Hey parents join the LA Kings on Saturday, November 25th for an unforgettable kids day presented by Pear Deck. Family fun, giveaways and exciting Kings hockey awaits. Get your tickets now at lakings.com/promotions and create lasting memories with your little ones. About a month ago, a friend of mine returned from a business trip to Mexico and upon his return shared with me some stories that he had heard during his time there in Mexico.

These stories have deeply impacted my thinking over the last month and today I want to share these stories with you in hopes that they will also impact your thinking. My friend frequently goes down to Mexico for business and a couple of benefits that he has is number one, he is bilingual, speaks both English and Spanish fluently.

Because of his language ability, he has the ability to integrate a little bit more deeply in the local Mexican culture than many other US Americans who don't have a significant Spanish language ability are able to. Also, my friend is a Christian and because of that has kind of a built-in automatic network in some of the local Christian churches and Christians that he has come to know.

He travels to Mexico frequently and during his time down there has over the years built up many relationships that are close personal friendships. When he returned, he shared with me some stories that he had learned from a few of his friends corroborated by multiple people but primarily the story of one man, a good friend of his who is a taxi driver.

They have a long history in relationship and he often hires this man for his taxi services when traveling down there. We'll call our Mexican taxi driver friend Rafael. We'll make up a name to protect him here. Rafael was sharing a little bit more about the on-the-ground information of what's currently happening with the local drug cartel which is most dominant there in this particular city in Mexico.

Specifically, our friend Rafael recently started paying protection money to the local drug cartel and here's how that happened. Our friend Rafael is a taxi driver and they're in the local area. The drug cartel comes to many people and extorts from them protection money. Compare this to what you may have seen in the old days about the mob where the mob will go down a street in Chicago or go down a street in New York and every business owner has to pay each week a certain amount of money to the local mafia for protection.

The protection of course is from them where if they don't pay the money, then the mafia goons are going to come in and bust up the business a little bit or bust up the business owner. So they pay money in order to be left alone. Well, it works similarly with the drug cartel there in Mexico.

Different people have to pay their money and if you pay their money, then you're not subjected to the violence of the local drug cartel. So taxi drivers have been on the list. In order to operate a taxi there in this particular city in Mexico, you need to pay the local drug cartel their weekly or monthly fee.

It's called a tax, their weekly or monthly tax. And if you don't pay it, then you are not going to be under the protection of the cartel and the cartel goons from time to time may come and commit acts of violence against you, intimidation, acts of intimidation in order to influence you into paying the money.

Well, if you do pay the money, then the local drug cartel gives you a placard, a number that gets displayed on the outside of your taxi. So that way the cartel employees and enforcers will be able to recognize the fact that you're official, you pay the money to the local cartel and thus you are safe.

Our friend Rafael had not wanted to pay the money, had not wanted to pay it because obviously it's his own money that he has and who wants to just reach into your pocket and give the money to somebody else? And also, of course, because of the moral question of saying, "How can I pay the money towards people who are intimidating it out of people?" These are people, criminals.

The local drug cartel is a bunch of criminals. And so we don't want to support that. I want to pay the bribes and don't want to do that. And as a Christian has a deep biblical conviction about seeking not to do that. And so for a few years had not done that.

But recently, our friend Rafael had changed his mind and here's what changed it. The drug cartel was able to get into the central taxi management system and with the leaders in the central taxi management system. Like most cities, this particular city in Mexico has a central dispatch system wherein the local taxi has a registration and they had to be registered and they get dispatched by the central system.

And this local central taxi dispatch system and fleet of taxis had decided that all of their taxi drivers must be officially registered with the cartel, paying the cartel their regular extortion money. And if they weren't, they weren't going to allow any taxi drivers who weren't paying the cartel into their system.

And so they came to our friend Rafael and they said to him, "You've got to pay the money. If not, you're out." Finally, Rafael buckled and he said, "Okay, I'll pay the money." So he started paying the extortion money to the cartel, received his little sticker to go on the outside of his car showing that he's official and now he is operating there under the protection of the local drug cartel.

