Latest / SILVER / GOLD / $UFD Meme Coin Investing & Global Economics / **WAIT!** ANOTHER State MOveS to RECLAIM Silver & Gold as Money 💰💰 - "Show Me State"
Transcript
- 0:00What we can do is we can use gold and silver for the payments
- 0:02of debts intentionally. And I think now we're coming to
- 0:05a time in history when, you know, we're talking about the
- 0:08the gravitation away from the dollar, even the international
- 0:11de globalization of the dollar, the de dollarization of the
- 0:14global economy. We're talking about how, you
- 0:16know, gradually the dollar is being destroyed through
- 0:18inflation. We're talking about the risk of
- 0:20going to a digital currency. We're talking about, OK, is the
- 0:23banking industry down for decades to come?
- 0:25What's the way that we can ameliorate that risk?
- 0:30Silver and gold investors are scared.
- 0:34Is the dollar losing its value? Did our founding fathers see
- 0:39this type of scenario unfolding and wisely put language into the
- 0:43United States Constitution to allow you to protect yourself by
- 0:48using gold and silver as legal tender?
- 0:51Today, we're fortunate to be joined by Bill Hardwick, a
- 0:55Missouri State Representative. He's one of the elected
- 0:58officials here in Missouri who's leading the charge for legal
- 1:02tender legislation. Bill, welcome to Ron's Basement.
- 1:05Hey, Ron, how you doing today? I'm doing great.
- 1:07It's an honor to have you here. Hey.
- 1:08It's hard to be in your basement.
- 1:09This is pretty cool and dwell with you among you know, the
- 1:12basement dwellers, so that's awesome.
- 1:13Yeah, well, the basement dwellers and I always, you know,
- 1:16I appreciate you saying that because you and I are here
- 1:19talking, we're talking about legal tender legislation, the
- 1:22importance. But the real important person is
- 1:26that third person who's joining us, who is scared.
- 1:29Right. And what you mentioned I think
- 1:31is the framing of the problem that the dollar is being
- 1:33destroyed, It's being printed into oblivion.
- 1:36Inflation is taking its value away since since the dollar
- 1:39became a free floating currency, its value is only measured
- 1:42relative to other things, goods and services in our country,
- 1:46other products, other currencies.
- 1:47And as our and as our governments printed, printed
- 1:49more money, right. There's been a de dollarization,
- 1:52the global economy, a devaluation of the dollar at
- 1:54home. And people are starting to feel
- 1:57it, and people are starting. It feels like it's percolating,
- 2:01that more and more Americans are realizing that there's something
- 2:05not right. Maybe they don't completely
- 2:07understand it, but they feel like something's not.
- 2:09Right now that is true. I sense that when I talked to
- 2:11constituents and people around Missouri that, you know, the
- 2:14four O 1K seems less valuable than it was before.
- 2:16I had a constituent who told me as I get older I'm stronger
- 2:19because now I can carry $300 worth of groceries out of the
- 2:22grocery store. And here he meant was, you know,
- 2:24that like all that, that cardinal is the price of it's
- 2:27gone up so, so much and they're feeling that.
- 2:29They're feeling like they worked hard.
- 2:31They want some certainty, some stability, and are, you know,
- 2:34their dollar and their purchase power is being destroyed
- 2:35gradually and rapidly in some ways.
- 2:38Yeah, and I want to point out I'm going to circle back to what
- 2:40you just said. Bill said that one of his
- 2:42constituents said he's getting stronger as he gets older
- 2:47because now he can carry $300 worth of groceries out of the
- 2:50where it used to be 3 carts, now it's you can carry it in three
- 2:53baths, 33 small. Bags.
- 2:55Everybody notices that. I mean, and and inflation hurts
- 2:58everybody of all income brackets.
- 3:00Whether you're somebody who's on a fixed income, whether you're
- 3:03you're about to retire, whether you're, you know, just trying to
- 3:06get by and feed your family, you feel the effects of it.
- 3:09And it's frustrating for people who've, like, worked hard, they
- 3:12invested, they saved, and they're seeing, you know, the
- 3:14value of their efforts just go, go, go before their eyes.
- 3:18Slowly eroded away and it's and it's kind of a slow process and
- 3:23some people refer to it as a hidden tax that the government
- 3:29again to circle back to what you said.
- 3:31Once the dollar was taken off the gold standard, it was free
- 3:36to be printed at will. And if the government needed
- 3:40more money in the past, they would have to raise taxes.
- 3:44But when they discovered that they had a free floating
- 3:46currency, they could print as much as they want, and that just
- 3:49dilutes the dollar and makes purchasing power go down.
- 3:53Yeah, via Fiat. And the American people pay for
- 3:56spending one way or the other, whether it's to a cut back to
- 3:59services, whether that's just increase of taxes or whether
- 4:02that's to the government printing money to pay for its
- 4:04own obligations that it's made. And then you fill that with by
- 4:07your purchasing power going away.
- 4:09And every company you do business with, everything's more
- 4:11expensive for them too. So one way or the other, you
- 4:13always pay for spending. And Milton Friedman said
- 4:16inflation is always the responsibility of the federal
- 4:18government because we know the value of things.
- 4:20The price is supply and demand, right?
- 4:21There's a demand curve. And so who controls the supply
- 4:24of the dollar? What's the federal government?
- 4:26So they're always responsible for its devaluation and
- 4:28inflation. Yeah, yeah.
- 4:30And I often bring up the point, and I think our viewers maybe
- 4:33wonder this as well at times. You know, the Federal Reserve
- 4:36says they have a target that we have 2% inflation.
- 4:40Now we both know that as your constituents said with this
- 4:43$300.00 grocery example, that they've well exceeded that
- 4:47target. But why does the dollar have to
- 4:50go down 2% in value anyway? Why does inflation have to be
- 4:53so? There's an interesting point
- 4:55about the the entropy of all currencies like that.
- 4:58There's a reason why there aren't any more Roman dollars
- 5:00for the Roman Empire. There's a reason why there
- 5:02aren't, you know, the currencies that existed in the Ottoman
- 5:04Empire before, right? It's because there's like this,
- 5:07there's like this decline that's expected to happen.
