Will Your Generation Destroy Free Enterprise? | Lawrence Reed

Something as simple as a pencil, as Leonard Reid pointed out in that famous essay, is the result of endless numbers of people who don't know each other from countries all over the world who perform minute functions, but very important ones that are part of the process of creating a pencil.

My guest today is Lawrence Reed. He became the president of the foundation for Economic Education, FEE in 2008. He served as president of FEE for almost 11 years, when he retired to the role of president emeritus in 2019. He has taught economics full time from 1997 to 1984 at Northwood University in Michigan and chaired the Department of Economics in 1982-1984. His interests in political and economic affairs have taken him as a freelance journalist to 92 countries. That's crazy. 92 countries on six continents. He is an advisor to numerous organizations around the world, and he's authored nearly 2,000 columns and articles in newspapers, magazines and journals all over the United States and abroad. His writings have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Examiner, Christian Science Monitor, the Intellectual Takeout, USA Today, the American Spectator, the Epoch Times, the Detroit Free Press, and so on. He has authored or Co authored eight books. And in 2022, something special happened. He was named by the president of Poland as the recipient of the highest honor that Poland bestows upon a foreigner, the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland. Absolutely incredible. I'm so excited to have Mr. Larry Reed with us today. Larry, welcome to the program.

Thank you very much, Richard.

It's a pleasure to be with you, Larry. I had the pleasure to first be introduced to you. You did a SPE engagement at an organization I'm a member of, the Nelson Nash Institute. You were asked to participate by my mentor, the late R. Nelson Nash. And I thoroughly enjoyed the presentation that you gave. And it was. You were the guest speaker for our evening dinner. And you really spoke about the power of character and the need of people of tremendous character in the world and how the world to some degree is really shaped around those that step forward and demonstrate impeccable character. And you've spoken on that topic numerous times. We may delve into little bits of that as we go through today. What really connected with me is that was one of my early exposures to fee as an organization. That's fee.org the foundation for Economic Education, and Nelson Nash, my mentor. He was an advocate, a supporter of that organization since the early the mid-50s, as I recall. And, you know, I started to really understand that there was this machine in the background promoting the ideas of free enterprise and liberty and personal autonomy, and maybe minimizing a little bit of government overreach and regulation so that the economic machine can move and churn. Now, something was happening around 2008 when you were asked to become the president of that organization. The, the organization, I think, was somewhat, for lack of better term, maybe it was dwindling to some degree and it wasn't reaching a level of prominence, as it's known today. What transpired? What were some of the challenges that you needed to take, take on when you stepped into the role of president?

Well, great question. Thank you, Richard. 2008 was a very eventful year, not only for fee, but for much of the world, because as people will remember, that was the year that the bottom fell out of the various markets, stock market, commodity markets, and what have you. And the economy plunged into a very deep recession that started right at the time I took over as president of FEE in September of 2008, FEE had already faced some challenging issues. Frequently, organizations that have been around a long time, and at that point, Fee had been around since 1946 and their founder has since passed away. Frequently organizations undergo a period of drift or uncertainty or a need for a rethinking of their strategic plan. And we certainly were in need of that. In 2008, Fee had a rough patch. And there were those who thought, wow, for this guy Reid to come in and take FEE over at the start of this massive economic uncertainty is going to be a real challenge. And it was. But I never thought that we were going to fail, because I think success depends upon choosing the right team, finding the right people, empowering them, not second guessing them, and forging ahead with a coherent, well thought out strategic plan. So one of the very first things we had to do at fee in 2008 was to shore up our existing support base. So I had to get to know the donors to FEE that I didn't already know and find some new ones. As a private charitable nonprofit, we depend entirely upon contributions. So I had to rustle the bushes at the start of a great Recession to encourage existing donors to stay with us and find some new ones. And also internally, I had to make some very tough decisions regarding spending reductions. We were looking at a deficit of more than $1 million. Fortunately, we had some reserves we could, we could draw upon. But before that first six months of my tenure was out, we reduced the deficit to about 900,000. The following year, I cut it further to about 300,000. And then the next year we were in The Black and have been ever since. And so rebuilding an organization with new blood, new staff, new a well thought out strategic plan, giving people the confidence they needed to support us. Those were the challenges that I had had to deal with and we dealt with them successfully. So. But I don't want to take full credit because we had a great board of trustees and increasingly a phenomenal staff. And I worked with a lot of good people to turn FEE around and put it on a path of success.