Those are the basic facts of the story presented to you without commentary or critical judgment of any kind. Those are the facts of what our friend Rafael has gone through. At the end of the show today, I'm going to tell you another story about the drug cartel and their involvement in the local banking system.

So stay tuned for that at the end. This story, since I heard it in the last month, has really caused me to think. My goal in today's show is to give you something to think about. My hope is that you'll listen to the commentary that I have here and the questions that I raise and take them back and just simply consider them for yourself.

The question is this. What is different about the actions of that drug cartel in a city in Mexico as compared to the actions of the local government in your town, city, state, and country? I decided to do this show. I've thought about it for a long time, but I decided to do this show because I was struck by my own experience this past week of going to the local courthouse to renew the registration sticker on my family's vehicle's license plates.

On the way over there, I was with my older children with the arrival of the new baby in our family and as we worked to get him installed happily, I've been spending a lot of time with my older children, taking them out of the house to give mama a chance to rest and have a quieter home, things like that.

I've been doing a lot of errands and various activities with my older children. So, we made some changes in the license plate and instead of just simply mailing in the check, this time I needed to go and get a paper adjusted. So, I decided to just go and make the payment in person.

Of course, my son is quite curious about what we're doing and where we're going. My wife and I have a philosophy of not lying to our children, just trying to state to them the absolute truth as best we can discern it in any situation. So, I was explaining to him that we're going to renew the registration system.

And of course, children, especially three-year-olds have a tendency to ask many questions that start with "why?" This is a useful question, "why?" Some professional speakers or coaches teach this as a way to get down to your fundamental feelings on a matter. Ask "why" five times. "Why is this important to you?" "Why is that important to you?" When you get to the heart of the matter.

So, of course, in this interaction and dialogue with my son, I explained, "We're going to the courthouse to pay for the registration sticker for our license plate." And so my son asks, "Why, daddy? Why do we need to go and do that? We already have license plates on the car." I explained that we need to pay in order to get this sticker.

And if we don't have this sticker, then we'll have problems. Well, why do we have to pay for the sticker? So, I explained that this is a tax put on us by the local government. And the local government requires us to have an up-to-date sticker that demonstrates that we've paid our tax.

Well, why, daddy, do we have to demonstrate that we've paid our tax? Well, if we don't demonstrate that we've paid our tax, then we will be pulled over by a police officer on the side of the road, and they'll write us a ticket, and we'll have to go to court, and they'll fine us for not paying our tax.

Well, at this point, my son dropped out of the conversation, but I continued thinking about the "why" questions. Well, why, daddy, would we have to go to the court? And what happens if we don't pay our tax? Well, if we don't pay our tax, there will be a steadily increasing range of penalties and consequences, up to and potentially including our spending time in jail, and being deprived of our liberty because of not paying the tax.

Well, after spending a month thinking about our friend Raphael needing to display the sticker on the side of his taxi in order to keep the drug cartel from coming and harming him and his family, I couldn't help but be very deeply aware of the parallels. And I've asked myself this question, "Is there a difference between the actions of the drug cartel in this particular city in Mexico and the actions of the Palm Beach County government here in Florida, in the United States?" If there is a difference, what is the difference and why does it exist?

For years now, I've had a consistent internal struggle over my own moral philosophy of taxation. I still have very few answers. I have ideas and I have convictions for my own actions, which are primarily, very simply, I pay my taxes. I pay every dollar that I legally owe and I do it for two reasons.

Number one, Jesus said, "Pay to Caesar what is Caesar's." I interpret that to mean, "Pay your taxes." Number two, I want to stay out of jail. And although I am extremely fond of many of the arguments relating to the illegality of things like income taxation, for example, it's my personal opinion, the 16th Amendment was never properly ratified.

It doesn't matter though. It simply doesn't matter because the goons with the guns and the prisons are the ones in charge. So I have a deep struggle with the question and I still haven't resolved it. In my commentary here, I'm not seeking to persuade you of any particular moral philosophy.

