Unfortunately in the 2019 update the lucid dreaming glitch has been patched it's official you can no longer lucid dream. Well that would be pretty annoying if that were the case right but if this was a video game if life was a game lucid dreaming would be a massive hack a massive glitch and something which people would most likely exploit for personal gain and by personal gain I mean just experiencing cool things and doing essentially whatever you want however this is not a video game although it is similar to a video game the woke among you will understand that however the glitch hasn't been patched and you can actually still lucid dream very easily so for those of you who are wondering how can I do all these crazy things how can I fly around like a superhero and have sex with celebrities and bathe in money in my mansion and all this sort of stuff right well you can do those things in a lucid dream because the glitch has not in fact been patched the reason I'm making this video is actually because a lot of comments and some of the most upvoted comments on my most popular videos is people saying things like the glitch has been patched or we can't do this anymore it's been patched so I imagine there's a lot of gamers among you I used to be a gamer myself I don't play so much these days but back in the day I used to be heavily into things like League of Legends World of Warcraft Skyrim and before that Morrowind and things like Impossible Creatures 80 Empires on computer I was a big gamer you know and so I'm familiar with the term the glitch has been patched and I also am very familiar with console commands and cheat codes and ways of hacking and exploiting games that is pretty much how I spent my childhood that and you know being outside and creating little fortresses in the forest and that sort of thing so yeah this glitch hasn't been patched you can still lose a dream very easily and you should because it's a great way of having a lot of fun and then the more fun that you have you'll that will then lead to more profound things and you know more meaningful experiences it's not all just about fun in the moment although that does sound a lot more enticing doesn't it anyway so the glitch hasn't been patched here's how you can lose a dream number one subscribe to my channel shameless plug there number two leave a comment on this video letting me know or letting everyone know what techniques you've tried how many hours of sleep per night you get and what your routine is how does your day look what do you do first thing in the morning what do you do last thing at night the person with the best routine the best comment and therefore who I've deemed the most likely to be a good lucid dreamer will win my lucid dream bootcamp course which is worth about 80 or $100 when you include all the bonuses and stuff so it's a little competition guys the best comment will win one person unfortunately is the only one one person is how many people are going to win this competition but to reiterate leave a comment letting me know how many hours of sleep you get a night how roughly how many of those hours or minutes are REM sleep if you know that and then let me know your routine what do you do in the morning what techniques do you try what do you meditate that sort of thing anything you think will increase your chances and then the best comment by the way I'm going to read out in a future video entitled something like the routine of the perfect lucid dreamers routine or something like that so that is how you take advantage of the fact that the lucid dreaming glitch has not yet been patched the cheat or the hack still works you can still basically experience what gamers refer to as god mode in your dreams okay you can do anything you can experience whatever you want you can basically run around as if you own the show and nothing will happen no negative consequences will be inflicted on you the worst thing that will happen is you'll get slightly addicted to dreaming and you'll want to sleep all the time but even that probably won't happen because the more you lucid dream the more you realize that actually this life is a bit like a dream and oh yeah we're getting deep right now this life is a bit like a dream and you can actually guide reality the universe the world to help you experience the things that you want to experience to choose to feel better think better thoughts do better things yeah this life is a bit like a game and in many ways you can explore it however you wish so leave a comment subscribe remember that's an important step I'm gonna ask you every video now to subscribe just in case you're watching this and you're not already an avid fan of how to lucid I see you next time thanks for watching guys this video and this channel was supported by my patreon followers please consider giving just a dollar a month to support this channel or just click the links in the description you'll find links to various lucid dream products articles techniques and tutorials if you did enjoy this video please click the notification bell and subscribe and I'll see you next time why are you still watching this you should have clicked one of my related videos by now right or subscribed or gone on to my website or something like that


Hi everyone, Joe for jaspyscasewrakes.com coming out to you with 2020 mosaic football Hobby pack break number 20 with the final five NT random team Spots being given away. That's gonna come up in a separate video We're gonna do the break itself first and then with a new dice roll will re-randomize everybody's names top five earn that NT break big Thanks, everyone here for making this happen There are the teams here and let's roll it let's randomize it six and a five eleven times one two Six and eleven the final time after eleven we got Brad all the way down not Bradley But Bradley all the way down to true All right, and let's get you let's get you a team here after eleven times one and Eleven the final time after eleven. We got the Falcons down to the Cowboys All right. Here's the first half right here And here's the second half right here. No trades in these little filler breaks Just get right to it. You want to give away those spots want to get to that NT as quickly as possible Will Fuller silver Terry Bradshaw red And we've got a montage TJ watt It's pretty nice 25 that'll be for the Steelers. That's gonna go to Bradley. All right now. Let's see who Let's see who's gonna win those spots Let's grab everyone from Steve down to Bradley and everyone in between you dice New list. There's the new dice right there. Let's roll it randomize it four and a three lucky seven times top five after seven good luck one two Three four five six and Seven then final time after seven now from six down to 32 sad times But guess what? If you want to try again There's another fresh case of NT up and a filler pack attack to it either one try it out Jasper's case breaks calm. All right top five. Congrats to you Drew Bradley Steve Birch Stephen Kay and Bradley Kay Congrats to you. You are in that NT random team break coming up in a separate video Jasper's case breaks calm I'm Joe. I'll see you for that one soon. Bye. Bye


This paper investigates the interplay between spin-orbital interactions, SOI, and Hubbard-induced Coulomb interaction in zigzag silicene-like nanoribbons, z-cyanar, revealing topological and magnetic phase transitions, and a double transition in a balanced system before being destroyed by a strong electric field. This article was authored by Xiao Longlu, Yang Xie, and Heng Xie.


Hey everyone, it's MJ and in this video, I want to look at the actuarial exam pass rates So what I've got over here are the pass rates for the exams written in around April 2019 so the very first exam session of the year and it isn't a little bit tricky looking at them because the exams have changed since I wrote them they've got new Codes they've got new names and sometimes they've even bundled some subjects together and split other ones apart So it's a little bit confusing So I'm going to refer to the subjects by their by their name rather than their code I am looking at the South African data Although I would expect it to be quite similar to the American the English and the Indian data as well I think I think yeah the exams are kind of like if one exam stuff in South Africa It's going to be tough in in the other places as well. So I think we can use this as proxy data The way I look at the exams is that there's essentially there's four levels Level one is what you do in your undergrad level two is what you're looking at doing at the end of your undergrad Maybe the beginning of your postgrad Level three or your postgrad subjects and then level four is what you do on your own outside of university So level one is normally very mathematical Level two is more application. This is the famous CA1 exam or actuarial risk management communications model documentation Level three is more your specialist subjects and then like I said level four is your fellowship subject. So level three you choose two and Level four you choose one So that you're going too much into the exam structure because it's probably gonna change next year Let's look at the actual pass rates and I've ordered them in you know, which exam people pass the most And I've ordered all the way down to the bottom where the subject. Yeah, there was an exam that nobody passed But Joe will get to that one what I've also done is I've correlated it with the levels So I've looked at the levels of the subjects first their pass rates and there's around a 63 percent correlation meaning the lower the exam The more likely there's people were to pass and this is what we expect more people to pass level one exams than to pass level four exams Although the fourth the fourth worst exam