Homeschooling, Streetfighting, Freedom, Common Vs. Statutory Law & How To Stand Up For Your Rights With Jesse Elder.

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

And now I was in a crisis of conscience because I'm teaching people martial arts, but I myself have no idea what to do.

Part of that is just based on the educational system. You know, I was never taught to line up in a row with all.

The other little factory workers understanding that what I think is the greatest freedom in life is allowing other people to have their own experience. We didn't found this country on a bunch of people who are so easily offended about what might happen and how all this other fragility came in.

Performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Oh, gee, I don't know how long I've known today's podcast guest. Years and years. Too many years. What do you think, Jesse? Like, 10 years, maybe?

I think we're going on a decade, dude.

Something like that. Let's just say a decade, because that sounds good. We met in Connecticut. I think it was at one of Michael Fishman's consumer health summits over there, where they get a whole bunch of highly influential health people in one room and then throw in a couple jokers like you and me to keep everybody humble. And I believe that was where you hit it off.

That's where you connected. Although I think we might have first met at Jeff Spencer's event in Vancouver.

That's right, Briefly in Vancouver for a seafood tower. You and I punished the tallest sushi tower known to. It was you and me and Kevin.

Was it Kevin Thompson.

Thompson. Then a copywriter named Colin Chung. I remember that. That was a great meal. Yes.

Well, I had no idea who you were, and I was brand new to this whole, like, online world, but right in the middle of our sushi destruction, there's these. These group of women that were like, two tables away, and they kept stalking and spying on us. And one of them came up and like Greenfield, I was like, who is this turkey? He must be famous.

That was early on in my social media exploration days when. When my primary avatars who followed me were triathletes and apparently cougars.

So, yes, yes, totally.

Yes. Well, you know, you know, so. So we met. You're a Texas man now. You live in. You live in Austin. You're a fellow homeschooler. We can get into that because I think that's kind of woven into part of your backstory and possibly why you're just a touch of a rebel now, which is another reason why we're having a call. You're man after My own heart. You're a self described millionaire mentor. I know. You're like a modern day philosopher. You got all these sick videos. What do you call mind vitamin videos?

Yeah, Mind vitamins. Very happy accident a few years ago.

Where do you publish most of your mind vitamin videos in case I want to link to that?

Yeah, Facebook and Instagram.

All right, cool. You're not canceled yet?

Not yet. I've been successfully using humor to dodge the sensors.

I don't know if that worked for another Austin guy down there, JP Sears. He may have still caught some heat. But anyway, so you. You have those, and I'll link to all this stuff if you guys go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com elder, which is Jesse's last name. I'll link to all of his shit on Facebook and Instagram and elsewhere. He's a former MMA fighter turned entrepreneur. He's also the author of the Upgraded Life. Or at least I found a bio for you somewhere online, Jesse, that said you were the author of the Upgrade Life. Is that like a book or is that one of those silly, like, online courses?

It was one of those goofy online courses that people buy to their lives. I know.

Yeah. Yeah, well, you had me confused with author. You should have said creator or designer. I don't know. But anyway, so. So you've been on this quest to tackle like human rights, sovereignty, common law versus statutory law. You've been blowing my mind on all these elements of freedom. The last time that I was in Austin, you and me, and it was after I recorded that podcast with Aubrey Marcus, we were at Aubrey's house with Kyle Kingsbury and a couple other folks, and, man, we riffed on what are our actual rights as citizens for quite some time. You had another podcast with Kyle Kingsbury that was pretty good about some of this. And I'll link to that in the show notes as well. But dude, before we dive into that stuff, obviously you're a fellow homeschooled nerd, but unlike me, I was refined and a little bit preppy and I got into like, tennis and, you know, chess and violin and a few other notable homeschooling activities, whereas you started beating people up in bars. So walk me through your little backstory, because honestly, I mean, as much as you might be sick of telling it, I think your story, especially for my audience, who probably hasn't heard it yet, is actually pretty fricking hilarious. Especially your vaselined up bar fighting scene story.

Wow. Yeah, so all of these were very, very unlooked for sort of things. And I, oldest of five, born in Austin, grew up in South Texas. Very blessed to be born to two. Two parents who somehow figured that I knew better for me than they did. And so they loved me and they stayed out of my way. Lots of love, you know, never felt abandoned, but never really felt guided and directed either. And so there's a lot of feeling was right for me and making up my own mind and experiencing the consequences, right or wrong.

Yeah, that. That works for some kids. Worked for me. Like, my parents would literally just give me books and walk away and say, get these books read.

And I.

And I did fine. My brothers and sisters, I don't know if it worked out as well for them, but yeah, for me, same thing. Total loner. They tell me what I need to learn and I just go learn it.

Right, exactly. And I was very, very appreciative. Am very appreciative to have had that experience. So that led to me being into all sorts of different things. I check out every book at the library on snakes or medieval warfare or whatever. And when I was nine years old, I found martial arts and freaking fell in love with it. It just was. Was, you know, really just touched a part of my soul. I loved it. Wasn't very good at it, but I loved it and kept training. And one day my instructor says, hey, you're going to go do a tournament? I'm like, oh, great. So I went. Got the crap kicked out of me, you know, 10 years old. But what are you going to do? Tell your instructor? No, no. So I kept going to tournaments, started doing all these little, you know, sport taekwondo, karate tournaments and Karate Kid came out back in the day and, you know, next thing you know, we've got like 50 kids in the class and, you know, it just kept growing. It was always my thing. By the time I was 19, I'd done I don't know how many hundreds of little tournaments. And I've been teaching since I was 15. By the time I was 17, I told my parents, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. So I opened a. Later, I opened a school. But when I was 19 years old, I had an experience that shifted everything because I'd been.

You went through puberty?

Well, it's debatable. But I ended up having. There's this girl that I liked. We would go to this house party and I was completely socially awkward. Arguably still can be.

Yeah. I was going to say that not much has changed.

Yes. I just have a beard now, you know, and be Sometimes are fashionable. So it's like, sometimes you're cool, sometimes you're not. I don't know how to time that.

You're talking to a fellow beard wearer. Now I, I get the respect now. You ought to see the cougars these days. They don't even know what to do in a walk in the room.

They're literally coming out of your beard.

That's right.

You're just prowling out of the face. Buzz. So there's this girl that I like, we're at this house party, and there's a guy at this party who is like mad dogging me. He's giving me the stink eye. And I go to her, I'm like, what's that guy's deal? And she's, well, that's my boyfriend. Like, what? So I'm heartbroken, I'm embarrassed, I'm angry. All these, you know, 19 year old hormonal feelings, and I'm like, wow. So I'm like, you know what, I'm just gonna leave. So I go to leave and I'm walking down the driveway and all of a sudden this dude just tackles me, jumps on my back, puts me on the, on the pavement. And I swear, dude, my first thought is that, oh, he's gonna get disqualified.

I know kung fu.

Yeah, well, the referee, I'm like, the referee is not going to, not going to stand for this. That thought lasted about two seconds, and then I'm taking punches in the face and I realize, oh, shit, there's no ref, there's no rules. All of a sudden I realized my 10 years of taekwondo training is worthless. I might as well have been armed with a paintbrush or finger paints or something. That's how useful of an art it was. Luckily, people pulled us apart. We ended up standing up and I got a kick off, kicked him in the head. He fell, I ran. But my world was shattered because all this theory and beautiful technique that I've been learning fell apart in the real world. And now I was in a crisis of conscience because I'm teaching people martial arts. But I myself had no idea what to do. So that led me to what am I going to do? And I very luckily had another mentor at the time who was training in Jiu jitsu, crazy Jiu Jitsu, right before the first UFC. So this is like 92, 93. And he said, you got to start this stuff. So I did. He convinced me to enter this little tournament in, in Austin. I did. I won a couple of matches, then I was hooked. I was like, wow, this stuff actually makes sense. So fast forward a few months. I'm training, I'm loving it. And I ended up taking. Still to this day, it's the only W2 job I've ever had. I was a bouncer at this little dive bar called Sneakers Nightclub in San Antonio. And this is like, this is a club where bands go to be born or go to die. I mean, this is like, there's no in between.