I've just shown you my cards. That's what I do and what I believe. I am just seeking to raise some thought-provoking questions and I hope that these questions will stimulate your thinking and your analysis and your consideration of various subjects. I try very hard to avoid the libertarian trope, "Taxation is theft." It slipped out of my mouth one time on a show that I'm aware of, but I try to avoid that.

But in many ways, almost any system of taxation, licensing, forced unionization, anti-discrimination laws, almost all of these systems simply seem to me to be the imposition of one person's will on another by the threat of violence. I want nothing to do with violence and thus I protest against and stand against almost every one of those systems.

I must confess I fail to see the difference between the influence of the drug cartel there in Mexico and the imposition on you and on me of many of the laws under which we labor. Think about licensing schemes for a moment. In the state and city where I live, if I were going to operate a taxi system, I would need to apply for a license from the local government and have approval for that.

Unfortunately for the people who have depended on those licensing schemes for their business and fortunately for you and me, the free market has undermined that licensing scheme. In the old days, you had to pay for every taxi that you were going to run in a major city like Chicago or Philadelphia.

You had to pay – or New York City. You had to pay hundreds of thousands, sometimes up to a million dollars for a taxi medallion for the right to operate a taxi in that system, in that city, excuse me, in that geographic area. Now, think about this. If the cartel – if you were that our friend Rafael driving a taxi, you already had one licensing scheme in place because the Mexican government and the city government has exactly the same system there in Mexico.

If you already had one in place, what would you do when somebody came to you and arbitrarily imposed an additional licensing scheme on you? Would you believe that that is morally right? If so, why? If not, why not? If licensing schemes are appropriate and right for one body of people with power and authority and influence, why are they not right for another body of people with power and authority and influence to impose?

If there should be one licensing scheme, why should there not be multiple licensing schemes? What's wrong with the drug cartel telling Rafael that he needs to display both the official "taxi medallion" for the local city and he needs to display the cartel's taxi medallion for the local city? Now, allow me to expand this question for you.

Let's talk about not contracting with a taxi driver but hiring somebody to do some work for you. You have a business. You desire to hire a man or woman to work for you or a few men or a few women to work for you. President Trump thinks that you should only be able to hire those people if they are from a certain geographic location or if they have a certain number that can be entered into the federal employee identification database.

If they are properly registered with the enforcers, what gives President Trump and his goons the authority to tell you that? President Trump's political enemies on the left think that they should have the right to tell you how much you are required to pay the person who's working for you.

That was an unfair characterization. Practically all – I'll give an exception for about three people. I couldn't miss their names. Practically all of the senators and congresspeople here in the United States believe that they have the right to tell you what you are required to pay somebody that you desire to work for you.

They believe that they have the right to tell the other person whether they have the legal right to work for you or not. If it was wrong for the taxi company to tell Rafael that they shouldn't – that they wouldn't hire him and that he couldn't work with them if he didn't have the proper license put on by the cartel, is it wrong for them to tell you that?

Here, of course, I'm obviously referring to minimum wage laws. I could give example after example after example, and if you're a Republican or a Democrat or a liberal or a conservative or a lefty or a righty or a centrist, I could give enough examples that would anger every single one of you.

I won't do that. I'll just simply tell you what I think is a very useful operating system for you and me to abide by. It's this. In the decision I'm about to make for my own life or for somebody else or the action I'm about to take, does this require me to force somebody with the explicit or implicit threat of violence?

Does this require me to force somebody to comply with my will for them? If it does, I'm out. It doesn't matter how clear the threat is. The cartel threat is pretty clear. All of my friends' acquaintances down there could list many, many people, some of whom have been kidnapped, some of whom have been physically harmed, dismembered, had the proverbial kneecaps banged out, some of whom have been killed and their heads hoisted on a spike as a warning to others.

The cartel's threats are quite explicit. In the United States, the threat of violence is much more implicit. Anytime I talk about the threat of violence, I usually get a few emails from people saying, "Joshua, you overstate the threat. You overstate the subject." Do I really? Assume that I go to my neighbor and we engage in a voluntary transaction, he and I, to trade goods and services with one another.