was the level one exam So they are a little bit of anomalies And what I also did is I correlated the amount of youtube videos I have on the subjects Would the pass rate and I found that there was a 65 percent positive correlation So the more videos I have on a topic the higher the pass rate Although that might be because I'm just making videos on the easy subjects, but I'm further ado Let's let's get into these these results. So coming up in first place was life contingencies This is where we calculate, you know How much money people need to put aside in order to you know get money back when they they die This is basically bread and butter actuarial signs 175 people wrote the exam here in South Africa, and we had a pass rate of 57 percent Which is very good. I mean that's that's more more than half Also at 57 percent was actuarial statistics now for those of you who don't know and this is a little bit of Advertising I have a whole bunch of videos on actuarial statistics on you to me, which you can go and check out I mean, I've also got a whole bunch of videos on life contingencies But therefore free on on YouTube Third place we have business finance Which I think was called accounting back in my day that had a 54 percent pass rate Only 41 people wrote it though. That's quite a small number I think that's because a lot of people get that exemption at university because accounting is very easy Then in fourth place we have financial maths This only had a pass rate of 48 percent but a hundred and fifty nine people wrote it I've also got a lot of YouTube videos on this Then I was very impressed by this one coming up in first place was the dreaded CA1 Actuarial risk management exam 207 people wrote it 93 passed so that gives us a rate of 45 percent Which I'm very impressed by because in my opinion that's that's the hardest exam. So and it came fifth So that's not too bad Then we see the very first Level three exam popping up and that is the specialist in the health subject. So this is like, you know discovery Medical aides and and all those type of things and that had a pass rate of 44 percent, which is very good. That was the best Pass rate for the specialist subjects Coming back to a level one exam is business economics and why did this only had a 41 percent pass rate? This is an easy subject. Why was the pass rate so low for that one? I would have expected business economics to be a little bit higher But like I said, they might have changed that they might have made the subject a little bit harder Then we have another level three exam and this is the risk specialist. This is for enterprise risk management If you want to become a Sarah act tree 78 people wrote a chance in South Africa 32 past That's a pass rate of 41 percent Which I think if I remember correctly is above the global average shows that your South Africans Very good when it comes to risk calculations Then we have the pension specialist subject coming in at nine with a 40 percent pass rate communications Exam, I mean, this is a subject. Some people get it and it's like it's the easiest exam I'll meet with one of my easiest exams and other people who just struggle struggle with it I mean, it's a lot of essay writing. There's hardly any maths and of the hundred eighty three people who wrote it So that's quite a lot only yeah, there's only a 35 percent pass rate Then we get an 11th position our first fellowship exam and that is for the life fellowship and that like I say That's your traditional act tree and just like how we saw Contingencies was had the highest pass rate with the little one exams life The life fellowship has got the highest pass rate of the fellowships But only a 34 percent which is I mean, that's still low only one in three people are passing the fellowship I mean, which kind of sounds yeah, it makes sense I it took me three attempts to pass my fellowship. So that that percent is quite accurate for me Then we see another fellowship the banking fellowship. This is very much a unique exam to South Africa I think when it first came out it had a zero percent pass rate It's now come up to have a 33 percent pass rate. So that's that's pretty good And quite a lot of people wrote it 21 people wrote it Which is more than the health fellowship which comes in next health fellowship had a pass rate of 31 percent It's pretty good Then there is the general insurance specialist subject. Oh, I wrote this at university. It was so tough I didn't get the exemption for it. It was I found it like Very very challenging, but they've got a 30 percent pass rate for it. So That's pretty good general specialist Then the life specialist Only has a 27 percent pass rate. So it's interesting how that pass rate is lower than its fellowship Now that is quite an interesting one Then we have risk models which is going back to a level one Subject and this was back in my day. See back in my day. This was two separate exams It was known as ct4 and ct6 They decided to add these things together and add on a computer element And yeah, we can see a pass rate of 27 percent, which is very very low Then we see the lowest specialist subject from a pass rate Which is a little bit awkward for me because I actually have youtube videos on this one This is the financial specialist. Well, there are not many people watch the financial specializing videos of mine I've also got a book if you want, I'll put a link in the to the amazon Store where I've written a book on just understanding financial instruments because there's a way to break them up So that they're quite easy to to comprehend And you can swap these little parts around and create your own little instruments It's quite fun, but that only had a pass rate of 26 percent. That's the lowest of the specialist Then financial engineering, which is the level one. It's the level one subject. This is what we do in undergrad This had a pass rate of 26 percent, which is incredibly low for a level one subject It is the lowest pass rate for the level one subject And that it's it's also they they've made this one tricky because when they destroyed ct6 and they combined half of it with You know survival models to create risk models They also moved the the runoff triangles and ruined theory into this exam Which was really difficult with stochastic calculus and ectosilema and oh you guys remember all that tricky stuff so it's Yeah, I think I think it probably was a difficult exam, but your 26 percent is a very low pass rate Um, I'll be giving a workshop on this one on the 3rd of august in capetown and again Sometime in september. So if you are part of the whole asa Society here in South Africa make sure you register for that And then you'll be able to see me in person and we're gonna go and try and Increase the pass rates because 26 percent is very low And then we've got three more exams to go Financial fellowship had a pass rate of only 17 percent Yeah, this one is this one's a tricky one. Like I said took me three attempts to get that Then the general fellowship comes in at 14 percent But the worst exam the one where people did the worst Was the pension fellowship and that had a pass rate of zero percent Zero wow look it was also the The less popular exam only four people wrote it Uh, but it had zero percent pass rate.  I don't know maybe the exam was in bad mood when he wrote it He's like I'm gonna give them impossible questions Because y'all no one was able to pass that zero percent And that we sometimes do see that you do sometimes come across exams that have a zero percent pass rate Very rarely will there be a hundred percent pass rate because then I think maybe they will Adjust the pass mark so that you know, not everybody passes um But y'all when you can see it's not like the other way around if the examiner feels that no one is worthy No one's worthy. It's not like they have to pass a certain number But y'all that is the pass rates For the actuarial exams written here in South Africa for the first semester of 2019 It's going to be interesting to see Whether my little workshop that I do Look, I mean 26 percent is the target to beat. Um, I mean it should be easy to beat But I want to see if I can actually get financial engineering after my workshop and put it as number one Let's see if we can get the highest pass rate for financial engineering. That's going to be a little bit of a challenge Um, but like I say if you're writing some of these other subjects, I do have videos on youtube Actuarial statistics is on you to me. And if you're doing financial instruments Um, especially the fellowship or the specialist in finance check out my book on amazon Um, and then y'all I think that's all we have time for for this video Let me know your thoughts if you've got any comments write them down below And I'll see you guys soon for another video. Cheers


We're involved with the paint-a-thon. This is an elderly lady who lives here. She doesn't have the wherewithal to get out and paint her house. So we formed a team in our major crimes division at the police department to come out and spend Saturday morning and most of the afternoon paint your house. As a police officer, you know, we're part of the community. We just don't patrol the streets, but we're part of this community. My kids are out here today.  In Swansea, as you can see, and you've probably heard some of the construction work right at the I-70 construction project. I mean, this is like right smack dab in the middle of it. My particular job is in the homicide unit. I've been in this neighborhood before on homicides, so I'm well aware of the neighborhood. It's a good neighborhood. Just a good working-class neighborhood. I'm looking forward to this new park system they're going to have here. I think it'll be great for the city. I'm just going to bring this area up a little bit.


