and then they go to the University, K to 12, and then the university. And then we have the Fundacion Azteca schools, which are a very interesting experiment that my daughter has made to infiltrate the government schools with this virus of freedom.

[Kibbe]

It's contagious.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Well, yeah, as long as they don't stamp it out. Yes. By the way young people are natural breeding ground for this virus because they appreciate freedom. They have not been trained to be slaves yet. They're in the process.

[Kibbe]

Let me geek out a little bit about Austrian economics and monetary policy and go back to the panel that you were just on. All of these problems that are created by government are not possible unless they own and control and manipulate the currency.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Obviously, that's what allows them to do all these horrible things like wage war across the world at all times and in all places. The only way they can do this because they can print them money. It's terrible.

[Kibbe]

The welfare state.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Yeah, welfare state also. But the warfare state, I think is even worse.

[Kibbe]

Far worse.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Yeah. Yes, the welfare warfare state. That's what I call it.

[Kibbe]

When I was a graduate student, I wrote a paper called Lawyers, Guns and Money, which was the relationship between the creation of the Federal Reserve bank and the endless wars that we have engaged in in the United States ever since.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Yeah, it's terrible. You know, America used to be literally the beacon of freedom and people outside America would believe the home of the brave and the land of the free. It was an inspiration, you know, to go there and to grow there. Not anymore. It's very sad.

[Kibbe]

You mentioned in your talk one of the favorite interviews I found on YouTube when Friedrich Hayek, I think soon after he published the denationalization of money, was struggling with this idea that the central bank is the source of all of our problems. Manipulation of money and fiat currency. This is the problem. But we're never going to be able to solve that directly. And he says instead we need to.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Sneak around the sly, roundabout way. Yeah, that was a phrase.

[Unknown Participant]

Yes.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Very interesting.

[Kibbe]

And you think that bitcoin, cryptocurrency, but bitcoin specifically is the best hope of what Hayek was suggesting.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Absolutely. The sly, roundabout way. First, it's definitely bitcoin, okay. Not cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is a catch all. Doesn't mean anything. Bitcoin. Now why? Because the problem that we need to go back to history, monetary history, brings us from seashell shells to gold coins and tend to the gold standard. And as I said, at the beginning of the gold standard, it was a good idea. The dollar was worth $32 an ounce, or I think 22 and then 32, 22 Bretton woods and DA, da, da. And you use these tokens printed by the US Government, which gave them a tremendous privilege. What was it the exorbitant privilege was a Frenchman that said that?

[Unknown Participant]

Yes.

[Ricardo Salinas]

And yeah, because they get to keep all the gold and then issue the tokens. So far, so good. That was the gold standard. But then there somebody came up with a good idea of defaulting on the token, and you couldn't exchange it anymore for gold. So now gold was refloating, and it was worth whatever the market was said was worth it. So immediately it went from $30 to 200 and $150. And here we are at $3,000 gold today. So the problem with gold is that it is a highly centralized resource. You have to put it somewhere. And because it's centralized, it's very vulnerable to confiscation. Looters and looters of all kinds. Yeah, thieves and governments. Same. Same guys. You know, organized crime is the same thing. So, yeah, they got connections to gold very easily. And so it's. It's hard to keep it safe and many other things, you know, to verify its quality and to divide it and to transport it. So then along comes bitcoin. And compared to gold, it's amazing because in 10 minutes, you can transfer billions of dollars. It'll cost you maybe $5 to transfer $2 billion from here to Dubai or to London or whatever. So once you have this feel for what it's like to have instantaneous transactions, high amounts with absolute certainty, no counterparty risk, and no chargebacks, it is really an amazing feature. Much better than gold.

[Unknown Host]

At kibbe on liberty, Freedom is a lifestyle24.7, something you live and breathe and wear every day. If that describes you, you need the very best liberty swag in the market today, Just like this shirt I happen to be wearing. Go to freethepeople.org kol and check out our exciting merch. You too can love liberty and look cool.

[Kibbe]

So there's a controversy in the bitcoin community that you probably know about between the sort of the original entrepreneurs in the space who wanted bitcoin to be a medium of exchange versus what it has evolved into more of a store of value and an investment. Do you have a. Do you have a side in this battle?

[Ricardo Salinas]

Well, you know, it's. It's this, as I said, this discussion about what. What is money? And they come up with the three things. A store of value, a unit of account, and a medium of exchange. And it's. It's boring. That. That thing is boring for me. Money is whatever the most liquid commodity that you have around. Around that is money. For me, the most liquid commodity. So money is. Do I have a T bill? Yes, I can sell it. Yes, I can get it's super liquid. It's money. Do I have a bitcoin? Can I sell it? Yes, it's liquid now. Can I go into a coffee shop and pay for a coffee? No. Well, because it's a high denomination bill, you know, but that's, that's trivial, you know, you can build a million medium of exchange based on the lightning network. And by the way, it works amazingly well. In half a second we transfer value. Pay for your damn coffee if you want to use bitcoin. But frankly anybody who understands bitcoin would not do that because you would have your assets in hard acid bitcoin, as hard as it gets. And your liabilities in fiat shit money that goes down in value all the time.

[Kibbe]

Shitcoins.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Shitcoins. If he had shitcoins. And you'd pay your debts with shitcoins and keep your assets over here, you know. Yeah, you actually, you take debt in shitcoins because it's going to depreciate. You use that to pay stuff and you keep your bitcoin and never spend it.