Well, no one wins the game alone. We all operate on some kind of, to some degree. And assembling a good team, I think is a key component of that. So I'm glad you identified that. What I think is interesting, when you talk about stepping into a role, and I surmise you probably had some understanding walking into the situation, that there was a deficit situation. Deficit scenario, yes. And for many people, they might look at that and say, wow, I'm stepping into a situation that's somewhat maybe doomed to fail. I'm volunteering and choosing to go down maybe with the ship the moment I get in there. And, and yet knowing that in advance, there's, there's people who walk into that scenario and don't know and they're faced with the challenge that they have to overcome. And then there's taking the, taking the path of this has to be done. We believe in what needs to be done. I'm going to put my hand up and, you know, agree to step forward into the light to be that guiding force, to build that strategic plan. There's, there's a lot that goes into that thinking process. So what was going on for you at that time when the decision was made that I. You would accept the role?

Well, a few years before, less than a decade, I had been on the board at fee. I love the organization and its mission. I did not want to see it fail. So I was partly motivated by the desire to come in and help an organization that I dearly loved. But I've never been the type to run from a challenge. I think that's what animates and motivates most people. And certainly I've never looked for some bureaucratic job where I could just punch in at nine, punch out at five. I'm happy to say that within five years of becoming president in 2008, fee was reaching a larger audience than ever before in its history. And our good mutual friend Nelson Nash knew that and supported us. And don't we miss him. But he was, like me, a longtime supporter and believer in FEE and its message. So all of those things more motivated me. And I like fixing problems. I should point out too, I like to take on a problem and make it history.

Amazing. And so for our viewers who maybe aren't familiar with FEE as an organization, again, that's fee.org maybe just explain, what is the mission of fee and how does it support the ideas of liberty?

FEE was founded in 1946 by the late Leonard Reed. No relation. He spelled his name R E a D. I didn't know him in the last seven years of his life. But after World War II, Leonard looked around and thought, golly, for a country founded on ideas of liberty and free enterprise, private property and limited government, there sure is a shortage of anybody who's full time out there defending those institutions and supporting their restoration in the face of the massive growth of government. You think back to the late 40s, World War II had just ended and a lot of people in the world thought, wow, well, big government saved us. It won the war. But of course, there were people like Leonard who were saying, don't forget big government was a big reason why the war was fought in the first place. There are lessons to be learned in that. So Leonard saw a need. And over the years, we have refined fee's message as well as the demographic we are targeting. At first, when FEE was virtually alone, Leonard and the staff were eager to speak to anybody who would listen. By the time I became president, it was apparent that we were in some ways a victim of our own success. So many other organizations had formed, inspired in part by fee, that we had to decide what is our niche. And we're no longer by ourselves. And it's not the same when you try to speak to a 60 year old as it is when you are trying to speak to a 16 year old. So under my leadership and our board of trustees after 2008, we determined that we would focus on a more narrowed demographic. And that is not just everybody of any age, but but rather newcomers to ideas of liberty in high school and college. Let me clarify that because we first thought, well, high school and college, that's our niche. But we didn't want to focus on everybody within that age demographic, roughly 14 to 24. We wanted to focus on the newcomers to Liberty students in that age group who hadn't heard these ideas before or maybe had heard them in the context of one particular issue, but not the broad range of issues or the foundational philosophical base of liberty. So that's our focus now. And our mission, our mission is to educate and inspire Newcomers to ideas of liberty within the demographic of high school and college age students.

Amazing. And with that in mind, we're going to hear more about the ideas, the powerful ideas of liberty when we come back after these messages.

There's certain moments in our life where we know that things are going to change. That happened to me in August of 2009. My life completely and totally changed forever for the better. I learned about this incredible concept called the infinite banking concept. Becoming your own banker. It was created by R. Nelson Nash. Nelson became my friend and my mentor. I loved him dearly. I now have the blessed life of being able to teach his incredible message, his incredible concept to the people I love to serve. You can learn all about it by registering for a free webinar@learnibc.com Go ahead, take the initiative. Start your learning journey.