- 5:09And in some days, you know, people like Tocqueville and
- 5:12beforehand, the framers of the constitution probably read
- 5:14history enough to know that is that a government that starts to
- 5:17to fund itself through the generation of a currency will
- 5:20start to decline. There'll be entropy of that
- 5:22currency's value over time. And it seems like it's been
- 5:24inevitable throughout the ages. And I know we're going to come
- 5:27back around to what I think is a solution to this, like a
- 5:29solution to make us transcend these problems in some way.
- 5:32But yeah, that's exactly right. There's just like the entropy of
- 5:34the dollar. And then, you know, when
- 5:37Keynesian economics came about and became in vogue in the
- 5:39United States during the Great Depression, New Deal, the
- 5:42solution for all economic problems is to print more money.
- 5:44Print, print, print more money. And then as you know as we did
- 5:47that, it accelerated the the decline, You know, Yeah, yeah,
- 5:50go ahead. Well, no, it's it's just
- 5:52interesting. You bring up the Depression, A
- 5:54lot of the viewers are are always interested in gold and
- 5:57silver confiscation. And Roosevelt, yeah, confiscated
- 6:02the gold, right, Because he couldn't print more dollars
- 6:06unless he had more gold. But it's really interesting that
- 6:09when they first they confiscated the gold and then once they had
- 6:13it, he got a double bonus because he then revalued the
- 6:16gold, which allowed him to essentially print dollars and
- 6:19devalue the. Gold.
- 6:20And it's interesting. The point you're also making
- 6:22kind of implicitly is that our association with gold and silver
- 6:25and tangibles to monetary value, it is kind of was a part of the
- 6:30the founding of American economics.
- 6:32The idea of having a Fiat currency is actually something
- 6:35relatively new to us in America, you know, new to us in Western
- 6:37civilization. And before there was something
- 6:39that that stabilized the supply and demand.
- 6:43But if I can make a trillion dollars, you know, like during
- 6:45the depression, Keynesian economics, you know after the
- 6:482008 market collapse, we had a interject demand quantitative
- 6:51easing solution that drove inflation up, which actually as
- 6:54people hedged against inflation by buying gold and silver, those
- 6:57prices rose. And then after COVID as people
- 6:59quit, you know, quit opening the doors for business, few people
- 7:02showing up for work less production.
- 7:04The federal government's solution was inject lots and
- 7:07lots of capital cash dollars, give people payouts.
- 7:10And the problem is with that obviously is that we have so
- 7:13much cash in the economy chasing less production goods and
- 7:16services and that means those goods and services cost more and
- 7:19your dollar is worth less. And you actually see, I mean the
- 7:23value of gold with, you know, it rose substantially during
- 7:26quarantine of easing post 2008. There's a market component there
- 7:29as people buy it and drive up demand.
- 7:31But there's also a component, people are hedging against the
- 7:33destruction of the dollar and it's about twice, you know, it's
- 7:35better than me, but twice the value now that it was 2011, 2010
- 7:39as there's so much people who want to hedge against the
- 7:42destruction of the dollar right now, decline of the dollar.
- 7:45You know, there's another YouTube content creator and a
- 7:48real leader in the gold and silver area.
- 7:51His name's Rob Keens and he's familiar with them.
- 7:54And he's also a supporter of the of the of the movement for legal
- 7:59tender legislation. I was talking to him the other
- 8:01day and he actually wrote a book about this.
- 8:04What was part of a book that he wrote that I asked him the
- 8:07question. I said is it is it true that
- 8:09most of the greatness that happened in America happened
- 8:14during the period when we were on the gold and silver standard?
- 8:16And he said absolutely. He said there's a a section of
- 8:19my book about it. We've done some great things
- 8:22post 1971, but the real meat of the growth and the real
- 8:28advancements that America made happen when we were on the gold
- 8:31and silver. State Yeah, we had sound money
- 8:33and we had a sound system of economics that took us from
- 8:36this, you know, this nation country in the late 1700s to a
- 8:41bludgeoning super into a blossoming better superpower,
- 8:44right. And and that's probably because
- 8:46we have some sound components to that.
- 8:48Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I also want to point out and
- 8:51circle back to something you said.
- 8:52You know, the Founding Fathers put this in the Constitution.
- 8:57So when we when we talk about it, I think sometimes we can
- 9:00feel like we're on the fringe and and but the reality is the
- 9:03truth is there's a reason why the Founding Fathers put it in
- 9:07the Constitution. They were trying to do some
- 9:09timeless things. Yeah, I'm an attorney by trade
- 9:11and the the difference between federal and state government
- 9:14powers is always very interesting to me.
- 9:16So there's a new rate of powers of the federal government and
- 9:18the Articles of Confederation before the Constitution allowed
- 9:21states a lot more freeway in making currencies.
- 9:24And there was kind of debate, you know, with Hamilton and
- 9:26stuff about OK, do we want, we need a strong country with a
- 9:29strong currency? And so in the Constitution, the
- 9:32most of coinage of money was was given to the federal government.
- 9:35But in the reserve powers to the state, it says no state shall
- 9:37coin money except gold and silver for the legal tender for
- 9:41the payment of debts. Right.
- 9:42Gold and silver can be used to transact business.
- 9:45And you know, there's there's a historical significance to that
- 9:47about all the cultures around the world.
- 9:49One commonality. See what money is.
- 9:51Money is a common metric for valuing things, right?
- 9:54But your, your $10.00 bill, your $100 bill here doesn't have,
- 9:57like, inherent value. It it's a way of measuring the
- 10:00value of the other things. Your chee's mug, right?
- 10:02Your box back here, the bear. It's a relative value.
- 10:05And so, so in the. So gold has been used by that,
- 10:08by cultures and empires and for millennia, right?
- 10:11Because it's it's easy to standardize.
- 10:14It has it has practical industrial applications and
- 10:16value, right. There's reasons why gold is
- 10:18useful. It's malleable.
