Revolution-Reformation--Wealth
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00:00:30.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:00:41.000 | My name is Joshua. I'm your host.
00:00:42.000 | And today we're going to talk about revolution versus reformation and how you can protect your money, your family, your livelihood, etc. If you are unfortunate enough to live in a time of revolution.
00:00:59.000 | This morning on Twitter, I wrote out a quick tweet that said I've over a period of years, I've become entirely opposed to revolution.
00:01:09.000 | I've become convinced over about the last 10 years I've been thinking about I've become convinced that revolutions are always bad, that they are 100% of the time just completely bad.
00:01:21.000 | Rather, I'm in favor of reformation, the things that need to be changed in society or in the world or in your city or your community.
00:01:30.000 | Those things should be changed not by revolution, but by reformation.
00:01:35.000 | Now, at the beginning here, I want to just talk philosophically about this difference between revolution and reformation, and then we'll apply it to money.
00:01:43.000 | But you should be forewarned that this show is going to be big picture.
00:01:46.000 | I'm not going to give a lot of specific financial advice, but we'll talk about what I see is the solution of how to survive and prosper during a revolution if you find yourself living through one.
00:01:57.000 | First, conceptually, what do I mean by these terms revolution and reformation?
00:02:02.000 | Well, admittedly, they're imprecise.
00:02:05.000 | But what I think of when I think of revolution is a complete transformation of something within a very small amount of time.
00:02:20.000 | A complete transformation of something within a very small amount of time.
00:02:26.000 | I also think of the concepts of kind of a lack of control, a broad spread, uprising of some kind that has something to do with it.
00:02:36.000 | I think there may also be violent connotations, whether that includes physical violence, such as some political revolutions have included,
00:02:45.000 | or that just implies such a dramatic pace of change that it feels almost violent because it's so fast.
00:02:57.000 | Now, I contrast revolution with reformation.
00:03:01.000 | And when I think of reformation, I think of a more measured system of change, a step by step, block by block change.
00:03:12.000 | It may wind up being a total transformation, but it's more systematic. It's more controlled. It's less revolutionary.
00:03:21.000 | And I become convinced that revolution is almost always bad.
00:03:28.000 | I want to say always bad, but sometimes I might apply the word revolution to something like the technological revolution.
00:03:35.000 | The fact that you're listening to my voice right now is an example of the technical technical is an outcome of a technological revolution.
00:03:43.000 | Now, is that is it all bad? I wouldn't say so.
00:03:46.000 | And so I wonder if my my universal condemnation of revolution breaks down.
00:03:51.000 | But it actually has been pretty tough.
00:03:53.000 | If you were to compare if you are to compare the challenges that we face today with regard to the technological revolution, they are substantial.
00:04:03.000 | The easy access to information has had untold positive effects, allows me to speak to you right now in just a really incredible way.
00:04:14.000 | But it also has come with tremendous difficulties.
00:04:20.000 | Example would be, how do you properly measure the flow of information?
00:04:25.000 | The world is dealing with things like fake news epidemics.
00:04:29.000 | How do we properly measure the impact of fake news?
00:04:34.000 | How do we teach people to carefully filter their information for its actual truthfulness?
00:04:41.000 | We're wrestling with topics like censorship.
00:04:44.000 | What ideas should be censored either by individuals or by public outcry?
00:04:51.000 | Who should be censored and why?
00:04:53.000 | These are ideas that we're wrestling with and you can see the instability in many of our societies that has come and is coming because of this technological revolution.
00:05:02.000 | It's been so fast that it feels like we haven't had time to get used to it or to learn the new skills that we need.
00:05:11.000 | Now, I'm not going to say the technological revolution is 100 percent bad, but it's it's really tough.
00:05:17.000 | It's really tough to handle.
00:05:19.000 | As we move into the world of things like political revolutions, I'm convinced that they're 100 percent bad.
00:05:24.000 | That the outcomes that people point to of, look, we achieved these things have such a heavy price when they're achieved in the context of revolution instead of reformation, that it significantly taints the end result.
00:05:37.000 | Better to go systematically, to be patient and to pursue a platform and a practice of steady, step by step reformation than revolution.
00:05:49.000 | I don't know if we are living in a revolutionary time, but it sure feels that way.
00:05:54.000 | It feels like if it's not, if we're not living in a revolutionary time, it feels like the winds of change could quickly blow in that direction.
00:06:04.000 | All that would be needed would be a few catalytic events, a few kinetic events.
00:06:12.000 | And it seems it feels like we live in a revolutionary age.
00:06:17.000 | Now, I don't know. Maybe this is normal. Maybe it's happened before.
00:06:21.000 | It just seems to me if we didn't, when I think about history and I think about what it may have felt like and smelled like and sounded like to live in other pre-revolutionary cultures and times, I don't know how different it would be from what we're living through right now.
00:06:43.000 | And so that causes me to be sober and to try to be sober minded.
00:06:47.000 | So what happens in revolutions?
00:06:51.000 | Well, one of the reasons that revolutions can be so dangerous is because they're usually accompanied by mobs, mobs of people.
00:06:59.000 | And mobs scare me. Mobs of any kind scare me.
00:07:04.000 | There's only one time I've ever been a part of a mob.
00:07:07.000 | And you'll laugh, but it's true.
00:07:10.000 | And that was when I was in high school and I did musical theater and we performed the Disney Beauty and the Beast production.
00:07:17.000 | And I was part of the mob, you know, the mob song from Beauty and the Beast.
00:07:22.000 | He's got fangs. Kill the beast.