I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Jesse Encamp, known to many in the dojo verse as the karate nerd. Jesse has a wonderful channel full of rich history, tips, and educational glances into the world of martial arts. Jesse reached out to me and we had a wonderful conversation about our YouTube journeys, how he transitioned from tournaments to the amazing channel that he has now, how even we got our own start here on Art of One Dojo. So today, we're just gonna share some of our conversation with you all because that's what this is. It's a platform to share ideas and our experiences. What made you decide to do that transition from tournament coverage to more educational and presentation topics like you're covering today? So it all started when I was living in Okinawa. So I went there because I wanted to learn more about karate, which I had been doing all my life since I was a kid, right?  So I decided, well, I wanna go deeper into this karate thing because I've been doing it all my life anyway, since both of my parents are my teachers and I grew up in the dojo. So I moved to Okinawa and while I was there, I experienced so many different and weird unique cultural things that I decided to just start sharing them online with people through something called blogging, which was the new thing back then, right? And so what I did was I started a blog and I just shared my experiences and observations from living in Okinawa, you know, going to find an old master's gravesite or practicing with that dude over there. And these things that I would have loved to read about myself if I wasn't in Okinawa, right? As a karate nerd. And so that started to resonate with a lot of people who didn't have the ability to go to Okinawa, who didn't have the same connections or influences that I had. And so gradually I built a community around this whole journey of exploring the art. And these people are known as karate nerds, right? And so from there, people started asking me to also post videos. And that's why I started doing more tutorials, teaching some stuff that I had learned. And gradually I got more and more requests. And then I kind of thought it was a fun way to share knowledge because text or blogging is kind of, there's a separation between you and the audience. There's a wall of texts, right? And it's fine to begin with because it's a safe way to express yourself. You can always go back and edit things. But when a video is out there, it's you looking into the camera and everybody's seeing you and there's nothing to hide behind it. And you can't really go back and edit a video. When it's out there, it's out there, right? So that was kind of the gradual next step because I'm not a naturally extroverted person. I always love to read and write and kind of be on my own. And that's why writing or blogging was the best way for me to start sharing my observations and experiences. And the next step after that is, of course, in real life, right? Doing seminars, which is what I started doing afterwards. And I still remember my very first international seminar because I'd been teaching since I was a kid in our dojo, right? So teaching a class is not a problem, but I'd never taught in English because it's my third language and I never thought outside of my own dojo. So in 2014, I decided to do the karate nerd experience where I wanted to invite some really awesome instructors. I had an excuse to learn from them myself, right? And then I got a bunch of dedicated karate nerds from 25 different countries attending this very first seminar. And I still remember, I didn't know, like, should I say punch, strike, or hit? Because I had never even thought about these things. I was so nervous before I taught that. And now, today, I've taught seminars in 19 countries. And I traveled a lot before that, competing with the national team and stuff. So I've been to a lot of countries, but it always kind of escalates or progresses once you reach a new kind of milestone all the time. And that's the way I try to see my work is always kind of growing and expanding, going outside of my comfort zone. Yeah, exactly. Exactly, exactly. Once you step out far enough, that becomes your new comfort zone. You got to keep pushing it outward. Exactly, right. Yeah. How about yourself? How did you get into the whole YouTube space? Oh, it's funny. We have my friend, Zach, he's actually on the channel. He's Whitebell Zach sometimes. We have been running our own video production company for about 22 years now. We met in college and we just started working videos. We started doing freelance work. And several years ago, we were looking into YouTube marketing as like an advertising platform. And we wanted to put together a service. So we went to my instructor at the time. He had a school and we're like, hey, you want to help us this?  And we'll film them and we'll release them and see if we can promote your school. We wanted to test the process. And we went to a school and we did like 30 to 40 videos each day. So we had ended up after two days of shooting, we had like 60 videos. They're super short. I kind of, looking back now, I kind of cringe, like, we weren't really prepared. He wasn't prepared. We had him with the question, like, you know, what's the history of MMA that he tried to sum up in one minute? So there's a lot of information left out, but it was sort of a platform test. And we released, you know, a couple of videos a week for a while. And it built a little bit of momentum. He got a little bit of business out of it. We're like, okay, this is great. We want to keep building this. And then about two years into the project, he decided that he wanted to close the school and move to North Carolina. And we're like, oh, okay, well, there went that project. But, well, we know we got to play around with it, we saw how it worked. And then we let the, we just let it sit for a while. And we noticed over the course of the year or two, it was still getting a little bit of traffic. And there were trolls that were jumping on there, but certain videos we saw out of the 60 videos were like four that were like surging. And we're like, okay, there's still something here. There's some momentum here. And we just watched it. And people were asking for more content that were like, all right, maybe we should turn this into something. And it was one of those things that we kind of talked about. It was in the background for the longest time. And then in 2018, my father passed away. And it was kind of like a lot of things came to a halt. You know, we kind of stopped the business for a little bit.  Cause I've trained on and off for about 28 years myself. And during his time of the sickness, I didn't really focus on it. So I'm like, you know what? I want to step outside my boundary. Like you said, I want to see what's outside of my local village. So I looked into some judo schools and I found a really good Japanese Jujitsu school here in my town, met with the Shihan, wonderful guy. He sat down with me. We talked for about an hour. He let me try a class and I fell in love with it. But that culture shock was there. I'm like, wow, this is so different than what I trained in. This is so, I mean, there's similarities, but the whole dynamic is different. So I got really interested in expanding my own horizon. So we started to just do a bunch of little topics and we're like, why don't we restart the channel? And we rebranded it. And the funny thing is we kind of tried to keep on the same content my instructor had, which was based on parents looking for schools, kids going to the martial arts, you know, how to find a school.  And as we started to release them, we realized that wasn't our audience. The people who are watching were other martial artists, more serious martial artists. And they were asking questions and I'm like, oh, these are not parents watching our show. These are people looking for real information.  And the more we got into it and we started doing topics for fun, like I've got my whole Pride and Kid series that I'm just totally obsessed with, but we threw fun stuff out there. But we saw that people were starting to connect with the material. So basically we kind of watched people were flowing and we're like, well, let's make material for that group because they seem to be the ones liking it. Yeah, I always struggle with that. Like, so there are two paths you can take with content creation. You can make the stuff that people want to see or you can make the stuff that you want to create. And they're not always the same, right? Because a lot of people want to learn like, let's say, you know, beginner tutorials, how to tie your belt or how to make a fist. But if I wanted to do just what people wanted to see, then I would kind of focus more on those types of videos. There's always the other path of like, if you consider yourself more of an artist, that kind of creating something that people don't even know that they actually want to see. Kind of that's what Henry Ford said. Like, if I just gave people what they wanted, we would just have faster horses and not cars. I don't know how you view that, but kind of. No, I agree with that. I took it as a challenge because the stuff, the material that people were asking for, we weren't quite 100% prepared on. Like they were asking for a lot of art history. I'm like, okay, we do a lot of research before we start putting that stuff out. I still find a way to throw in the stuff I wanted to talk about. But then we tried to explore, like I started to listen like people's comments. People started asking me advice, like, hey, I'm really short, what's the best art for me?  What's the best art for me? And it's like, when we started realizing there's people out there who have a lot of challenges. There's disabilities, there's learning issues. There's people who can't find a school. Their school shut down. I have a history of, you know, my school changed so many times. Two different instructors, like probably six different locations. We kept changing the curriculum. So I understand a lot of the struggles students can go into. So we're like, well, why don't we dive into some of that? So we try to mixture, you know, people want art history. We put those out when we can. We do some fun stuff when we can. But then we try to do a lot of, well, this is a challenge a lot of people face. How would you overcome it? Well, here's our perspective. This is what we did. Here's the people we talked to. So yeah, I agree with you. There's a lot of topics people want to see. And there's the stuff that you want to do. But I definitely think there's a kind of a middle area where you kind of mix and match them together. That's what you want to find, right? What would you say is the number one challenge that people seem to have? Some question you get a lot. A lot of age related. We have a lot of, we have a lot of older martial artists. People are like, it's funny because I get people when they're 40s to 50s ask me, is it too late to start? Well, no, but I get the same question from 15 year olds. Like, no, absolutely not. There's always something you can get out of it. It's a weird, sometimes I get questions from like somebody who's like 75. And honestly, I don't know. I haven't been 75 yet. I'll tell you when I get there, but I don't think it's too late.  