Like, to literally die. Death by motorcycle gang, like that kind of bar.

Dude, I did see some Swedish guitar player in the 80s almost Coke himself to death. That was pretty interesting. But so I'm in the bar and I'm like, now 20, and I'm thinking I'm, you know, hot stuff, you know, making my 550 an hour. You know, it's pretty cool. Kick the occasional drunk person out. And the promoters of the club decide that they're going to have fight nights.

And just. Just so I could interrupt real quick, for people who might not be watching a video of you or haven't seen you, you're kind of like a skinny ass. Like, you look like maybe like a skinny starving Texas rancher, not a bouncer.

Oh, 100%, dude. I'm. I'm this. I have literally the same body composition that I did when I was fighting. Six three. 150, maybe.

Yeah. You have done a roundhouse kick over my six foot two head, though.

I do remember.

Yeah.

Remember Fueled by Sushi. So here I am at this club, and they start having these fight nights, and they basically just roll this wrestling mat out on the dance floor, and they have a clipboard at the bar for people to sign up to fight. And that was it. There's no waivers, there's no rules, there's no time limit, there's no gloves, no safety equipment, and no weight limit. So it's literally like just a smorgasbord of human beings. Let's get in there and see what happens. Not necessarily legal, but, you know, the club is like, hey, business is slow on Thursday. People seem to like this fighting thing. So now I'm really in a crisis of conscience because I'm teaching martial arts during the day, balancing at night. And I realized I either have to enter this thing or I have to stop teaching because I'm totally out of integrity. I'm like, all right, I'll do it. It scared the heck out of me, but I signed up to fight, trained my face off for about a month, and. And ended up fighting and. And won both matches that night. And I was hooked. Not because of the violent aspect, although it's, it's a damn, it's a baptism. Baptism in reality. It's like you find out really, really good how good, you know how you find out fast how good you think you are.

Yeah, it's pretty damn good. Rite of passage for a 19 year old.

It was epic, dude. It was epic. And I, I, yeah, I mean, changed my life because it mostly made me immune to theory that sounded good but turned out to be bullshit when, when reality hits. And then that just bled into so many other things that maybe we could talk about. So anyway, I keep fighting almost every week and I really start to make the connection between like my mindset and you know, what I'm focused on and you know, what I'm reading and am I meditating and how am I breathing and nutrition, all these things. And I started to get into visualization. I started to explore my faith on a very active, practical level. Not just, you know, I was baptized Catholic, but that I had way too many questions. And anyway, so I start, I start doing these fights, end up winning all these fights. Like one week after the next I'm winning, you know, like almost every week I'm fighting and I'm winning. There's another guy who keeps winning and winning and winning and everybody starts to get real excited in town like, oh man, these guys are going to match up. This is going to be like the grand finale. And I'd seen this guy fight before. He had probably 35, 40 pounds on me, which concerned me because I'd seen him just destroy. I'd watched him fight one guy in these, in these Thursday night fights. And the fight literally lasted like four seconds. The referee is like ready go and stop. Fight's over. The guy got just a straight right to the face, went down and they carried him out. So I'm training for this guy. I know that my only chance is to get him on the ground.

Yeah, you've seen him fight before and you know jiu jitsu come in handy.

Yes, exactly. And especially back then hardly anybody knew Jiu jitsu. So it's like the land of the blind. The one eyed man is king. And that was me. So fight night shows up and I have not slept properly for probably two, three days leading to the fight. I'm so nervous, but I'm committed. I'm in. Let's go. So I drive my, I had this little crappy Mazda RX7. Sometimes started sometimes didn't parked on a hill that was my, my, my early days, drive this, this jalopy, park in the back of the club, have my bag walk in the back door, and it's the wildest smell, man. It is like, you know, it's a nightclub, so it's beer and cigarettes and. But now they've had all these fights and so it's like blood and sweat and Tiger Bomb and Bengay and more beer and, you know, pretty sure, you know, that there's people that had sex recently somewhere in that club. And so it's just like somebody's got.

Stars selling that as locker room clone. Somebody would buy it.

Telling you, man, we can bring that in in a big way. I don't know what it would be called, but I'd call it Funk. The Funk. Yeah, the affiliate program is sick. It's going to be epic. So I walk in, it's just incredible smell, lots of adrenaline. Pretty soon, you know, I'm warming up and they call my name and they're like, in this corner, Jesse Elder. And I come out and they're blasting Van Halen. It's my fight song. I come out there and then it's quiet. And then they announced this guy's name. We'll never forget his name. Alan Croft. Alan Croft. And everybody starts cheering and the place is packed. You know, it's like fire code says you can have like 300 people. There's way more than that. And it's my students, my friends, my family, my parents, my baby sister. Like everybody in my life is here to watch this big night. So the guy comes out and I'm in the ring by now. We have these little, little like four ounce gloves on and I have my jiu jitsu gi. I think I'm hoist Gracie. I'm like ready to go. You know, the referee real quick is like, all right, you ready? You ready? You guys know the rules. There really aren't any. So just make a good match. So I'm circling and I'm waiting for the bomb because I know this guy's going to drop a bomb. And if he hits me, it lights out. And the guy's got 40 pounds on me. No way I can take a shot like that. And so I'm just waiting, waiting, waiting. Sure enough, it's like watching all the tide goes out. You know, the tsunami is coming in. I see his body shift back, he loads up. Sure enough, here comes that bomb. And I've been training for it. I mean, I had guys that I was training with and I'm like, hit me, like, literally fight Club. I want you to hit me in the face. And so I would train, you know, work with these guys who try and punch me in the face. And I would shoot in, shoot in, over and over again. So I felt good about that. This guy loads up, here comes, he launches this bomb and it was like, dude, it was like slow motion, just like training. Dove under, get the clinch.

So you should. You shoot after he throws?

Yeah, as he's throwing, you know, it's like you got. It's really like a wave, you know, if you've ever been in rough surf, don't let the wave hit you. You can dive under it and you miss the brunt of the force. Same thing with the punch. Get under the punch, get to the body, get under the arm, tie him up. So I'm now inside and I remember feeling a tiny flash of relief because that was like the hardest part of the match. So I thought. And the guys that I trained with, a lot of Brazilian guys, they had this, this sort of chilling saying. They said, when we fight, we will get to the clinch. When we get to the clinch, we will go to the ground. You are in my world then, because the ground is the ocean and I am the shark and you don't even know how to swim.

I appreciate that too. Having two sons who are immersed in Jiu Jitsu multiple times a week. I get it.

Yeah, totally. So that was my confidence, right? Every other person I'd fought, I'd taken to the ground or let them take me to the ground and it was over. They were helpless. So I'm now clinched and I'm like, this is the worst part is over. I'm going to get this guy down. I'm just going to calm down, chill, let him make mistakes. I'm going to tap this guy out. We're good to go. So by now they've also got rounds, so we're doing five minute rounds. So I clinch. I've got this guy in and I'm just. It's a matter of time until he missteps. I've got all my weight on him, all £150. I on him, waiting to sweep him. I'm in there and this dude's strong. I mean, he's, he's given everything he can. And I'm just tucked in, holding, holding, holding. But then I start to realize I'm losing my grip, which is weird. I train, I mean, I train properly, Right, right. But I'm losing my grip. I'm like, what's going on? And dude, then it Hits me as I have my face press against this guy's ribs. And I'm holding him tight, but my hands are slipping. I'm like, what is going on? And then I smell that his body is coated in Vaseline. His corner had literally covered grease because they knew I was going to shoot in. They knew I was going to take him down.

