1316 FBF: Ron Paul on Liberty, Taxes & 'Construction Void' Housing Bubble Risk

Welcome to this week's edition of Flashback Friday. Your opportunity to get some good review by listening to episodes from the past that Jason has hand picked to help you today in the present and propel you into the future. Enjoy.

Welcome to the Creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You're about to learn a new slant on investing, some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world's most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine, self made multimillionaire who's actually been there and done it. He's a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who's owned properties in 11 states, had hundreds of tenants and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to your Financial Independence Day. You really can do it. And now, here's your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.

Welcome to the Creating wealth show. Episode number 912. 912. Thank you so much for joining me today. This is your host, Jason Hartman, and I am happy to say our guest today will be someone I've been trying to get on the show for many, many years. We almost got him on the show several years ago. He is who I think might be one of the world's most legitimate politicians. Well, he's a former politician, politician, still a doctor. And that of course is Dr. Ron Paul. He was a congressman for what, 20 some odd years. And he's just got a great history, he's got some great ideas. He is loved by both sides of the political aisle. In this day of very divisive world in which we live, Ron Paul is thought of very highly by both liberals and conservatives, but especially by libertarians, which in my opinion is the only legitimate choice for a political party is to be a libertarian because the best government is a small government. And then you get all of your socially liberal policies and you get your fiscally conservative policies essentially with the libertarian camp. So it's the best of all worlds. The best of all worlds. So before we get to Ron Paul today, who also will be spotted speaking at our upcoming Meet the Masters of Income Property event. I am so happy to have him as a speaker. And we've got an all star lineup of other speakers. I'm going to make some formal speaker announcements, give you a little biography on some of the speakers in the future here on future episodes. But we also just booked two more. I believe I mentioned Ken McElroy, the rich dad, advisor, author. He will be joining us. Ken McElroy has got a wealth of experience in property acquisition, development and property management. And then also I did not mention to you yet that my old friend Jeff Myers, the real estate market researcher Jeff Myers of Myers Research will be speaking as well. So think about it. We've got the two leading real estate market researchers in the entire country speaking at our event, John Burns, John Burns Real Estate Consulting. And Jeff Myers, who used to employ John Burns is speaking as well with Myers Reeves Research. You're going to get some fabulous information, just a phenomenal outlook on what is going on with the economy, what is going on with the housing market. Of course, we've got several other speakers that I have mentioned before, but Jeff Myers is new on the roster and Ken McElroy is fairly new on the roster as well. So before we get to Ron Paul, I want to talk to you about a couple things. Darren Bloomquest has been on the show a couple of times. He's with Atom Data also, you know, realty Track affiliation and he's been on the show several times and he also spoke at last year's Meet the Masters of Income Property. And his housing report is really, really interesting this time. Especially, of course, the article I was in recently on his housing report was even more interesting. Just kidding. But this one's really good because it examines the topic of bubble markets. You know, are we in a bubble in many markets, housing prices have increased so dramatically and of course, you know, we divide the country or the world, not just the country, into three types of markets, cyclical, linear and hybrid markets. The cyclical markets are crazy. They're nuts. They're way beyond the point of fundamentals when it comes to real estate valuation. The hybrid markets less so. The cyclical markets I still think are quite a bargain. And apparently all of you do too, because you are buying properties like they are going out of style, as the old saying goes. My mom used to tell me when I was a kid, Jason, you spend money like it's going out of style. Well, she thought I did that because my mom's more conservative than I am. But I don't know. I'm fairly conservative with my money lately, I guess, you know, you get a few years under your belt and you just realize that was a lot of hard work to earn all that money and I don't want to have to do it again. So that's why we do a lot of consumer advocacy on the show and we report to you on various scams and bad investments and so on. And so forth. We will continue to do that, of course. Heard my shows about the folks in Kansas City, the guy in Hilton Head, South Carolina, but Atlanta, all over, I don't know, Pip, the tax lien company and so forth. You just heard another interview, a third victim came forward. Well, really a fourth victim