[Kibbe]

I'm sure you've noticed that many of the bitcoin maximalists, the people that were advocates early that got involved, are big advocates today. There's quite an overlap with people that have read some of the Austrians. Because it's a different way of thinking about money.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Because it's freedom.

[Unknown Participant]

Yeah.

[Kibbe]

And it's also this process. You mentioned Karl Menger in your speech, founder of the Austrian school. And money's what you decide it is.

[Ricardo Salinas]

It's subjective.

[Unknown Participant]

Yeah.

[Kibbe]

It's not what the government decides.

[Unknown Participant]

Yeah.

[Ricardo Salinas]

That's every time you discuss Bitcoin somebody says, well, it has no intrinsic value. Intrinsic value is something that, how do you say, a cop out from people who don't understand. There's nothing intrinsic about value. There's no such thing as intrinsic value. All value is subjective. Everything is subjective. No intrinsic value. And what is the difference between investing and speculating? Just the guy who's speaking with the same shit, you know, you expecting something to happen in the future, but investing sounds better than speculating for sure.

[Unknown Participant]

Yes.

[Kibbe]

So I read somewhere that you have 10% of your wealth in business. Bitcoin is that, well, here's the deal.

[Ricardo Salinas]

What is wealth again? So if you go and do your net worth and you say, well, I got all these assets and these liabilities as your net worth, so what are my assets? I have a lot of companies and I own stock in these companies and most of them now are private. So I control these companies and they're my companies and I have some partners. So if I added up what these companies are worth, it's a big number. But you know what? It's irrelevant because I'm not selling it and nobody's buying them. So what is what? This is very common in the, in the financial circles in the U.S. like, let's say, I don't know, Musk has 10% of Tesla, so it's very easy to calculate. Well, 10% of 400 billion is 40 billion. And he's worth 40 billion.

[Kibbe]

Right.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Which of course is a total falsehood because the only way to have 40 billion is to actually sell your stock and pay the taxes. And then you'd have, what, you'd have a deposit in T bills. What do you do with that? You go buy some other stock. So why did you sell your stock in the first place? So it doesn't make a lot of sense, but what I do have is a liquid portfolio of liquid assets that I manage. And yeah, I have about 60 now because gold has gone up now. It's about 37% gold and the rest is bitcoin and bitcoin miners. But yeah, it's about 60, 40 now because gold has gone up a lot. Thank goodness.

[Unknown Participant]

Yeah, yeah.

[Kibbe]

So you mentioned Elon Musk. If you've been reading the news, there's a lot of vandalism, some people say terrorism of Elon's Tesla and not his, but just Tesla cars, Tesla dealerships, crazy.

[Ricardo Salinas]

People all over the world. Yeah, it's amazing.

[Kibbe]

But you seem to be a happy warrior. You seem to enjoy the fight.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Never passed the occasion to get into a good fight.

[Kibbe]

And, and you know, my sense is, and know he says this, that, that Elon's doing what he's doing now because he believes it's the right thing to do.

[Ricardo Salinas]

I think so.

[Kibbe]

And the, the question is if, if there's a price to be paid for speaking the truth, for trying to liberate other people with the ideas of freedom, why can't we get more business people to step up? Successful people, not just business people.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Yeah. You know, normally businessmen have part partners and they have fiduciary duties and that is a big deterrent right there. It's hard for somebody to act with full autonomy if you have partners and you can be sued and people can point your finger at it. Thank goodness, in my case, my dad and I are the partners and we agree fully. So that has not been an issue. But it's a problem now if you're sole proprietor. I think Milton Friedman has A very good article on this, on the social responsibility of capitalism. We should go look it up and. Exactly. He's talking about this. If you're a business manager, a very important guy and very solid guy, like let's say Jamie Dimon at Morgan. But he's not a full owner. He represents the owners. So any political position or charitable contribution he should not be doing because he is acting in the representation of the shareholders and he certainly does not have unanimous consent to do whatever it is he's doing. You see what I'm saying? So that puts you in a no go zone for the vast majority of businessmen immediately. It's only the sole proprietor who can act in an autonomous way. And I just remembered this from Milton Friedman, which by the way, is a very good speaker in terms of the libertarian populist.

[Kibbe]

Yes, he's a great speaker. He was the first.

[Ricardo Salinas]

A great speaker.

[Kibbe]

Take it to pbs.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Yeah, yeah. And also that reminds me, Ayn Rand is such a bad speaker on television. It's very bad news for us that love her and her ideas because her delivery is terrible and her accent doesn't inspire any confidence.

[Kibbe]

This is why we believe in a division of labor.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Exactly. She should have stuck to writing.

[Kibbe]

I am getting the hook from your team.

[Ricardo Salinas]

I gotta go.

[Kibbe]

And I really appreciate the time you spent with you. I have a gift for you.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Okay.

[Kibbe]

And the hope, the hope of this gift is that my country and your country avoid a destructive trade war.

[Ricardo Salinas]

I certainly hope so.

[Kibbe]

And in honor of that, I want to give you a bottle of my favorite Kentucky bourbon.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Oh, okay.

[Kibbe]

Before there was a 40% tariff imposed on it.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Angels envy Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate that.

[Kibbe]

So salute.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Yes, we should definitely never go into a tax war.

[Unknown Participant]

No.

[Ricardo Salinas]

Because tariffs are taxes at the end of the day and they're being paid by consumers 100%. So let's get out of that. But thank you.

[Unknown Host]

Thanks for watching. If you liked the conversation, make sure to like the video, subscribe and also ring the bell for notifications. And if you want to know more about Free the people, go to freethepeople.org.