They'd been watching you, too?

Totally. So now I'm like, oh, this is a variable I do not know anything about. I'm slipping. And sure enough, man, my fingers open up. The guy pushes stiff arms me and cracks me. And it was one of the hardest shots I've ever taken. I didn't go down, but I was rocked. I was rung, I covered. The guy's all over me. Somehow managed to clinch again. I'm eating shots. We finally end up on the ground. And I don't. I mean, this is just training. I don't remember it happening, but I ended up getting him in a triangle choke. And the guy's standing up, he's trying to stack me, he's trying to pound me, but I'm putting this triangle on for everything I've got. And I'm. I'm trying to pop the guy's head off of his body because I know that if. If. If I don't, it's not going to be pretty. So I've got this guy. I'm literally watching his hand raised to tap. And the freaking whistle blows. Round is so they stand us up. And I treated that like it was the last round. So I'm gassed, and we go back in round two, and it was just a disaster, man. I kept shooting. Somehow I kept.

Kept slipping off.

Exactly. I kept managing to clinch. He would just stiff army crack me and start again. So every. Every time, it's like, you know, street fighter. My power meter is just getting lower and lower and lower. The end of the second round, he ends up mounted on top of me, about to just unleash. And the whistle blows. I'm like. So after three rounds of this, I just can't. I can't get the guy. I'm gassed. I have nothing left. I've eaten so many shots. And match is over. They raise his hand, I go to sit back down, and my corner's pissed. They're like, he broke the rules. I'm like, there's no rules to break. So it's like, good on you, man. Way to find the advantage. But, dude, I was in bad shape, man. I couldn't see. Like, blackness kept coming in and out. And I could hardly breathe. So I told my corner, I said, hey, you need to take me to the hospital. So take me to the hospital. And so many people came with me. You know, my family was there, which everybody watched this beating take place. It was. It was awful. Man, I thought this was going to be the best night of my life, right? I'm going to be like, you know, this is like the homeschooled kids equivalent to being the homecoming king. You know what? Didn't happen that way. So I'm in the hospital. They do X rays. Doctor comes in, he says, the reason why you can't breathe is because your left lung is collapsed. I'm like, all right. So I'm sitting there up until that. I mean, at that point in my life was the greatest test of faith I'd ever experienced, because I thought I had everything right. You know, I aligned myself. I was a good person. I was doing good in the world. I'm teaching class, I'm working with kids and families, and I'm a good son, I'm a good brother. You know, it's all this stuff, yet I just got destroyed, and I just didn't make sense to me. So I'm laying there, I'm in extreme physical pain. I'm breathing as if, like, through a coffee stirrer, you know, just like these little sips of oxygen. And also to add to this, I'm looking out through the door, and I can see through these little swinging doors out in the lobby. And the lobby is packed, man. It's packed with my family. I haven't thought about this in a long time. Yeah, my parents were there, my brothers, my sister, my students, my friends. Everybody had come, and it was through these little swinging doors. I could just read their faces. And it was like every emotion you can imagine, you know, it's concern and anger and, you know, fear, and there's just so many emotions. And I remember sitting there in the hospital bed, and I just. I just wish that I could tell them, like, I chose this. I'm going to be okay. One way or the other, I'm going to be okay. And I was feeling so bad that they were feeling bad for me. And I just wanted to so much to just let them know that I'm like, I chose this. This was my choice. And that was one of my early experiences and understanding that what I think is the greatest freedom in life is allowing other people to have their own experience. And that was really hard for me, you know, to see my family and friends in so much pain. Because they thought I was in so much pain when really as far as I was concerned, yes, physical pain. But I'm just kind of having this evolutionary experience and I'm down for it. So that was, it was a rough night. And some other spiritual, very, very powerful things happened that night. I essentially talked to God and I got to feel that, you know, I have a body, but I'm not my body. And you know, I was looking there at the lights in the hospital, these fluorescent lights, and all of a sudden it just, I don't know, it's like revealed to me that, you know, that light, that bulb is illuminated because of the energy that's flowing through it. But when the, when you turn the switch off, the energy withdraws from, from the bulb, but nothing happens to the energy. It's just not shining through the bulb. And all of a sudden it hits me that night, 20 years old in the hospital bed, like that's what this body is. It's illuminated by this spirit, by the soul. But when this is done and that soul withdraws and goes back home, then the body just. It's like a bulb, it just. You just turn the bulb off. And that's not, that's not the human anymore. You know, that's not the essence of the being. It goes somewhere else. And I really lost my fear. Death that night. I stopped believing in death. Yeah, it's just a.

Most people will take like ibogaine for a near death experience and you hacked it through like a Vaseline smeared street fighter. But that's a good way to do it. And I know that you obviously went through a lot in that experience that I understand based on your explanation was probably pretty formative to just the way you view life now. Especially this idea of giving people their own space, which you needed as you were there in the hospital room, kind of finding yourself or at least a different piece of yourself. And I know that there's plenty we want to talk about today when it comes to freedom and common versus statutory law and how to stand up for your rights. Whereas I know the rest of your story is intriguing, you went on and I guess briefly, don't let me put words in your mouth, you continue to run all these dojos and everything.

I did, Yeah. I was 20 years old. Bounced for a couple more months left because I felt the violence starting to be contagious. I started looking for trouble where there wasn't any and that wasn't good for my psyche. So I quit. Ended up opening my first school when I was 23, no idea what I was doing, but kept applying this philosophy of training. It's like only results matter. So I learned to communicate in a way that caused people to enroll and made it about them and not me. And all this basic business stuff ended up training my staff. And at our peak when I sold, we had eight schools. We had a consulting company and it was awesome. And we're making a few million bucks a year, which to me was mind blowing for martial arts.

Pretty good for martial arts dojos.

Yeah, yeah, we were the most profitable schools in the world. We had great business partners and I was very happy to apply a lot of the things that I learned from martial arts training into, into sales and marketing and communication and helping because our staff was very young, 18, 19, 20 year old kids like I was. And I wasn't going to subsidize their teaching lifestyle by enrolling a bunch of students. So I just told them from the very beginning, look, if you think you're a good instructor, go enroll somebody. Anybody can teach a class. Not to diminish the art, but teaching is the fun part. The work is recruitment and enrollment. How good are you at communicating and inviting influence and persuasion? So a whole body of work developed around that. And we had kids in high school who were making more than their principal. I'm not saying teachers make a lot, but they were based on merit, they were based on actual results. So when I sold the schools, I really didn't know what I was going to do next. I just knew that that pendulum had swung as far as it could. So I sold the schools and then immediately had a bunch of emotional bandwidth open up. And I realized that the relationship that I'd been in for 11 years, marriage of 10 was functionally over. And we just had such core values, differences and you know, there's a lot that was involved there. But you know, we worked at it, but it was clear it wasn't going to work. So I ended up getting selling my business that I'd had, you know, my whole life and then six months later was divorced and in 2013 was totally starting over again. And that was a whole other whole other evolutionary experience, you know, to go from having all this comfort and notoriety and industry prestige and impact and you know, you're getting all your needs met and all of a sudden, next thing you know, nobody knows who you are. I don't even know who I am. Zero of my old life and literally starting over again.

So you eventually, you know, I know that you've traveled around the world you and I have run into each other at multiple locations over the planet, including from fricking, like, what was that European country we wound up in? Yeah, Bulgaria. We spoke in Bulgaria. And some, like, cement warehouse type of play, like, all over the place. And you were teaching people how to be successful, how to make money, how to start your careers, how to do a lot of the stuff that you became to be an expert in. But then you and I didn't run into each other for a few years. And then I kind of sort of heard some waves coming from your direction the past couple of years, particularly since the pandemic, when we've been a little bit more concerned about our freedom and standing up for our rights, and then had dinner with you down there in Austin. I was like, holy cow. What intrigued me, what sucked me in right away, that I would maybe would be a good place to kind of get people, allow people to kind of wrap their heads around. The kind of stuff you're talking about now is you basically were given a very simple scenario of, like, you know, what to do if you got pulled over by a police officer. I think that was the story that you were telling. And maybe that'd be a good way to explain, like, what it is that you're up to now. I mean, why were you even telling us about. About, like, this almost script that you'd use if you got pulled over?