on the show talking about that when it comes to a bubble. There were a couple of interesting things in here in this article. One of them was the construction void as a risk factor. So they talked about these various risk factors and I love the way Darren and his co author outlined them in this article. And remember, I have for the last 12 years taught you about what I call the three dimensions of real estate. How things are non correlating, non correlating indicators when it comes to housing value. Now what do I mean by value? I don't mean price, I mean value to you as the investor. Because you might have these countercyclic things, right? Like the value of your house, the capital appreciation potential of your house, yet at the same time you have the rental income, the yield produced on the income generated by your property. And these two things, many times during many cycles of the market are very, very much non correlating. And I always refer to the conversation with my friend Nancy back in circa 2004 at the car wash I bump into and she works for Irvine Apartment Communities, one of the largest apartment owners in the country. And I said, how's business Nancy? How are things at iac? And she says, we're not having a very good year. And I said, why is that? And she says, well Jason, everybody's buying a house from you. And so it has sucked renters out of the renter pool. And this is the wonderful thing about income. Property, the most historically proven asset class in the entire world. Why? Because you can win regardless of the market by simply adjusting your thinking and thereby adjusting your strategy. So is your strategy a capital gain strategy or is it a yield strategy? So that adjustment is important. So one of these risk factors they talk about in the report is the construction void. And this is pretty startling. Are you ready for this? Okay, let me read this to you. Housing risk factor number four, the construction void available for sale. Housing inventory is so low in part because of the aforementioned lengthening homeownership tenure. What they talked about there is how people are staying in their homes a little longer, which by the way, I don't think that will be a continuing trend. I think that's a symptom of the Great Recession. I think that's a bit of an anomaly. We live in a very mobile society. You know, there's always new stuff, new technology. If you want to see a stagnant housing market, just look at, well, for the westernized world, just look at Europe, okay? Europe, people own their homes forever, stay in them forever. There's not a huge real estate brokerage business in Europe. Now, of course, you could go much further than, and you could say, well, what about Russia? What about, you know, what about Eastern Europe, the former Soviet bloc. Right. Even more so there. But I'm talking about even in Western Europe, you know, much less activity in terms of move up buyers. Right? So the homeownership tenure has increased. Again, I don't think that is a long term trend, but right at the moment it increased to I believe 8.3 years. So a little longer than normal. You know, typically that's a five to seven year turn. Right? So in part because of institutional investors. So we talked about homeownership tenure, in part because of institutional investors who acquired hundreds of thousands of single family homes as rentals near the bottom of the market and are continuing to hold on to these homes. Well, that's in part true, but it's not clearly true. You know, lots of those have also been liquidated as well. So, you know, I predicted that the institutional buyers would not love this business because it's very fragmented. And the temperament of big institutional buyers is that they can deploy billions and billions of dollars worth of capital very easily. They can manage it very easily even if they get lower returns. Hey, it's not their money. So it's that sort of ease of management. Right? But for the small investor, embrace the fragmentation, put up with a few frustrations and make a lot more money than you will in the institutional type asset class. Okay, I think hopefully you can tell where I'm reading and where I'm editorializing because, you know, you can just tell. So I don't need to quote this and that. I hope, I hope I don't need to be that strict about it. But if you want a copy of this report, just ask your investment counselor and they will give you a free copy of this report. If you attended Meet the Masters last year, then you got a free subscription to this report, okay? So you of course can refer to it and you can see where I'm actually reading and where I'm just talking off the cuff. Okay? So moving on here, they're keeping the houses, blah, blah, blah, and in part because there isn't much new supply of homes in the pipeline. Now. This is the startling part. You ready? If anything were falling behind. Now what he's talking about there is construction falling behind in construction of new homes. HUD and the Census Bureau estimate that we're likely to market 610,000 new single family homes this year based on June sales figures. That's about the same production rate as we saw in February of. Are you ready for this? Are you sitting down? Investors, are you ready? That's about the same production rate of new housing stock as we saw in February of. Drumroll.