- 10:20You know it. We can we'll talk hopefully in a
- 10:22second about all the ways that's going to be necessary for
- 10:24furtherance electronics and stuff like that that I see.
- 10:27But like it's uses that metric. So the founding fathers
- 10:29identified that but also they intentionally didn't say the
- 10:33state couldn't coin gold as money intentionally.
- 10:36They said a state could use gold and silver for the payment of
- 10:39debts. And even then So what the
- 10:41Constitution is about, it's about preventing the
- 10:43centralization of authority economic power authority.
- 10:46And it's about saying OK, you know the the United States
- 10:48capital you can do XY and Z and the state governments can do
- 10:51ABC. And so intentionally the power
- 10:54to to to have you know have these market forces, these
- 10:57regulation market forces to do business was divided between the
- 11:00state and federal governments to some degree.
- 11:02So the so the government can't coin Missouri bucks, they can't
- 11:05coin U.S. dollar. We can't print the dollar.
- 11:07The Federal Reserve does that right.
- 11:09But, you know, the, the central bank does that.
- 11:11What we can do is we can use gold and silver for the payments
- 11:13of debts intentionally. And I think now we're coming to
- 11:16a time in history when, you know, we're talking about the
- 11:19the gravitation away from the dollar, even the international
- 11:21deglobalization of the dollar, the de dollarization of the
- 11:25global economy. We're talking about how, you
- 11:27know, gradually the dollar is being destroyed through
- 11:29inflation. We're talking about the risk of
- 11:31going to a digital currency. We're talking about, OK, is the
- 11:34banking industry down for decades to come?
- 11:36What's the way that we can ameliorate that risk?
- 11:38The state of Missouri. We can have another market for
- 11:40banks to transact business. We could have another way for
- 11:43people to maintain assets, to have a barometer of metric for
- 11:48the payment of debts, the value of our goods and services in
- 11:50Missouri. So if there's a decline of the
- 11:52dollar, so if we move to a digital currency, which would be
- 11:54disastrous for our community banks and regional banks and
- 11:57local banks, right, It would be terrible for them.
- 11:59It put them out of business. We move toward that.
- 12:01It gives the local banks a market to be in.
- 12:04It gives us a hedge for the risk, the political risk of, you
- 12:07know, what decline, the economic risk of what would happen with
- 12:10the banking industry. And it gives us a way to
- 12:12prevent, you know, we think a lot of us conservatives like
- 12:14myself are afraid of that movement toward a digitization
- 12:16of our currency and what that means for your freedom to
- 12:19transact business, right. So it solves a lot of problems
- 12:22and it gives us a whole new market to invest in, new
- 12:24business in the state of Missouri, like other states have
- 12:26done too. And I might throw in Gold has
- 12:29done a pretty good job. Not for decades, not for
- 12:33centuries, but literally for thousands of years of
- 12:36maintaining value. Yeah, there's something about
- 12:38since mankind encountered gold, No, seriously, it's got, it's
- 12:41really interesting. It's like a because I actually
- 12:43have a degree in classics too. So one of my fields of studies
- 12:45is antiquity, right? You know, the Greeks and Romans,
- 12:47you know, ancient Mesopotamia and it's just interesting since
- 12:50mankind encountered gold, they used it as a thing to to barter
- 12:53with, to do Congress with. It had some value.
- 12:56You could say, well, it has value as jewelry, right?
- 12:58Why is it attractive as jewelry? And then me, you know, my
- 13:01background in the Army is engineer officers.
- 13:02So I think, OK, what can you use gold for?
- 13:05And we had a debate in the house last session where some people
- 13:08may the point, OK, there's only commodity value to gold.
- 13:11There's only market value, which is true.
- 13:12The more people buy it, you know, there's a seller, they
- 13:15agree to sell for a certain price that fluctuates the price.
- 13:18But gold does have intrinsic value as a conductor.
- 13:21As you know, there's gold in your iPhone, There's gold in
- 13:23your smartphone, there's gold in electronics that need to conduct
- 13:26electricity super efficiently, but itself is a conductor, you
- 13:29know, used in semiconductors to control the flow of electricity
- 13:32and advance electronics. So as long as we're going to
- 13:34have civilization that uses electronics, there's a practical
- 13:38application for gold. So that makes even more sense,
- 13:40right? That we should have it to be a
- 13:41component of our state's treasury treasury's reserves,
- 13:44right, That banks can start to have it as a reserve in our, you
- 13:47know, in our state, not only to say, OK, you know, we've divided
- 13:50up how our assets are calculated.
- 13:51They don't in in this bill. Banks don't have to use gold,
- 13:54right? Nobody's forced to do business
- 13:55in gold. I'm not about that forcing you
- 13:58to engage in the market. But what I want to do is I want
- 14:00to have an alternative to what I think is more and more people
- 14:04are worried about the US economy, what could happen, the
- 14:06banking industry, you know, inflation, the destruction of
- 14:09the dollar. Why don't we have a market where
- 14:11there's a way to do business as an alternative to that, that
- 14:14that addresses all the risk, economic problems, political
- 14:17problems, you know, problems of division of power, the federal
- 14:20and state government that I'm concerned about.
- 14:21It addresses all those simultaneously.
- 14:23Interesting. So let's get to your legislation
- 14:27because we've had a great discussion about the why.
- 14:31What is the legislation and why don't you tell the viewers what
- 14:34you're doing here in Missouri. I'd like to say that, you know,
- 14:37behind every piece of this legislation there's a driving
- 14:40force and I have the feeling that you are passionate about
- 14:44this and I can call you a driving force.
- 14:46Behind. Yeah, Senator Bill, I will
- 14:47follow that. Last year.
- 14:49He represents the Saint Charles area in the Missouri Senate and
- 14:52kind of led that charge and what there I I was reading it.
- 14:54I was thinking about it. I was studying more and I was
- 14:55like, this is really cool. This is a great idea.
- 14:58So this year he's filed the version of the Senate.
- 15:00I'm filing the version of the House.