Very quick context. Back in February of this year, at the time of this recording, 2021, for whatever reason, I. I began to be attracted to the law, and I started studying law, and it was. I just found it fascinating. You know, it was like being a kid again. Like, oh, I'm reading every book in the library about medieval warfare, except this time it's about law, history of law, law forms, all that. And I was obsessed, and I was, like, laughing at myself. Like, dude, you've never really cared about this. Like, all of a sudden, I just couldn't get enough. So I put about 350 hours of study in over the next couple of months and found that there are so many things that we don't know. They're not necessarily secrets. Not like they're being suppressed, but they're certainly not being taught. And I just started to connect with people and learn from people who had been applying very specific remedies to their specific situation. Everything from mask stuff to the magic potion to, you know, job stuff to taxes. And, you know, I met a dude who. In Florida, Steve Emerson, who realize that property taxes are illegal. It is against the law. For the government to charge you tax on your home, the place that you live. So he studied the Florida Constitution where he is. He studied the United States Constitution, found all this case law, went to the tax office and said, I demand that you remove my property from the tax rolls. And they did.

Holy cow.

I mean, it's like so much stuff that we just don't. We just accept, oh, this is what you have to do. But it's not.

But it's a whole different form of law. It's called common law. Right.

American equity law, or common law versus.

What we're used to, which would be statutory law. Right.

Statute law, civil codes, criminal codes. Exactly. I'll give you an example in full disclaimer here. I'm skirting close to the edge of my comfort with my own integrity, because these are things that I know of. Very little have I actually applied outside of some mask stuff, which has been.

Entertaining, but I'd love to hear a little bit more about that later on too.

Oh, dude, I have some new stuff that I can't wait for the lockdowns to be tried again in Texas. I'm ready to go. But anyway, so here's the way. This law firm, this country, America, was founded on a law firm called common law, American Equity law. And it specifically states, at least in the Texas constitution, and every state has its version, that every law, every court must be a court of record. That is a specific type of court. Where there is a magistrate, there is a clerk, and, you know, they have the ability to bring a jury in. And so they are bound by common law to follow due process. And here's how due process works. What this country is founded on very simple. There must be an injured party who can prove or is willing to testify with particularity that on this particular day, at this particular time, so. And so injured or damaged me or my property. And they go before the magistrate, they go before the clerk magistrate says, all right, by the way, are you indemnified? You know, are you gonna. Are you gonna bond this claim? Because if you're wrong, then you're gonna be liable for damages and everything. And the person says, yes, you know, I'm ready to step up. That's due process. And that's. That's still exists. It's still a long one. But what this. What has happened is we've added on. Well, we haven't done it, but it's been done. So many extra forms of law have been added on. Statutes, codes, civil codes, criminal codes, which is basically sort of weaponized the legal system for monetary gain. And it's all money game, because if you can. Just like the church back in the middle ages was inventing sins fast than they could, you know, and people could keep up with them.

Right. So you could pay to have your sins forgiven.

Right, right, right. And it's like, you know, the Catholic Church owned fisheries and they realized sales are down, so what do they do? They make it a sin to eat meat on Friday, Sales go up. I mean, it's. It's not even that. That.

So, so in the US what would be an example of that? Of using law for monetary gain?

Well, check this out. It's. It's. That's a great question. And it's very simple. If there's no victim, is there a crime?

There's no victim. Is there a crime? Well, I don't know. If I were. If I were speeding down the highway, you know, let's say it's 55 and I'm going 80. I mean, theoretically, if I get pulled over by a police officer, isn't that considered to be a crime for me to be going 80 and a 55?

Well, under statute law it is, but we have to go back to common sense and go back to actual, you know, natural law. Is there a victim? Has anybody been harmed? Now, I'm not talking about if you. If you drive past a little old lady who's, you know, doing 50 and you buzz by 80. Well, that's.

So it's not a crime to stress somebody out, but you mean, did I actually hit somebody or cause an accident or something like that? Let's say in this case. No. Right.

If there. If there is no damage, then there is no crime. And see, this is what the country was founded on. You know, we didn't. We didn't found this country on a bunch of people who are so easily offended about what might happen and how all this other fragility came in. You would have been laughed out of town if you were to say, he offended me, or you go to the person directly and you back to back.

Or, he was riding his horse too fast down the road.

Right, right. He could have killed me. Did he? No. Then toughen up, buttercup. I mean, this is founded on a very, you know, resilient.

I don't understand that. Like, if a cop pulls me over and I'm speeding on the highway, I mean, aren't I issued a ticket? Don't I have to go pay it? Like. Like what? Well, what do you do, Jesse, if you. If you were to get pulled over today, what are you going to say?

So if I get pulled over, of course, you know, my hands are going to be on the. On the wheel. You know, there's no need to stress them out further than they already are. But the cop comes up, and I roll the window down, and I say, hello, sir. What is your emergency?

What is your emergency? You're sent to the doc to.

To the cop, say to the cop, what is your emergency? Because they've got their lights on, and those lights are emergency lights that are to be used for an emergency, and they are to signal you to get out of the way so that they can go to the emergency.

Okay?

So it's been bastardized to get you to kind of be scared and all that. And the cop will say something like, do you know why I pulled you over? And if you start playing the game and you start saying, oh, I guess I was going too fast, or, no, I don't. Why don't you tell me? And all this kind of stuff you're already starting from to tiptoe into their territory, their statute territory. So instead. And this could be for speeding. It could be for. I just did it with the irs. It's kind of. Kind of entertaining. But anytime somebody's making a claim that you've broken a law, what they're trying to do is bring you into their jurisdiction. They're trying to bring you into their world of fiction. Rather than being drawn into their world of fiction. You invite them or demand that they produce proof that they have jurisdiction over you. So in this example, the cop pulls you over and good evening, officer. What is your emergency? You were going, da, da, da, da. And here's what you were doing. There's a lot of ways that this can go. If it's a traffic ticket, a speeding ticket, all these kind of tickets. If there's no injured party, there's no crime. These tickets are basically offers of contract. They are making you an offer to give them money. And it would be like if you and I went to that sushi restaurant and we ordered a bunch of pizza. I order pizza, and they say, well, we don't have pizza, but I order you to give me pizza, you're in the wrong restaurant. We don't have here. So, you know, if I get a parking ticket, which I've gotten tons on my. Especially on my motorcycle for some reason, parking tickets, these are offers of contract. They come from a vending machine corporation based out of somewhere else that this municipal corporation known as, or doing business as the city of Austin has created this fictitious thing that I now owe them money because I parked my personal transportation port on a block of pavement that they drew an imaginary circle around and said I owe them money. I did not sign any contract agreeing to that.

Well, I want to interrupt you just a second then I want to hear more about like what you, what you would say if you got pulled over and continue that, that kind of like script that, that interaction with the officer. But like when, when we're born and we get our birth certificates or we become I guess, like, like obligated to adhere to these contracts, Isn't that part of what we've agreed to from birth is to be a part of that contract?

