Latest / Financial Survival Network / FreedomFest's Dynamic Shift: It Keeps Getting Better -- Mark Skousen #6018

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FreedomFest's Dynamic Shift: It Keeps Getting Better -- Mark Skousen #6018 · Financial Survival Network

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And this was sort of the big point that Brad made that he's going to
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talk about a treatom Fest, and that is it increases productivity and reduces costs
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in so many different areas, and this is an exciting development. You're listening
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to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network, where you get valuable information you just can't
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find anywhere else to thrive in today's trying times. You need the Financial Survival
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Network now more than ever. Go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com and get your
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free newsletter and gift. Financial Survival Network now more than ever ed. Welcome
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you are listening to watching the Financial Survival Network. I'm your host, Carrie
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Lutz got a real treat today. Mark Skousen, the founder of Freedom Fest,
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is on with us as well as a well known author and all around
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flaming libertarian much like yours. True and Mark, it's really great to have
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you back. I missed freedom Fest for the first time in ten years last
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summer due to a prior commitment, but I'm going to be there this year.
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And it looks like you know, for a while, interest looked like
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it was kind of waning, but then a lot of things happened and now
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you guys are back stronger than ever. Well, yeah, we had.
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We were forced to cancel by Governor Cisselak in Las Vegas in twenty twenty,
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and he gave us a notice like two weeks before. He kept promising that
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we'll be able to do it, and then he said, well, yeah,
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you can do it if you have no more than fifty people in any
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room, including the general sessions. And that was laughable. So in Essa's
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they shut us down. But you know, it's interesting. We still did
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some smaller conferences at the Ahern Hotel and so on during twenty twenty and then
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we can't. After that happened, we decided, well, every other year
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we're going to go to a different city. We're going to be in Vegas
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every other year, and then the rest of the time we're going to be
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going We were in twenty twenty twenty one, I guess we were in South
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Dakota. We went to Mount Rushmore and we had a huge, huge turnout.
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Half the people had never been to Mount Rushmore before, so it was
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quite popular. And Kevin O'Leary is our keynote speaker, and it was really
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a lot of fun. And then the next year we were back in Vegas.
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We had John Cleeese, the British comedian, We had a big crowd.
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It was really a lot of fun. And then this last year we
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were in Memphis and we had Mike Row come and he was just fantastic.
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And we always have a big name speaker. So this year we're back in
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Vegas, and I can reveal to you at some point in the program where
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we're going to be next year, because it's raised a lot of eyebrows and
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so we might as well talk about that right now. So next year we're
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going to be in Palm Springs and in California. That's our first time,
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perhaps our only time in California went into the fri But Palm Springs is really
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an interesting story because that's where the Hollywood crowd and the rat pack and so
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forth went to write uh screenplays. I mean Frank Capra of It's a Wonderful
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Life every time he said, let's go to Palm Springs and perform or come
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up with the screenplay. So that's that's quite famous for. In fact,
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I was talking to Van Simmons, the coin dealer, and he says that
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there's more concentrated wealth in Palm Springs than any other part of the world,
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which kind of surprised me. So that's next year, and it's going to
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be in June rather than July, so we're saving ourselves a little bit on
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the heat in Bold Springs. But so this year we're in Vegas. We
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have as our keynote speaker, well, we have a couple of them.
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We have Stephen Pinker from Harvard, who is foremost I would call him the
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public intellectual number one in America in his books on on violence, how violence
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has gradually declined. He's got some really work there, and so we're looking
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forward to hearing what he has to say about the enlightenment and rational thinking and
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are we going to are we headed for a new World War three? If
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you will. We have also have the wrapper Iced Tea coming, who's been
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making quite a few little here statements. Yeah, so I stee he's the
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longest standing actor in law and order. Uh. And of course he's has
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tremendous experien sperience with the black community, and so it's going to be interesting
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to hear him or maybe hear him rap about what's happening in the world today.
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And of course Lisa Kennedy from Fox News is going to be back as
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our MC and we just confirm Matt Ridley, Lord Matt Ridley Ridley from the
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UK, so he's probably public ellectual number one of the UK who's coming and
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talking about innovation. We're going to have a debate, by the way,
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uh carry, I don't know if you're familiar with this big debate among libertarians,
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primarily about whether intellectual property rights is an actual property right that should be
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enforced by law. We're talking about patents, trademarks, conky right and there's
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a lot of h I have a libertarians. You say, now there shouldn't
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be any laws on this, and you're on your own once you invet something.
