path: root/transcripts/satoshi-roundtable/sr-004/ron-paul.mdwn

Satoshi Roundtable IV

Ron Paul

2018-02-06

# Introduction 1

Please welcome Alex from Coin Center... Bruce's son. My name is Alexander.. I'm the CEO of Bit..... something... I would like to introduce the ... Nick Spanos.

# Introduction 2

Nick Spanos

A while ago, I think last year, ... we said it would be cool to have Ron Paul here. Bruce calls me a few months ago and says we have to get Ron down here. I tried. I work for Ron. I worked for both campaigns. Rallied the troops and the phone banks. Before that, Itook myself out of politics, I worked with Bush before that, dispatching lawyers in 2004 last thing I did. And then I said I can't do this any more, these guys are jerks and I don't believe anything they say and they don't either. That was 2004. And then I was driving down the high way and I pulled over and the 2007 debate was on and I saw Dr. Paul there and said, competing currencies, personal liberty, I found out he's been fighting for us since 1971, coming off the gold standard in that year. So 40 years or so. More than that, now. I said to myself that I had to help this man. I threw everything away to go work for this man. I did everything I could for this revolution. You might not have known I was part of that- but the reality is that we have Dr. Ron Paul here and he started this monetary revolution that we are all a part of. 

# Ron Paul

Thank you. I've said this before in other speeches. I give a lot of speeches in Washington. I never get applause. When I leave Washington, I get applause. Thank you very much. Nick Spannos taught me a lot, and thank you Nick for the introduction.

I asked someone last night where he went to school and he said "I take the Ron Paul curriculum". I also have brought along my wife Carol. I have to be careful. She comes along, like in the campaigns in the early yeears, she was getting more popular than I was. She was well received. She always claimed she was disinterested in politics, wanted to stay home and take care of kids while I worry about budgets. She knew I would worry about the federal budget. She made a deal- you take care of the federal budget, and I'll take care of our budget.

She was always ready to go and help out and had done a whole lot. When I first decided to run for Congress, in the early 1970s during the Watergate year.. Nobody wanted to run on the ticket, which is why they let me put my name on the ticket. AUgust of 1971, that was a unique day of monetary history and has ushered in an unbelievable set of circumstances that we are living through today and we will be living with the consequences for a long day. The Federal Reserve system is a monster and you guys think about alternatives.

I went to Carol and  I had a few years to go through school. Uncle Sam drafted me out of my residency during the Cuban crisis and I was in the military for 5 years. I then opened up a practice in Texas. I was doing well. I loved medicine and still love medicine. I wanted to run for congress. Someone asked me, why would I want to do that? A republican running for congress.. in a state that is 80% democrat. Is a foolish mission. The 70s were really rockking. Interest rate was 21%. Wages, price controls. Someone said, it could be dangerous running for congress. What does she know about danger and terrorism? The danger, she thought, was that I would be elected. I assured her that nobody would elect me because.... anyway, she said I would end up elected because people want to hear the truth.

OVer the years people say, you know, they don't agree with all of my positions and my votes. But they know I'm doing my best and they trust me. If you have the right issues, ideas are important, but it has to be delivered in a way where people trust us and believe us with conviction.

It should be in all of our interst to live in a free society or smooth out the rough edges. That's one thing that has fascinated me over the years. I was elected to Congress in the 70s, for 4 terms, then 12 years later, stayed involved after that. The originla issue was monetary issues. I came across Austrian school of economics. This is Rothbart and others. It fascinated me to no end to read about an econmic policy based on common sense. My mission was to talk about this and send out a warning and maybe have some fun along the way.

Coming to groups like this, most of you do have a lot of fun getting together and talking with one another. It's serious because of what we're up against. If you take the position like many of us do, and many here in this audience, it would be nice if we could all of the sudden have a role in government so that we can get rid of the 16th amendment and get rid of income tax and let you keep everything you earn to yourself.

The monetary system that might work a lot better than the one we have now... the monetary system, we try our best to follow the founding father's definition, and only accept legal tender, but there's been a lot of cheating and there have been shortcomings but that is human nature... People cheat, mpeople want to have monopoly control of money. Money is from the marketplace and voluntary exchange. Bartering was cumbersome. We replaced with gold and silver and then there was coins. But that alone was 5, 6 thousand years. The founders wanted to make sure that it didn't happen, or at least that was their goal. They said nothing other than gold or silver was to be used as legal tender. But it wasn't too long into our history that there was a lot of abuse of that system. It ended by the time, by the time we ushered in the progressive era a hundred years ago, t was a disastorous turn for us and the cause of libety. We had income tax and federal reserve established in 1913.