Good. Dude, I'm so glad you brought this up because this is a huge misconception. This actually took me about 150 hours to untangle myself from. Yes, there's a birth certificate that is created. Yes, it's in your all caps name. They may be using that as collateral on some global market, all of that. But here's the thing, and this is what I found that gives me tremendous peace of mind. First of all, any contract that is enforced or assumed that you didn't enter into is fraud. And there is no statute of limitations on fraud. And so the moment someone presumes to administer my property, meaning to control me, control my business, control my money, control my life, rather than try and untangle my status and do all this other stuff, I. I don't deal with ghosts. I don't deal with fictions. I don't deal with corporations. I am a man. I am a natural living being and I only deal with natural living beings. I do not deal with fictions. I don't deal with corporations. I don't deal with fairy tales. So in the event of some agent of a corporation presuming to direct me or my property, their premise is that I've in injured the state. Okay, well, is that Mr. Or Mrs. State? Where's the injured party? Show me the verified claim. Well, you violated this law. Okay, show me where it says that I, Jesse Elder, am subject to that law. Show me where it says, well, you're a citizen of the United States. Show me where it says. I'm a city of the United States. I am a man residing in the geographic area known as Texas. The geographic area known as United States of America. But show me where it says that I am bound to obey your statute laws. Your statute codes. And there's no proof of that. There's absolutely no proof. Yes, I reside in this area but show me a contract where it says that I'm signed with my signature that I agree to abide by these, these corporate rules. This is a homeowner's association. I didn't sign.

So back to the police officer. Sir, you asked the police officer, what crime have I committed? Officer, what's your emergency? Officer?

Yeah, officer, what is your emergency? How can I help you? And he says, well, you're going 80 and a 55. Okay. I wouldn't say anything. It's up to him or her. And they start saying, I'm gonna have to give you a ticket. All this stuff for me, I love the path of least resistance. So I'm not going to stand there and argue with a cop who's got a gun on the side of the road. Don't give me the ticket. What will happen is I'll take the ticket. I will then file or send an affidavit of status. I will send that to the magistrate, send that to the court, send to the. To the grand jury if I need to, and basically say, you've got the wrong guy.

What's an affidavit of status?

Affidavit of status is a kick ass little document. It basically is. Has 14 different, different paragraphs in there and it says, I, Jesse Elder, am a man residing in the geographic area known as, you know, Austin, state of Texas, et cetera. However, I am not, nor have I ever been a subject, resident, citizen, taxpayer at all of the municipal corporations doing business as city of Austin, state of Texas, county of Travis, or United States of America. That's. That's one of the paragraphs. Another paragraph goes on to say that I'm created by God and therefore only God can minister my property. I am the property of no man. That is slavery. It cites all sorts of specifics in the constitution and the bill of Rights. And it basically ends by saying if anyone can prove that any of the statements made in this affidavit are materially false enough for me to change or amend this affidavit, then they have 10 days to submit in affidavit form proving their claim that this is a false document. Failure to do so implies consent.

Where'd you get an affidavit of status form?

Dude called Alphonse Faggiolo.

This dude is Alphonse Faggiolo.

Yeah.

Do you have a website?

His website is very, very clutch. It's. I am. Has sent me to you.

All right.

Yeah. It's the clunkiest im.

Has sent me to you. All right. I'll Hunt down any resources for anybody listening. I'll put these in the show. So Alphonse's website, I think you actually told me about this website before, and it's got all these different forms and all these. It's kind of, kind of clunky to get through, but it's got like information about all this stuff and how to navigate through getting pulled over or the property tax situation. But it seems kind of clunky.

The website is clunky, but Alphonse has got a great process, six step process. Affidavit of status, mail fraud, notice of liability, notice of claim. You basically go on offense with these turkeys and you basically say, who are you to darken my door and presume ownership over me? It's not how it works. I'll give you another funny example. I had a. So last time I filed taxes was 2014. Mostly because I just want to see what happens.

What happens if you don't file your taxes?

Yeah, I'm okay. What happens.

So.

And I'm very cognizant of the fact that I'm in a position in my life at this particular chapter where I don't have dependents. You know, I mean, I help my mom out and stuff like that, but I don't have kids. I'm not in a partnership at this moment. You know, I own some land and stuff, but it's not like I've got a ton of debts that I need to service. And so I'm like, I want to see what happens. So I just stopped filing taxes. And they send some love letters with a nice green stripe on the envelope. And it's like, oh, you, you know, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, yeah, we'll see. Last year I, in a moment of weakness, paid a lawyer 10,000 bucks. I'm like, hey, just in case, you know, we get any more letters, can you handle it? So I give him power of attorney. Don't hear anything from him for months. Guy calls me, this is like four months ago at the time of this recording, maybe five months. And he says, Mr. Elder, this is attorney, blah, blah, blah. We've got a notice from an examination officer from the IRS that looks like they want to audit you and you have to fill out all this paperwork. Da, da, da. I said, all right, send me what they got. So I get this form and dude, it is like a. I don't mean this unkindly, but it's like a mentally damaged chimpanzee made. This spreadsheet is incredible. There's like four different font sizes. It's all over the place. This is a government document, okay? And it's all these stupid questions like, you know, what's your title? So I write, I'm the guy that gets shit done. How many hours do you work? Like, only the ones I want to. How much money did your business make this year? More than last year. What. What accounting form do you use? I'm like, no idea. Eventually, dude, I just lost interest. I'm like, who are these people? So, by the way, this is not just me being flippant or rebellious. Through my studies, I've found that the Internal Revenue Service is a for profit debt collection agency founded in 1933, based in Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico?

Yes. Debt collection is under Title 15 of the U.S. code. Internal Revenue is under Title 26. So anytime you get a letter from the IRS, you're actually dealing with a debt collection agency which is bound by federal and state laws. And they're already violating at least three laws just by threatening you through the mail. It's amazing. Not only that, but there is literally no federal law saying you must pay income tax. There is no law anywhere that says that an individual has to pay tax on their stuff.

I'm going to interrupt you real quick. Why do more people not know this?

Well, fear, mostly. And a heavy, heavy amount of conditioning. So when, you know, Aubrey gave me shit about it, he's like, oh, good luck. You know, you're gonna be like Wesley Snipes. See, that's the meme that shows up in people's mind. That's thought, that's. That's planted. Do what you're told and then justify it.

Unless you're homeschooled and you grew up not having to put the square peg in the square hole and the round peg in the round hole and figure out problems and solutions for yourself, which I'm actually not joking. Like, I've found that I have a probably higher degree of resistance to authority or at least questioning if the way things are being done are actually the way they should or could be done. I think part of that is just based on the educational system. You know, I was never taught to line up in a row with all the other little factory workers.

Ben, you nailed it. And the educational system itself is so that it was a whole other rabbit hole we can go down to. But anyway, I send this, this form back to the lawyer. I'm like, hey, you know, before I go any further, I really need some clarity. I need to know, you know, who this, this individual is that Is presuming to administer me and my property. So I said, here's six questions that I want you to ask them Before I can go any further. So I sent the questions. I'll read them out in a minute. Lawyer emails me right back. He's like, Mr. Elder, I can't represent you if you're going to challenge the tax code. I nailed it back. As a brother, I'm not challenging anything. I'm requesting clarification so that I can make a pure determination about who is this human being that I'm dealing with, Because I have no idea who this person is. I've never met this person in my life. I don't know if they have any authority over me. That's what I'm asking for. And the questions were really simple. Number one, am I the property of you or your employer? Yes or no? Two, what is the name of your employer? Seems like a fair question. Number three, is my mine, or is my body under control of you or your employer? Next. Have I consented or signed with my signature any obligation or contract Where I've relinquished my rights to you or your employer? Yes or no. Have I consented or affixed my signature to any obligation or contract agreeing to be governed by your laws, your statutes, and your codes? Yes or no? Do you have a verified claim to bring to me from a man or a woman Claiming that I have damaged them or violated their rights in any way? Yes or no? And then finally, under what authority are you administering my property?

Did you get these questions off of that guy's website? Off of Alfonso's website?