No, well, here's how I look at it. No matter, okay, if you're 75, you're not gonna be going jumping into tournaments or competing, but who is to say you can't learn one or two things that could help yourself to defend yourself? Or if you fall, you may even learn how the fall properly could save your life.  There's so many... We had one guy come into the Jiu Jitsu class and he was probably around 70, 75. And I'm like, I give you credit dude because he was doing the falls. And after a while, it got to be too much for him. I'm like, I give you credit for trying because that's rough to start at that age. But no, I think regardless of whatever age it is, as long as the person speaks for the doctor, I think there's always some sort of benefit they can get out of training the martial arts regardless what it is. Whether it be grappling or boxing or whatever, they find what's right for them. There's a lot of low impact arts that they have injuries, but... Maybe the problem is that they compare themselves too much with others. They expect to be able to perform like a 25-year-old. I don't know. Well, there's a lot of stigma out there too because there are people, I have had viewers say like, oh, once you're past the age of 40, you don't belong on the mat. Like, why? That's your perspective.  So I know for a fact the age of 40 is not a cut-off. Mm-hmm, right. There is this Chinese saying, I think it's a Chinese saying that the best... What's the saying? The best time to plant a tree was yesterday, but the second best time is now. I like that. Yeah, yeah. We'll see, maybe I'll be super stiff and weak one day. We'll see, I hope not.  He's amazing, yeah, absolutely. Have you heard about this diet? Is diet, no. Milkshakes and hamburgers. I mean, I thought it was a joke when he told me, because I invited him as a guest to teach at my KNX seminar. We filmed two videos, but he also did an interview for the participants, kind of Q&A thing. And he honestly, he said that his diet is hamburgers and milkshakes. He said it greases his joints and that's why he's so flexible. I could see him saying that. He was, and he got upset when we thought he was joking. Well, he doesn't kid around like that. He's a very straight shooter. He is, he is. So maybe I think maybe it's something with his genetics also, because other people on a fast food diet, they would just break down. Yeah, but he also doesn't stop training. He told me one day in an interview, he goes, look, he goes, I keep moving because he goes, if I stop, I die. So he posts off on Facebook all the time. He's always doing classes. He's always teaching. He's still doing seminars and he's still really fast. Exactly. So whatever he's doing is working for him. For sure. For sure. He's like a shark.  I think I believe some of the first videos of yours I saw were your trips to Okinawa, which I found were absolutely fascinating. And I know you went to China as well. I haven't had a chance to see those, but just seeing you actually going around and you didn't just do a tour, but you actually got into the culture and you showed how each dojo operated. And it was such an eye-opening experience to see how different martial arts training is across the world that that got me hooked in your channel right away. And your material was fantastic. So I love that you did stuff like that. And then just how you bring different techniques and where the history comes from and, you know, misconceptions. And with your brother being in MMA, I think that the mix of perspectives that you have is really rich. And you've actually inspired me a lot of just kind of directions I want to go and how I want to present to people because your material is out there and I think it's one of the better channels, honestly, in the martial arts. Yeah, I hope that I can inspire people because honestly, just putting yourself out there is pretty, it's pretty scary to begin with. But it is.  And I definitely don't consider myself, I don't even call myself a sensei, but others do. But still, just putting yourself out there, that's the scary part. But you don't have to see the whole staircase to help somebody take a step. You just have to be one step ahead of them, right? And, actually, I think it's a shame because there are so many people out there with awesome knowledge, like world champions and experts and professors, but they never share what they know because they don't like, for instance, that intranet trolls can criticize you super easily, right? And so I always try to find these golden nuggets, these people with super high level proficiency or expertise, and then try to extract some knowledge from them and then try to share that with as many people as possible. I'd like to extend a great big thank you to Jesse Sensei for your time and sharing your journey with us. Now, if any of you out there have not seen this channel, then I cannot recommend it enough, and you can find it in the link in the description down below. Also, be sure to join us in the next episode when we continue this conversation and we talk about our experiences exploring other arts outside of our own. Thank you so much for watching.


So, Patrick Newman, as I mentioned earlier, is truly an economic historian, which for those of you who listen to the Human Action Podcast, might know that we have been going through the two-volume Rothbard and Austrian perspective on the history of economic thought. We did four shows on its two huge volumes, over 500 pages each, and it really is a lost art. It really is a tradition in America that is in deep, deep trouble, and I'm told by a lot of PhD economists, it's actually possible to go through an entire PhD program now and economics it and learn nothing about the history of your own field. And so we have these young, brilliant people who might go to Wharton or Harvard or Stanford and we're dropping them into investment banks and we're dropping them into places like the Fed, and they literally don't know anything. Maybe economics started with Adam Smith, that might be all they know. They know nothing about their own profession and its own history. And so Patrick Newman is a welcome addition to this genre, a needed addition to this genre. And he's going to be speaking tonight about his new book, Chronism in America in the Early Colonial Period, which is 1607 to 1849. When he's done, he will take a few questions, so please welcome Dr. Patrick Newman. Thank you, everyone, for attending and staying this long. Now would be a great time to go to the bathroom or to check your phone or to do anything of that nature. So for those of you who don't know me, who haven't met me, I am Patrick Newman. I live in Florida. I live in Tampa. I'm a stone's throw away from St. Pete, and it's my great honor to be giving this talk tonight, to be talking about my book, Chronism, Liberty vs. Power in Early America, 1607 to 1849. It's really an honor. This is something I've been working on for a long time, which I'll be talking about. It's kind of, you have your baby. Some people have actual babies. I have a book. That's my baby. And it's like, this is my book. This is something I've created. It's taken many months. It's taken years to write. And it's just, it's an incredible honor to have spent all this time on this, and now I'm selling it, we're selling it as a paperweight. So, no, but in all seriousness, it's a book. It's meant to be read. So I'd like to talk a little bit about the origins of the book, how did this book come to be? Where did the book come from? In the fall of 2018, Hunter Lewis, who is a donor of the Institute, he's unfortunately not here tonight, but he approached me after the Supporters Summit, and he asked if I'd be interested in writing a book on the history of crony capitalism in America. This is after I'd worked on the Progressive Era. I edited the Progressive Era by Murray Rothbard, came out in 2017. I was currently working on editing the fifth volume of Rothbard's Conceived in Liberty, and I said, well, crony capitalism, someone wants me to write a book on crony capitalism. Of course, I mean, I leapt at the opportunity. I was very interested in doing this. I said, well, I'm currently editing the fifth volume of Rothbard's book. I can start working on this next year. So about April of 2019, I started to work on the book. That's when I officially started to work on the book, and I'd really just both guns blazing. I was working a lot on this. I was reading. I was writing. I was trying to cover an incredible amount of material, and I had basically finished the book in about, let's just say, December of 2020. And then the Mises Institute, I was publishing it. I worked on the index over the summer, and then the book is out, and I'm just incredibly happy to have this book completed. So as I mentioned, the book is on cronyism or crony capitalism. What exactly does that mean? So traditionally, we're told that legislation is in the public interest. So to benefit the public welfare, you have central banking to eliminate business cycles and to iron out the fluctuations in the economy. Tariffs protect jobs, subsidies, or wise government investments, infrastructure subsidies. I'm sure many of us have been hearing this quite a bit in the news. This is all very important. This is all noble, these wise, enlightened, public-interested officials. They're all pushing for these policies. In reality, it's due to special interests. It's due to insider businesses, politicians, intellectuals, looking to get concentrated privileges at the expense of the public. Central banking does not stabilize the economy. Central banking benefits Wall Street bankers, and it basically causes business cycles. Protective tariffs do not protect workers. They privilege certain manufacturing businesses and create monopolies and cause higher prices at the expense of consumers and foreign firms. So I wanted to focus on the, really was supposed to be focusing on the history of cronyism, why it went up in certain eras, why it declined, so why special privileges increased during certain years, why special privileges didn't increase as much in other years. And originally, the book was supposed to be about a 500-page comprehensive history. And as I spent more time on this, projects, they evolved. You change your focus a little bit or you say you want to concentrate on one topic a little bit more than other topics. And I guess you could say in classic Rothbardian fashion, I said that, well, in order to accurately describe cronyism, I really wanted to concentrate initially on early America. Because early America, the time of the founding fathers, really up until the Civil War, you had significant political movements that were actually interested in reducing cronyism. Right? Nowadays, we're lucky if you have a politician speaking at a podium like this and they're going to use the word free market in a speech like this. We get all excited. We're like, wow. He said free market. Does he actually believe in the free market or is he just saying this? What's going on? Back then, you actually had politicians who believed in the free market and even better than that, they were pushing for policies that actually promoted the free market or tried to bring about a quasi free market. So you have Andrew Jackson