- 15:01We're going to send it forward. You know, the ideas we, you
- 15:04know, we get the leadership in both chambers.
- 15:05The president Pro Tem of the Senate, the speaker of the House
- 15:07refer it go to committee. What the legislation does is it
- 15:10authorizes the state because the state government needs to have a
- 15:13power given to them to through legislation authorized to enact
- 15:17basically that provision of the constitution.
- 15:19Gold and silver will be legal tender for the payment of debts
- 15:22in Missouri. So the treasurer's going to have
- 15:24to have a involvement there to create a reserve where we have
- 15:27to standardize a way that which you could pay to the state of
- 15:29Missouri using gold and silver, some tangible version of that.
- 15:32It may, you know, and I don't envision like a gold brick
- 15:34necessarily, but there could be though they call them gold backs
- 15:37that there's kind of a paper document, it's imbued with gold
- 15:39in. It has a tangible quality.
- 15:41It has a fixed set quality right that distinguishes it from a
- 15:44Fiat currency. And then so one way that you
- 15:47turn it into a currency legal tender is you take away the
- 15:50taxation of gold, the capital gains tax, tax associated with
- 15:53it. So we tax goods and services,
- 15:55right? Mm hmm.
- 15:56But we don't tax money, right, because money is a measurement
- 15:59of value of those goods and services.
- 16:01So one of the ways you get after making gold legal tender is you
- 16:04take away the state's ability to tax it, right?
- 16:07It becomes something that now it's not a commodity that has a
- 16:10tax associated with it. It it has a relative value to
- 16:13other commodities in goods and services, right, right.
- 16:15And so we want is so the dollar is a metric for goods and
- 16:17services and we know there's issues with trusting in that in
- 16:21the long term metric. So now we'll make gold and
- 16:23silver, those two precious metals, a metric for valuing
- 16:26goods and services in Missouri. And and I think a lot of people,
- 16:28including myself and maybe even our viewers, we are.
- 16:31So we've been so trained to think of everything in dollar
- 16:35terms. Yeah, that, that it's hard for
- 16:37us to realize like, yeah, we measure, it's easy for us to
- 16:41measure the price of gold and dollars, right.
- 16:45But the inverse it's, you know it's it, but it we do.
- 16:49Go ahead. And no, they're all their
- 16:50analogies like that. I mean, Bitcoin is like that.
- 16:53Yeah. And the reason why I There's
- 16:54issues Bitcoin too, right? There's Bitcoin.
- 16:56But even though Bitcoin's purely digital, right, we're talking
- 16:59about something tangible, you want a tangible turn into this
- 17:01decentralized. But Bitcoin's like that's a
- 17:03relative, you know, the foreign currency exchange market.
- 17:05It's a relative gauge. You know, the euro versus the
- 17:08yen versus the dollar. They're just ways of gauging the
- 17:11value, the exchange rate, you know, 1.34 to the euro, whatever
- 17:13it is the dollar at any given time.
- 17:15So we just have, we'll just have another thing that we can do.
- 17:17But what's beautiful about it is that because it's tangible and
- 17:20there's a fixed supply, it distinguishes itself from
- 17:23something that, you know in in China, they can print as much as
- 17:27a currency as they want to and they can exchange that for as
- 17:29many dollars. So China can create X amount of
- 17:32dollars it wants to and use that in the economy and use that to
- 17:36to have manipulated purchasing power.
- 17:38Right. They and they're China will
- 17:40eventually have issues with the way that they've manipulated
- 17:42their own currency. But what they've almost done in
- 17:45China is they went away from a currency to like a credit system
- 17:49that the the people in China have government credits, right,
- 17:52for their behavior and they're and they have enough good
- 17:54credits. You're good.
- 17:55You know you're doing well. You're doing what the Chinese
- 17:57government wants you to do. You can have a business.
- 17:59You can travel. If you don't, you, you can't,
- 18:01right. You can't succeed.
- 18:02You can't economically prosper. You can't go free come and go.
- 18:05You can't travel inside the country.
- 18:07And so a system where like you go toward that where your
- 18:09currency is not really actually barometers of goods and
- 18:13services. Now it's a barometry
- 18:15relationship with the generator of the Fiat, which is a central
- 18:18bank that turns into a credit system.
- 18:20And so there's really no free market in China.
- 18:22And what we want to, I want to do in Missouri and the United
- 18:25States to do the opposite. I want to create a decentralized
- 18:28free market system where the where we're using to exchange
- 18:31for debts is actually a way to gauge to value a metric, a
- 18:35barometer of the value of goods and services, right.
- 18:38And then I don't have to go as permission like if I have my my
- 18:41gold back or however, you know, that measurement gets
- 18:43standardized over time. I have that, you know, in my
- 18:46hand, this tangible thing. I don't have to go as permission
- 18:49from DC or from whatever to go say, hey, I'm going to trade
- 18:53this and that's what we're talking about capitalism is you
- 18:57have something that that's useful to me.
- 18:59I have something that's useful to you.
- 19:01We bargain about how much of your thing useful to you is
- 19:04going to be traded for what's useful to me voluntarily and
- 19:08then we make a trade. So that's the system we want to
- 19:10have, right? We give the agency and power
- 19:12back to the person that has that in their hand and they go, I can
- 19:14trade this for, you know, you changing the oil in my car, me
- 19:18buying meat at the grocery store.
- 19:20We know we trade goods and services in a in a mutually
- 19:23beneficial exchange. Yeah.
- 19:24It I heard someone recently say like the best forms of money
- 19:30grow. I want to get your comment on
- 19:32this come up organically the worst forms of money which I
- 19:36think is correct me if I'm wrong what you were referring to with
- 19:39China and what feels like to a certain degree is happening in
- 19:41the United States. Get forced on us from above and
- 19:46in that if free market and I will circle back to what we
- 19:49talked about earlier the the the the best of times in the United
- 19:53States where we made the real gains I think were the periods
- 19:57that number one we were our our currency was tethered to silver
- 20:01and gold and the free market was allowed to to.