I found that from some other rabbit hole that I dove down from. Guy who was faced with some officer, Agent from irs called into the guy's office, Sits down in the office, and they're ready to give him the third degree, audit him, threaten him, all this kind of stuff. And he said, before we go any further, I need you to answer these questions. He pushes the paper across the desk to the agent. Agent reads it, Looks back at the guy like, ashen faced. Takes the guy's file, puts it away and says, please leave. Gosh, again, full disclosure. I don't know what's going to happen. You know, I might be wrong. I might be rising in the. In the ranks here.

Have you. Have you had to do this with a police officer before?

No, no, no, no. I have great rapport with cops. I love cops, for the most part. You know, I recognize I'm saying that as a white American male, you know, there's. There's all sorts of.

What if you're walking through the airport and somebody asks you to put a mask on Jesse?

Oh, dude, that's happened many times.

What do you say?

Happened a couple months ago, the guy appeared out of nowhere. Like the Butler and Mr. Deeds.

They always do.

Yeah. He's like, whoa. I was like, whoa, you're quick.

They're very, very attentive these days. Not when you need your peanuts in your water two years ago, but now.

Yeah, I know, I know. So this guy shows up and he was not a police officer, he was airport security. So, you know, totally, totally different authority, but still had a gun, taser vest, you know, sunglasses, the whole thing. So he shows up and he's like, you need to wear a mask. And of course he's wearing a mask. So I just looked at him and I said, I can't understand what you're saying with that thing on your face. He's like, you need to wear a mask. I said, I need to read your lips. I said, I can't see what you're saying. So he pulled the thing down. Now we're on E. So he takes his mask off.

Yeah, okay.

And see, but see, there's compliance now I'm creating for him to jump through. He says, you need to wear a mask. I said, no, I'm good, thank you. And he says, you need to wear a mask. I said, brother, I understand your job is to tell me to wear a mask. And you have now done that. You've done your job. You've done it twice. You know, I'm happy to give you five star review. I mean, this is. You're. You're nailing your job here. But I'm not going to wear a mask. You cannot make me wear a mask. He's like, you need to wear a mask or I'm going to escort you out of here. And I said, well, here's the way that works. The moment you touch me, that's battery and that is a felony. And in fact, in Texas, to obstruct someone's breathing by covering their nose or mouth is a second degree felony. And that's a minimum of two months in prison, maximum of 10 years. And the moment you touch me, to put a mask on me, because that's the only way mask is going to go on me, is if you put it on, you'll actually be committing a secondary felony. And if you're doing that in my site, then under Texas penal code chapter 22.01, I can actually place you under citizen's arrest. So what are we going to do now?

Oh, geez. So what's this airport security officer say?

He looked at me. He's like, will you please put your mask on? I said, no. And then he just, like, he didn't know what to say. He's out of answers. I said, but listen, I really appreciate you doing your job. I'm not here to make your job hard. Not going to do it. And he was like, okay, you have a good day. I said, you too, man. You too. And that was it.

Wow. Wow. So when you're doing this, like a police officer with the irs, with, with. With this guy with the. With the mask, I mean, like, like, how, how scalable is this for the general population? I mean, is this something other people can learn? Do you, like, you talked about this Alfonso's website? But, but, you know, this is stuff nobody grew up learning. Like the difference between, say, like, common law versus statutory law or even what, what your actual rights are. Like, where do you even start learning about these type of things?

Well, here's. Here's what I would suggest. And this is, this is literally all anybody needs to know. And then the specific linguistics we're working on that you and I talked about, you know, I've got a concept of the law dojo we're working on. We're building it.

Right. Instead of your karate dojo, a dojo that teaches people these kind of things.

Right, right. But here's. Here's the thing. And this is actually, this is why I'm so drawn to it now that I think about it. Because everything that I teach, from marketing, sales, branding, ethical, cult building, all these kind of things, everything that I teach is subtractive in nature. It's not additive. In other words, it's not the things that people don't know that are keeping them stuck. It's the things that they do know that are patently false. Once they remove the things that are not true, then they come back to their heart. They come back to knowing who and what they really are. They remember their purpose. They remember their divine mission on this planet. They remember that they're a perfect child of God and you are made in his likeness and image. And there's no mistakes there. Once you know who you are, then it's very simple. And I can do this in 90 seconds. Does any human being on the planet have more rights than any other human being? No. Every human has exactly zero more rights than every other human. Now, people can argue that and they can say, yeah, but what about this and this. And this. Well, the only thing that you're going to find is not even an exception to that, but a potential debate point is threat, influence, persuasion, or outright violence. But all of that outside of violence, everything else is convincing and coercion and manipulation, which causes people to. To agree, not even knowing what they're agreeing to. But if you know who you are and you know that, you know you're. You're an honorable person, and you're not going to be in dishonor, and you're gonna. You're gonna abide by your word and abide by your integrity, then nobody actually has any rights over you. So imagine this. Let's say, some. Some person doesn't have any sense of their own power. They think they're gonna get power by controlling me or you. And they look up on the map and they go, there's Ben and Jess house, and they draw a circle on their map around your home. And then they come to your door the next day, and they knock on the door and they say, hi, Mr. Greenfield. You don't know me, but I drew a circle around your house, and I named it Fantasyland. And you're in that circle, so you have to give me some money. You'll look at that person, probably, and say, I don't know what you're smoking, but I hope you didn't pay too much, because the quality is terrible and you're hallucinating. Be gone. Because that person is making things up that have nothing to do with reality. They have zero more rights. Now, let's say they get all butthurt, they run away, and then they. They come, they get three friends, and all three of them agree that this circle called Fantasy Land around the Greenfield home, that you have to do what they said in their circle. No, three times zero is still zero. Now, what if there's a hundred of them and they call themselves a legislature and they decide that we're going to draw this fictitious circle around your geographic residence. We're going to name it City of Spokane or the State of Washington. And now here's this fictitious circle that you have to do what we say. Well, you can't make that choice. You don't have any authority over me. So, no, I'm not going to abide your silly game. I don't deal with fictions. I don't deal with corporations. What I. I live my life according to natural law. I live my life according to my guidance and my relationship with my creator. And you have no power over me. And you basically put The. The onus. The burden of. Of proving that they own you, proving that they have jurisdiction over you, and they can't, because they didn't. They didn't create you.

So one thing you mentioned earlier that I just want to put a little pink bow on was you mentioned, like, all caps on a. I think you mentioned, like, a birth certificate. Why does all caps matter?

There's a theory, not without some basis in reality, that when 1933, the federal government was running out. They didn't have anything else to collateralize. They'd already collateralized the federal lands, they collateralized the state lands. Nothing left to collateralize. And you can't collateralize, collateralize people, because that's slavery and they'd all be hung for treason anyway. So what they did is created a corporation the moment someone's born. So you're born in a hospital. Very important that you have to be born in a hospital. The doctor, the nurse signs a certificate of live birth. The child was born alive, and then that certificate of live birth goes to the census or the population department or whatever they call it. And a birth certificate is made with all capital name, which is a corporation that you now represent. And so it's like a trust that you're entering into. You are the surety to that trust. And now all business done with you through the state is done through that corporation. It's fascinating. There are people that have corrected their status and. And, you know, like, rescinded all of that stuff. But again, I don't have the energy to do that. I just prefer to deal with any living being that darkens my door, give them my affidavit of status, and said, please show me where it says that I have signed a contract agreeing to abide by your laws, your rules, your regulations.

You were talking about some guy, I think it was, at that dinner, who. He, like, went before a judge, and the judge wound up getting arrested, or the judge wound up basically getting fined or something like that.

This happens dozens of times every year. And of course, the media is never going to report it. First of all, if you walk into a courtroom, who's the most powerful person there?

Based on our chat for the past hour, I'd say you are absolutely meaning not you specifically, but by the person who's representing themselves in court, the member of the public.