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I think it's pretty crazy. Lord Ridley and has written about this saying
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his book How Innovation Works. And we're going to have a debate on this
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topic. Well, remember Steve Jobs was a big defender of intellectual property if
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it was Apple's, but when it came to everyone else's intellectual property, he
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couldn't have cared less. And Apple had the resources to fight any fight out
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there. So yeah, I know that fight has been out there and it's
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one of those kind of balancing things, whereas if you have too much intellectual
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property rights, it will stifle innovation. But then again, we've all heard
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the stories about the car companies, and I don't know if it's true or
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not, but it sure sounds interesting where they there's a two hundred mile per
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hour corburetor that they've bought up, and they've stolen intellectual property and suppressed it.
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So I want to see that as a recovering attorney, and in fact,
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as America's top recovering attorney, I personally want to want to view that
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debate because you know, it really is unsettled in my mind. And look,
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the Chinese have been ignoring intellectual property rights since they started their assent.
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It doesn't look like it's doing them much good now though. No. In
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fact, my wife has an experience. He wrote a book called Matriarchs of
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the Messiah about the women in the Bible, and street bound on online on
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Amazon, four different books that had her exact It was her book. They
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just changed the title and changed the author, but it was her book.
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I mean, are we supposed to just walk away and just let that happen?
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I don't know. It seemed a little bit bizarre, and Amazon took
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him down when when we pointed that out that they had stolen uh this intellectual
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property copyright violight in our copyright. And by the way, we have the
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same problem with Freedom Fest. There's quite a few organizations, primarily around the
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July fourth holiday that call themselves Freedom Fest. Do we write them a polite
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letter saying listen, we have a trademark on this, so we'd prefer that
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you not use it, and most most of them have been quite cooperative,
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but it is an issue. And anybody who's written a book or as a
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patent, if you spend billions of dollars developing a drug, I mean,
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should you have an exclusive rite for a certain period of time at least for
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that It sounds like a legitimate argument to me. So this will be a
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fun debate for sure. And I've had the same thing happen to me on
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YouTube, where people have ripped off my shows more than fair comment, put
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them with a bunch of other shows, and they wind up getting more reviews
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than me because they're not restricted by YouTube. But because of my prior political
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pronouncements, I'm in the YouTube sandbox, you know, I'm throttled and god
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forbid, I get more than five thousand views on a video, then they
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start suppressing it. Hey, but you know what, look this fits into
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AI really will because anything that you produced from AI doesn't have any copyright protection.
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Well, and by the way, we had someone that we've invited to
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Freedom Fest, so we are going to have a big session on AI.
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And this guy, Bradana Kastanio I think is his name, and he's from
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San Diego. We've invited him to speak at freedom Fest and he gives an
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incredible presentation on all the positive aspects of AI. And one of the examples
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he in years was he gave he said, now let me show you a
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lecture that I gave, and he just shows a little snippet from his lecture
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that he gave in English, and then he said, now let me show
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you what AI has done to create this lecture in Spanish. So it's his
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voice, it's but it's all in Spanish, and his lips now look like
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he's saying it in Spanish. You know, when they have that problem of
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translation, that's often a problem the lips are moving one way in the language
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is another. Well that's been solved with AI, and so he goes to
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a whole litany of all of these positive things that are coming out of AI
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instead of just the negative that the chat GBT will allow students to plagiarize without
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impunity. These are the issues that I have as a professor, of course,
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because we want people to do their own original work. But chat GBT,
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the Tyler Cowen of marginal Revolution, he did a chat GBT what is
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Mark Skelezan's greatest contribution to economics? And it was absolutely one hundred percent accurate
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and beatifully Britton. I was really shocked because I've heard heard all these statements
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that they come up with a lot of false information and that's all the truth
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my case, it wasn't all right. Well, hey, I am going
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to run it as we speak, because I got to see this. I
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put in Peter Schiff one time and it was fairly accurate. I put in
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like top ten gold bugs, and his name came up, so and I
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subscribed to it because look, I'm gonna like make a little personal disclosure here.
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I used to have somebody writing show notes to these interviews cost me a
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good amount of money. She was definitely worth it, really English scholar.