1964. Whoa.

Are you telling me that the new single family home supply in February of 1964 was just about the same as it is today? In February of 1964, we had about 192 million people living in the United States. And today, you know how many we have? About 320 million. Oh, my God. Is that a shortage or what?

Yeah, okay, stop yelling. Jason, calm down. Keep telling the people what they need to know. So here's what it says. The bubble danger with the supply shortage. By the way, can you tell I've had two cups of coffee this morning? Okay, yes, I have. One was a bulletproof coffee and one was a regular one. Two cups already, and it's only 11am that's why I'm hyper. Okay.

The bubble danger with a supply shortage, home prices can quickly rise, thus reducing the pool of qualified borrowers and cutting sales. Well, prices go up, fewer people qualify, you gotta drive further drive until you qualify to the outlying areas of any metro area and cutting sales. But folks, and this is just me talking, as I've told you before, what this ultimately means, and this is what it means with inflation, but also with asset inflation. Remember, there is a distinction, and I think I even alluded to this in my interview with Ron Paul. Coming right up here in a moment, is that the asset inflation issue is not really counted in the consumer price index when it comes to inflation, right? So what happens is that people have to come to terms with accepting less. They just get less. Less housing, higher density, lower quality, smaller square footage, inferior locations, inferior school districts. You're just going to get less as you have asset price inflation and people are priced out. That's the reality of the world, okay? You just get less. That's it. Your tenants get less and buyers get less. So that's it. You know, I went to my mobile home park yesterday, and this is a mobile home park that I purchased with our client Steve. A lot of you have met Steve at other Meet the Masters events and Creating wealth seminars that I've done. And I went and met with Steve yesterday, went down to the mobile home park. It's about 90 miles south of Las Vegas. I drove down there in my new car, not a Tesla, thank you very much, in my new non Tesla, primitive but wonderful gasoline powered German car. It was such a joy. You know, Tesla owners have something they call range anxiety. You know, we adults, we've all heard of performance anxiety, right? It's a male thing. Okay, so range anxiety, that's what Tesla owners have, range anxiety. Because you're always worried about yourself. Stupid battery running down a tank of gas. In my new German car, my new high performance, beautiful German car that cost $40,000 less than my hundred and seventeen thousand dollars Tesla that they finally took back because it was such a lemon. Oh God, I can go 492 miles on a tank of gas. What a joy. Anyway, enough of the tangent, Jason. Get back to business here. I went down to my mobile home park yesterday. Steve and I met with the contractor. We looked at the further improvements that we're making to the park. Really, really exciting stuff. And so as you know, you know, I own apartments, single family homes and mobile home park. And I love to partner with clients, by the way. I love to partner with clients. So if you want to partner on any of your deals out there clients, I've got cash and I would love to invest. I have more cash than I do time to invest. So if you need a cash partner, look me up. Jason hartman.com. okay, so I'm having lunch with Steve after we looked at the park and I said, hey Steve, do you remember when you used to come into our office a couple of days a week back in 2010 and remember how we were writing letters of intent one after another after another on all these different properties? Apartments, self storage facilities, mobile home parks. We were really interested in the mobile home park thing and we just had so much competition. The buyers were lining up to buy these assets. Multiple offers, we got outbid. We just wouldn't pay the price to buy anything. And so we didn't, we didn't buy anything. We bought this park that we have together now about three years ago I guess on a 1031 exchange when we sold another 125 unit apartment complex that we had in Scottsdale, Arizona. And what happened here? We look back, it's 2017, we're sitting at lunch, I'm talking to Steve about this, and Steve and I both looked at each other in kind of a depressed fashion thinking we should have just agreed to the Price every seller wanted and bought everything we could. If we would have just bought everything we could get our hands on, we would be so much richer today. And that's always the thing. The price always seems too high at the time. The reluctant investors lament. You've heard it before. I hesitate to make a list of all the countless deals I've missed. Bonanzas that were in my grip. I watched them through my fingers slip the windfalls which I should have bought or lost because I overthought. I thought of this, I thought of that. I could have sworn I smelled a rat. And, well, I thought things over twice. Another investor grabbed them at that price. Well, that's the reluctant investors lament, right? Very, very good lesson. So, yeah, that's the deal. I just wish we would have bought everything right now. You may be thinking that now, but look, folks, this is an unlikely bubble scenario. We're in. The banks have been incredibly conservative. I'm going to talk to you a lot more about this, but I just wanted to share with you this. So the bubble danger is that there's this housing shortage. Well, what does that do? It pushes prices way up. Now, keep in mind, people always talk about a good market as a seller's market. They never say a good market as a buyer's market. That's always considered to be the depressed bad market. But hey, if you're a buyer, it's pretty good. Okay, this article and all of the people that they interviewed for this article are people who generally come from the context in their thinking of more sales volume is considered a good market and lower sales volume is considered a bad market. Nowhere in this article that I have seen, at least, are they ever talking about rental rates in the sense that if the investor owns the property and supply is constrained, of course prices go up, but so do rents. Okay? It's a multidimensional asset class, and that's the beauty. So here, I'll just finish this up. We got to get to Ron Paul, okay? He's obviously more important than whatever I'm going to say. Well, I don't know. Maybe. Okay, so even if new home demand soared, it's likely that much additional production is now impossible for two reasons. First, the building industry has a huge labor shortage, as the national association of Home Builders points out. Topping the list of problems builders faced in 2016 and expect to face in 2017 is the cost availability of labor, a significant issue for 78% of builders in 2016 and one that has significantly grown in importance since 2011. Second, new homes are expensive. The median sale price for a new home in June was $310,800 versus $263,800 for existing homes, meaning that for many potential buyers, new homes are simply beyond reach. Folks don't wait to buy real estate. Buy real estate and then wait. The only thing you've got to do to make sure you're going to be in good shape, I mean, there are outlier problems. I get it. Nothing's perfect.