A judge is a public servant.

And it was kind of funny, by the way. We were having this dinner with a lawyer who was well versed in statutory law and really didn't know anything about these common law concepts. That you were bringing up. I think I forget his name. Hopefully he's not listening in. And offended that he didn't know this, but it was blowing his mind. The stuff he'd never learned about in law school.

Well, there's a reason they don't, because all the law schools are run by the bar association. Bar stands for british account registry. All this shit goes back to the central banks. And so of course you're going to have your minions. And I'm not disrespecting lawyers. I've got good friends and some family members and clients and students who are lawyers. But they all. Every time I say this stuff, they're like, yep, that checks out, that checks out, that checks out. So the worst thing you can do is get a lawyer. You know, if I'm. If I ever find myself in front of the magistrate, and I'll share this guy's story in a second, it's a good one. But if I ever end up for a magistrate, I'm never going to get a lawyer because that's basically telling them, I'm a baby, I don't know anything about the law, and I need this person. They will. Sometimes they'll try and appoint one for you and say, we've brought this lawyer in to represent you. Objection, your honor. Or what's your objection? I don't need to be re presented. I'm right here. I don't require re presentation. I'm right here. And the judges crack a little smile because they realize that, oh, all right. This is not one of the trained monkeys in the circus here, right? So great, great, great dude. He's here in Texas, names Randy Kelton. He's got a really fascinating show called rule of law radio. I think that's his website also. Rule of law radio. Randy Kelton. Good dudes. And OG Kelton goes before magistrate for something. It might have been taxes or maybe a speeding ticket. Goes before the judge and basically just tells the judge, you know, hey, you know, I know you swore an oath of office. You know, you are a public servant. I am a member of the public, therefore you're my servant. So I'm just here to make sure you're doing your job correctly. Then he proceeds to cite the exact relevant case law that the judge is, you know, violating. And he says to. He says to the judge, you now have to, you know, throw this case out. And the judge is like, well, I'm not going to do that. He says, okay, judge, I just want to make sure you heard what you just said. You Said that you are not going to uphold this chapter of penal code, this law. Cited again. The judge said, that's right. So Kelton, this dude has brass balls, man. He looks at the bailiff who's there, you know, the. The. The armed guard right in the court. And he looks at the bailiff, says, bailiff, did you hear what the judge just said? Bailiff's like, yes, sir. He says, great, Then I want you to arrest that man.

Oh, my gosh.

Tells the bailiff to arrest the judge because the judge is breaking the law. The bailiff's, like, frozen, doesn't know what to do. So Kelton says, so you're telling me you're not going to do your job, that you swore an oath to protect and serve the public? And the bailiff's like, I guess not. He's like, all right. So Kelton pulls out a cell phone, dials 911, calls the cops on the cops.

Oh, my goodness. Right there in the courtroom.

In the courtroom.

So what happened?

So then the police show up, or Sheriff. Sheriff shows up, and he explains the thing to the sheriff. He says, sheriff, the bailiff is refusing to do his job and protect me, a member of the public, against this person who is failing to uphold his oath of office and violating this chapter of penal code, etc. And the sheriff's like, what if I stumbled into. And it was like, it stalemate. It was like nothing happened for a little bit. And finally the judge is like, get out of here. Go. Get out. And Kelton said, I will, but, you know, understand that I. I'm still going to file a judicial complaint. Because you don't. Just because you just broke the law and now you're telling me to leave doesn't mean you didn't break the law. So I believe he went on to file a judicial complaint, and the judge got in trouble.

Wow. Holy cow. So. So when it comes to this kind of stuff, I mean, obviously, you know, you mentioned Alfonso's website. Im has sentmetoyou.com as one place to go learn. Since you and I were talking, I actually, I signed up for a course, and I've been slowly going through it. Like, I admittedly, I'm kind of sort of. Well, I get called out for this, but I'm kind of sort of playing dumb on this podcast just a little bit to get, like, the. The layperson's explanation from you, because I signed up for the Sign in America study course, and I've been doing one course a week, and this course is based on the Background related to the idea that our identity as Americans have been stolen and that during the Civil War era the original American republic was set aside, replaced with a corporate for profit structure which you already talked about. And it describes via a series of interviews and podcasts and PowerPoints etc. How to reconstruct lawful government to bring correct oversight of employees back into balance, bring American common law back into session, to reconstruct our peacekeeping function of things like state militia and land and soil jurisdiction and continental marshals and stuff that a lot of people I think are familiar with. But I think that's a pretty decent roadmap. I think that that Alfonso's website that you recommended is a good one. I also found it and this one kind of, you know how like these online signs, summits kind of jump all over the place and it's just like a bunch of random people getting interviewed. But a guy named Matt Belair did one called the Choose Freedom Law Summit. That's not bad in terms of like, just like a series of interviews and I'll. I'll put a few of the resources that I've found as I've been going along and so obviously, you know, my purpose with this podcast was to make people aware of the existence of the rights that they did not know that they have and the existence of, of an entirely different law system that I believe is going to be more and more crucial for people to have an understanding of going forward into the phrase that's often overused these days, the times that we are in. But anyways, you have other forms of self sufficiency that I know you find important. I feel like we should or could do another podcast. But you mentioned you have land, you're in Texas, so no doubt you have guns and we've established that you have a motorcycle. If you were to like rapid fire a few other forms of self sufficiency in addition to an understanding of statutory versus common law, what would be a few other things that you think are important in these times? Sort of like homesteading or alternate passports or anything like that. Like what are the biggies for you?

Sure, biggies for me. I just want to live my life and that's pretty simple. So. So I started to look at all of the ways in which I was dependent on structures over which I had no control. Structures that could be subverted, controlled or decimated. And I just started with Maslow's pyramid. I worked my way up the top and I realized my weak link is food. I'm bachelor at this point. I use Uber eats obsessively and basically don't have food in my fridge.

You're skinny, so you can survive like three days without a shake.

Fast metabolism. So I started to realize, okay, forget about shit hitting the fan. I don't want to approach this from a fearful perspective. What about just quality of life? Wouldn't it be awesome to have natural food? Wouldn't it be awesome to know where my food came from? And so that was sort of the genesis of my property experiment. Found this great property connected with an amazing team, and we've got our first crops coming in two weeks. So that, to me, is an upgrade. It's not a. It's not an emergency approach, just like a cool thing to do. But in the process, I've realized how simple it is. Not always easy, but with the right people, the right community, I mean, this. This property will be growing food to feed probably 150 people a year by next fall.

Yeah, it's amazing how, like, we. We have six raised garden beds. And I mean, not only can we grow enough to, like, feed our entire church with those six raised garden beds, it's crazy. We give food away. But then, like, I got into sprouting. Like, when. When Covid first started, I got into, like, I can buy a bag of seeds for like 2 bucks on Amazon and sprout some of the most nutritionally dense superfoods in my pantry. I actually just invested in a company that's doing, like, a push button sprouting system. It's made by the same guy who taught me how to sprout, Doug. Doug Evans, who wrote the sprout book, which is amazing. But, yeah, I mean, between that grabbing a bow or a gun, goats, chickens, if you have a big enough plot, I think that's super important. I think that's probably not like a big news flash to a lot of people to be able to have some sovereignty over your own food production. What about any of those other little things that might fly under the radar for people?