Now. We are back here with Larry Reed. Of course we've talked a little bit about the mission of the foundation for Economic Education imparting these incredible ideas of liberty onto the youth of today on tomorrow. And what is fascinating is I think back to this period in 2008 and I, I have my own recollection of was happening in my life at that point in time. I owned some real estate and of course I saw the challenges that were created by that environment in Canada. The impact for us was a little bit different than watching the news happen in real time as we're getting it from our American counterparts. But at the time that you stepped in as president, you were right at the cusp of the news changing and the news around economic collapse, global calamity taking place around the financial system. And I'm curious, you know, obviously you needed to go and seek donors, you needed to go and communicate with past donors to try to raise capital in a difficult time when people are fumbling around to figure out where the money is. What was that experience like? Now stepping to the role of president and trying to think through what does this economic challenge that the world is facing present for us at this organization.

We didn't know of course, how deep or long lasting the correction would be. But it was obvious for some time that the economy was being artificial, actually stimulated by a long stretch of artificially depressed interest rates. Money creation that the Congress had exacerbated the situation by various measures that funneled a lot of this new money into subprime mortgages. So we knew a correction was coming. And I gave some thought to that when the offer came to take over fee it what looked like an unstable moment in the economy. But I thought whatever the immediate future may hold, the need to make the case for liberty and free markets is only going to grow. That's not going to recede by economic developments. And in fact, maybe a sour economy would give us opportunities to do that that we wouldn't have had otherwise. And sure enough, and I remember in the first couple of years after I took over fee in 2008, that was the most popular request. I was doing a talk on explaining the Great depression of the 1920s and 30s. I was doing that somewhere, it seemed, every three or four weeks because people were concerned about the environment and were we going to see a repeat of that and that sort of thing, what caused it and what are the similarities with the current situation? So, yeah, the situation was dire, but it also gave us opportunities. And to talk about the Great Depression means you get a chance to explain to people where booms and busts come from. But they don't come from the free marketplace, they come from government intervention. It gives you opportunities to talk about inflation and mismanagement of the money supply. All these are critically important topics within the broader liberty framework. And so I welcomed the opportunities that the bad times gave us to drive home some of the points we make all the time at fee.

And you, you mentioned the boom bust cycle, referred to as the business cycle. It's something that is quite core to the Austrian mindset around their, their take on what facilitates this rapid rise of, of price inflation and so forth and then the precipitous decline that usually happens much faster than the rise. And, and so maybe just for our viewers who maybe aren't familiar, just extend on that a little bit from your perspective from the Austrian school. Why is it important for our listeners to understand why the boom bust cycle happens and how these interventions that take place facilitate the transaction?

It's so important for people to understand what brings these boom bust cycles into being because an awful lot of public policy is made based on these experiences. A lot of bad policy. Whenever we fall into tough economic times. That's when people kind of set aside some principles they thought they always believed. They are more eager to accept government intervention because the politicians say we will save you and so forth. And so, you know, good policy is rarely made in moments of frantic excess that instead you need sober minds and good ideas and probably more stable conditions to really expect good policy to flow. So people should understand that booms and busts are not natural to a free economy. They don't have their origin in people buying and selling and making investments and so forth. I mean, even in the healthiest of free economies, you're going to have some failures. But that's in the natural order of things because some people don't capitalize their enterprises sufficiently and they, or they misjudge the consumer or, you know, any number of reasons why some people make mistakes and we, they, they pay a price for it. But when you have a great number of industries and businesses across the board falling apart seemingly out of nowhere, that requires an explanation that's some sort of failure of the entrepreneurial function that cries out for explanation. And the Austrian school economists, I think, have done more good work in this area than any other. They have pointed out since the days of Ludwig von Mises, beginning in the 1920s that a boom begins when government and its monetary authorities, for any number of reasons, stimulate the economy with easy money. They drive interest rates down by flooding the economy with easy money and credit. And at first it feels good. It's like the guy who goes to a party and drinks like a fish, you know, he feels pretty good for a while, but the next day he's got to pay the price for that. And as Austrians have pointed out, the down phase or depression phase of the trade cycle is really a corrective period. It's when the excesses fostered by the false stimulation, the easy money and the lower interest rates, the alcohol at the party, all of that comes back to bite us in the depression phase when we kind of cleanse those excesses from our system.