I started off with an interesting monetary system and policy.... it's a facilitator, it facilitates big government. Yes you can tax, but you better have enough. You can borrow, but there's never enough. You have to be destructive and counterfeit money and they of course have done that for a long time. The other thing is not only do they facilitae the money and big government, but what they do is they are a taxing authority. They are the biggest taxing authority. It's the destruction of monetary value. During WW2 and ever sense, we have had the same discussions about the Federal Reserve, that the valuation f a currency is the thing that is taxed... if they come and double the money then the value goes down by 50%. Without robbing you. But it's counterfeitting you, that's the robbery. They are counterfeitters at the Federal Reserve. The first monetary legislation which directed to do what the coins would look like, the founders in 1792 wrote a piece of legislation that said counterfeitting was a serious crime. They only listed a few things that were considered a serious crime in our early history on a federal level. Counterfeitting was one of those fwe things. Counterfeitters were given the death penalty. That's how serious they thought about this. I think it would be interesting to enforce this law today. This shows the seriousness of the monetary issue.

The system has not been a good friend of liberty. I started off talking about ... but as time went on, I became much more interested in looking at the big picture. The big picture to me now, sound money of course, for the preservation of society and to move in a positive way rather than destroying what we have, is the protection of liberty. Governments should not be designed to make you safe or secure in a physical or any other way. That's not the job of the federal government. The job of the federal government is the preservation and enablement of your liberty. That should be the goal of the government. Once we get away from making people "safe and secure"- such as TSA, Dept of Homeland Security, look at monetary issues... every time they mess up, they come in with a big deal, a large amount of regulation. The first one to do this was the greenback during the civil war under Lincoln.. they suspended the gold standard, it made the banking system much more vulnerable, so in order to do that they introduced the notion f the comptroller of the currency. They said banks weren't doing well and they were over-extending themselves.. every time there was an emergency, comptroller would basically try to cover up the mistakes and make up for the mistakes.

In 1913, the Federal Reserve was established. The reserve financed WW1. After WW1, they got a depression. The depression of 1921. Guess what happened. That depression was really sever.e. GDP went down 15-50% in one year or so. They had a president then that said, hands off, it's been a lot of mischief out there, too much inflation, we need to liquidate our mistakes, we need to get rid of the defecits. It was really bad. In a year or 1.5 years... And then in 1929, ... on and on, they end up, so we had to have more regulation. SEC, CFTC, big regulation. They try to plan the economy-- it never works, they mess it up, but then they think hey we need more regulators and we will correct all the mistakes.

With Enron too, more regulation. SEC didn't save us from that. And after the housing bubble, then it was Dodd-Frank. But it doesn't work. The government keeps getting bigger. Not better, just bigger. The whole thing is a facilitator. What does government do because they have control of creating the money. So they create welfare state to buy votes. Big banks get control over the system and so the banking system continued to default, then you have the incessant wars that are financed by inflation. But the .. investment... the one issue that will have to be dealt with that we don't have a market is the reason so much what we see today and everything going up and down and the national debt at $20 trillion... The one thing that causes so much of the distortion is that they have got rid of the price of money. I loose that loosely.  It's interest rate. It's one of the most vital things in the economy. Capital comes from the excesses of what you earn. If you can earn something and not spend it, you could invest it. We have lost this concept. We think capital comes from the federal reserve system and you just print it. Who gets money first? This is political. The military industrial complex first, and then these other folks, etc.  Fed was holding $800 billion up to $3.5 trillion and now they don't know what to do with it... But the big thing is though, you can't create capital out of thin air, there's more distortion and then you have to giving up the... Because when the big bust came, and we had to have QE, QE 1, QE2, with trillions of money... Guess what happened to that money. Did it go to people who lost their jobs and people who lose their homes? No. It went into Wall Street, and believe it or not, it stimulateld Wall Street and it was a bit of a bubble. It was a disaster.

This is why I am interested in the monetary system. It encourages big government and the destruction of liberty. I don't think sound money is the answer on its own to the problems. I think the goals have to be set. Money is part of it. We have to decide, what is the role of government? The prevailing attitude of what government should do is, to take care of everyone's necessities, welfare, and everything that people want now for free. Is it to police the world?  Just think of what we're doing around the world. What about, the government is there to protect our privacy? That's wholesome. But how does that happen?  We have no privacy. And yet, you have ... secrecy of the government. It's turned on its head. American people are suffering. We're putting up with way too much. We put up with the TSA. All because people are trying to have perfect safety.