- 20:06If you're looking to buy gold, silver, or platinum, do yourself
- 20:10a favor and check out Pimbex, the online precious metals
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- 20:18I was a happy customer before they offered to support the
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- 20:28will too. And be sure to tell him that
- 20:31you're from Ron's basement. The free market is the biggest
- 20:33advantage the United States had. Yeah.
- 20:35So one of my favorite economists in political philosophers is FA
- 20:38Hayek, who wrote extensively about central economic planning.
- 20:42And he describes something called this information problem,
- 20:44where there's the central planner who's trying to plan all
- 20:47the multitude of transactions and that, you know, the
- 20:49individual transactions that could line up.
- 20:51But no matter how smart the central planner is, the economic
- 20:54planner, he doesn't know what the person on the side of the
- 20:58street needs to know to survive for their business.
- 21:00Yeah. So when the the Soviet Union
- 21:02first came about, you know, it's, you know, Soviet Union
- 21:06communism heavily central economic planning.
- 21:08You know that you know the government knows best about what
- 21:10how to distribute goods and services.
- 21:12And so there were, there were detailed plans about, OK, we
- 21:15need X amount of toothpaste here, X amount of cheese here, X
- 21:18amount of bread here. Right.
- 21:19This is how we'll distribute it for the needs and masses.
- 21:21But no matter how much they tried to plan, they can never
- 21:24get it right. There was a there was a shortage
- 21:26of food there. There was too much toothpaste in
- 21:28this other city. Right.
- 21:30And the reason why is because the guy who's selling hot dogs
- 21:33every day in day out on the street corner, he learns faster
- 21:37than the faster than the government exactly how many hot
- 21:39dogs they have on hand. Because if he has too many he
- 21:42loses money and if he has too few he turns away customers.
- 21:45So him trying to survive and optimize the the the supply of
- 21:50his goods and services to the customer actually actually
- 21:54quickly, very quickly, right. Efficiently some would say.
- 21:57I mean I'm not efficient market guy.
- 21:58I mean I can't anime not but like efficiently figures out
- 22:01exactly how to have me how many hot dogs to have on hand.
- 22:03If he doesn't he goes out of business.
- 22:06And so nobody who's planning, you know, transactions and
- 22:09distribution, distribution of money and goods and services
- 22:12will know what he'll learn by doing business day in and day
- 22:15out. Right, right.
- 22:17And gold and silver are a good solution or a good conduit for
- 22:22for that to occur. Yeah.
- 22:23And that's the idea. Like I'm so I'm decentralizing.
- 22:26I mean like I said, we're addressing the problem
- 22:28inflation, right? We're addressing what I think or
- 22:31probably growing systemic risk in the banking system.
- 22:34We're addressing the A, the the centralization of power, which
- 22:37is the problem, but we're also addressing that, OK, I'm using
- 22:41gold and silver to decentralize economic decision making to the
- 22:44individual. Yeah, yeah, which which
- 22:47incentivizes market based decisions, capitalism.
- 22:51Creativity. And right.
- 22:53And the silver I have a silver round.
- 22:56I won't reach back there and grab it, but there's another guy
- 23:00who's a great YouTube content creator of bald guy money.
- 23:03We're having a discussion. And he had one ounce silver
- 23:06round is like a battery. Not not in terms of storing and
- 23:11it's great for use in electrical batteries, but a value battery,
- 23:16right? Yeah.
- 23:17I change the oil in your car, you give me a silver round.
- 23:21I don't really need anything from you right now.
- 23:23But some other guy who can fix my lawn mower, you know we can,
- 23:28we can, we can make our own decisions, yeah.
- 23:29And that's what's interesting about it like so that and there
- 23:31was a criticism last year about, OK, an economic collapse, what's
- 23:34the value of it? Well, at first I'd argue that
- 23:37that us using those as those metals to transact business is
- 23:41actually a way to address the risk of an economic collapse.
- 23:44It's one of the things that prevents the collapse of our
- 23:46company because even if there was a banking collapse and even
- 23:49if there was more trouble with the dollar, people in Missouri
- 23:52could still go. I have so many gold backs on
- 23:54hand and I know I could trade that in Missouri for gasoline or
- 23:57whatever. So that's a way to address that.
- 23:59But then, OK, so let's say, let's take that.
- 24:01Let's take that hypothetical scenario.
- 24:03You know, the economy is is crashed, there's gold and
- 24:05silver. It still has utilitarian value
- 24:09in continuing the society industrially, like you said, the
- 24:11use of batteries, you know, the use of electronics.
- 24:14Yeah, the chemical processes we use, you know, to make mirrors,
- 24:17to make pretty much anything. Solar panels, Solar panels.
- 24:20Exactly, right. So you can, you can, you can
- 24:22transfer solar energy to electrical energy.
- 24:24Yeah, using these precious metals.
- 24:26And so there's like all kinds of things that would be very useful
- 24:29actually, you know, if there were an eventuality like that.
- 24:32So that's interesting to me too and that when that point was
- 24:35made last year in session, you know at my, my visceral reaction
- 24:38was like that's off, right. And then I was like let me just
- 24:42go study all the all the industrial applications of gold
- 24:45and silver. And I was like, you know it's
- 24:46one of the things you know we can't function off the Internet
- 24:49but you don't really have, you actually don't have electronic
- 24:50communications network without gold and silver.
- 24:53So it seems like there's there's always, there's utility for
- 24:56society and any condition for it, right.
- 24:58As long as we're as long as we use electricity, there'll be a
- 25:01need for gold and silver. Yeah, yeah.
- 25:03And I think that, and I'm sure our viewer would agree with us
- 25:06as well. In the United States, there
- 25:09seems to be a, there's a growing level of awareness surrounding
- 25:14gold and silver. But this is just my opinion.
- 25:17It seems like since I was born in 1970, when I look back at
- 25:21history, it seems like since we went off the gold standard,
- 25:25there has been a, oh, an encouragement from the powers
- 25:31that be to kind of dissuade people away from silver and
- 25:36gold. Like there hasn't been like most
- 25:37people are in the United States. Now you go elsewhere in the
- 25:42world. I talk to people all over the
- 25:44world. They have a completely different
- 25:46perspective when it comes to silver and gold.