Facing a depression, you have to eject the poison somehow.

Yeah, exactly. Facing a depression, I suppose there are two broad courses that the government could take. One would be for it to fess up and say, sorry, we did that to you, we caused the boom. And we therefore laid the foundation for the inevitable correction, the bust. We won't do that again. Of course, as an Austrian, that's the course I prefer. But the other course that government usually takes is it says, oh my gosh, don't blame us, it was everybody else who caused this, and we will be the saviors. We'll come in and save you. Here's another bottle. Here's, you know, have another drink, let's reinflate, drive interest rates down again and set us off to another boom. That's why we never get off this boom bust cycle, because government never really does the first option. It hasn't since the early 1920s. Instead, it just does more of what caused the problem in the first place. So people need to know that, so they don't say government is the solution to our problem, if they understand that it was the cause of the problem, they will look elsewhere, I think, for the right solution.

And I'm glad that you mentioned it that way, because elsewhere. Well, one of those elsewheres is the foundation for Economic Education, and it goes back to that mission. Of course, your, your zone and your target is for the youth of tomorrow, people in that, that age group you identified. But, you know, I really want to make sure people understand that it's certainly not limited to that. And there's so many incredible, free, amazing resources. I mean, you could, you could basically get the equivalent of an economics degree just by reading the articles that are free on, on the website. I mean, it's really profound. And one of the things that I love that has happened, you know, is that there's a lot of the original works of Leonard Reed, who is one of the founders, available there. I believe all of his essays are available there for a free download there.

All of his books, too. 27 books.

27 books. I believe that the entire PDF is 1200 pages or something. I mean, it's a lot of content, fantabulous material, even though it may have been written long ago. The problems that we're facing today, the ones that you've just identified, are still happening. There's still problems, and there's still problems that we're going to be dealing with tomorrow. In fact, we're in a current economic climate where massive, fundamentally printing of the money supply increased to the monetary supply, certainly in United States as well as in Canada and many other Westernized nations. We're potentially going to see another problem. And I think we're seeing components of it now. I know we had an inverted yield curve scenario recently, so I would imagine you're watching those kind of things. And you know, before we jump to our next break, I'm curious, what advice would you give someone who's watching this now where they could really, really begin to understand to some depth what's happening at the government level and how they might play a better role at the personal level on moving forward so we can try to transition away from this boom bus system?

Well, because that's the central question that we deal with at FEE every day. We have created an awful lot of resources intended to provide the answers. So it may sound self promotional, but I have to say the best answer to your question, Richard, is for people to frequently visit the FEE website. There's usually something new added to it every day. And if you explore the website, you'll find that there are not only 70 years of archived content, much of which is as relevant today as ever. But you also have courses that are offered. So if you're a teacher or a homeschool parent, you'll find incredibly valuable resources in that regard. Much of the commentary that we post on the main page of the website almost every day of the week, it deals with current issues. So you can examine what's happening around you through the lens of free market economics by visiting fee.org any day of the week. And also we have fee speakers appearing at events all over the country. And I'm happy to say that since COVID has receded, our in person events or students are just going through the roof all over the world, not just in the United States. And our webinars continue to set records as well. So we're back in the growth phase under a new president, a man named Jogo Costa, who I think was a magnificent pick. He's from Brazil and he's doing a wonderful job since he became president this past March.

Amazing. Fantastic. With that in mind, we're going to talk a little bit more about fee and how we can increase the ideas of liberty and the power of innovation that liberty provides. When we come back after these messages.

Have you ever wanted to be a part of a network of visionary entrepreneurs? People who get you, who understand you, who think differently? They're actively going out and making things happen. They're making the world a better place. They're creating incredible change, incredible innovation. And they're having discussions about how to make the world a better place, how to create a bigger, brighter, better future future. How to take what they already know, combine it with what someone else knows and make something grand. Well, you're in luck. There is such an incredible network. It's the Epic Fit Network. You can go to theepicfit.com to learn more, apply to be a member of this incredible organization. I'm a member and I love it. It's been fantastic and I can't wait until we have more amazing people just like you joining this incredible group.