00:07:30.000 | You know that song. And I remember performing that song on stage.
00:07:35.000 | And I was part of the mob. I was just part of the chorus.
00:07:38.000 | But, you know, we had our pitchforks in our hands and we would set out and here's Gaston, you know, riling up the mob.
00:07:45.000 | And, you know, he's got fangs, razor sharp ones. He's got fangs. He's got claws.
00:07:50.000 | We're not we won't rest until he's dead. Kill the beast.
00:07:53.000 | And, you know, I'm acting this out. And I remember how my blood used to like the adrenaline into my body used to pump when I was performing that scene.
00:08:04.000 | And it just felt it felt exactly as I would imagine it feeling if I was part of a village mob to go up to the Beast's castle and kill the beast.
00:08:15.000 | And I remember that I would be yelling these words, you know, kill the beast.
00:08:19.000 | And I felt a sense of murder in my heart. I felt a sense of just we're going to go after them.
00:08:25.000 | And this this mob psychology came in, even in a ridiculous high school musical theater application.
00:08:33.000 | And part of that, you would say, is just good acting, right?
00:08:36.000 | Good acting involves putting yourself into a state where you feel what your character would feel.
00:08:41.000 | So part of it was good acting. But what I observed was how quickly that became part of how quickly I felt those emotions.
00:08:52.000 | And even though the whole thing was made up and it was a story made up about a magic incantation where a man was transformed into a beast and the beast had done nothing wrong.
00:09:02.000 | But now the mob is being riled up by, you know, Gaston, who's going to go. We're going to go up and kill the beast.
00:09:08.000 | The whole thing was made up. And yet here I was feeling like, wow, I could almost commit murder based upon this simple fact of we're here on a stage and I'm surrounded by people.
00:09:21.000 | And we're we've got our fists in the air and we're yelling and saying, we're going to go. We're not coming home. We won't stop until he's dead.
00:09:29.000 | And here's this, you know, the guy, you get the point that scared me to this day. It still scares me when I think of some of the situations I've been in in my life because of peer pressure or crowd dynamics.
00:09:44.000 | You know, it really, really scared me. It still does.
00:09:49.000 | I remember one, another example. I remember years ago I went to a T. Harv Ecker seminar. If you'll remember, T. Harv Ecker was, is the man who wrote the book called The Millionaire Mind, not Thomas Stanley's Millionaire Mind, but T. Harv Ecker's Millionaire Mind, all about changing your scripts with regard to money.
00:10:12.000 | And I went to his seminar. It was a very well done seminar. I really enjoyed it. But he did this thing at the seminar with regard to crowd dynamics.
00:10:26.000 | And I'm giving away the point, which you almost hesitate to do, but in this case, I think it's important. And he put the crowd through and you had to bring a hundred dollar bill to the seminar.
00:10:35.000 | And he was talking about the mindset of money, of how you master over money and you adjust your mindset. He was talking about how, and the way that you were going to show your complete and total mastery over money was you were going to burn your hundred dollar bill.
00:10:54.000 | Now, these things sound ridiculous, but he had a beautiful way of building up to it, of getting the crowd into it. And I watched the crowd dynamics and I remember that I was torn. I was sitting there saying, this is stupid. This is stupid. I'm not going to burn a hundred dollar bill. This is utterly stupid.
00:11:12.000 | But I remember how much I wanted to participate in that because of the crowd dynamics of the money seminar and how I wanted to experience it. And I don't know. I don't think I would have done it. But maybe I'm fooling myself. Maybe I would have.
00:11:27.000 | And then he would round up the whole crowd. I can't remember the details of how he did it, but he's got candles ready and you're just about to light it on fire. And then he says, stop. And then the lesson is that if you were ready to burn a hundred dollar bills, you were acting like an idiot. Stop. You have to actually respect your money and take care of it.
00:11:47.000 | And I learned a lesson, right? I learned a lesson of how a good orator, a good leader can get a crowd to do something that an individual really never would. You see this all throughout the world. You see this in political settings and religious settings and all kinds of places where you just see a mob psychology take over. And it scares me.
00:12:09.000 | I made a commitment. I said, I'm never going to be part of a mob. I'm just not going to do it. And I've done a pretty decent job of not being part of any kind of mob. But I've had the mob come for me a time or two and it's not fun. And it's scary how our human group dynamics work and how it really exposes us.
00:12:28.000 | So in revolutions, you often have these mob dynamics at work and people get hurt. Things get done. Atrocities get committed when you're in the middle of these, these revolutions, especially if there's violence involved in a political revolution of some kind and people do things they would never do at another time.
00:12:46.000 | Now, why do I say that revolutions are always bad? That seems like a hard statement to defend. You know, where most of us want to go is immediately to what about the American Revolution? Right. Let's talk about what the American Revolution was, was great. We think we say the American Revolution was great, but the French Revolution, that was the bad one.
00:13:05.000 | Well, sometimes the French people might want to talk about that. It seems a little bit mean to always make fun of the French Revolution, although it had a lot to be critical of. But even just the American Revolution, you know, years ago when I was young, I was raised with probably what many Americans are raised with is this, this basic context that the American Revolution is the ultimate, ultimate example of an appropriate, moral, upright, just revolution.
00:13:34.000 | It was the right thing. And of course, we're coming up here on July 4, you know, the day to celebrate the American Revolution, Independence Day. Over the years, I studied history a lot more. I started off thinking, oh, I would have been a patriot, right? I would have been right there with Paul Revere. And I would have been there in George Washington's army. And I would have been there with that.