- 25:49But here in the United States, it's been somewhat tamped down.
- 25:53And whether or not that was a coordinated effort or, you know,
- 25:56I like to say I do like to bring up and we're not getting into
- 25:59the political rabbit hole here, but but you know, when Nixon
- 26:02took the United States temporarily off the gold
- 26:05standard, I mean to me that was kind of like a divorce.
- 26:09And so why would the US government want gold to be
- 26:12doing? Well, they just basically
- 26:14divorced the dollar right from gold.
- 26:17So, you know, it's it's like they like they traded teams or
- 26:21something like they're not. They're thinking, well, that's
- 26:23not good. There's a reason why we're, you
- 26:25know. Yeah.
- 26:26And and so, you know, I've heard the arguments about why the
- 26:29divorce from the gold standard was economically viable, right?
- 26:32There's no inherent, there's no, it's all market value of gold.
- 26:35It's a commodity like weed or whatever.
- 26:37But it did seem like we did that.
- 26:38We also took the guard wheels off for the government's
- 26:41national debt to whack up so much.
- 26:44And we started to do what, you know, our our purchasing power
- 26:47and our ability to scale our industrial might is part of
- 26:50America's might globally, right. We can fund an army.
- 26:53We can fund, you know, we can fund production, right?
- 26:57So that was definitely a strategic advantage to us.
- 26:59But we started to do what empires from the French to the
- 27:04British to the Romans to the Persians did, which is we go,
- 27:08OK, we can just make stuff up, you know what I mean?
- 27:12And so we could create an obligation and we can go poof,
- 27:16have a way to pay for it. Little by little by little,
- 27:18right? Like, oh, we'll just do it this
- 27:20time. That's why, Nixon said
- 27:21Temporarily, Right. I'm sure it was.
- 27:24Yeah. Well, we'll just do it this one
- 27:25time, then we'll get back on track.
- 27:27Wow. Never got back on track.
- 27:29Sorry. No, you're right.
- 27:30So we've done that. So The thing is, The thing is
- 27:31that all those governments and empires and our, you know, the
- 27:34predecessors and global hegematic powers didn't quite
- 27:37realize is the government can print money, but it can't create
- 27:41wealth. Yeah, Those are two separate
- 27:43things, right? So I can make much more dollars,
- 27:46right? But what happens is I'm not
- 27:48actually making the country richer, right?
- 27:49Right. I just make your dollar less
- 27:52valuable, right. And so wealth is generated
- 27:54through, I have something that you need or want and I trade it
- 27:58at a profit at a premium, right. Right.
- 28:00And so I, I, I accumulate for me and my family and whatever more
- 28:04things that are valuable. And if I just make dollars, if
- 28:08there was only One Cup of coffee in the United States economy and
- 28:12there was a trillion dollars in the coffee cup will be worth a
- 28:15trillion dollars. Yeah.
- 28:16And that's kind of what the people who are printing money to
- 28:18solve the problem, I don't think.
- 28:20Realize and I think also and you are a fascinating person to talk
- 28:23to you by the way and I don't say that to everybody as as as
- 28:30as technology improves and the market creates efficiencies,
- 28:36right, that people should actually be able to get more
- 28:41value for the value of their dollar, not the inverse which
- 28:45has happened, right. I mean I mean I'll tell you I
- 28:48was, I was when I was in college, quick story I was
- 28:51during the summers there's a can factory here in Saint Louis
- 28:55Continental can company. I was a steel worker and steel
- 28:58Workers Union and covered guys on vacation.
- 29:00That plant had been open since pre World War 2.
- 29:05The guys that work there who were wonderful people said that
- 29:09in the 1940s there were 2000 people working in that plant,
- 29:13OK, it was massive. And they only produced, and this
- 29:17was in the late 80s, they only produced like 20% of the cans
- 29:22that we were making in the 80s 'cause we had this new robotic
- 29:24welding stuff. And yeah, that that that is
- 29:27efficiencies improved, the value of the dollar really should go.
- 29:33Yeah. Yeah, we should, we should
- 29:34optimize the price point. Yeah.
- 29:35So theoretically is all those hot dog vendors, you know and
- 29:37the and the manufacturers of the car or whatever, yeah, are
- 29:39maximizing exactly what they need.
- 29:41And with their sub vendors, they're maximizing the perfect
- 29:44price point and theoretically that should optimize the price
- 29:47point. That's not happening at all.
- 29:49No, there's there's less stability.
- 29:50There's more volatility now. Yeah, and there's more
- 29:53concentration of wealth right in this country than any other
- 29:57time. And of course that's not covered
- 29:59on on CNN or or any of the major any of the major news networks.
- 30:04So people are finding themselves now.
- 30:08It's ironic, right? And one of the other state reps
- 30:11brought this up like in the 70s, an average American family with
- 30:16one income earner could live a pretty good life.
- 30:19Now an average American family needs two full time income
- 30:24earners and a couple side hustles.
- 30:27Yeah, to get. By first Mining Gold is a
- 30:29development company advancing two of the largest gold projects
- 30:32in Canada, Spring Pole in Ontario and Duparque, located in
- 30:37Quebec. Each already has 5 million
- 30:40ounces of gold reserves, but exploration initiatives are
- 30:45underway at both projects to find even more gold.
- 30:49First, mining is well financed, has zero debt and owns an
- 30:53interest in four additional Canadian Gold development
- 30:57projects. And we've taken middle income
- 30:59people in the country and we've just squeezed, right?
- 31:01Yeah, because that and the inflation is the worst squeeze
- 31:04from people. Because this, your paycheck is
- 31:07worth less. Yeah.
- 31:08And your your savings and your investments are worth less,
- 31:11right? You you'll get, you'll make it a
- 31:13better return on your CD on interest, which is some positive
- 31:15but doesn't actually make up for how much you were squeezed.