We are back with Larry Reed here and we are stepping into the concept of innovation and how core this element is to the entrepreneurial experience. And really when we think about the, the intersection between innovation and economic engine, the economic machine moving in the world, it's very difficult for that economic machine to move forward and to, to continue the cogs churning if there's not a continual stream of innovation taking place. And I think we have multiple experience over the last century in other parts of the world where we can see where that economic engine has almost ground to a bit of a halt because of certain policies and ideas. So when you think about the need of the entrepreneur, the entrepreneurial vision, the requirement of both liberty and an environment where liberty exists for innovation to flourish, what are some of the things that come up for you?

Entrepreneurship is critical to this whole process. Innovation is basically what entrepreneurs do the great majority of the time. There's very little that we use today as consumers that is brand new, based on no previous product or skill, and just appears out of nowhere. Almost everything that we use is a innovated version of something that came before. And as long as entrepreneurs are free to innovate and to enjoy the rewards that often, but not always, come from innovation, depending on consumers and their desires, as long as they're free to innovate and keep those rewards, they will keep doing it. So it's a critical dynamic element in a free economy. An economy that is no longer innovating is by definition a stagnant economy. And then you have to ask the question, why would an economy stagnate? Why would people see opportunities but not act upon them? Why wouldn't they issue a new and improved version if there was some money in it for them? Well, the answer to that invariably is because the political authorities have stuck their nose in the way and by various measures make it impossible or too costly or too punishing for entrepreneurs to innovate. So they just quit? They just stopped doing it?

Yeah, without the lack of incentive. And so I think that, you know, innovation to me is, is around thinking. But the reason that thinking exists for people to desire innovation is generally because of a problem that exists. You know, problems are our best, the best cause of innovation. There's something that's in your way that you need to remove from your way. You know, and, and whether, whether it's the problem of my digital camera is too big, and how can we fit a digital camera into this technology device that I can also communicate on? And how can I take my computer that used to be the size of my entire desk and put it into this little box that I can carry in my pocket? There's all these things that exist. You know, how can I go on the airplane and put on these noise canceling headsets so I don't hear the crying baby because there's a problem where I can't enjoy my long flights anymore. All of these little things that begin to create the most impressive innovations that have ever existed on the planet and will yet to, yet to exist, that we don't even know about.

Oh yes. In fact, Richard, why don't I take a moment here to give an example, an extreme example, but because it's extreme, it's one that's, that's easy for people to understand. That actually came from the pages of history during the Great Depression, which we just ever so briefly talked about. This is an example of government attempting to stand in the way of entrepreneurs. And if it had succeeded, it would have crushed innovation. And that was a measure that Franklin Roosevelt proposed to the Congress he wanted. This would be about 1937, give or take a year. He proposed a top marginal income tax rate of 99% and that was defeated in Congress because a lot of congressmen said, who's going to invest if they reap a reward by serving the consumer? And Mr. Roosevelt takes 99 cents of every dollar. Well, Roosevelt, it got worse because Roosevelt was so miffed that Congress didn't give him that, that he came back and by executive order, he imposed a 100% tax rate on all incomes over $25,000. Now can you imagine that? You're an entrepreneur, you come up with an idea. It requires taking some risk, accumulating some capital, making some investments that might go sour. And along comes the federal government that says, well, don't make more than $25,000 because if you do, we're going to take all of it. Well, that didn't fly. Congress intervened and rejected that executive order, repealed it. That's an example. Governments, every day of the week, all over the world are putting roadblocks and barriers in the way of risk taking innovators. And often they do it by vilifying those innovators ahead of time, calling them the rich elites. And you know, we gotta make sure they don't make too much money. Well, that sort of thing has taken one civilization after another and just crushed it by driving entrepreneurs to someplace else or some other more sterile activities.

Well, one of my best friends, Jason, he likes to say that money will go to where it's well respected. Coincidentally. You know, your experience of that scenario with FDR is, is interesting because at present, present time of this recording, we have a particular federal government in Canada that is imposing a lot of, maybe not to that degree, but it certainly feels like the general population would, would concur that. It feels like there's that oppressive nature of stemming the ability for innovation to occur. And we're seeing it happen where businesses and people with capital are moving, they're transitioning to the United States or they're moving to Other countries or they're looking at doing business endeavors elsewhere and actually moving their money out of Canada because of these constraints upon their ability to take what they've done, what they've worked with, what they've, they've tried and created. And some have failed. And some have succeeded, but that is the price of risk. You, you don't know for sure what the outcome is going to be. But if you know for sure if your outcome is good, that everything good that you create is going to be taken away from you, it does pull the incentive to innovate away quite quickly.