Perfect.

This is certainly not perfect. But if you Simply follow my 10 commandments of successful investing, you know, and you buy properties that make sense, the day you buy them, you do all the other stuff that we talk about on the show, you're going to be in good shape. I mean, we are, in my opinion, in the linear markets. We are very, very far from a bubble concern for many reasons that we've talked about. But we will keep talking about this. I got a lot more I want to talk about here. We got to get to Ron Paul. This interview is already getting long. So remember your five year plan contest. Jason hartman.com contest. Do your five year plan video. Do it for yourself. But hey, also you might win free VIP tickets to Meet the Masters. You might win free travel allowance. What else are our prizes? I don't even remember. Go to jasonartman.com contest. They're awesome. Oh, an Adventure alliance weekend. Yeah, we got incredible prizes. So do your five year plan video. Also register for Meet the Masters and get your ticket. If you haven't purchased a ticket, about 160 of you have, I believe. But if you haven't purchased a ticket yet, get your ticket. Well, we still have early bird pricing. You've got three levels of options. If you enter and win the contest, we will refund your ticket cost and then you will get that back and you'll have your free tickets. Or you can just give your ticket away or, you know, bring your significant other, whatever you like to do. Okay. So here without further ado, it's my honor to have Ron Paul on the show today. And here he is.

It's my pleasure to welcome Dr. Ron Paul to the show. Of course, you know his name. He's a former congressman for many years and he's known as America's foremost advocate for Liberty. He spent 23 years in Congress. He was an outspoken critic of the banking system and some of the monetary and fiscal policy that we have. And it's just a real pleasure to have him on the show today. I've been a fan of his work for many, many years. And I know a lot of you in our audience are as well. Ron, welcome. How are you?

I'm doing fine, Jason. It's very nice to be on your program today.

It's good to have you on. And we're also looking forward to having you speak at our upcoming Meet the Masters of Income Property event in San Diego in January. So we can't wait to see you there. You've talked a lot about the true meaning of liberty over the years. What is the meaning of liberty? I mean, this is a word that people throw around kind of carelessly. What does it really mean?

I believe that you can start with, you know, self ownership. And that means you have responsibility for your own life and you should have the ability to benefit from the fruits of your labor. We've been drifting a far cry from that. I think the founders understood that position that we as individuals have natural rights and that they don't come from the government and that we ought to have the right to lead our life as we so choose, that we can seek our happiness. But they never put anything into the Constitution that said that the government will become automatic part owners in, in everything that you do. So liberty, the opposite of liberty would be a personal income tax on your efforts. Because that means that if you interpret the income tax, that means that everything you earn belongs to the government. And then what you get to spend is what the government gives you permission to spend and to keep on certain conditions and exactly what the prices will be and all these kind of things. So liberty is cell phone shift. But along with this, for it to work is responsibility. Because if there's a dependency on others or at least a demand and a conversion of some people say, well, some people can't do this. And if that is the case, and people can demand assistance rather than the responsibility for oneself in getting help from family, friends, neighbors and church. That's a whole different system. And we had a nice introduction to the principles of liberty in the early years, but I think we have drifted away. I frequently say in my speeches that if you want to ask the proper question in anything you do politically is what should the role of government be? My answer to that is very simple. The role of government should be limited to the protection of our liberty. And the rest of the problems that we face and that we have to take care depends on the individual and how that individual interacts with his friends and neighbors and family.

Very good points. And you know, one of the things I really like about your work and your philosophies and all of your excellent books is that you seem to be really clear on this. There's so much opaque sort of murkiness out there. So many politicians are. You know, they lick their finger, put it up in the wind, see which way is the wind blowing. You know, how have you been able to maintain such a real consistency and clarity when it comes to these ideas?