He gives me money. I give him services or vice versa. Assume that I don't report the income that I earn on that transaction. I do, by the way. Assume that I don't. Under that circumstance, what happens? Well, if I'm caught, the IRS goons have the ability to come and to take all of my assets or take enough assets as they consider the appropriate amount to pay the taxes.

Ultimately, if I am a leader and I can be made a public example of, for example, let's say that I'm somebody who is prominent in the media space, someone who's teaching others to evade their taxes, then ultimately I'll lose my liberty and I'll be jailed for the nonpayment of taxes.

The people who come to my house and do that all wear guns. Is that not a threat of violence? Now, of course, the initial letter that comes to me doesn't come with all of that written. Clearly, it starts slowly and gently. Just like when the local enforcer for the mob in your city or for the drug cartel, if you're living in a certain place, just like when they come, they usually start a little bit nice.

Usually, there's some benefits with it. Most cartels have found that the most effective way to gain support is to provide benefits. I've seen this a good bit in some of what I've read about the spread of ISIS and other religious groups across the Middle East. You have oftentimes a national government and if it's supposedly – what's the word for it?

The national government supposedly has authority but the local people never see the national government. They have derived no benefit from the national government. But the local warlord or the local chief or the local leader, the tribal leader, they are very active and diligent in the community. They're the ones who distribute food.

They're the ones who set up schools. They're the ones who are helping the people. Of course, the allegiance of the local people goes to not the national government that is invisible to them, to the local government. It's no different in the United States or any of the countries that we live in.

The national government sends out the money, sends out the services in order to keep people going. Same thing. It engenders respect. It engenders support. So back to the threat of violence. It can be explicit, guy standing in your doorway smacking a baseball bat against his hand or it can be implicit, a veiled threat.

The threat of violence is still the same. Now I care not to get involved in trying to overthrow the US government. You won't find me participating in any violent revolutions of any kind. That's a foolish endeavor in my mind. Over time, the power of the free market will have its effect.

Watch the taxi business. Uber has destroyed fundamentally the violence, the effect of the violence and the fear of that on the taxi system in many large cities. And once people get a little taste of freedom, Broward County here in South Florida where I live, Broward County, the local taxi cartel had successfully lobbied the city government in order to ban Uber.

And so Uber and other ride-sharing services were banned in Broward County for – was it a year or something like that? The outrage by the local population who wanted Uber was so significant that very quickly, the city council reversed their previous position and they said to the taxi cartel, "Sorry, guys, but we're opening this back up," and Uber was reinstated.

So things will continue until people get frustrated enough. I have a lot of confidence in the free market and systematically in the United States and around the world, many of these cartels are systematically being broken and destroyed by the power of the free market and by the triumph of good over evil.

But you and I can help, not by picking up a gun and joining in the same evil methodology that the government enforcers use, which is to impose their will on another person with a threat of violence, but just simply by living differently. So start with yourself and in all of your opinions and start with what's close to you.

Ask yourself the simple question, "For me to get what I want, does it require me to force somebody else to comply with my will based upon the threat of violence?" If it does, walk away. If it doesn't, consider proceeding forward and be careful that in all of your negotiations with somebody, you're not holding an unfair advantage over them based upon some kind of threat.

If you're dealing with a weaker person in a negotiation, seek to strengthen them. If you're dealing with somebody who has an information disadvantage that would be immoral for you to move forward, make sure they know what they need to know. That's the right thing to do. Treat somebody else exactly the same way that you would like to be treated.

And in time, if you do that and I do that, in time, things will change. That's my encouragement to you. I hope that you take this story, and I'll close with my second promise story, and you just simply consider it. I'm not trying to present to you a coherent, comprehensive, moral philosophy.

I am trying to present to you a thoughtful question, a useful thought experiment. I don't know all the answers. Frankly, I don't know half the answers I'd like to know. I am with you an earnest questioner and an earnest thinker. But I found that story from our friend Rafael so interesting, so thought-provoking, so gripping to me over the last month, and I hope that you find it the same way.