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And then to Oxford, and you know, but she didn't really have an
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in depth understanding of what it was I was about. When I put it
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through, I use an AI, NotI it taker, which I'm doing on
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this show, and then I put it through chat GPT. I make a
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few edits because it's kind of it's kind of predisposed to some relatives and trite
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statements, so I cut them out. But you know, I'm able to
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do it in a matter of minutes. It's speeded up my workflow by about
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three hundred percent and saving me money at the same time. So if you
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read in these show notes, take note they were written by two ais,
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because I don't think one AI is enough. Mark. Yeah, but you
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raise the important point, and this was sort of the big point that Brad
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made that it's going to talk about a free invest and that is it increases
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productivity and it reduces costs in so many different areas, and this is an
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exciting development. So I think we're afraid of it. We're afraid that computers
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and robots are going to take over the world and so forth. This is
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a genuine fear, I think. But and who wants to play I don't
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know if you've played computer chess at all, but it's almost impossible to beat
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these cases. Yeah, you just can't beat them at all, even at
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the lowest level. I have a hard time beating the computers. So it
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takes away some of the fun of playing chess and other games. Yeah,
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well, you know, that's that's technology for you. Well, here you
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are Mark Scouts and It is an American economist, investment analyst, and author
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who has made significant contributions to the field of economics, particularly in the areas
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of free market theory, investment strategies, and historical economic analysis. His work
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spans over several decades and has influenced not only academic circles, but also investment
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practices in public policy. Well, it's telling me things I didn't even know
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about you, Mark, And I didn't even know about it either. Thought
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on the one that Tyler Cowen did for me, who said my gross output
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GOO is my major contribution, and that was definitely back it's here. Yeah,
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yeah, exactly. So it's nice to see that kind of thing.
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I mean, I think overall this is really very exciting. The problem is
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that you know, it's going to get to the point on in politics where
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they can create characters that look just like the politician saying things that he never
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said. That's going to happen, and that has probably already happened. In
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fact, we might have had an AI in the White House for years and
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not even known about it. Not Mark right, Well, he's been cloned.
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But why would why would you clone someone who's half asleep? Hey,
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if this is AI, that it could be the biggest ad to like put
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the genie back in the bottle that there is. Hey, so talking about
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economic theory, about advancements, did you ever think he would live to see
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a major Latin American country rightfully elect a libertarian who in twelve I think,
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in less than ninety days made an economy that was in chronic deficit for the
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past dozen years into surplus, closing down government entities left and right. And
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this is like the greatest libertarian experiment. Mark that a country's undertaken, probably
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in your life and mine, I think we have. We have just now
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recognized how significant this paradigm shift is in Latin American politics and perhaps around the
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world. So you look back at Salad Oiende, the Marxist too one in
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Chile. He won with there was a three way race, so he never
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had a majority support for his Marxist vision of Chile, and of course it
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ended very badly. Here you have a candidate who has won the majority.
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I think he won with fifty six percent of a vote, and he's got
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very widespread support. I've talked to a number of Argentines. In fact,
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my son in law is Argentinian, and so he keeps me informed of what
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people are thinking and so forth, and so far he has still very strong
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support. Although in the legislature he has his own party is an extremely small
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minority, and that is something has to deal with. He has to deal
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with the Pedinistas and the unions, which are still very strong in maintaining their
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conservative let's keep it the way it is, of corruption and excessive government regulation
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and size. Do you know, from what I understand, over half the
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people, half the Argentinians, to get some kind of compensation from the government,
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either in payment one sort or another. They're working for the government,
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and so it's a tall order for Malay Hobbier Malaye, I wish his first
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name was Salvador. Like Ende could see he could be the savior of Latin
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America and the world. The jurious. You know, the jury is still
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out on this guy because he could be handcuffed and he could end up resigning.
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I mean, you just never know if he's not able to achieve the
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goals that he has. And it is political, I mean, it's everything
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is as you know, you can have your own strong libertarian views. I
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mean, he's called himself an anarcher, anarchist, and I think he named
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his dog Murray Rothbart or something, so obviously he's not an anarchist because he's
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having to deal with real world problems. The biggest issue there with Malay is
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the dollarization that he has proposed, and he has not delivered on that yet.
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Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins, who's the world's expert on dollarization, he's
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helped Ecuador dollariz and other and currency boards and that sort of thing. He
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says that Malay is making a big mistake postponing the dollarsation. But of course
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you have to have you have to have plenty of dollars to dollarize, because
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if you dollarize at a high exchange rate in order to cover your dollarization,
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that could be quite a burden on the average person. Ecuador did this.
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They converted the escudo at twenty five thousand escudos to the dollar. Well,
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I mean I was in Ecuador recently and they told me when this happened ten
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years ago that the four of the middle class are really slammed because they didn't
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have dollars. They had to turn in twenty five thousand isscudos to get one
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dollar. The tax and attack difficult. So for Argentina this could be a
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problem. Is what is the exchange rate that you're going to do this as
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And I don't know if you can do it right away or not. Hanky
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says yes, and the others are saying we need to accumulate more dollars.