as president. He vetoed the Recharter Bill for the second bank of the United States. We could only dream of a president standing up to a central banking institute like Andrew Jackson and his fellow Jacksonians. So we can only dream of having a founding father like Patrick Henry, who's really able to fight the centralization in the U.S. Constitution in the creation of an empire of power. Patrick Henry is my favorite founding father. I swear it has nothing to do with the fact that his name is Patrick, because my name is Patrick. Right? So as I was spending more time researching, I decided to really build upon something that Rothbard had focused on a lot and conceived in liberty in the progressive era, which is this eternal struggle between the forces of liberty and the forces of power. Because back in early American history, you actually had a significant political force composed of businessmen, politicians, intellectuals, et cetera, that were genuinely interested in bringing about free markets, decentralization, peace, private property, and personal liberty, so to speak. You know, the good, the real hardcore libertarians, okay? You had the anti-Federalists. You had the Jeffersonian Republicans. You had the Jacksonian Democrats, right? And when they had control of the government, cronyism declined. It didn't decline as much as we would have liked due to what I call the corrupting nature of power, but it still declined, right? We'll take our victories when we can get them, right? They were fighting the forces of power, so the forces of statism, of greater government control, of centralization, so I'm talking about the Federalists. I'm talking about the Hamiltonians, the Alexander Hamilton, and his cotere, you could say, talking about the national Republicans, the Whigs, et cetera. And when they had control of the government, power and cronyism increased, okay? So special interest legislation increased, okay? So I wanted to focus on this battle between liberty and power. And if you've read any of Rothbard's works, his historical works, such as the Progressive Error or the Four New Liberty, right? He talks about this early American history going through the clashes between the Hamiltonians and the Jeffersonians, clashing between the Democrats and the Whigs. He talks about this in the span of, let's say, five pages in Four New Liberty in the revised edition. So I said, well, wow, this is a great story. I was really captivated by this. Let me use this as the framework for my book on cronyism. And this is what you're supposed to do as intellectuals in the Austrian tradition. You're supposed to try and stand on the shoulders of giants and not make too big of a contribution, but just make some sort of contribution, right? So later on, someone can look at your work and say, well, I want to expand upon them. This is how science evolves. This is how ideas evolve, right? So I said, well, I wanted to write a book focusing on this period of American history because I think as I'll be talking about in my discussion, there's a lot of these individuals, such as Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, I don't know if you know, but they're not exactly held in high regard now. You see their statues, their spray paint on them, or they've been erased from buildings and so on. It's a sad time to be someone who loves American history because there's a complete sort of revision taking a hold on all levels of our American history, especially at the K through 12 level, all right? So this is something that I wanted to write on. I had written this book and it's a great honor to have this book published and to now be able to talk about it, all right? So I said to myself, okay, I'm going to give this talk. I thought, okay, do I want to describe the book? Do I want to tell you what the book's about? I mean, I've told you it's about the history of cronyism. It's about this great struggle between liberty versus power. I could go through the whole plot of the book, tell you about the book, et cetera. But then I said to myself, well, wait a second. If I do that, then no one's going to want to buy the book, right? Or read the book. I got to only describe so much just so you say, well, that was a pretty mediocre job of explaining the plot. I guess I really do need to read the book in order to figure out what he's saying. So I said to myself, well, I'm pretty good at doing that. I think I can do that task quite well. What I'd like to talk about, so I've got a book called cronyism. It covers the period 1607 to 1849, all right? And I'm asking people in the year 2021 to read the book. So why should someone in 2021 or 2022 or through the rest of the 2020s, et cetera, read this book, all right? Another way of putting this is why should someone in 2021 buy this book, all right? Another way of putting it is why should someone in their friends in 2021 buy this book, right? So what is the importance of this book? Why should people care about this book? So I thought about this. Of course, after I wrote the book, I'm like, why are people going? Well, people have to find out, why do people want to read this book, right? So the first reason as to why this book is important and why other books such on similar topics are important is that history is how we learn. History is how we learn about the world around us. This is something that Rothbard wrote in a lot of grant proposals to write on American history, which eventually became his Conceived in Liberty series. And this is something that really stuck out because you have an economist and he said, look, most people find economics fairly dry and boring. It's abstract. Some people are really captivated by other people. It's tough, right? How most people learn is they'll learn through history. They will take a history course when they're in elementary school, then they'll take another history course in high school, then they might take something in college and then they will watch a documentary every now and then, or they're going to read some articles, read a book, go watch the news, et cetera. History is how we learn about various economic concepts, et cetera. And unfortunately, most people are learning the wrong history, right? Because when most people go through history class today on American history, they're going to learn that the Industrial Revolution was bad, so the emergence of capitalism was bad. They're going to learn that capitalism caused the Great Depression, et cetera, et cetera, right? Because one of the reasons why I would say the left are really just the forces of statism and government intervention are so successful now is because they've totally monopolized the history market, right? At every stage, they've totally monopolized the history market, whether it's in elementary school, you learn basically a very anti-free market perspective on American history, whether it's in college, whether it's on the news, whether it's a documentary on the history channel, et cetera. So your average person is going to say, OK, well, of course we need government regulations during COVID to keep us safe because without health regulations, people were poisoning the sausages. That's why we had this meat inspection act, right? Or of course we need the Federal Reserve to pump in reserves and to increase the money supply and to stimulate the economy during an economic downturn. Well, that didn't, when the Fed didn't do that, we had the Great Depression, right? So your average person, even though they might not consider themselves a historian or really consider themselves very knowledgeable in history, over the successive years they've sort of been, these ideas have really been packed into their mind. And so they're stuck with a certain perspective. Because if we want to change people's perspectives on the present, we have to change their perspective on the past, their length. OK, if we want to get people to support greater free markets, less government, we want to get people to be against central banking, against protective tariffs, against government spending, against the national debt, we have to show that all of these things were bad in the past. Otherwise, people are just going to say, well, I learned in my history class. Or wait, someone told me this, et cetera, OK? We need as many examples as the free market and the quasi-free market showing how private roads or private banking systems exist. This is something my book does. I go through this. We need as many examples as we can showing that prominent legislation in the past was not due to benevolent politicians trying to advance the public interest. It was due to cronies, right? It was due to individuals trying to enrich themselves at the expense of the taxpayer. My book goes through this as well. If we don't change people's perspectives of the past, unfortunately, we're not going to win. It's just going to be, this is the sad reality because basically the anti-free market forces have control of the history market, and it's going to continue to shape people's perspective on how we change the present. So history, it's very important. It's how we learn. That's the first reason. The second reason why I think my book is important is that it's interesting. I think it's interesting. And if I think it's interesting, then it must be interesting. So it's interesting. I go through a lot of examples of cronies in pushing for special interest legislation. A lot of stuff that your average person doesn't really know or even your average historian, someone who's read a lot of books on American history, doesn't really know. Because I didn't really know a lot of this stuff when I started, and I said, wow, that's incredible. That really happened for that reason, right? So I talk about how Robert Morris, the merchant prince of Philadelphia, was prominent in basically trying, during the Revolutionary War, was trying to install a big government basically to benefit himself and other elites through the Articles of Confederation. And he tried to do the same thing through the Constitution. I talk about how George Washington was actually very close to vetoing the bill for the Bank of the United States. He was actually gonna listen to Jefferson and not Hamilton. But why he didn't was because the Federalists would let him change, amend what was known as the Residents Act to place the capital, which was supposed to be somewhere on the Potomac, just a little bit closer to his land holdings in Alexandria. This is a true story. He signed the bill so the Federalists would allow him to basically put the capital right next to his land. And the value of his real estate shot up, obviously like a thousand percent. Most people don't know that. Most people don't know. That's why this may come as a surprise, but Washington DC has been crony from the start. So hopefully you're not too shocked by that. I talk about how the Boston Associates, this group of elite manufacturing firms, were not only very prominent in pushing for protectionist legislation in the 1820s, but they were actually crucial in getting Florida into the Union. And the treaty where we purchased Florida from Spain, they were able to get a very lucrative bail out that benefited their manufacturing companies and their shipping companies. I talk about how the reason why we declared