- 31:18No, no. And So what we want is we want
- 31:19people to have an opportunity, incentive to save, to accumulate
- 31:23wealth for their family, right? That's what I want to make
- 31:26easier. And the monetary system we have
- 31:28now and that we're hurdling toward the United States is just
- 31:31making it more and more difficult for those people.
- 31:33You know, a mutual friend of ours, Pat Holland from the
- 31:36Missouri Freedom Initiative, who's also a big supporter of
- 31:39all this legislation. He taught me a term.
- 31:42Taught me a term. Well, nonetheless, nominal
- 31:45confusion, which is what you just described, right.
- 31:48If I went and grabbed $100 bill, I'm 53 years old still to this
- 31:53thing. I'm like, oh, there's $100 bill,
- 31:55you know I want it. But that $100 bill is way
- 31:58different now than it was in 1980.
- 32:01There's no doubt about it. Yeah.
- 32:03That's right. What was, you know, you graduate
- 32:05college and you make $25,000 a year and you're doing great.
- 32:08Yeah. Because now you're in abject
- 32:09poverty. You know what I mean?
- 32:10It's relative what you can buy and what you can save.
- 32:12And those people are hurting. What was $100,000 and you're at
- 32:16the top of the middle class is now you're able to, you know,
- 32:19feed your family basically off of it.
- 32:20Right. And and so people should
- 32:22intuitively feel that that, you know, it's like you're Sisyphia
- 32:25and rolling the boulder up Sisyphus, you know, rolling the
- 32:28boulder up the hill. This is being fast.
- 32:30You're working is we're working harder than ever.
- 32:32Yeah, You know, and it seems like we're just not letting
- 32:35people advance, right? And we went to the opposite
- 32:38incentive structure. Yeah, yeah.
- 32:39And I think that was the case in the earlier days of this
- 32:43country, yeah. Yeah.
- 32:44You work hard, you save, you do well, right?
- 32:47You're going to pass on good things for your children and
- 32:50you're going to have a good life, right?
- 32:50You're going to benefit from it, so.
- 32:52Yeah, I can't help but show this chart.
- 32:54This is the the DXY, the dollar index, right?
- 32:56Since show the viewers real quick since 1985.
- 33:01That's the dollar index which compares the dollars to a basket
- 33:04of other currencies, the euro, the yen.
- 33:08And if we look since 1985, the dollar really isn't down that
- 33:14much in value, right. But I I tell people, yeah, it's
- 33:18not it. That's relative value.
- 33:20You hear all this. Oh, the dollar's strong.
- 33:23The dollar's, you know, the strongest.
- 33:25It's great. Yeah.
- 33:26OK, well, then explain to me, if we took that $100 bill or we use
- 33:31the example of your constituent who gets stronger as he gets
- 33:35older because he can now carry $300 worth of groceries, that
- 33:40that, that the $100 today buys probably half of the groceries,
- 33:46if even that, of 1985. Yeah, but the dollar's strong.
- 33:50So, yeah, So you have a relative value of the dollar chart, Yeah.
- 33:54And so it's relative to other currencies, other currencies
- 33:57that are also experiencing some measure of entropy because of
- 34:00the truth. You have a, you have a through
- 34:02here around 2008, right? And the 2008 financial collapse.
- 34:05Other currencies did maybe a type of quantitative easing or a
- 34:09type of injecting. So their currencies debased a
- 34:11little bit too, right? And there's no relative scale
- 34:13there also. But your chart ends at 2020,
- 34:16right right before the massive spending.
- 34:18This chart doesn't encapsulate the the most significant period
- 34:21of inflation since the late 1970s early 80s we found the
- 34:24United States, and so I'd be interested to see like, what
- 34:26that looks like. For 2020, well, next time I see
- 34:29I'll update. My chart.
- 34:32Yeah. It's just you know, I I don't I
- 34:34don't know which analogy you like to use.
- 34:36You hear people say the dollar is the the best horse in the
- 34:40glue factory. I like to say like if you and I
- 34:43went to left here today and went and found the most suspect used
- 34:48car lot in Saint Louis and we found the four worst cars on
- 34:53that lot, right. That one would be the dollar,
- 34:55one would be the yen, one would be the euro.
- 34:57It's like comparing or you hear people talk about it's like 4
- 35:02guys jump off the Empire State Building and the dollars falling
- 35:06the slowest and says well everything's great so.
- 35:08Yeah, no, that's right. And again, one of our
- 35:10distinctions is. So it may be the best horse, but
- 35:13why not have another horse that doesn't have the flaws that are
- 35:15being created in it? Yeah, and I think I misspoke
- 35:17earlier. I was talking about Bitcoin can
- 35:19be produced indefinitely. The blockchain There's a finite
- 35:22component to Bitcoin for. Sure, yeah.
- 35:24But there are disadvantages to Bitcoin that gold doesn't have,
- 35:27right? And there's also a reason why
- 35:28gold has these applications that Bitcoin doesn't, right?
- 35:31Yeah, so I think it's. And again, like there's a
- 35:33blockchain, there's a password, there's it's much different than
- 35:36what I want to do, which is, you know, you have something
- 35:41tangible. Right, right.
- 35:43Something that I can put in my hand that I don't have to go,
- 35:45you know, log in, right, to make transact business on.
- 35:48Or have to rely on electricity? Or I mean, you know, the worst
- 35:51case scenario. Right, exactly.
- 35:52That's right. Yeah, that's right.
- 35:53In some ways it's notional. I mean, the blockchain is an
- 35:55authentication system, but there's notionality to it,
- 35:58right? There's there's.
- 35:59We've imagined this and it's construction isn't quite real as
- 36:03opposed to something where like you said, there's a banking
- 36:04issue, there's an Internet issue, you know that there's a
- 36:07cyber attack yesterday in the United States, right, That risks
- 36:10some of our ability to have, you know, online presence, you know,
- 36:13our coordination, communication, let's say something like that
- 36:15happens. Wouldn't it be better if we had
- 36:17something that we can still go down to the grocery store, go to
- 36:19the gas station and we're used as a as a commonality for our
- 36:23transaction? And I know that some of the
- 36:25legislation all the states are have their own nuances are
- 36:30providing for state depositories.