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So talking about currencies, and I didn't have this on our list of things
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to talk about. But now that you raised it, we got this bitcoin
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right. I was a skeptic for many years. I'm still skeptical because I
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know that it can be shut down. Should the powers that be really regarded
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as a major threat, and yet to performance wise lately, I mean,
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it is the best performing asset of twenty twenty four. Well, not only
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that, but I have a chart in my latest newsletter. This chart will
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blow you away. I can't I don't think I can. It'd be nice
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to put up on the screen. But it's a chart showing the performance of
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various assets year by year since twenty and eleven. And that's so we're looking
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at yeah, we're looking at eleven. It's it's eleven years or something,
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maybe since twenty thirteen. So eight out of the eleven years, guess what
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asset is out performed at the top. It's bitcoin. Yeah, and then
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also the three years and it underperformed. It was the worst performing. So
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it was just up and down like a yo yo, you know, or
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at all away. It's the new inflation edge. It's just remarkable. It
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is performance, and all of us kind of missed it. Yeah, yeah,
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well I had the opportunity. I followed it. And I'm an expert
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at figuring out when bitcoin peaks, but I'm really bad at figuring out when
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it when at bottoms and buying. But so what I've done is all I
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did was just set up automatically on a site. I buy X amount of
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bitcoin every Monday, and then when I believe it's peaked, I dump it
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and then I begin the acquisition again. And you know, I'm I don't
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you know, Hey, I'm no investment gurger like you, but it's proven
21:26
to be an effective way to play this thing because it's much easier to pick
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a peek than it is to pick a bottom, at least in my experience
21:34
in markets. You know, I think that. I mean, my son
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Tim and I put together. We have this TNT trader. It's a short
21:45
term trading system, and we are all in bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology
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and all of this sort of thing. I mean they are. We are
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printing money right now virtually. Mean is because we have call options on top
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of the bitcoin. And what you talked about the government shutting it down,
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Well, guess what the government did. And one reason the market has taken
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off when the SEC approved all the ETFs in bitcoin. That was the bottom,
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that was a messing song. Hey, the government's actually approved this,
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and you you the returns have just been spectactuar and we actually think it could
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hit one hundred thousand before overhud a thousand before it's over. We will see
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these kind of products jet to be careful of because you never know when some
22:40
kind of event is going to occur to the causes it to collapse. How
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do I sign up for your TNT Trader stock investor. Mark. Well,
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you go to Mark skalsend dot com and TNT Trader is there, and it's
22:53
a rather expensive service. But we do have an introductory offer of ninety nine
22:59
dollars for the first quarter, but then it's two hundred and seventy five dollars
23:02
every quarter after that. Mark. If it worked, it's chop chamber,
23:06
chop change order for those are here want to make money. Mark. Obviously
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you didn't hear that we're having this thing called inflation. You should be getting
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at least five hundred dollars a quarter for this because if it works. Hey,
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people always say, well, if the system really worked, if the
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guy knew what he was doing, particularly with gambling systems, he wouldn't be
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selling it to the public. He'd just be out there printing money. But
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there is a boat that I have it in my own portfolio as well,
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so we're doing both. But I'm signing up today. Yes, yes,
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sir, I'm signing up, and I will have a link in the show
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out to this interview that the AI will be gracious enough to write for you.
23:47
Oh, thank you, because one thing I've learned is the system may
23:52
be good or it may be bad, but it's better than not having any
23:56
system at all, because the only way to make money over the long run
24:00
is discipline, because discipline will get you in there when you should be in,
24:06
it'll get you out when you need to be out emotions. If you
24:10
don't have a system, then you're only running on emotions. I think.
24:14
Also, we have protective stops so that we move the trailing stop up as
24:18
we're making money and we get stopped out because you never know when the market's
24:22
going to turn against you, especially in the option area, and we do
24:26
out of the money call options, which is a high risk, but you
24:30
know you can't lose more than an hundred percent, but you have upside potential
24:34
that's unlimited. So that's our approach, all right, I love it.
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Hey, we'll have two links there linked to Mark site and TNT Trader as
24:44
well as to freedomfest dot com. I am definitely going to be there this
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time. Mark, appreciate your taking time out from your pursuits here to touch
24:55
base with us and bring us up to date. If you got a question
24:57
for Mark myself the email mail addresses k Lfcarrie Lutz dot com and make sure
25:04
you go to the site Financial Survival Network dot com and sign up for our
25:10
free newsletter Mark always a pleasure. We'll see you in Vegas, all right.
25:14
Take care, Thank you, Carrie, Thanks for listening to Carrie Lutz's
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Financial Survival Network, your solution to today's trying times. For the latest,
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go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com. Financial Survival Network now more than ever,