war on Mexico during the Mexican War in the 1840s was not to spread slavery. It was actually to capture ports on the Western coast, particularly San Francisco, because then when we had cities on the Western coast, we could start to engage in various imperialistic policies with China. This is actually the reason why we started the Mexican War, and this is something that all of James K. Polk's cabinet officials admitted. So there's a lot of examples like this. Another example is that Chief Justice John Marshall, he was a prominent land speculator. He was very affiliated with Robert Morris, his younger brother James Marshall actually married Robert Morris' daughter. Stuff that you don't really read about in your average American history books. Stuff that makes you go, hmm, I wanna spend a little bit more time looking into that, right? So there's a lot of interesting examples of cronyism, a lot of interesting examples of genuine libertarian radicals trying to reduce cronyism, right? And that's very important, that's an important reason why people should read the book, right? It's interesting, and when it's interesting, then it's enjoyable to read, right? So far we've got history, right? It's how we learn. We have the books interesting, okay? What's another reason why this book is important? Is that, well, there's currently a revision going on in American history. There's the 1619 project. There is critical race theory. I don't know if many of you know this, but there's a gubernatorial election going on in Virginia right now, or at least it's going to be going on in a couple of weeks. This is sort of big in the news. And a big issue between the Republicans and the Democrats is over what is being taught in the public school system in Virginia, particularly how we teach American history, right? Because nowadays with the 1619 project and critical race theory, et cetera, we learn that America, it was all doom and gloom. Everything was just this plot to install and strengthen slavery. America was racist. It was sexist. It was all these badists. It was all capitalism's fault. So now you've got people saying that the history of capitalism is built off of slavery and that all of these prominent politicians, guys such as Thomas Jefferson, oh, when they were supporting free markets, it was all just this cover up for slavery. That's all it was. And now we need to tear down all these statues or we need to describe history through a different lens, right? Well, my book doesn't do that. My book goes through history as I believe it should be taught and is the correct way that it should be taught, early American history. Is it the way that fits with our current ethics? Were these people, we say they're ethically good from today's standards? Well, of course not, right? But that doesn't mean we change our interpretive lens on how we understand these individuals. We want to understand their strengths and weaknesses from how people back then understood their strengths and weaknesses. I don't want to demonize someone now just because I don't think what they did back then was socially acceptable. You want to demonize someone if people back then thought what they did was socially unacceptable, okay? So there's this very big revision going on in American history and particularly how it's being taught and people are learning that American history is all doom and gloom and that there's no heroes, it's all villains and that capitalism has led to all sorts of problems and what we really need is a thorough remaking of how we view history and as well as a thorough remaking of how we view the present world, okay? So my book, for people who are just interested in the old school American history, whether they're older individuals, whether they're their parents, whether they're their children or young adults, et cetera, having that sort of old school American history, I think is very important right now. It's missing in traditional history textbooks and just traditional history books, what you watch on the news, what you read online on various articles, et cetera. I want someone who's going to look at the strength and weaknesses of a Thomas Jefferson or an Andrew Jackson in not a biased light, okay? I want someone who's going to respect these individuals for the tremendous amount of effort they put into trying to create what was known as an empire of liberty, okay? So that's the third reason, right? So we've got, so far we've got three reasons, right? We've got history, it's how we learn, the book's interesting, right? Stop the 1619 project and what's the fourth reason, the last reason? Well, I want to show that there's light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately, there's no light right here but there's still, if you read the book, there's still light at the end of the tunnel, right? Because when we're trying to change the world right now, we think that, well, there's no hope, right? The forces of power have won, the forces of big government have won, et cetera. How could we possibly try and change the world of today? Well, I think if we want to try and change the world of today, we have to understand and appreciate how similar movements, such as ours, changed the world in the past, right? And they were fairly successful, were they perfect? Now that they get everything they wanted done, obviously not, but they still got a good amount of stuff done. The Jacksonian Democrats still got rid of the central bank of the United States, they still got rid of protective tariffs. Yeah, we all gotta give them a round of applause. Exactly, I mean, how often can we say that a president actually stood up to a central bank, right, that's very important? How often can we say that a president actually paid down the national debt? These things are very important. If we want to try to achieve something like that, even a fraction of that in the present, we have to learn how people did that in the past, okay? So there were these mass movements of libertarians and forces for decentralization in small government, okay? They were very radical, they were very ideological, they used a variety of resistance tactics, nullifications, sometimes even threatening secession, et cetera, they were very strategic in how they tried to accomplish their aims, okay? So the anti-Federalists fought the Constitution in the 1780s, but once they realized that the Constitution had been created, they switched their tactics. They became very vocal defenders of the Constitution, or at least they created what's known as the strict constructionist view of the Constitution, interpreting it the way they wanted, okay? Patrick Henry was very prominent in this, right? So the Constitution that at least can be defended by many libertarians, that interpretation actually came from people who previously fought the Constitution, okay? The Jacksonians, they had previously fought executive power in the 1810s and 1820s, but then when Andrew Jackson became president, they championed executive power, why? Because they realized that Congress is too corrupt, you had to have the executive do the work, do most of the heavy lifting, in veto various bills, in rotate out various bureaucrats in the government to try and drain the swamp, so to speak, okay? So we wanna see that, well, we were able to achieve successes in the past, so why can't we achieve similar successes in the future? Why can't we do the same thing right now? So at least that fourth reason that there's light at the end of the tunnel, okay? People have made strides in the past, maybe they didn't get as far as they wanted to or it didn't work out in the end, but we can do it one more time and we can do it with feeling, okay? So that's an important reason why the book should be read. I go through a lot of this hidden sort of story. So we've got the four reasons why I think the book is important for someone in the 2020s history, it's how we learn, the book's interesting, okay? We wanna stop current revisionist takes on American history, right? And we wanna show that there's light at the end of the tunnel, okay? So, so I'm very, so I'm very honored to finally see this book out in print. I'm very honored to see it in physical form. I hope that for those of you who have purchased it and read it, I hope that you enjoy it. I hope that my talk has maybe changed some of the other people's minds to take a look at the book, to read it, to see if it will change your mind or to see if it will change someone else's mind in your life. I would once again like to thank Hunter Lewis for sponsoring the book. I would also like to thank the Mises Institute for graciously publishing the book, all right? It's organizations such as the Mises Institute. These are organizations that I've really grown up loving. My very first Mises Institute event was a Mises Circle event in New York in 2010. I'll never forget it. I went there, I picked up my name tag. I met Pat Barnett and I said, wow, this is a great organization. My first Mises University was in 2011 and here I am promoting my own book. So I think that's pretty cool. I'm very happy about that. I would like to end with a quote of sorts, right? So it's actually a quote by Thomas Jefferson. Well, it's technically a misquote. He didn't actually say this but a lot of people said he said this. It's that, so, well, we're just gonna say that he said it, right? It's that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. We now have computer programs that we can churn through all sorts of documents. Apparently, Thomas Jefferson never said it. That's saying originated around that this time. Andrew Jackson did say something like that in one of his presidential speeches but this is something that's generally attributed to Thomas Jefferson. So eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. What does that mean? Well, it means if you wanna protect liberty, if you wanna cherish liberty, if you wanna defend liberty, you constantly have to be learning about liberty. You constantly have to be reading about liberty. You have to be writing about liberty. You have to be talking about liberty. Because if you don't have people like that, the other side will just win. It's just what's gonna happen because there's going to be misguided government policies. There's going to be various special interests trying to get their own legislation and they're just successively going to win. So you need to be eternally vigilant in order to protect liberty. So in that spirit, what I'd like to say is that eternal research is the price of liberty. Okay, so in order to protect the liberty, you have to have people researching about liberty, reading about liberty, writing about liberty, constantly trying to defend liberty against its various critics. Because if we don't support people like that, then liberty won't survive. And it's thanks to the organization such as the Mises Institute that have really been instrumental, not only in my career, but it's also in many other individuals' careers who are here right now that has been truly dedicated to defending liberty. So I think with that, I would like to conclude and we have some time for some questions. So thank you very much. Patrick, we have a couple of mics in the room, please. If you would, just raise your hand and wait until the mic comes for you and ask your brief question for Dr. Newman. Dr. Newman, is it your opinion that cronyism today, the kinds of cronyism we're facing with Pfizer and all of the COVID stuff, is that unprecedented? Are we in an unprecedented time of cronyist turmoil or is there a precedent to that that we can look to to say there's a way out of this? That's a great question. Over the past couple of years, really since the 2020 crisis, we've seen a tremendous increase in cronyism. I would say a lot of this has been unprecedented, but we've seen similar explosions in cronyism, particularly during various national emergencies such as the Civil War, World War I, World War II, okay? And you've seen tremendous, during those periods, tremendous suppressions of personal liberty, increases in various special privileges to businesses and intellectuals and politicians and so on.  