Oh yeah. And it's, I think, further notable that so often these confiscatory, punishing measures are being put in place by people who themselves have never been entrepreneurs and wouldn't know how to be one.

There's something about the spirit of, you know, the United States. It's well known and regarded as a place where ideas can thrive. The Industrial revolution, the technological revolution, if to a large degree the, the technologies and the things that we use and often take for granted on a daily basis. I, you know, I held up my cell phone as an example. These things were first pictured in someone's mind and then had to become reality. I mean, it's not like it was just an overnight thing that they built the iPhone. No, an idea had to be created. The idea had to be implemented. It took years and capital and R and D, a lot of investment to go and create the thing. To even determine, you had to have the product available before you could even determine if the market wanted it. So all that's the risk that someone's going and taking in. And not all those ideas work out. They don't all, they're not all home runs, but, you know, there are certain ones that, that show up and then they, they shine drastically. So for people to recognize and think about that, if you were to put it into context as a global traveler, someone who's been to six continents, you know, close to 100 countries, you've, you've, you've experienced the, the life and the, the feeling of the boots on the ground. People in other nations. What is it that you see when you go to a nation that hasn't, hasn't created the environment to, for innovation to thrive in comparison to one that has.

One of the things I noticed right away in such places, whether it be behind the old Iron Curtain or even more recent examples of countries where governments are all over the place, regulating, mandating, issuing orders, acting as roadblocks in the way of innovation. One of the things I see is a dispiritedness. I see so many people who are just sort of down about life because they have no hope, because they haven't seen any change or much of it in their lifetimes. They don't see the opportunity to make change without taking too great a risk and not being able to enjoy the rewards if they succeed. So they just kind of give up. Where you see an entrepreneurial, which is another way of saying a free economy, those two things go together. You see life, you see color, you see activity, you see hope. You see people who are coming up with ideas all the time. And that's what makes a dynamic free economy so attractive to people, because it gives them reason for hope, gives them opportunities that they don't have where the government controls things. I look back at early American history, really, for much of our history. Even today, we still have plenty of examples. Some of the fantastic people who came out of nowhere and became very highly successful entrepreneurs, often with having failed several times at first. Have you ever heard of the guy named the Ice King? His real name was Frederick Tudor. His father offered Frederick Tudor a free Harvard education. And Frederick turned it down because he came up with this idea. This is like 1810. He came up with this idea that people in the Caribbean have never experienced ice. And so he thought, I can cut blocks of ice out of ponds in western Massachusetts and put them on boats and take them down to Cuba and other Caribbean countries and sell it and become very rich at giving people ice in hot places. Well, he tried that. He's failed miserably. Went bankrupt. But he never gave up. And before long, by the 1820s, he had become an ice millionaire. He figured out how to take 180 tons of ice on a ship carved out of ponds in western Massachusetts and ship them 16,000 miles away to Calcutta, India, and still have enough of it left when it arrived that it could be sold at a profit. And this is the guy who. Who in their right mind would have said, I'd like to invest in that. Well, Frederick Tudor figured it out. And only in America at that time could you really make a fortune by failing a few times but having a dream and sticking to it. And American history is full of that. That's what free societies are all about.

With that in mind, we're going to get back to the message of hope, hope in the future of innovation, when we come back after these messages. Are you looking for a great book to read?

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We are back to talk about hope, hope in the future of innovation. And we where do we see this hope come from in a free world, in a free society? Well, interestingly enough, I was able to learn about this incredible award that you had created. This award, I had no idea about it until I got to understand that my mentor, Nelson Nash, was going to receive the award. And so what a blessed and incredible experience it was for him to receive that. And what we're talking about is the Blinking Lights Award. Now, this award is something I really want you to explain to our audience how this is a representation of hope and liberty in the world and what the meaning behind this award is and why people should understand that things like this exist in the world because of past experiences and the drive of people to overcome major challenges. You mentioned the Iron Curtain before in our previous segment. Talk to us a little bit about what the blinking lights are and why is there an award created for it.