I'm not exactly sure how you arrive at that point, but a lot of people ask me that question, why didn't you succumb and capitulate and become the chairman by playing their game? And I tell them that I would be a miserable person if I did that, and I wouldn't be able to bear it. So I find greater satisfaction by doing it my way and having a belief which everybody professes to have, but they don't follow that. They always find an excuse about a day or two after they get to Washington. They're always idealistic, but the time they get there, they want, I need to be on this committee. I need to get this for my district. I need to raise money for my next campaign. And then all of a sudden, they know that they have to play the game. And if not, then you get severe criticisms and you get really shunned in the political sense. But I have been able to maintain this, because in this whole definition of liberty, there is one principle that has been applied throughout the centuries in developing societies that are actually designed to protect people. And that is that there should be no initiation of aggression against another person. And that's been noted in all our great religions. In the Judeo Christian religion, it's been the Ten Commandments, thou shalt not kill, steal. And this means that you can't commit aggression. Now, the big thing here, this principle, if you understand it, most people do understand this, most members of Congress would understand this, that you're not supposed to steal from people. You're not supposed to hurt people. Sometimes they don't understand that they're hurting a lot of people with their legislation, but they're not supposed to hurt people. They know they're not supposed to go in and steal from people and hurt people and kill people, but they have no compunction about sending the government and the IRS and the NSA and all the agencies of government to do what you and I can't do if you and I can't do it. This is so clearly put in Bastiat's law that you can't do anything in government that you can't do as an individual. So if I can't go into your house, you know, because of your privacy protection. Government shouldn't do it. But you hear it all the time. The government doesn't go for search warrants anymore. And especially since this century, in this century, the NSA has totally abolished the fourth Amendment. So our government has lost its way.

Yeah, no, it definitely has. But you know, one would argue that while the government has to protect people's liberties and they do this under the guise of protecting us, it's for our own good. So how do you distinguish that? How do you draw that line? Of course, like you said, don't commit an act of aggression against another person. If we can't do it, the government shouldn't do it. But the government, there are bad guys out there. I mean, we all know that. And the bad guys have to be, you know, stopped, right?

Yeah. And they will appeal to you for humanitarian reasons because like after 911 I had a lot of people come up to me and sort of challenge me on my position. They say, Ron, you have to give in to this because we have to be safe. Governments are supposed to make us safe, physically safe and economically secure, which you know, a lot of people still believe. But I don't think that's the purpose of government. They can't make us perfectly safe or perfectly secure and redistribute wealth. That invites the, the whole concept of socialism and welfarism and communism that they're going to give us perfect safety and destroy the whole nature of man because the government has to make all the decisions. So once an individual or society caves in and say the government needs to make me safe, and believe me, I can understand it, I can sympathize with it after 911 that was certainly a disaster. But just think, we were spending over $40 billion before 911 to make us safe and secure. It was a total failure of. So government can't do it. All they can do is undermine our liberties and make things much worse. So I think the practical argument has to be stated, the moral argument has to be stated and then we have to refute those people so that only the government can make us safe. I don't believe that is the case. I think when governments tend to do that, they make us unsafe and very poor and we get involved in wars trying to make us safe and secure.

Well, and then there's the whole issue of blowback of why it happened in the first place, why 9 11, any of these acts happened in the first place. Kind of wonder in the Ron Paul thinking how much of it is blowback. I mean, you can't really argue that 100% of these acts are a blowback problem. Certainly that's a huge part of it, I'm sure, but. And nobody can really know, but, you know, there'd probably be some terrorism even if we weren't interfering in everybody else's business, right? Or.

No, I think it is a combination. It isn't all or nothing, but the radicals are out there. I think there's radicalism in all religions, and if it's initiated, you know, they can become very, very violent. And that is a big problem. But when you have an excuse such as us portraying violence on people, invading their countries and bombing their countries and committing coups and getting so involved in hurting people and many people suffering from our foreign policy, this just feeds into those who want to radicalize, and I think they do not. The radicals in all the religions, I don't believe for a minute they really represent those religions. And some people in this country, especially right now, if you believe in Islam that it's automatic that you are a very violent person. And see, I don't buy into that, but I do buy into the fact that there's a lot of radicals that have been incited and they get their support from our foreign policy. So the stimulus for it may well be blowback, but you have to have somebody out there looking for a fight anyway, and I think that's what happens.