But we have been in similar periods. Of course, history never repeats, it always rhymes, but I do think there is a way out of it. I do think that people are finally starting to get upset at the various restrictions, they're starting to get upset at the economic situation, the job market isn't recovering like people wanted to. Inflation is now becoming a problem. I'm very interested to see how that's turning out. The Fed, at least is somewhat thrown in the towel. They've switched from calling inflation transitory to now the word is episodic, right? So it's like Star Wars episodes, it's a new inflation, the inflation strikes back, return of the inflation, the inflation menace, attack of the inflation, revenge of the inflation, that's what we're moving to now. All right. But I think there is a way out, yeah. We have other questions. Can I talk now? Is it okay?  But a question that, here I am, folks like me lie awake at night and think about is, and this should be in your wheelhouse and if you don't have the answer then I don't respect you. I'm just kidding. Why? Why, why, why? After the Bank of the United States Charter had expired in 1812, did Madison and the legislature sign off on renewing the Charter for a new Bank of the United States in 1816? Why would they do that when they knew that the institution was controlled and owned by private banking stockholders and had nothing to do with the benefits or the welfare of the people of the United States? Why would they do it again? What were they thinking? Yeah, that's a great question. So the first Bank of the United States, its Charter relapsed. It was not renewed in 1811. This was due to the tie-breaking vote by George Clinton, the former anti-Federalist governor of New York. He became vice president. It was a real relation when I say Clintons of New York. And then the new bank was chartered in 1816. So why would they do that? Well, the unfortunate reason is that as I discussed in my book there was various prominent financiers that had lobbied for this bank, another Bank of the United States, particularly John Jacob Astor and Stefan Gerard. They had lobbied for a bank. Even more importantly, they had lobbied to have their former lawyer, Alexander J. Dallas, become secretary of the Treasury. And so they were all pushing for this bank because they had bought a bunch of government bonds during the war of 1812. And they were looking to trade in these government bonds for stock in the Bank of the United States at par value, which drastically increased their holdings. I have admittedly a negative view on Madison. So I think he basically kind of went along with all of this because he was okay with it. By this time, the Republican Party, the Jeffersonians had become thoroughly Hamiltonian and very federalist. But that was why they pushed for it. They didn't have the courage to get rid of the bank. Jefferson didn't have the courage to get rid of the bank when he was president. But fortunately, that charter was not, the knot goes throughout its entire length thanks to Andrew Jackson basically vetoing the early recharter by Nicholas Biddle. But so to answer your question, why we had another central bank? Well, we had prominent cronies basically lobbying for it. So that's the unfortunate but correct answer. Yeah. We bought the book, so let me say that right up front. You can ask your question then. Okay. You know, talking about George Washington and buying the land and all these different, and when we constantly like to defend the founding fathers, is this going to be fodder for, you know, liberals to say we told you so? Yeah. The country was a mistake in the beginning. It's always been corrupt and it's time for the do-over. I haven't read the book and maybe you explain all that, but as you're talking, that thought came into my head and it's bothering me. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, so it's an important question. Will people now say that, well, they were all corrupt back then? I would like to say well, some of them are corrupt in particular. The founding fathers that are now champion the most now are the ones who are the most corrupt, right? So you have a musical for Alexander Hamilton. This is interestingly the same man. This is not even discussed at all in the musical, but this is something that I discussed. He had become the most powerful general in the late 1790s. He'd become Inspector General basically in charge of the army and he was trying to get the United States to declare war on France so we could invade Louisiana, we could even invade South America, et cetera, stuff that isn't even talked about now, right? Because people just say, well, Hamilton, he's great. He supported a central bank, right? So there were definitely bad people back then. There were cronies, but very importantly, there were also good guys, people who aren't even discussed at all, right? So if Washington was the most famous Virginian in the 1790s, well, there was also the second most famous Virginian in the 1790s. A lot of people don't know who this was. Even the second most famous American. And that was Patrick Henry, right? So there were good guys. And guys like Patrick Henry, they did fight the Constitution from the beginning. And I do think the Constitution was a mistake because it tried to basically centralize the 13 states and put it into a centralized government when in reality the correct approach was to have multiple confederacies. And this is something that Thomas Jefferson wanted. This was his empire of liberty, right? He thought it would be okay to have multiple confederacies. He even thought that the West Coast would eventually become its own independent nation, right? And this is the story that I think needs to be told because one of the important ways how we can change the present is actually through trying to support greater decentralization such as nullification or even the dreaded, as Tom Wood says, the dreaded S-word, you know, secession, right? These are the appropriate strategies that we need to pursue, right? I think there's a couple... Oh, over there. Hey, thank you so much for your talk. Congratulations on your new book. One of my questions... My question is, given the fact that you've done such an extensive review of the cronyism of the past, can you maybe give us just one example or one idea of maybe a strategy that we can apply today given kind of the theme of the talk this weekend? Yeah, so that's a great question relates to that fourth point I mentioned, light at the end of the tunnel. Well, now this is when I quickly leave, but I think an important sort of strategy that we can learn from, and this is something that I was deeply impressed by, was again how we can strategically look at documents such as the Constitution and see what are the appropriate ways in which we can enact reforms on the federal, state, or local level, right? So one of the great strategies that was created by basically anti-federalists, particularly an individual of Virginia, another great Virginia known as John Taylor of Caroline, was what became the compact theory, right? So arguing that the states entered the Constitution as a compact and when the federal government violates their end of the bargain, so to speak, states have a right to resist, to nullify, or potentially even to secede. I think getting more and more people comfortable with these ideas is very, very important because we're unfortunately not going to be able to reform Washington. It just simply won't happen. It's too concentrated. The only way we can try and do, we can really try and enact reforms is if we try and do it much more on the state and local level. And we've really seen a lot of strides towards nullification regarding various mask mandates or ordinances or vaccine requirements, et cetera. And this has gotten people a lot more states' rights oriented.  Yes, I'm from Florida. I'm from the land of Florida. I'm a Tampainian. We enjoy our freedom. And it's like, how goes up into the land of Pennsylvania? Like, well, what's going on there? Tell us about that, right? And I think that's actually healthy because we've been getting much more of a decentralized, individualist spirit. And this is something that's very important. Hey, my question is, what would you say to the Richard Wolff types of the world who would say that there is no distinction between, they don't recognize the distinction between cronyism and capitalism, and his critique would be that wherever you see capitalism, there always has been cronyism that followed behind it. So at my college at Florida Southern College, we actually sent her for free enterprise in sort of part of the clashing battles. We had to invite Richard Wolff to speak. So I met him and I've actually discussed some of these issues with him. And unfortunately, I wasn't able to get my point across. So someone such as Richard Wolff, a very prominent Marxist who basically says everything in capitalism is bad and I was talking about how inflation is due to greedy capitalists exploiting the public. So of course we know what's coming and that's price controls, which this time it will work. I'm convinced that price controls will work this time. This is the one time in history, but they will work. I will say that one you, they just simply don't know their history. They don't simply understand how there were various quasi-free market, regulatory environments, right? So when people think of free banking in the United States, they think it was very chaotic. In reality, the problems were caused due to government intervention, but it was by far the best monetary system that we've had in terms of bank failures in the severity of business cycles, et cetera. So to explain that well, these weren't due to capitalism's fault, this was due to cronyism's fault, and to also explain the importance of economic education. This is something that Mises said that really to defend capitalism, its eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. To defend capitalism, you need people who are able to defend it against cronyism, right? The cronyism doesn't result from capitalism. The cronyism results from government intervention because whenever government starts to regulate and oversee business more and more, they're inevitably going to invite business into that partnership, so to speak. So this is the problem most people don't understand. They just think, well, if we get the right guy in charge, we get