Back in the 1980s and early 1990s, I did work as a freelance journalist in Iron Curtain countries like Poland and Mozambique and other places. And it was in Poland in 1986, when it was still run by the communists, that I ran into a couple so big DF and Sophia Romoszewski, the people who were active in the Polish underground, the anti communist resistance connected me with them, and it turned out they had run an underground radio, very illegal, spreading the message of liberty against the communist regime throughout the 1980s. And at one point in my discussion with them, I asked, well, when you were broadcasting, how did you know if people were listening? Think about it. This is an illegal radio station. You can't broadcast for very long before you have to tear it down, take it someplace else so you're not detected by the government and arrested, which they ultimately were, by the way. In any event, Sophia answered that question, how did you know if people were listening? With the following line she said, well, we wondered that too. We could only broadcast eight or 10 minutes at a time before having to tear it down, go someplace else and set it up again. But one night we asked people, if you believe in liberty for Poland, the message of this radio station, please blink your lights. And then she said, we went to the window and for hours all of Warsaw was blinking. That story became emblematic in our minds. At fee of people who are for Various reasons having to deal with trying circumstances. Maybe they live in. Under a tyranny, as she did in the 1980s, but they haven't given up. And they're dedicated to liberating themselves and other peoples from the yoke of tyranny. And in one way or the other, they're involved in spreading the good message of liberty. And so we gave that award over the years to a number of people. Nelson Nash was one, you might say, well, Nelson didn't live in a tyranny, but Nelson did take on a kind of financial establishment, you might say, to advocate for some ideas that deserved attention but weren't getting it. And then he stuck with it, created organizations and events and so forth to, to propagate the idea. And so we thought that he is a. Or was since he's passed away, but he certainly was a blinking light for liberty. Somebody who doesn't give up, who, whatever the odds are, they don't give up, they don't slink away, they don't remain quiet. They speak truth to power and they promote their ideas as best they can. I just think that's a phenomenal quality in people. I wish more people had it.

It's so inspiring to know that there's people who are willing to take that stand. And I certainly felt that Nelson was one of those individuals and he was fighting economic tyranny to a degree. And we talked earlier about the boom bust cycle, government manipulation of markets and interest rates and so on. And really that was his calling to take the knowledge that he had of Austrian economics, connect it with his knowledge of the insurance industry and say, how can we have personal liberty and personal autonomy of your financial life, of your financial household? Do it in such a way where, you know, he, he promoted secession to, to secede from a world that didn't support you financially by doing the things that you could control at your level. And he, his concept of becoming your own banker, the infinite bank concept, is really the, the epitome of that. And, and it has been described by a number of people and, and I whether. I'm not sure how you feel about that, but it was, it has been described as really Austrian economics in action at the individual level.

Yeah, it takes it beyond theory and it gives each and every person an opportunity to practice it in real life to their personal financial benefit.

So that concept of economic liberty is. Though we don't live in an overtly tyrannical world in North America, there are certainly a number of those tyrannies that do exist in the world today. But there, there is something really tremendously powerful about being able to take control of the economic components that exist in our world. What comes to mind, Larry and I like to speak to this a little bit, is the idea of the miraculous pencil. And, you know, Leonard Read wrote an essay called Eye Pencil, and it resonated with me so well. I got my first copy of it from Nelson directly. And there's even a great little animated film that's available on the fee webs, on the Fee YouTube channel that people can watch. Perhaps we can try to link to that that explains how the creation of a single pencil cannot happen without a global impact of. Of people all around the world working in some form of concert for the creation of a single pencil. And without all those actors happening about the stage of this, this, this business activity. We can't even have a simple pencil that we can use in a school system. Can you extrapolate on that idea and, and how that global intersection comes together for the ability for products to be created that we all use the creation.