00:13:56.000 | But over time, I've become convinced that, or I hope that I wouldn't be actually. At this point, I think the American Revolution was a mistake. I think it has turned out to be a mistake. And although you appreciate so many great things about the United States of America and so many good things that have happened, none of us have God's middle knowledge to go back and have an idea of what would have happened if things had gone another way.
00:14:21.000 | And I personally, if I could go back and, and you just say, Joshua, you can go back and be a subject of King George living in the United States, the US American colonies, I'd do it in an instant. You had the freest, one of the freest places on earth, as long as you weren't a slave, a black slave in the United States, you had one of the freest places in on earth with, you know, a tenth of the level of taxation of British people have basically 1% of income is what historical,
00:14:50.000 | historical economies of economists have estimated incredible freedom. And when you look at what happened in the wake of the revolution, you know, an immediate hyperinflation, immediate massive increases in taxes, immediate new laws. And then you had the pre constitutional era that quickly led to the US Constitution. And sorry to step on your toes, constitutionalists, but it's turned out to be, I don't know, you appreciate some things about it.
00:15:17.000 | But a number of years ago, I became convinced that I'm an anti federalist politically, and that the Constitution was basically a middle of the night coup. And what has happened is the victors write the history books. And so the constitutionalists won. And so now we look at the Federalist Papers and every conservative Republican says, well, look, let's look at the Federalist Papers. And you compare the Federalist Papers to today. And you say, well, you know, I appreciate many of the things about the Federalist Papers, but I'm not convinced it was a good idea.
00:15:46.000 | I'm not convinced it was a good thing. I'm not convinced it was the best solution. But, and again, I'm not bitter about any of this stuff, just kind of an abstract, unpopular opinion that I personally hold. No need to argue about it. None of us can go back and change it. None of us can adjust it.
00:16:02.000 | But I find the constitutional period or the Revolutionary War period in the United States important, especially as it relates to wealth. Because over time, when I finally realized, you know what, I think if I were, you know, 200 and whatever years ago, if I were anything like I am today, I probably would have been a loyalist. I probably would have been a loyalist to the crown.
00:16:24.000 | And so what would that have meant to me financially? Well, it would have meant total ruin, right, financially. There have been two major periods in the United States of America where tens of thousands of people have been ruined financially. Actually, I guess probably three, but two big ones, where tens of thousands of people have been utterly ruined financially by revolution.
00:16:48.000 | The first obvious one was in the wake of the American Revolution, where all of the loyalists, anybody who had not joined the revolutionary cause, all of the loyalists basically had to flee, had to flee to Canada, many of them. They lost their property, their property was taken, lost their assets, lost their businesses, experienced complete social ostracism, basically lost everything.
00:17:14.000 | And many of them, of course, fled to Canada and started over in Canada. And I'll give you the other example in a moment. But it's sobering when you think back about how fraught with danger things were. Again, the victors write the history books. And so we look back from a modern perspective, if you're in the United States and you're raised as a U.S. American, you look back and you say, well, of course, you know, what the people did was patriotic.
00:17:39.000 | And Thomas Jefferson says the, the, the tree of liberty should be watered with the blood of tyrants. And these were the most patriotic men ever. No, they committed treason. Right. They committed treason. And in my opinion, again, very unpopular opinion, but in my opinion, under a lot of them are completely false pretenses.
00:18:00.000 | So what would have happened if they had not won? Well, if they had not won, then everybody who joined that side, if England had been victorious in the American Revolution, which any observer would certainly have expected, the actual outcome of the American Revolution was astonishingly unexpected for kind of a thoughtful outside observer.
00:18:23.000 | Basically, the French saved the revolution at the end due to some, some good diplomacy. I think it was Ben Franklin, right, who went to France and finally succeeded in persuading the French to join the cause and help to defeat the British. But another reason to practice your French. Benefits of learning foreign languages.
00:18:45.000 | But without that, if the British had won, then of course, all of the supporters, all of the rebels would have been totally crushed.
00:18:55.000 | The rebels would have been crushed. Their property would have been taken. They would have been hanged in the village square. They would have been imprisoned. Their families would have been left completely destitute. And, and, you know, they would have lost everything.
00:19:09.000 | So put yourself back in the context of the American Revolution, right? You're living in Boston and put yourself in a situation where you've got to take sides in this, in this war. You've got to either be a rebel, aka a patriot or whatever term of the time, or you're going to be a loyalist.
00:19:30.000 | Well, that's a hard question to make because if you pick one side or you pick the other, if you pick the winning side, things might work out for you. If you pick the losing side, you might be ruined. And that's what happened. The rebels won. The revolutionary spirit, the early Americans won. But that meant that the loyalists were destroyed and had to flee, had to flee with what they had on their backs.
00:19:57.000 | Now let's go forward in the United States to another period after the Civil War. So again, in the Civil War, you have a revolutionary spirit. You have the Southern secession. And then you have the, the, the Union Army come in and, and, and determined to put down the Southern secession.
00:20:15.000 | Well, we know how that war ended. It wasn't clear in the middle of it, how exactly it would end, but we know how it ended. And just think back to, think back to what would have happened in that context if, if either side had won. Now we know of course that the Union Army won.
00:20:34.000 | So tens of thousands of landed Confederate supporters fled the United States. They fled to Europe. They fled to Central and South America. They fled the United States. Tens of thousands of, of Confederate landowners lost massive amounts of property with the property of their slaves, which obviously that was the morally right decision.
00:21:01.000 | But it still doesn't change the financial devastation that they experienced. But we're, but in addition to that, people lost houses, they lost businesses, they lost massively. And again, tens of thousands of people, primarily the wealthy landed people fled all around the world.
00:21:17.000 | And that was a war that was filled with war crimes. That was a war that was filled with human atrocity on both sides. War is never pretty. It's never, it's never as neat and as elegant and as pretty as you want it to be. You want it to be this, this nice thing, but war is ugly and tremendous crimes are, are committed in the midst of it.
00:21:37.000 | So we had tens of thousands of Confederates that fled, fled and, and lost everything and had to start over again in another place. Now, what if that war had gone differently? You know, one of my forebears was the leader of a county in the South, inside the Confederate South, that when the Confederate South seceded from the Union, he actually led the charge for his county to secede from the Confederacy.
00:22:04.000 | And so he was a, I guess, a Union loyalist. He didn't want to be part of the Confederacy. What would have happened to him if, if the Union had won? I'm sorry, if the South had won? Well, of course, if the South had won, then he would have been a traitor. And the people in the county that supported that would have been a traitor and they would have lost everything. A bunch of them would have been hanged in the village square and lost everything.
00:22:26.000 | And so revolutions are just simply flat out dangerous. They're dangerous no matter what side they're on. And, and the other reason why I look at revolutions and just think about how destructive they are is the results are so muddled. You know, you look at many of the wars where you say there's a clear moral cause.
00:22:44.000 | You look at the, the Civil War with a clear morally right cause that involves the ending of slavery. Or you look at a place like, I don't know, you look at World War II and you look at war and you think this could have been solved some other way. And if it had been solved some other way, it would have been better.
00:23:02.000 | So slavery ended all around, you know, the American, the United States of America ended slavery with a war, but it didn't have to be that way. Slavery was ended in other places without a war. And when there is a revolution, it leads to bad situations.
00:23:18.000 | You know, years ago, a number of years ago, I've mentioned on the show various times I went to Haiti. And one of the things that's really interesting when you speak to Haitians is Haitians are incredibly proud that they, their country is the, has, to my knowledge, is the only successful slave revolt, black slave revolt in the world.
00:23:41.000 | And it's really interesting because I toured the palace and the citadel that I mentioned in a previous show. I toured the palace and then some of the things that were built by slaves. And you look at the cost, the human life of that. And it's, it's horrendous, right?
00:23:58.000 | You go to so many of these ancient, the, the, these ancient buildings and, and edifices and monuments. And you think about the human cost that was involved in it. It just makes your, all you want to do is sit down and cry.
00:24:15.000 | You know, you think about the Bung Road in Russia or the, you know, the palace of, this is the citadel. And you think about the human cost in Haiti, just the slaves that gave their lives. It's, it's just, it's heartbreaking.
00:24:29.000 | And when I've gone back and I've thought about what's happened in Haiti since the revolution, and when I would talk to the Haitians and try to get an understanding of what on earth is going on in this nation, I'm, I don't know, you know, I'm not Haitian.
00:24:46.000 | I don't really have any, any way to, why I should have a valid opinion about it, but it just seems like such a troubled and dysfunctional place that I wonder if the revolution was, was great.
00:24:59.000 | I think Reformation would have been better. Don't know. My history is not competent enough to know that. What I do know is this, revolution is dangerous. It's dangerous for you and it's dangerous for your money.
00:25:13.000 | Now, if you're on the winning side of a revolution, can it make you a fortune? There have been people throughout history who have done that.
00:25:19.000 | There have been people throughout history who made their fortune during times of war. War is a racket. War is a way of certain people getting rich.
00:25:27.000 | And so, if you can be on the winning side and you can play that inside game, maybe you can use war, maybe you can use a revolution to build your fortune.
00:25:37.000 | I'm not comfortable with that. I'm not interested in it. I think most of that is immoral. I wouldn't sleep at night if I had a financial fortune that was built on the death of thousands of people.
00:25:48.000 | I couldn't sleep. I couldn't spend that blood money. But I acknowledge that that is the case throughout human history.
00:25:55.000 | There's also a good chance of ruin. If you're on the wrong side of the revolution, there's a very decent chance of ruin.
00:26:02.000 | So, what do you do? How do you protect yourself if you happen to wake up and find yourself in a time of revolution?
00:26:10.000 | Well, about the only thing I know to do is to step out of the way.
00:26:15.000 | Sometimes easier said than done. And sometimes morally, I think stepping out of the way might be the exact wrong thing to do.
00:26:25.000 | Morally, it would seem that there are times when you need to stand up and open your mouth.
00:26:30.000 | There are times when fighting, whether it be physical violence or whether it be with words or rhetoric, seems the appropriate thing to do.
00:26:43.000 | The cost, finances should not be our god. Finances should not be building wealth and keeping wealth, should not be the only thing that we're focused on.
00:26:56.000 | It should not be. And so I want to leave wide open the door and leave wide open the position that there are times when something is too important to run away from.
00:27:07.000 | But when I look at things pragmatically and with the background that revolution is probably bad on all sides, which admittedly very few people would share that opinion.
00:27:19.000 | But I've just tried to articulate a little bit about why I think it is generally bad and why I support reformation of things that need to be reformed, but not revolution.
00:27:29.000 | When I look at it, about the only solution that I see is to get out of the way.
00:27:37.000 | Get out of the way physically, remove yourself from a place of physical harm, remove yourself and your capital or at least significant amounts of your capital and have a plan to go somewhere else.
00:27:52.000 | If you go back to almost any revolution, there are warning signs in the years before it.
00:27:59.000 | There are warning signs, two that I've had a good deal of experience with that are fairly recent, the Cuban revolution and then also the political revolution in Venezuela.
00:28:09.000 | Now, they looked different, but one of the things that's been fascinating to me is that both of them had significant warning signs.
00:28:17.000 | And in both cases, you'll find people who had their eyes opened and who had their eyes opened, they were paying attention and they made plans to not be stuck in the middle of a revolution.
00:28:32.000 | This past weekend, I was spending some time with a Venezuelan family and their escape plan, they left Venezuela about five years ago, but it took them about four or five years of work before that to set up the system for them to leave Venezuela.
00:28:45.000 | They had to get residency paperwork in another place.
00:28:47.000 | They had to start a business in that place in order to get the residency paperwork.
00:28:50.000 | So they had to figure out how to start the business.
00:28:52.000 | It was very expensive for them, but they were able to leave Venezuela years before things got really bad.
00:28:59.000 | And today, we were sitting at a resort, sitting and chatting and they were doing well, doing really, really well.
00:29:07.000 | Even though their, you know, their friends and their family and their compatriots are not, because they saw the revolution coming and they didn't sit and wait.
00:29:18.000 | Now, in hindsight, when I go back and I think about my admittedly limited knowledge of history of almost any revolution, I think the same thing can be said.
00:29:29.000 | That when you go back and you look and you see the winds are coming, that's the time to have a backup plan.
00:29:36.000 | That's the time to be able to move.
00:29:39.000 | So if I put myself in the position of let's go back to the American Revolution.
00:29:44.000 | If I took plans proactively and did my best, and let's just assume that I'm not going to be on the front line, right?
00:29:52.000 | I'm not the revolutionary and I'm not the leading opponent.
00:29:55.000 | I'm kind of stepping, stepping out to the side.
00:29:58.000 | If I took plans proactively, I could adjust things, right?
00:30:04.000 | If I had, if I assume I have money, right?
00:30:06.000 | This is a lot. Everything in life is easier if you got a lot of money.
00:30:09.000 | But you might just, why don't you send your family to France, right?
00:30:12.000 | Or send your family to Germany for a few years.
00:30:15.000 | You think back and you look at the pain.
00:30:18.000 | I look at, I watch, I enjoy watching historical movies.
00:30:22.000 | What's that one? The Mel Gibson one, right? The Patriot, something like that, where he's in the American Revolution.
00:30:26.000 | If memory is right, didn't he lose a child?
00:30:28.000 | And wasn't that what caused him to be this valiant warrior?
00:30:32.000 | Well, it's not worth it to lose a child, right?
00:30:36.000 | Of course, you hate to disrupt your whole family and do that.
00:30:39.000 | But if you're in that situation, wouldn't it be better to shut down your business operation,
00:30:44.000 | shut down your farm and put your family, send them on a boat to Germany?
00:30:49.000 | You go back to Germany, kind of pre-World War II Germany, and you look at all of the people.
00:30:53.000 | You think about a guy like Albert Einstein or who was the economist? Mises, I think.
00:30:59.000 | Who got out, you know, a few, just a little time before.
00:31:03.000 | And they waited even too long.
00:31:05.000 | But you think about all the people who stayed, who stayed in Germany and in Austria.
00:31:10.000 | When, if they had just simply left, if they had recognized, look, the writing's on the wall, let's adjust.
00:31:15.000 | Let's go in a different direction.
00:31:17.000 | Let's move some of our affairs, move some business affairs.
00:31:20.000 | And let's go to a place that's a disinterested, you know, more neutral place.
00:31:25.000 | Think about the human lives that could have been saved if more people had done that.
00:31:32.000 | Now, I don't know how that kind of thing affects history.
00:31:34.000 | I have no idea. I have no idea how you adjust a society or civilization.
00:31:41.000 | And I'm not sure to what extent we have even any kind of moral responsibility to think about that.
00:31:47.000 | It seems to me that we, of course, are responsible for ourselves and our family.
00:31:51.000 | And although I believe we have responsibilities that emanate out from that place,
00:31:56.000 | I'm not sure that those responsibilities are as intense as many people would want to force you to think they are.
00:32:02.000 | I don't know. I don't have that answer.
00:32:04.000 | But looking back on it, I'd like to think that if I could figure out a way to arrange the logistics,
00:32:11.000 | I'd like to think I'd like to send my family out of the danger zone.
00:32:15.000 | And so if I consider myself being in, you know, pre-Revolutionary War United States of America,
00:32:24.000 | or Civil War United States of America, or 1970s Iran, or Cuba before the revolution there,
00:32:32.000 | or Venezuela in 2010, or wherever we are, wherever you are right now,
00:32:43.000 | it just seems to me that there's a lot to be said for being thoughtful and prepared
00:32:49.000 | and making a plan to get yourself and your money out of the area of trouble.
00:32:58.000 | So let's pretend that you're living in a place where you say, you know what, there's potentially problems here.
00:33:06.000 | What do I do? What practically do you do?
00:33:09.000 | Well, the first thing that you do is you need some money or you need a way to earn some money.
00:33:15.000 | You don't actually need that much money if you have a way to earn money.
00:33:19.000 | I have a course called How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Crisis.
00:33:25.000 | Been very well thought of by my students. I've had tremendous good feedback on it.
00:33:31.000 | But in that course, I talk about the importance of having a portable business or a portable occupation,
00:33:38.000 | a portable job skills. And so that's one of the great things.