- 36:33They're even now talking about the the prospect in some of the
- 36:36states of asset backed digital currencies, not crypto
- 36:39currencies, but that the states would manage through their
- 36:44depository kind of an electronic version of silver and gold that
- 36:48would be 100% backed and transparent and for lack.
- 36:54I don't know if the right word is redeemable, meaning that if I
- 36:56owned one of these units of of digital currency that I could
- 37:00show up at at a certain time and get and get it redeemed.
- 37:03Yeah, digital currency may be the wrong word.
- 37:05Digital or electronic transfer may be a middle word.
- 37:09So you have that now. But even you know the, the
- 37:12money, the deposits they have in the bank, the bank doesn't have
- 37:14that much money in deposit for what they flinted out, right.
- 37:17You know, and so there's there's wire transfer of gold, boy.
- 37:20And that exists now like you said my and there's also, you
- 37:23know, you could buy gold through a contract, right, through a
- 37:25commodities contract, You, you know, you can buy a put or
- 37:28whatever, right. But but then if I if that is
- 37:30executed, I had X amount of gold, right.
- 37:33That's different than a digital currency when there's nothing
- 37:36that's, you know, the the wire transfer of gold electronic
- 37:39transfer is like here's a note, you know, here's a title to a
- 37:43car. There's something that exists I
- 37:45associate with it as opposed to here's a title and there's no
- 37:48car, right. Right.
- 37:49And then then, so then what digital currency turns into is a
- 37:51bunch of Ious, which my concern is it just turns into Monopoly
- 37:55money in a way to control people.
- 37:57Right, right. I mean, I think as long as it's
- 38:00backed and regulated and audited, right, people have a
- 38:04certain degree of of comfort with it.
- 38:07Yeah, but that's the big key, so.
- 38:10Yeah. But you can in theory get a like
- 38:11you people buy in the commodities market, they buy
- 38:13contracts for gold all the time now, but there is a thing that
- 38:16they're purchasing, right, that exists associated with that
- 38:19investment. Right.
- 38:20So this has been a fascinating conversation.
- 38:24What about the nuts and bolts of the legislation?
- 38:27Has it been filed? Where can you give us an?
- 38:30I don't have, I don't have a bill number yet.
- 38:31OK. In the next week, I should have
- 38:33a bill number. OK.
- 38:34Hopefully put that out there. You know, I hope that your
- 38:36viewers check it out. Yeah.
- 38:38I hope that they get engaged in the process.
- 38:41They give us feedback on it. You know, they help.
- 38:42They help us move it forward. They let their representatives
- 38:46and they're the people who are serving them in Jefferson City
- 38:48know what they think about it. Yeah.
- 38:50And that we advance something I think will do a whole lot of
- 38:52good for the state. You know, for all those reasons.
- 38:54There's 360° of reasons why I think it would be beneficial for
- 38:58Missouri if we adopt this also. Yeah.
- 39:00And and it's a number of what I call the innovative states that
- 39:03are that are working on this Texas, Florida.
- 39:08I didn't realize that Florida's the 15th largest.
- 39:11If it was a stand alone country, it would be the 15th largest
- 39:14economy in the world in in in what I view as the states that
- 39:20are doing well on many different levels.
- 39:25But I would include Texas, I would include Florida in that
- 39:29group and and I'd like to include Missouri as well.
- 39:33And we have New Hampshire, New Hampshire, not New Hampshire,
- 39:36New. Hampshire.
- 39:38Yeah. No.
- 39:39Like, if so if your if your ship is taking on water and it's
- 39:41sinking, you can't just keep doing what you're doing, right?
- 39:44You got to innovate and you got to think about what.
- 39:47So it's incumbent on us. We're thinking about the future
- 39:49to go what is happening to our economy, what's happening to the
- 39:52people? And then what can we do to say,
- 39:54OK, I see the problems, I see the, you know, I see the the
- 39:57problems at present. And I I can, I'm trying to pick
- 40:00the problems coming down the horizon.
- 40:01What can I do about it? Yeah, well, here's something we
- 40:03can do about. It yeah.
- 40:04And that and that sums up what I know is how my viewers feel in
- 40:09general about silver and gold right.
- 40:11Like, we're worried we something's not right and we've
- 40:15dug in. And when we dug in, what we
- 40:18discovered was silver and gold are a pretty good solution.
- 40:21Yeah, there's a reason why it's transcended all those nations
- 40:25that have gone. I like to just joke around, say
- 40:28it has seen every form of the economy, economic system,
- 40:34political system, right, every war piece, whatever you can
- 40:38throw at it. It's somehow is just maintained
- 40:41the steady you know pretty much steady value.
- 40:43Yeah, it kind of been useful. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 40:45If people want to learn more about you, Bill Hardwick,
- 40:49Missouri State Representative, how do they do that?
- 40:51Look me up at Bill Hardwick. I'm on Facebook.
- 40:53I'm on Twitter. We've got an official House
- 40:55website page. Read the bio there.
- 40:57Track the legislation on the House website and it's please
- 40:59get involved. You know, e-mail my office, call
- 41:01my office, call the other Representatives and Senators
- 41:04offices, let him know what you think and be part of this
- 41:07process of this legislation going through the system.
- 41:09Yeah, Yep. And I know that.
- 41:11Can I mention Pat Holland? Pat Holland with the Missouri
- 41:15Freedom Initiative? Many of you are familiar with
- 41:18Pat and what he does. That's MO free.org.
- 41:22I'll put links to your your page and other things in the
- 41:26description of this video. Did I forget to ask you about
- 41:29anything? No, Ron, I think we've covered a
- 41:30lot. We've done it all.
- 41:31It's been great having you in the basement.
- 41:33OK. Thanks guys.
- 41:35And on behalf of all the viewers, thank you, Bill.
- 41:37Great, great conversation and I think we provided a lot of value
- 41:41to the to the basement dwellers. You know, I appreciate the
- 41:43opportunity. So thanks.