the right person, they're going to have the right rules, and they're going to be able to safely regulate everything and et cetera, et cetera. And the only way to combat that is through reason, it's through argumentation, it's through showing them historically. This is now what resulted, and it will certainly not result in the present. You said wonderful things about Jefferson and his idea of confederacies and notification so forth, but are those things in the book? Yes, yes. I talk about them significantly regarding the Empire of Liberty, regarding the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, regarding what was known as the Spirit of 1798 or the Spirit of 98, regarding the compact theory and et cetera. All of this is in the book because it relates to cronyism and it's how reformers genuinely did make a very serious dent in cronyism using these doctrines, and hopefully we can do the same thing. I'm confident that we can do the same thing in the present. We're talking about the position that some people take, which is just we need to get the right guy in charge. But in your view, is cronyist domination of the political system inevitable or is it containable? And if it's inevitable, then is that ultimately an argument against the state or against any state? I would say it's unfortunately inevitable, but it's really inevitable whenever you have a very large country, you have a country that's expanding and that's putting more power in the central government. The proximate reason I described this in my book, I didn't want to give it away, but it relates to the question that the approximate reason why the Jeffersonian Republicans and the Jacksonian Democrats failed, at least they didn't succeed in fully removing cronyism was because they basically got corrupted by land. Jefferson's presidency, particularly his second term, was destroyed by his prior decision in 1803 to unconstitutionally, at least in his mind, purchase Louisiana. And there's this massive acquisition of land because once you do that, then you have to support internal improvements, building all sorts of roads, et cetera, to bind the empire together. Jefferson, once he purchased Louisiana, he then basically tried to maneuver to acquire Canada. And this is really the reason behind the War of 1812. The Jacksonians stumbled because over the Texas annexation question, as well as trying to acquire ports on the California coast, such as San Francisco, which led to the Mexican War. So really the cronyism is inevitable whenever we try and have these very large governments, like the central government of the United States, cronyism is inevitable because you have so many special interests and you're trying to, everyone's trying to get their own slice of the pie. Really the only way I think we can realistically try to reform the situation is by, through greater decentralization, at least trying to remove that power from Washington. So to have sort of limited smaller governments where the people are thoroughly imbibed with sort of this general free market or libertarian orientation, right? That's really the only way we can stop cronyism, I think. How much do you trust left-wing politicians who claim that they want to take steps against cronyism and lobbying people like Bernie Sanders? Not much, unfortunately. That's not the correct solution because in many times, as sometimes gets covered up, they are funded by various large financial banks and other institutions. So they're cronying themselves and it's the government is Mr. Fix It. It's the mentality. It's the nirvana fallacy. It's saying the market's not perfect so there's various errors and of course the market isn't perfect. Entrepreneurs make mistakes, et cetera. And they say, so therefore there's a government solution and if you just listen to me, I will be able to bring about the promised land, et cetera. It's not a sincere attack on cronyism. We can look at various socialist countries, not Scandinavia. They're not actually socialist. We look at the socialist countries that we would turn into places like Venezuela, et cetera. They're socialist, but they're very crony. So the left-wing politicians know I would not trust them to reduce special interests, privileges, and so on. We can very clearly see that with all of the landmark legislation that they've passed if you think of all the cronies involved in Obamacare or the Dodd-Frank Act, both of those in 2010. It's an incredible amount. People are generally less aware of this because they just simply say, well, these guys say they're fighting for the common man, the common person, so that means they must be. And well, politicians never lie. So therefore they're doing the right thing, but that's just simply false. And I think it's a very important goal of ours, a task of ours to actually try to really change people's mind on this, that politicians lie. This has happened historically, and they will continue to lie, and they'll continue to take advantage of a relatively uninformed public. Has there been a connection, historically speaking, and perhaps in your book, between the infrastructure that is initiated with the war and national defense and then maybe any cronyism that follows domestically? Yeah. That's a great question. There's been a lot of infrastructure that's been tagged along with war. In my book, I talk about the Erie Canal. So if any of you had to sing this old song when you're in music class at elementary school about the Erie Canal, you know what I'm talking about, the canal in New York, it was actually very linked with the War of 1812, because it was really pushed for by this former federalist. His name was Peter B. Porter, and he was trying to get a canal, particularly a canal in Lake Ontario, because that's where his business was, and he thought that if we've invaded Canada, we would be able to basically accomplish that, and it was basically tied in. It later became the Erie Canal, but I go through this whole story. A lot of people don't understand. I talk about how in the Mexican War, there was this big movement for a transcontinental railroad or to try and have a canal across Panama, stuff that the transcontinental railroad, especially during the Civil War, war and infrastructure has been very, very linked. And a lot of people think, oh, infrastructure, well, roads and canals, people aren't talking about canals now, but we still talk about roads and highways. Well, there can't be anything crony there. We all need roads. You know, who would build the road, so to speak, but actually you look at the historical record, there's tons of pork, there's tons of special interest privileges in various infrastructure legislation. So it's not something that's new. The current cronies have involved in the infrastructure bill is not new. It's been present in basically every infrastructure bill we've had, unfortunately. Hello. So this is sort of a general decentralization kind of question, but it's come up a lot in libertarian circles that I am in and people with whom I respect. But there seems to be sort of this question about whether state governors can usurp the authority of local governors, even though they're in a libertarian direction like mask mandates and stuff like that, whether or not they should supersede these local governments who may constitutionally have more authority, but whether libertarians should support these kind of, and to me instinctively they should, but whether or not sort of state governors who may not have constitutional authority can actually move us in a more libertarian direction with local ordinances and stuff like that, whether or not we should say, oh no, that's giving them too much power or whether we should support those things regardless if they're in a libertarian direction. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, this is very prominent, especially regarding, say, the state of Florida and various local ordinances. So we say, well, if the people locally decided they want to do something, well, then why can't we respect them and et cetera, and I would say, well, certainly if local people want to do that, then yeah, we should let them do that, but local people didn't decide to do that. It wasn't a local decision. It was something at the federal level. See, the current, the critics of that, they never, it's not a one-way street. So they say, well, local, you know, local communities, towns, et cetera, they have a right to institute these ordinances and defy their governor, et cetera. But of course, if the governor's supporting restrictions and the local community decides to say, we know we don't want to restrict that, they never defend that, right? It's only in the direction of government intervention, right? So they say, well, you know, it's always the local community's right to decide they want these ordinances or not. They don't actually mean that because when local communities have tried to resist, they fall back on the authority of the state or the federal government. So I do support state governments basically saying, no, you're not allowed to do that, or no, you can't enforce vaccine requirements or mask mandates or something else, et cetera, because it's not, the other side isn't playing fair on that. And the local community doesn't have the right to do that anyway because it's not a collective decision. Local communities, local businesses have the right to say, oh, if you want to enter my business, you have to wear a mask or something, but they also have the right to say, if you want to enter my business, you don't have to wear a mask, right? It was never that way. It was always in the direction of more government intervention. So the people supporting these policies, they're not actually in favor of decentralization and local control. They're just in favor of basically greater control from Washington. This is just a giant sort of smoke screen for that. All right. I think we have time for one more question. Hopefully that's an easy one. So the book stops at 1849. Yeah. Why 1849? And are you planning a second book to cover the rest of Crowley? Yes. That's a good question. Why did the book stop at 1849? Well, the book stopped at 1849 because that was sort of the official collapse of, you could say, the Jacksonian movement. And I felt that that was a sufficient ending point for talking about the liberty versus power. I'd gone through the Jeffersonian. I'd gone through the anti-Federalists, excuse me. I'd gone through the Jeffersonians. I'd gone through the Jacksonians. I felt that was a natural stopping point. And yes, I would like to write a book or books continuing the story using a different interpretive framework. A great sort of period would be from the 1850s to the 1950s, basically covering all of the cronyism in there. And that would be a project that's something I'm working on. If there's demand, I'll supply. So, you know, those John Baptiste say, supply creates its own demand. So there is that. But that's the reason why it was a good thematic sort of conclusion. And I would definitely like to continue the story. Yeah. So thank you. All right, so I think we're good? Thanks. All right, well, big round of applause for Patrick. Thanks so much. Thank you. We'll see you in the morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much for coming.