Of something as simple as a pencil. And also things as complicated as a jet airplane, these come into being not because some king has issued an order, hey, the peasants want entertainment or the peasants need writing implements. So you guys over here, you have to make them. No, these things happen because free or relatively free, people decide, hey, here's an opportunity, here's an entrepreneurial opportunity for me to make a few bucks. They bring together the factors of production. They hire the people they need to create the product. And those people may be from all over the world. And something as simple as a pencil, as Leonard Reed pointed out in that famous essay, is the result of endless numbers of people who don't know each other, from countries all over the world who perform minute functions, but very important ones that are part of the process of creating a pencil. The skills, the knowledge in making something as simple as a pencil are so decentralized and so immense at the same time that no one person in the world could make a pencil all by himself. And by all by himself, I mean you couldn't. If, let's say, you could not rely upon anyone's knowledge, anyone's skills, you had to start from scratch. Pencils haven't been invented yet, and you've got to make one from nothing. You couldn't do it, and not by yourself anyway, because you'd have to be a logger, you'd have to be a miner, you'd have to. You'd have to know so much that one person could not possibly know. And yet pencils happen in such abundance, nobody ever goes to a store looking for one and finds that they're not there. It's a remarkable thing, but that's the way markets work. It's a magic that we ignore or.

Vilify at our tarot, the concept of being inspired by an idea. And so for our viewers, if you have an idea and you're inspired, consider who can help you get that idea accomplished. Consider what you might do to protect your idea. We have a great episode, by the way, where we've interviewed a gentleman who created a blockchain technology called Easy IP EasyIP today, and for as little as less than $100, you can go and register your idea with an immutable timestamp to give you that first point of protection so that you can recognize the value of your intellectual property. That is an innovation in a world where we want to be able to protect the innovations that we have. And so just considering the US Patent Office alone and what value has been created out of that for a global scale, I mean, it's really tremendous. It's almost mind boggling just to consider of all the products in the known world, just how many of them stemmed out of the U.S. patent Office. So to be able to have that ability is really profound. And so if you take a moment, Larry, I'd love to hear some of your final thoughts. What would you want people to know and consider about the importance of liberty and the importance of character as we go about our bigger and brighter future?

Well, I think those two things, liberty and character, as I've often said in many places, are two sides of the same coin. You can't have one without the other. Without liberty, how will we even know if you have character? We have to give you significant liberty and see what your choices are before we find out what your character is all about. And I think vice versa. People who lack character are not going to enjoy liberty, the absence of character, that is to say, people who might be profoundly dishonest or irresponsible or timid or ungrateful or irresponsible, they're not going to be a free people. The lack of character will produce such chaos that historically we know what happens. A strong man comes in and knocks heads together until he brings order out of the chaos and there go your liberties. So the two things, liberty and character, are intertwined inextricably so. But I also want people to know that they should remember that liberty is rare and precious. Few people in the history of the world have lived In a situation that could be described as one of substantial liberty, most people have been historically have been serfs or slaves or. Or simply lived in a system where they had to be in constant fear of those in political power. That's the way most of the world has had to live. So you might say tyranny is the natural order of things. And liberty, when it arises, is kind of rare and precious. And it's not automatic, it's not guaranteed. Just because you've had substantial liberty doesn't mean your kids will. We can lose it all. Even President Reagan put it so well when he said, we're just a generation away from the extinguishing liberty. Depending upon what's going on up here, if people forget what it's all about and why they must commit themselves to it, support it, defend it, then it will not be long for this world. And liberty at the same time is so important that I think it's not an exaggeration to say that life without it is unthinkable, if not impossible. Can you imagine transplanting yourself into North Korea, which is one of the countries in the world with the least degree of liberty, just from what we know of it from afar? If you were living there today, you'd be constantly monitored, constantly restricted and constrained. You wouldn't be able really to live your own life because the Dear Leader has plans for you. And so what ends up happening is you do what you can get by with or what he tells you to do. So he's living his life through you instead of you living your life. I think that's unthinkable. I wouldn't want to live five minutes in that kind of situation, even if somebody says, well, but if you're free, you're going to sometimes make mistakes and maybe you'll have to suffer the consequences. Hey, give that to me any day of the week over a The situation of being a kept citizen, humbled at every turn by somebody who thinks he knows how to live my life better than I can. I'd rather enjoy the slings and arrows of uncertainty in that situation than to bear the burdens of living unfree as somebody else's slave.

Well, with that in mind, we want to celebrate freedom, the freedom of the entrepreneur, the freedom of innovation, and how we can overcome the types of challenges you just identified. And we can't wait for you to join us on our next episode next week. Thank you so much, Larry, for being with us today.

Thank you, Richard.