00:33:42.000 | Let's say that you have $10,000, but you're living in a place and you look around and you say,
00:33:46.000 | I'm certain that revolution is on our doorstep. I'm certain.
00:33:50.000 | These facts are telling me that revolution is coming.
00:33:53.000 | Well, don't sit back and say, well, I've got, you know, I've got to wait till I have a million dollars to leave.
00:33:58.000 | Frankly, it's probably easier for you to leave than the guy that's got a million bucks.
00:34:02.000 | Because the guy that's got a million bucks probably has a good portion of it tied up into non-movable assets.
00:34:07.000 | And he's not willing to leave. Why don't you just leave for a few years?
00:34:11.000 | Why don't you just get another job, find a neutral place somewhere that's safe and just move, go get another job in that other place.
00:34:20.000 | This might be a time to practice your German, right, or practice your your Swahili or practice your your Arabic or whatever it is.
00:34:28.000 | Just go get another job, another place and sidestep the revolution.
00:34:34.000 | It it really can work. Now, there are some logistics to that, right?
00:34:39.000 | You need a residence permit. You need the ability to work legally. You got a deal in our modern world.
00:34:45.000 | It's much more complex if it were 17, 1775.
00:34:51.000 | You could just get on a ship and no passports and you just get on a ship and go.
00:34:55.000 | If we were even if we're back in 1930 or 1935, the use of passports and paperwork was nothing like what it is today.
00:35:05.000 | Today, it's an administrative nightmare and it's you'll spend your $10,000 just getting your your work permits to go to another place.
00:35:11.000 | But it's worth it's worth it. So you need to play a source of income.
00:35:15.000 | Now, in the modern world, one of the things that's so great is so many of us can earn an income through the technological revolution that we live.
00:35:22.000 | You can earn an income through your phone. You can earn an income through your computer.
00:35:27.000 | And even as I've talked about, one of the greatest, the biggest lifestyle opportunity that we face right now is the fact that it's now mainstream and expected.
00:35:37.000 | And even considered to be the morally right thing that a company allows its workers to work remotely.
00:35:44.000 | That's an incredible opportunity because it means you can still work for your American company, even though you're living in Mexico.
00:35:53.000 | You can still work for your Canadian company, even though you're living in in Australia.
00:35:58.000 | Your hours will be funky, but you can do it.
00:36:00.000 | You can still work for your German company, even though you're living in Ireland or whatever your your particular details entail.
00:36:09.000 | That's outstanding. It's awesome.
00:36:13.000 | So you need the ability to you need the ability to move yourself.
00:36:18.000 | Sometimes there's more complex needs for that.
00:36:22.000 | So sometimes your passport is not going to be sufficient.
00:36:27.000 | You know, it's remarkable right now. The American passport has always been a strong and passport with regard to its travel privileges.
00:36:37.000 | And of course, I'm an American holding American passport.
00:36:40.000 | The American passport is not particularly well appreciated around the world right now for travel, because the United States being the current epicenter of the global pandemic.
00:36:52.000 | And so it's nice to have multiple sets of travel documents if you can arrange that.
00:36:56.000 | It's less important, I think, than many people think, but it is still helpful and important.
00:37:00.000 | So you need to think about how you get yourself and your family from one place, a place of danger to another place.
00:37:06.000 | Sometimes that literally means, you know, the not proverbial, it literally means the middle of the night fleeing.
00:37:14.000 | Sometimes that means you become a refugee and you've got to go out in the middle of the night.
00:37:19.000 | Maybe you're racing for the Mexican border or you're racing for the airplanes.
00:37:24.000 | It's interesting to think back a couple of months when the US announced the closing of the borders to from Europe,
00:37:32.000 | when at that time Europe was the epicenter of the global pandemic and the US is closing the borders.
00:37:37.000 | There were people in Paris and in London who were paying tens of thousands of dollars for a plane ticket just to get into the United States before the border closed.
00:37:46.000 | Not a joke, not ancient history, a couple of months ago.
00:37:49.000 | So sometimes you're fleeing in the middle of the night.
00:37:51.000 | So you want to think about what you do.
00:37:53.000 | Again, I'm not going to teach my course here necessarily, but you could think it through.
00:37:56.000 | Just think through, well, how, what would I need?
00:37:58.000 | I need some money, right?
00:37:59.000 | I need some access to the money, some money, etc.
00:38:01.000 | Then with regard to your investment portfolio, you want to pre-position things.
00:38:05.000 | You want to pre-position and move your money to another place.
00:38:08.000 | This is easier if you have paper assets than if you have physical assets.
00:38:13.000 | It's tough for a guy who's got a million dollars worth of real estate to be completely convinced that he should overnight liquidate it.
00:38:19.000 | Probably a little bit excessive, but that's not necessarily the only option.
00:38:25.000 | So you think about doing something like equity stripping.
00:38:28.000 | You put yourself in a situation where you wake up and you say, I've got a million dollars worth of real estate here.
00:38:33.000 | And it's all sitting here in this country.
00:38:36.000 | And I'm concerned, what would happen to that?
00:38:39.000 | If I had a problem, if there was a revolution here in this country, what would happen?
00:38:43.000 | So maybe you go ahead and lean up your property and add three quarters of a million of debt onto it.
00:38:50.000 | Then you move that money abroad.
00:38:52.000 | It won't cost you all that much to do that for a few years.
00:38:55.000 | Keep the debt on the property. If the winds of revolution die down, then you go ahead and pay off your loans.