I try to do my things here and there. I thought I would go be a political leader. I went there, didn't desire or intend to become the chairman of the banking committee. What you do, you say, I want to be in leadership and then first thing you care for your distrct, you vote with us and there's-- anything there's for your district we take care of it for you. To be chairman, raise money for the partty. It's $30m to become chairman. It's so corrupt and so messed up. With this defecit facing us, something is going to give. That's what I'm thinking about now.

I am here and talking with people who are trying to figure things out. I don't understand everything you talk about, but I do understand the goals. We need an alternative to the US monetary system. As long as we still have the right to have a private school and home schools then we still have hope. But if you are going to depend on government schools, then forget it. They are the ones running the show in schools, including cultural marxism and similar baloney. There's no hope there. But if we still have the right for home schooling, then we should use it.

Same thing with medicine. I am not a fan of our president, when he does something right then I get excited. He got rid of the mandate. People who couldn't afford insurance got penalized and attacked. So that was helpful to fix.

I've argued that the mandate was so bad that is is that it eliminates the chance to get out of the system.

What about in money? That's a tough area. Governments always want to have a monopoly. Legal tander laws. My approach in congress was to-- legalize freedom of choice. Let people pick and choose. We wanted a bill to allow competing currencies. Have another currency. Repeal legal tander laws, nobody gets in trouble for wanting to compete with the government. If you want to use something that invites taxation-- you should never have to pay sales tax, or if your money valuable goes up, you shouldn't have to pay capital gains on it. This would set the standard and principles. But we're a long way from that.

This is why I am interested in blockchain. Maybe we could circumvent those laws and build an alternative. I think this could be really valuable.

People need opportunity. If we live in a free society, the most important thing is that it releases creative energy. There's a lot of people in this room with creative energy. That, of course, Iwant people to get people out of the way and let you do your jobs and not be worried about regulators taking control of it. No matter what is happening, no matter if good or bad, Ihave become skeptical of regulators and government watching you. I was much more optimistic about the internet early on than I am now. In the 50s and 60s Istruggled to find literature. You placed a call and get a book in 2-3 weeks. When the internet came out, this to me was fantastic and still is. The things you could find on the internet.. and ordering a book and getting it in 24 hours. That's fantastic. I thought the internet was going to be the answer. I have the Ron Paul Liberty Report I put something up just about every day. Isometimes challenge the government on my Report that there's monitoring going on and distribution of our programs... then I find out, there was actually some CIA involvement in the development of the Facebook and Google stuff. And then when you think about the privacy you want to protect, they are the arm of the government. They will give the government anything they want, and they are exempt from lawsuits. This is written in law- Congress did this. I have become more sketpical. I want something with the least amount of government involvement. Eventually the government has to be dealt with. They have guns. They don't like to be chalelnged. They are not going to give up. We have to be aware of this.

Any time there's talk about maybe the government will be reasonable and not harm this, well let me tell you, they are not reasonable. There's only like 6 people there that I trust. There's no reason to expect the people there in Washington to be reasonable. Some people think there's a 2 party system, but there's no two parties. What do you think about the two party system? I am still looking for the second party. And maybe you say Republicans were better than Democrats on healthcare or whatever... but overall, they support war, they are war mongers. This big government stuff, this inflation, supporting stupid endless unconstitional endless wars... That would go a long way towards working for a much better world.

You need to divide up the military industrial complex... that's how the different states get hooked. You just create jobs, right? The soviets, the Russians now, still have several hundred nuclear weapons. And we have over 750. Don't you think we are safe and secure enough now? That's a whole lot of nukes.

We wanted to get a bill passed called Audit the Fed. We got all the republicans to support it. We had the strength, politically, if we worked at the grass roots. It got to the point where Trump said it would be a good idea. But the new chairman of the board... alll of these people don't want the federal reserve audited. Auditing would reveal a lot of stuff going on. We would see transactions and foreign governments and foreign central banks. That's the real power is. It's limited. This is limited. It's coming to an end. 40 years of fiat currency. Bigger than any other fiat currency in history. There's mbeen more malinvestment than ever before. There's been more sovereign debt, that's a huge issue. It's not about "if", it's about when, and what you're going to do about it. It's so important that we look at monetary policy and foreign policy, but also our civil liberties and the 4th amendment.