Close with a related story. Rafael was telling my friend who traveled down to Mexico about one of the tools of the cartel, one of the major tools of the cartel is kidnapping. Kidnapping is big business, and of course, kidnapping on a high profile scenario is obviously significant. If you are a white business person traveling in certain parts of Mexico, you better go with an armed retinue of guards.

Or you better be very low profile because kidnapping of high profile people is good business, a lot of money in it if the person can successfully perpetuate it. But kidnapping on a smaller basis is also big business. So Rafael told us that what the cartel has done is successfully infiltrated the local bank.

It's gotten insiders on the local bank. How? Who knows? He didn't clarify those details to my friend. Whether it was through bribery or through extortion, who knows? But he got details on the local bank. So that he – the cartels would know when they kidnap somebody how much to ask for in the ransom amount.

If they knew how much was in my bank balance, then they could kidnap my wife or one of my children or all of my children, and they would know exactly how much to ask for. Now, of course, I wanted to know how much did they ask for because I'm interested in what the elasticity of the demand curve is with kidnapping.

If I have $100,000 in my bank account, do they ask for $100,000? Do they ask for $150,000 because they know I'll go get it from friends and family? Do they ask for $50,000 because they know I'll be able to do it quickly and easily or $15,000? I mean what's the elasticity of the demand curve?

I really want to know that. But unfortunately, I don't have that data. But it just struck me how all of us face unique financial planning circumstances. And it's important that we always listen for those stories on a global basis so that we can check our own finances. Now, I'm not too worried about my local bank representative telling a kidnapper how much money I have in my bank account so that they know how much to extort from me by kidnapping my wife or my children.

That's not a high concern of mine. I am concerned about a local person targeting me for a frivolous lawsuit or even a legitimate lawsuit based upon knowing how much money is in my bank account. I am concerned about being targeted, not necessarily in the United States in current days.

But I am concerned if I were living in Greece about being targeted for a haircut as was the term about four years ago based upon the government knowing how much money is in my bank account. So, learn from these situations and then look and seek to accurately assess the circumstances in your own country and in your own financial situation.

I hope you enjoyed my stories today. I hope you find them thought-provoking. I hope that you don't decide to take up arms and try to go and fight somebody. I'm not even asking for you to fight with me. I'm happy to hear from you if you want to write to me, but I'm not looking for any – I'm just asking questions in hopes that you'll consider yourself.

I'm still considering these things myself. Just remember this. Violence is never the solution. Violent revolutions seem to always end badly. I can't think of a single example where they ever ended up better. I really can't. Including the US-American revolution. I don't think we ended up better because of it.

That's my opinion. Very unacceptable to many people, but I don't see it. But you do always have the peaceful right of secession. You can always walk away. You can always leave. So, consider exercising that right. Because in that situation, you're able to exercise your peaceful, non-violent opposition to somebody else.

If somebody is presenting – if a company is doing something that you find offensive, find a different provider. If a country or a local government jurisdiction is doing something that you find offensive, move. The most powerful positive trend – one of the most powerful positive trends that we face today is the freedom of information and the light that gets shown on various situations.

I hope that it can continue. I believe it will. And you can be a part of a peaceful revolution by simply looking at your own situation. And, hey, when the threats are big, pay them. I choose to pay all of my taxes to the US government even though I despise what they do with the money because I want to stay out of jail.

And I'm scared of the government goons. It doesn't mean I won't at some point exercise my right to move. It's always a balance. So, recognize you don't need to be violent. You don't need to use their methods to do it. But you do always have the peaceful right of control over your expenditures.

And that's the relation of today's show. Oftentimes, I get asked what relevance does this have to radical – to personal finance. Today's show, the relevance is simple. Number one, consider tax policy. Consider whether you should or shouldn't pay taxes to the local enforcers in your neighborhood. And then also consider the fact that you make a statement with your expenditures.

Thank you for listening. I'm out of here. Be back with you soon. This show is part of the Radical Life Media Network of podcasts and resources. Find out more at RadicalLifeMedia.com. Are you ready to make your next pro basketball, football, hockey, concert, or live event unforgettable? Let Sweet Hop take your game to the next level.

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