00:39:02.000 | If the winds of revolution pick up and all of a sudden things get bad, if you've got to slip out in the middle of the night, at least you're walking away from $250,000 and your life intact.
00:39:13.000 | Instead of walking away from a million dollars to save your life.
00:39:16.000 | At least you got your $750,000 in another country that you can use to get yourself set up again and then work out the details on the back end when you have the opportunity.
00:39:25.000 | So think about those strategies.
00:39:27.000 | You've got paper assets. Things are easier.
00:39:29.000 | You can access stock accounts from all over the world.
00:39:31.000 | You can access bank accounts from all over the world.
00:39:34.000 | And it's easier to do that now than it ever was.
00:39:38.000 | Just imagine yourself in 1775.
00:39:41.000 | Just imagine, right?
00:39:43.000 | How are you going to move your family's wealth?
00:39:45.000 | You got a million bucks or whatever the equivalent was back then.
00:39:48.000 | How on earth are you going to move a million bucks from Massachusetts in the colonies to France?
00:39:57.000 | How are you going to do it?
00:39:59.000 | Or imagine yourself in pre-revolutionary war France and you got to figure out how do I move a million bucks from France to Switzerland?
00:40:06.000 | How are you going to do it?
00:40:07.000 | Well, it's tough, right?
00:40:08.000 | Gold coins, I guess. Gold coins, jewels.
00:40:12.000 | It's not easy.
00:40:14.000 | It puts you at tremendous risk of theft and of loss and of targeting.
00:40:19.000 | And you can go as fast as a horse can go.
00:40:21.000 | In today's world, you can waltz across any border with a string of random numbers in your head with a decryption key for a Bitcoin wallet or a set of passwords that allows you to sign on to an online banking portal anywhere in the world.
00:40:37.000 | And boom, you can move your money around the world.
00:40:40.000 | It's so much easier in today's world than it once was.
00:40:42.000 | So take advantage of that.
00:40:43.000 | Make sure you have some infrastructure set up.
00:40:45.000 | And the nice thing about it, you know, I've talked over the past few months, I've talked about moving money abroad outside of the United States and kind of being prepared.
00:40:56.000 | I've talked about taking some money out of the bank, being concerned about bank runs.
00:41:00.000 | Thankfully, none of those fears have come to pass.
00:41:03.000 | I'm grateful for that.
00:41:04.000 | I'm grateful for it.
00:41:06.000 | I don't think my warnings were imprudent.
00:41:09.000 | I don't regret anything.
00:41:10.000 | I think that we've got a long way to go with the current crisis.
00:41:13.000 | But thankfully, none of those dire concerns have been needed.
00:41:19.000 | I'm grateful for that.
00:41:20.000 | And you should be too.
00:41:21.000 | But at the end of the day, there doesn't have to be any cost involved.
00:41:26.000 | If you've got the infrastructure set up right, I haven't lost any money because I've been concerned about the economy.
00:41:31.000 | If you've got the infrastructure set up right, you had your bets.
00:41:35.000 | And in the modern world, you can do that.
00:41:38.000 | So I don't want to go too deeply into it.
00:41:43.000 | I mean, I've hopefully I've given you enough to spark you.
00:41:45.000 | What I wanted to emphasize was simply this.
00:41:47.000 | Two points.
00:41:49.000 | Number one, I'm convinced that reformation is the way to go, not revolution.
00:41:55.000 | Revolution appeals to you when you're young and aggressive and you think that everything is going to be better if we start shooting.
00:42:04.000 | Right. Revolution appeals to you when you think we've got the upper hand.
00:42:08.000 | Let's just beat these people down.
00:42:11.000 | So whether we're talking about a physical revolution with physical violence, you know, some kind of political issue or whether we're talking about a moral revolution, all I can say to you is it's not.
00:42:21.000 | What happens when you have a revolution?
00:42:24.000 | You lose support of people and you never have.
00:42:29.000 | You can't have peace and harmony.
00:42:31.000 | Reformation is the way to go.
00:42:33.000 | It's frustrating when you're young and you want it to go fast.
00:42:36.000 | But reformation means that you can bring people along with you.
00:42:39.000 | You can have stability.
00:42:40.000 | Now, maybe I'm just getting old.
00:42:42.000 | Right. I'm at that point of life where I'm not not very useful as a soldier.
00:42:46.000 | Got too many concerns at home.
00:42:48.000 | You know, they don't send they don't send 40 year old men off to war.
00:42:52.000 | 40 year old men have children.
00:42:53.000 | They got businesses.
00:42:54.000 | They got affairs.
00:42:55.000 | They send 18 year old men off to war and I don't know, maybe 75 year old men off to war.
00:42:58.000 | But they don't send 40 year old men off to war.
00:43:01.000 | So maybe I'm just conservative because I got too much to lose.
00:43:06.000 | But I don't think so.
00:43:08.000 | I don't think so.
00:43:10.000 | I just think that those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still.
00:43:14.000 | You have a revolution.
00:43:16.000 | What happens is instead of having people together where everyone feels good about the fact that we're making progress and it was done in a lawful way.
00:43:25.000 | What you have in a revolution is you have winners and losers.
00:43:28.000 | And the winners oftentimes destroy the losers.
00:43:32.000 | There's a guy, I'm blanking on the name right now, but a social scientist who wrote about revolution.
00:43:38.000 | He's talking about a moral revolution.
00:43:40.000 | How do you define a moral revolution?
00:43:42.000 | People talk about that in the modern world, a moral revolution.