Iv'e been opposed to incessant wars for a long time. I wonder how I got elected in Texas.Let's end the drug war. Let's get rid of these prisons. We have way more prisoners than anyone else in the world. We spend more on military than the next 10 countries. The empire will end. There's no doubt about it. I have no idea what date. All empires do end. The most magnificient thing that could happen in my lifetime or the 20th century, was the dissolution of the Soviet system. I was in the air force between 63 and 68... There was a lot of fear and real missiles. There might have been a few people in 1988 and saying "in 89 the wall is going down". Nobody said that. But it happenedj ust like that, because they ran out of money. They had that operation in Afghanistan and they did poorly. We're going to show this is possible. You have to know what it's all about, when it gets rebuilt.

I want to encourage people today to make plans- either monetary plans, or otherwise. One of the most important things is to protect yourself and your family, and then do something with what you can do with the system. Often I go to college campuses and people came to me and ask, what do I want? What should I do?

Do whatever you want to do. But do something. And that's what I think you're doing here. You're doing something. And though I don't understand all of this, I do know you're interested in liberty. I've met a few of you who have been interested in my campaign. I appreciated that.

Ihad a personal belief about how this works. I believe you can come to a conclusion- you know what's going on, you're going to save yourself, you're going to make a lot of money on this, you will be safe and secure. I believe this has to be very personal. If you have come to a conclusion and have fairly good confidence that liberty is better than tyranny, then that's all you need. If you think you are losing liberty and you don't do anything, then I think that's not particularly good. We have a greater obligation. Many people over the centuries never get involved. You are involvedi n technology and advancement and it's very important.

In one of my books, Imentioned that technology is magnficient. The printing press was amazing. Think about what it was like before that. Or when the telegram was created. The speed iand the quality and preserving information I think that's fantastic. The internet contributes to this. What I want to do is ensure that we can move in the direction of advancing our liberty. One of the reasons I like it is that, it gives me a chance, and it should help all of us, to think about striving for excellence. If you want to strive for excellence and virtue, then just think of your life as a compensation camp. Some countries actually are like that. Think about Cuba and all the countries in the world-- they have minimal liberty. We have liberty, but we're going to lose it. We are not nearly as great as so many of us would like to believe. A majority of Americans believe we are the greatest nation ever and we have a moral obligation to spread the AMerican message which is "do it our way, we know what is right, if you do it our way then we're going to send a lot of money, and if you don't then we're going to bomb you". We should mind our own business, bring our troops home, provide for a system that is prosperous, get a lot of creativity. I think other countries will want to emulate us. I think today this is not happening. :People are sick and tired- every day, of our country just fiddling with all these countries. Our soldiers might not be killed in Yemen, but it's our weapons doing this. Syrai is still a mess. Obama said it's time for Assad to go, and that's what Trump's position is; they make this decision that he's a bad guy, but under the circumstances there's al ot of bad people in Russia and we didn't decide to go there we made them our ally. It doesn't work, if it worked, then you might have a bit of an argument, but it doesn't. The more we get involved, the more killing happens, the more death happens, the worse conditions get.

I think the concept of liberty has been well developed. We have this technology. In my lifetime, how much technology was used to kill more people? What about technology that would help people? I don't know this well enough but I think if something comes up and says look, we've had enough of our government but we have a process here that we can follow to every penny and decides and tells us where it goes. That's what Iwould like to know. The pentagon doesn't get audited. The fed doesn't get audited. This is all supported by the two-party system.

Despite all of our problems, I do think of myself as an optimist. Looking at technology over the centuries, everything has been improved. Standard of living is improving. We've been killing more people than we save, though. Nuclear energy is reasonanle if people follow some rules, but now people are threatening with nuclear weapons and it's so unecessary. The concept of liberty has made a lot of advancements.

I think Austria ne economics is a better explanation than any other system. It really takes the issue of what the role of government ought to be. It should be limited. It's about what people believe the role of government should be. No, it's not just the deep state, it's pretty darn important, but if the masses of people in this country didn't believe in the wars or the welfare state then it wouldn't happen. The 60s. That was a tragic, horrible war. For nothing. And now we send our troops over seas and we you know buidl it up and say they are going to protect the constitution and our liberty. How? How are they doing that?  It's illegal and immoral. There might be bad people over there, but you're making conditions worse. The system needs to be changed.

I believe there's a better understanding now of civil liberties. It's not in DC. I am optimistic when I leave DC. People are changing. DC wont change until the young people grow up. I love it when young people say they are interested in liberty and want to make a difference. Itell you what, when I talk with some people and they tell me they got interested-- sometimes I'm bewildered because theychanged their mind about what they were doing in their life.. Starting organizations, for example. Some of the energies might have come because of the issues of liberty. Technology available because you're a free thinking person, and then maybe you use it to care of people and more honorable purposes will get me very excited. I am excited to be here this evening.

I want to thank Bruce for the invitation, I've enjoyed this very much.