Yeah, well, having. And you don't even need property. You just need somebody that has property or start growing in your backyard. And more than anything, this is often overlooked in a lot of the, you know, prep circles and prep clubs and survivalist communities is the importance of community. And so there's a group of people that are here in Austin. You know, we're all within maybe 20, 30 minutes driving distance of each other, and we regularly communicate on, you know, what's your level of prep? What's your level of readiness? And it just feels Good. You know, people have car insurance and health insurance and fire insurance, but they don't have food insurance is mind blowing to me. So having food insurance to me means having. And I didn't invent all these terms when I created this course called Global Prep Club. But I teach something called the Food Horizon. And it's basically, you know, a healthy active adult will need about a million calories per year and so that's about 2,700 calories per day. So you just take your food stores of whatever they are. If you're going to go full on prep and get like freeze dried stuff, that's cool. If you're going to can, if you're going to ferment, if you're going to pickle, if you're going to do all that other stuff, you just do the calorie count and multiply the calorie count by the number of or take the calories you have and divide by 2750 and you arrive at a date and that date is your food horizon. And so I teach people how to just steadily push their food horizon out. And our goal for the people that I'm coaching is to move their food horizon out to the point where you've got enough time to handle a learning curve in the resource management of growing your own food. And I also suggest to decentralize your approach. So if you're going to have chickens, just be the chicken person and be the chicken person for your community and somebody else can be the goat.

That's a good idea. It's kind of similar to Charles Eisenstein gets into in some of his stuff with Sacred economics and the entirety of the gifting economy. Which of course if you were to just google for a list of different websites that allow you to basically trade, not sell or there's actually a really great book called the Buy Nothing Get Everything plan. I'll link to that one in the show notes as well. And they have a whole website called the Buy Nothing Get Everything. It's basically. I forget it's like Buy Nothing get everything.com but it's. But it's a list of all the places in your city that allow you to trade. And it's actually a pretty robust website and seems to be getting bigger by the day along with websites that are social media neighborhood websites. Like what's the popular one? It's like social media for local websites like myneighborhood.com or something like that. But anyways, yeah, but Buy Nothing Get Everything.com is a good resource as well, that I've found for just like trading it and potentially doing business with pockets of people who may not require you to be vaccinated, to do business with them, or require you to be masks to get into their, you know, into their place of business. There's also, I mean, I'm living in a pretty good area of the world, Jesse, and there's actually a book called what's the name of it? It's basically about how if there's one area of the country that's most likely to secede, it's actually this area that I'm living in right now, kind of like the Moscow, Idaho, Pullman, Washington, Spokane, like Idaho, Washington, Montana type of area. That book is called Survival and Resistance in Evangelical Christian Reconstruction in the Pacific Northwest. And it's about the whole history of these fringe communities of people who do business with each other, no matter what they might be getting scapegoated as particularly pocketed in the Pacific Northwest. That's also a really interesting read and I'll link to all these in the show notes.

So this is what's so spot on about everything you just said. There's a great video that some company did or some group did is animated and it's basically all about parallel structures. I need to, I don't recall the title, but that's all.

If you find a shoe to me, I'll put it in the show notes. I will.

But it's a beautiful animation. It just basically shows how populations are controlled and are, you know, mentally sort of destabilized and damaged. And the solution is not to fight those destabilizing forces, it's to build better alternatives that work for you. And that's what I'm actively doing. And you know, if we, if we look at food and water, we look at community, we look at lawful forms of self governance in tandem with these things. We're not trying to overthrow anybody. You all do whatever you want. I'm just not going to participate. And this is another fascinating thing. I don't know how I can't verify this because I'm just not in this world. But it came across my attention two weeks ago that in China, which is completely totalitarian government, but a beautiful people, right? Like incredible Chinese culture. Government and culture, two totally different things. As much as 40% of the Chinese economy is black market.

Wow. Is the proper term for that secondary market.

It is. Although I'm the hashtag that I'm coming out with next year is black markets matter. But, but the, you know what is a Black market is a market that, that can't be controlled by the centralized power structure.

Right. It's outside of government sanctioned channels, which.

Is why they hate it. That's why Ross Ulbricht got opened up Silk Road and got taken down hard. Dismissed all his defense evidence and he's now serving two life sentences with no chance of parole because he was running a secondary market. Running a market that was on Bitcoin, Totally anonymous, totally reputation based. And yeah, they took him down hard, but you can't put the genie back in the bottle. And once people have enough powerful parallel structures and better alternatives, you know, it's essentially what's been happening anyway. We're just seeing it accelerated now. And you know, with, with what I believe are going to be supply chain shortages, food shortages, maybe even potentially legit famine. You know, I don't want to participate in the famine. I don't want to participate in food shortages. So I'm doing everything that I know how to do to make sure that me and mine are taken care of. And everything about that just resonates with every cell in my body because it just seems responsible. It seems like intelligent stewardship of this incredible planet that we get to live on. And I am, I mean, I kid you not, I wake up so grateful for the powers that. Well, powers that should not be. But you know, the people that are acting like they're in power, I'm so grateful to them for revealing their hand, for playing the theater. Because it's all it's done is accelerate my wildest dreams. I always wanted to sanctuary. I always wanted to have a kick ass place, to have, you know, like tough mudder with paintball. Now it's like I've got this place. I thought it was gonna be when I'm 60, but no, it's, it's a little early and awesome. God bless them.

Well, you know, I think probably one of the best places for people to kind of keep up to date on what you're doing because it's, it seems like all the time you're pushing out good information that will help keep people up to date on this. Would it be your Facebook page? Probably. That's where I see you pretty active.

Facebook, Instagram and Telegram.

Telegram. Okay, cool, cool. So I'll link to Jesse's Facebook, to his Instagram, to his telegram in the show notes if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com elder and then I would also encourage you guys, if you have your own resources to add or your own comments or discussion points to Add go there also and jump into the conversation. And I think that we can all learn from each other. Go take that sign in America study course. Stay tuned to Jesse's law dojos. There's so many places that this conversation could go. But again, my purpose, again, Jesse, on the podcast, was to at least begin to bring awareness to this and use my platform to do so. And again, I'm not saying that. That you gotta, like, stick it to the police officer when you get pulled over. Maybe you just need to get some. Get some chickens and familiarize yourself with common law to a certain extent and go read the sprouts book. But I mean, at least begin to think about these things, because I don't know if you agree with me, Jesse, but the world's gonna look a lot different a year from now.

Oh, 100%, man. 100%. And when we see that farmers are being paid 1.5 times their subsidies to till their crops under, then you have the shift shipping container fiasco. Then you have, last I checked, there's 130,000 truck drivers that are not at work because they're being paid to stay home, basically. So we've got all these weak links in the supply chain, any one of which could cause a major hiccup. We've got about five of them that are all beginning to glow red, and that could be scary, or it could be the most exciting thing ever. And so I'm trending towards excitement, and I've always found rational optimism to be the ultimate advantage.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I dig it, bro. I dig you. I appreciate our friendship and I wish we had a chance to hang out even more because I just always have a blast and learn so much when I'm with you. I get so inspired about all this stuff. So stay safe out there, especially amongst any Vaseline. Vaseline smeared street fighters and keep making homeschoolers proud, dude.

Oh, man, you touched my heart, dude. So good to connect.

All right, folks. Well, I'm Ben Greenfield, along with a great Jesse Elder signing out again. The shownotes are BenGreenfeldPinnance.com elder we're linked to all Jesse's pages and everything else we talked about. Thanks for listening in and until next time, have an amazing week. In compliance with the FDA FTC guidelines, please assume the following about links and posts on this site. Most of the links going to products are often affiliate links, of which I receive a small commission from sales of certain items. But the price is the same for you and sometimes I even get to share a unique and somewhat significant discount with you. In some cases, I might also be an investor in a company I mention. I'm the founder, for example, of Kion llc, the makers of Kion branded supplements and products, which I talk about quite a bit. Regardless of the relationship, if I post or talk about an affiliate link to a product, it is indeed something I personally use, support and with full authenticity and transparency recommend. In good conscience, I personally vet each and every product that I talk about. My first priority is providing valuable information and resources to you that help you positively optimize your mind, body and spirit. And I'll only ever link to products or resources, affiliate or otherwise, that fit within this purpose. So there's your fancy legal disclaimer.