00:43:46.000 | And we're living through a number of moral revolutions.
00:43:49.000 | And this intellectual said there are three stages to a moral revolution.
00:43:54.000 | Stage one is what was once condemned must become celebrated.
00:44:00.000 | So perhaps there's an activity that has once condemned, was once condemned.
00:44:06.000 | That which was once condemned has to become celebrated.
00:44:10.000 | That's stage one.
00:44:12.000 | Stage two is that which was once celebrated must now become condemned.
00:44:19.000 | That which was once celebrated must now become condemned.
00:44:24.000 | And stage three is those who once condemned what is now celebrated must now themselves be condemned.
00:44:36.000 | So the people themselves that used to hold the opinion, they now have to be condemned.
00:44:41.000 | And when you reach that stage three, the moral revolution is close to its end.
00:44:46.000 | I've thought about that a lot over the years.
00:44:48.000 | You can take almost any issue.
00:44:49.000 | So you take the issue that you're concerned about, put it in,
00:44:53.000 | and you can see where you are in the phases of a moral revolution.
00:44:57.000 | Again, stage one, that which was condemned must become celebrated.
00:45:01.000 | Phase two, that which was celebrated must become condemned.
00:45:06.000 | And phase three, those that previously celebrated what is now condemned must themselves be condemned.
00:45:19.000 | That does not a peaceful society make when you go through moral revolutions.
00:45:25.000 | Revolutions have winners and losers.
00:45:27.000 | And the winners almost have no choice, or maybe it's just mob psychology.
00:45:32.000 | They just wind up trying to destroy the losers.
00:45:37.000 | Doesn't work.
00:45:39.000 | Reformation is better because when you reform, step by step, little by little,
00:45:43.000 | when you're patient and take a long perspective, you can keep everybody coming with you.
00:45:47.000 | You're never going to get, excuse me, I shouldn't have used everybody.
00:45:49.000 | You're never going to get everybody, right?
00:45:51.000 | But you can keep many, many, many, if not the majority, if not almost everybody with you.
00:45:55.000 | Then you can have a peaceful, orderly transition.
00:45:59.000 | Don't buy into revolution.
00:46:01.000 | That was point one.
00:46:02.000 | Number two, if you're in revolutionary times, think carefully about what you do
00:46:09.000 | and recognize that you've got choices.
00:46:12.000 | Again, I used to think I'll be the fighter.
00:46:15.000 | I'll pick the issue and I'll be the fighter.
00:46:19.000 | Might be age speaking, might be responsibility speaking,
00:46:22.000 | might be the fact that I've got too much to lose.
00:46:24.000 | Maybe I'm a coward. You judge for yourself.
00:46:26.000 | But more and more it just seems to me that in a revolution, there are few, if any, winners.
00:46:34.000 | Especially if that revolution involves violence, there are few, if any, winners.
00:46:41.000 | I don't want anything on my conscience that I'm ashamed about a decade from now.
00:46:48.000 | When you look at the practicalities of life, a lot of times it just seems to me that
00:46:53.000 | if you have the option, which not everybody does, but if you have the option,
00:46:57.000 | if you think ahead, you might be able just to step aside from the revolution.
00:47:02.000 | That might save your life, might keep your family together,
00:47:06.000 | might save your children, etc.
00:47:09.000 | Might save your neighbors.
00:47:11.000 | Pay attention.
00:47:13.000 | Don't think just because you've never lived in a revolution
00:47:16.000 | that somehow they don't happen anymore.
00:47:19.000 | They do happen. They have happened. They will happen.
00:47:24.000 | Think now about what you would do so that if the winds of revolution start to blow where you live,
00:47:35.000 | you'll be able to pay attention.
00:47:37.000 | Thank you for listening to today's show.
00:47:39.000 | I would advertise to you that I teach a course,
00:47:41.000 | How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Crisis.
00:47:44.000 | It's available at radicalpersonalfinance.com/store.
00:47:47.000 | It is a great course.
00:47:50.000 | I give you everything I need to know, everything I could think of as to solving some of these problems.
00:47:56.000 | And anybody that took my advice has been far more relaxed
00:48:01.000 | in the current crisis that we're living in than their neighbors.
00:48:07.000 | I've been far more relaxed and in a strong place in the current crisis than most of my neighbors.
00:48:13.000 | And yet, and I want that to be you.
00:48:17.000 | It's not too late. It's not too late for this current crisis.
00:48:20.000 | One of the things that should be pretty clear is that most things don't happen all that quickly.
00:48:27.000 | There's plenty of time.
00:48:29.000 | But as the classic saying about bankruptcy goes, how did you go bankrupt?
00:48:33.000 | Well, slowly at first and then all of a sudden.
00:48:36.000 | Slowly then quickly.
00:48:38.000 | It's oftentimes how crises seem to happen as well.
00:48:40.000 | They happen slowly, then they happen quickly.
00:48:43.000 | So if you're in a phase where you're concerned that in the future there might be a crisis,
00:48:47.000 | be it personal, be it a natural disaster, be it a widespread societal issue of some kind,
00:48:53.000 | a monetary issue, etc.
00:48:55.000 | Make a plan. Think it through.
00:48:58.000 | And I would humbly submit to you that the resource that I've created at radicalpersonalfinance.com/store
00:49:04.000 | should be one of your first steps.
00:49:06.000 | radicalpersonalfinance.com/store
00:49:08.000 | How to survive and thrive during the coming economic crisis.
00:49:10.000 | Hope to see you inside the course.
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