Yeah, yeah. No question. One of the things you talk about that I absolutely love, and I'm sure almost all of our listeners love the idea of this, and that is the Liberty Amendment. The Liberty Amendment, which is ending the income tax. But, Ron, how would the government survive? The government needs money to at least do the. The few things enumerated in our chartering documents, you know, promote the general welfare. That's been blown away proportion, you know, provide the common defense. That's been blown away out of proportion. All of this stuff is so far from original intent, obviously, but the government still needs some money to run. Where would it get it if we didn't have an income tax? Would it strictly be by inflating the money? That's another form of tax. It's like we have double taxation.

You know, I think the first question is, do we have any examples of a country doing well without an income tax? I will say yeah, we did pretty well from the time our country was started up until 1913, we didn't have an income tax. Of course, they tried it in the Civil War and it was very small. In 1913 on. But the principle was established and that was very bad. No, it goes back to what the role of government ought to be. If you have a government that is following a proper role and the people are satisfied with, and they understand that liberty is what they want and they want a chance to take care of themselves, then you don't have to have an income tax, since it's such a terrible tax. Let's say you do. If you're not a total anarchist and you don't want to, you have to have a government, and I believe in national defense you can get the needed funds. Even if you wanted to endorse the principle of user fees, you know, we have that in our highway system. But the problem is, you know, the highway tax could probably take care of our highways, but the money goes into a kiddie in Washington and they use it for everything else. And then to get your money back for your district that are your state sent up there, you have to play the political game. But a user tax is pretty good. A tax for the military. I think it could be done with a very, very small import tax or a very, very small tax on sales. But the problem is it always gets out of control. So. So even if you didn't have the income tax and you say, well, let's have a small tariff to pay for the bills, well, all of a sudden there's protectionism that comes in and they're spending all money and they need the money. And look at them hurrying around today to try to find more money. And they don't talk a bit about the role of government. Nobody is talking seriously about in these weeks that this tax bill has been going on. They're not going to get the reduction of government. They should be talking about what is a tax. I think a tax is when government spends money the way they collect it is secondary. And you mentioned even the inflation tax.

It's still a tax and it always hurts the middle class and the poor the most.

Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, when they talk about regulating this, that or the other thing, I mean, the minimum wage debate's a good one. And I don't know that I've actually heard you talk about that one, but I have a feeling I know what your view would be. To me, at least you raise the minimum wage, it's just going to trickle right through the system. The businesses are all going to raise their prices and it's just going to cause inflation. You know, it's funny how people somehow think you can get something for nothing, like things can be created out of thin air. I mean, these. These are adults. Don't. How do they. They have these like childish belief systems.

It's crazy to me, part of it. They're reflecting their education. Education in our country for 100 years has been downhill. You know, the progressive education teaches that these things are good. You know, that deficits don't matter. And debt, we can monetize debt and we can help the poor and we can police the world. And they're taught this. So most members of Congress have been taught that all along. And judges have been taught this. So they endorse this, but they don't understand what a voluntary society. You talk about a minimum wage. Well, it's easy. What's easy? To get to the college kids about, you know, voluntary arrangements for social things. Social and sexual matters. As long as you don't hurt and force people do what you want. But when it comes to economic policy, then the liberal influence would come in. Well, you can't do it there. But it's. The moral principle is the same. Government should allow us to have our social associations decided by ourselves as well as economic. If that is the case, then you work for the person you want. Then you get. You have to work out a deal. They decide to pay. It actually works out better than the coercion. And the coercion that is so dangerous. I've often said that, you know, even if the system that I describe would not work so well and we'd all be a little bit poor, I'd still want it just for the moral reason. But we don't even have to deal with that. This system that I'm talking about and sound money is the humanitarian system where you have the greatest amount of wealth and the best distribution of wealth. And yet we, as conservatives and libertarians, we don't do a good job in promoting that message.

This episode has gone a little longer than expected, so we will be back with part two on our next regularly scheduled podcast. Thanks for listening. Thank you so much for listening. Please be sure to subscribe so that you don't miss any episodes. Be sure to check out this show's specific website and our general website, hartmanmedia.com for appropriate disclaimers and terms of service. Remember that guest opinions are their own, and if you require specific legal or tax advice or advice in any other specialized area, please consult an appropriate professional. And we also very much appreciate you reviewing the show. Please go to I itunes or Stitcher radio or whatever platform you're using and write a review for the show. We would very much appreciate that. And be sure to make it official and subscribe so you do not miss any episodes. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode.