Addison:
Welcome to The Wiggin Sessions. This is episode 64, it's hard to believe. Today, we have
Mark
Moss with us.
He's going to help us understand how to survive and thrive in the post-pandemic economy for
2021
going into
2022, and also, we're going to talk about an event in Miami that's coming up on November
15th.
Mark is an interesting entrepreneur and business coach, right? ? You're helping other
entrepreneurs get
started too, and relate those experiences to investing. So, I'll let you riff on your own
background. We've
never met in person, but we have many colleagues in common. You come well recommended and
you
just told me
before you started that you'd been reading our newsletters.
Mark:
Yeah.
Addison:
There is a connection to the readership that is going to be viewing and listening to this.
I'll let you riff
on your own background, because I think, from what I've read anyway, it's really interesting and
I think you're
going to have a lot of good things to say. Then, we can introduce the theme for today, which is
an impending
energy crisis.
Mark:
Yeah.
Addison:
Let's start with you first.
Mark:
Yeah. I've been an entrepreneur investor for my whole career. The lines of the entrepreneur,
business
owner, investor
get very blurred. Started out in real estate. I was fixing and flipping homes, over 150 homes.
Was I
an investor,
business owner, right? It gets pretty blurred. Did really well with that. I started a couple
businesses. I started
an e-commerce business at the bottom of the dotcom crash. I had a high-tech medical equipment
business and I learned
how to make a lot of money and I was doing really well.
I sold those businesses. I had a Fortune 500 exit and I was just all-in on real estate. I was
developing real estate
from the ground up, eight figure projects. When 2008 came, I got pretty much wiped out. So
that's
kind of the story.
My beautiful success story ended with tragedy. I had to kind of take a hard look at things, and
I
realized like,
"Shoot, I'm pretty good at making money, but what is this whole financial casino thing going on
that
I don't really
know about? There's something missing that I don't get."
While a lot of people never recovered from that, I just figured I had to figure this out, and so
I
just dug deep and
started investing in my own education. Some of your newsletters were some of those things that
really were working
well for me. I think probably the majority of what I've learned has been through financial
newsletters over the last
dozen years or so. You get the play-by-play as it goes along. I had to figure out what this
financial casino was
about. I kind of started to learn about hard money and gold, kind of became a gold bug, and kind
of
went down that
path.
As I kind of learned about that more, pulled myself out of the hole, was able to kind of rebuild
my
career, my
assets, and so forth. For about the last seven years now, I've been kind of giving back and
taking
my own market
analysis and kind of giving that back to the world and helping them kind of understand, make
sense
of what's going
on in this world today, how to navigate it properly, how to protect themselves from it.
Addison:
Well, that's one of the things that I find interesting about your story, is a lot of the
ideas that you're
bringing to the table, a lot of the discussions you're having with people are based on your
experience, the
experience of going through 2008, which, that's common for a lot of us, but you are able to
kind
of translate it
into advice for people who are new in the markets or maybe they're trying to figure out the
financial casino,
like you say, or they're just trying to put pieces together for their own investment
portfolio.
Right now, yours
is based on experience, and that's something that we always say at Agora, that's what's more
important than
anything else. You can read a lot of books, you can read a lot of newsletters, but
experiences
really are what
drives things. I find your story interesting in that respect.
I want to talk about two things. One, the event down in Miami is called Market
Disruptors. If
you can talk
about why that's important to you, that concept. That's something that we talk about a lot,
especially in the
technology sector. We talk about the disruption that goes on and it's all over the place
because
of social
media. So, let’s discuss that a bit and then move on to what you see as an energy crisis
that's
already
underway. I have some specific questions about Germany shutting off their nuclear power
plants,
Lake Mead being
down to 30% of its capacity. There's a lot of people that consume energy, and the whole
system
is being taxed
right now. But let's start with Market Disruptors, because I like that concept and you can
talk
about it a
little bit, how it's going to apply, and then what the event's about, because it sounds
really
interesting to
me.
Mark:
Yeah. So, as I was trying to come back from the 2008 crash that crashed me personally, I, again
dug
deep into my own
education and I learned a concept that I've really hung onto and it just kind of changed
everything
for me. That
concept is that money is like energy. It doesn't disappear, it transfers. So I thought, "Shoot,
that
means that I
lost my wealth and somebody else got it." I may not be the most competitive person in the world,
but
that didn't
really sit really well with me. I figured, "Shoot, I need to figure this out," and so I vowed to
myself and to my
family that this would never happen again. I was going to figure this out, and I wanted to
figure
these wealth
transfers out and I wanted to be on the receiving end. I wanted to be on the receiving end of
the
wealth transfer
moving forward. For the last dozen years, I've kind of studied this phenomenon and the types of
events, the type of
market cycles that cause these wealth transfers to happen. As you just said, technology cycles
are
great for
transferring wealth, especially what I call technological revolutions. So new technologies like
iPhones, I mean
that's cool, but a technological revolution is different. I'm talking about the industrial
revolution, steam engines
and steel, electricity, oil, automobiles, and so forth. Every time we have one of those, there's
a
new set of people
getting rich. And so that's one of them. Obviously times of volatility, like we're dealing with
right now, energy
crisis, as you've talked about, those are dangerous for a lot of people but they also represent
massive
opportunities to have that wealth transfer to you if you're on the right side of it.
Then, also, like you said, technology is that and there's kind of that creative destruction.
Something new kills the
old way. That's that Market Disruptors event. All of these things are disruptions in the market.
If
you read them
properly, if you position yourself properly, I believe they can be massive opportunities for you
instead of wiping
you out like what happened to me. This, right now what we're going through, is kind of all of
those
wrapped into
one. We kind of have this perfect storm that's been brewing. On an 80-year timeframe we can see
right now the
financial system's ready to be reset. On a 50-year cycle, we can see technological revolutions
happen. And so, we're
there right now. So we have this new technology, it's disrupting markets. The financial markets
are
being disrupted.
At the same time, we have all these political things, which we can talk about, that then lead
into
more financial
things like energy. And so it's dangerous, but there's also opportunity.
So, I wanted to have an event. I put together about 15 speakers who focus on different parts of
the
market and
basically have them answer two questions. One, what do they think is going to happen over the
next
couple years? And
two, what are they doing about it, or what should you be doing about it? I thought that was just
really important
because we're at this really, really dangerous time, but a tremendous opportunity. I'm not a
doom
and gloom guy. I
do think the next couple years are probably going to get worse, but I see massive hope and
prosperity on the other
side. If we can use this time to get ahead, we can have a tremendous life in front of us, and so
that's why I put
the event together.
Addison:
The people that are coming to the event, they're kind of across the spectrum. You're not
going to get one
answer across 15 people, because there's a lot of different ideas out there about what to do
about it. Maybe a
good way to talk about it is what would be your top three ideas that people can use as we pull
out of the
pandemic economy and we're facing this crazy divisive political situation, and then probably
massive spending
with new taxes? There's a lot of big things, as you call it, a perfect storm.
Mark:
Yeah.
Addison:
What are your top three ideas?
Mark:
This goes beyond just money and finance, although it is all together. I believe that we should be
looking at freedom
as an asset. I believe we should be looking at health as an asset, and especially in today's day
and
age, our
freedom's under attack, our health is under attack, and so I think it's important to look at
that a
little bit more
holistically. We have people that are kind of leading the world, the World Economic Forum, guys
like
Mark Carney who
have massive influence and they've written books, then told us what they think the world is
going to
be like, what
their goal is. And so I think it's important to understand that and look at that holistically.
We're going to have people talking about everything from what they see happening politically and
financially, of
course. How to build your wealth, and so different strategies, what's going on in the bond
market,
the stock market,
cryptocurrencies, but also how to protect your wealth. Asset protection strategies, how to build
cash flow, things
like that. And then even into health and freedom. I have Dr. Joe Mercola coming to talk about
health
and censorship
in today's day and age of this pandemic kind of world, and then into plan B stuff, so passports,
offshore
destinations, onshore plan Bs and stuff like that. Really everything that you need from A to Z,
from
understanding
what's going on, how to build your wealth, how to protect your wealth and then how to protect
your
health and your
freedom, all of that together in one event.
Addison:
You said that you thought that the world's going to be a little bit challenging, or the
economy, financial
investments and things are going to be challenging over the next couple years. Do you think
that's a result of
the pandemic or something larger?
Mark:
Well, It's definitely something much larger. It's much, much larger than that. The pandemic I think
is escalating
things, but I think at the end of the day, if we boil it down, in my opinion, it all comes down to
the money
printer. When you print unlimited amounts of fake fiat money, this is the type of problem that you
have and it
enables things like government overreach, things like that. I would say almost every problem that we
have today
boils down to that money printer where you started off talking about supply ... or energy crisis
that's happening. I
think that boils down to the money printer, the policies, the central planning. We're having supply
chain
constraints, shortages, that's central planning, money printing. The pandemic, I think, has sped
that up. In
addition, it's created a new assault on our health and on our Liberty as well.
Addison:
It's also created a new assault on the financial system. If you spend, I think it was $6.6
trillion in 2020,
and now you have the floodgates opening. There is some political debate in Washington about the
size of the
spending programs. But I love this argument like, oh $3.5 trillion is too much for one bill so
let's break it
down.
Mark:
But it costs nothing.
Addison:
Yeah. But then the compromise is $2 trillion dollars. Like what? Like what are you talking
about? But it's
supported by the printing press as you call it. There's a theory, Modern Monetary Theory says
that it doesn't
matter as long as they can take it back in taxes. That scenario means that you're just dependent
on the
government for your livelihood because whatever you make, you're going to have to give back
taxes in order for
the theory to hold weight.
Mark:
Yeah. Well, I think it doesn't hold weight at all. And if you have a basic understanding of what
money is, then you
can understand that they can't just create that from thin air. Anytime you have a group of
people
who have to work
for wages and another group of people that have a money printer, it leads to slavery every
single
time. We've seen
this happen over and over throughout history. So this Modern Monetary Theory, it can't really
work.
And like I said,
I think it's really caused these distortions that we have today. You talked about the Fed with
their
six and a half
trillion dollars in 2020, it's whatever, somewhere in that range.
You dump that into the market. And then what do you think is going to happen? Typically high
prices
are the cure for
high prices. So prices go up, two things happen. One, people buy less of those things. Two,
manufacturers would rise
to make more of those things but when you dump in the money, the people don't care about high
prices, they keep
buying more things. Also inflation has run so high that the manufacturers can't really produce
more
of those things.
And then because of that money printer, because of all that money, it's most of that money, you
reference the three
and a half trillion or maybe the two trillion dollars, most of that goes to government bloat,
right?
Pork, if you
would call it that. And so it allows that government to get bigger and bigger and then what do
they
do? Well, they
start passing more policies like, oh, people in this certain class of people shouldn't be
allowed to
work anymore,
things like that. And that just only makes the problem even worse.
Addison:
Well, it's kind of interesting too, because then it gives rise to political trends. Like one
thing we were
talking about prior to this conversation is just the one sided acceptance of climate change as
an issue that the
politicians globally should address. We have a lot of that going on. It got baked into the
infrastructure
debate. But to me, the dots don't connect. I don't know what you think about policies that are
trying to be
enacted, and then the amount of money that they have to spend to make it happen. And it's
actually a huge
weight, and this is going to lead right into the energy discussion. The economy's ability to
actually produce
incomes for families. And which may have a knock on effect for the financial markets for
sure.
Mark:
Yeah, for sure. Over a year ago I made a video. When I was in California, there were rolling
blackouts happening. At
the time, this was September 2020, I was down in Mexico in a town with one paved road. The rest
is
all dirt roads.
And in California, there were rolling blackouts, in Mexico there was no problem with power
blackouts. And so I made
this video and I said, what's happening in California is coming for the rest of the country and
it's
coming for the
world. Now that was somewhat prophetic. But I said, the reason why I know this is because it's
being
caused by
policies. So in California, trying to be kind of the leader, the example, they said, let's shut
down
all the fossil
fuels. They shut down natural gas, they shut down nuclear. And let's move to renewables, wind
and
solar. But they
didn't build the wind and solar, didn't replace it. And so then we found ourselves with
shortages.
And so I knew
that because it was policy. It was a government policy that caused that problem.
And as those policies continue to be put in place throughout Europe, throughout the whole world,
we're continuing to
see more and more of that problem. And so it's both, it's a money problem and it's a policy
problem.
I think the
money problem causes the policy problem.
Addison:
Yeah. And the way that you connected to dots there too, is that the policy leads to it ...
it's going to lead
to real world problems for people. I mean, if you have rolling blackouts, I remember when that
was going on, and
then if you have infrastructure problems in ... we're in the mid Atlantic, when we get these big
storms,
everything gets wiped out. You don't have power for a couple days. That's a common experience
for people. But
policy is a different thing. Policy is like, the policies that are put in place make it harder
for people to be
innovators in the energy space, build new plants. If they shift the conversation to one of only
climate change
is the word that they use, but if it's only about that, what happens to the innovation in that
space? And I
think we're seeing the result of that is that we're in an energy crisis, but it's not being
focused on because
the conversation has been shifted to a different political idea.
Mark:
Yeah. I mean, it's definitely a man-made crisis. So we've known how to make energy and we've
known
how to make
electricity for a long time. It's easy to do. The only reason that anybody would ever be short
of it
today is
because of policies that were put in place. So it's definitely manmade. And I think it's
unfortunate, if you look at
the way things are going today, most of the people that are driving these policies, I think
there's
two things, but
I think first off their aim is not human flourishment. Their aim is to try to turn the world
back to
its original
state, which of course is not habitable. People freeze to death or die of heat stroke, famines,
floods, etc. And
it's only through our management of the world that we've made it a good place to live.
And so I think they're not focused on human flourishment because if they were, they would realize
that access to
cheap, abundant energy is what creates human flourishment. And as you bring people out of
poverty,
they consume
less. Instead of burning wood for fuel, which is the worst you could do, they would move to
clean
natural gas. And
so really it's the ability of people to move up that really affects that. It's what allowed the
United States to
lower its carbon emissions by 30% over the last decade. And then of course we can discuss
science if
that even
matters.
But all the things that they're looking at, I think it really comes down to somehow they think we
need to turn the
world back to its original place. Now I say that's also due in part to the money. And that's
partly
because what
happens is if you look at like the eight stages of the decline of an empire, like a 250 year
empire,
you'll see that
after affluence, you kind of go to the age of enlightenment, and people go to full-time
academia,
they go to
full-time politics. And those people don't really live in the real world. And so they start
making
policies that
have no real grounding in what the world needs. And so they're making decisions without
understanding what that is.
And so they start to control how the power companies work, the energy companies work, and that
causes even more
problems.
Addison:
Yeah. So that's really a question of the stakeholders. If you're a full-time politician,
what
do you gain? I
ask one of my colleagues this all the time, because he listens to a podcast and he comes up
with
different
theories on how things work and I'm perpetually perplexed by what it is. What's the
incentive
for politicians to
make dumb decisions. But what's their incentive? What do they get out of it? There's an
academic
theory on that,
called public choice where you advance a certain policy like this climate change agenda so
that
you can continue
to get votes because it becomes a popular thing.
And then that gives you more power. There's a whole school of thought there. But I still
don't get it. I
don't get what the motive of wanting ... the way you phrased it is to return the world to
its
natural state or
something like that. It's funny, just this last week we were writing about Jean-Jacques
Rousseau. And he wrote
in one of his seminal works called The Solitary Traveler and his idea was that society
itself
was broken and the
only way to return to a virtuous life was to live in the wilderness and get out of society
entirely. And I
remember reading that and thinking, well, yeah, that's good for one person at a time. Like
if
you want to go
live as a hermit, you could go do that. But that's not how society functions.
Mark:
Yeah. And I'm kind of far removed, but not that far removed. My dad grew up on a farm in Iowa. My
grandfather
obviously grew up on a farm. And that was a little bit far removed, but anybody who's actually
seen
or actually
tried to experience living off the land, it's not an easy life. Good luck. You'll spend all your
time trying to
provide food and shelter for yourself. And so we've ... as humankind, we've evolved past that
where
we don't have to
spend all of our time trying to stay alive anymore. And now we can focus on higher level things
like
creating
medicine and creating computers and things like that. And so for anybody that thinks the goal
would
be to go back to
live off the land, I just think they're just so far detached from the real world. They've never
really understood
what that means to live off the land. And then how backward ... that's where we came from. We
would
have no
progress. If all we had to do was figure out how to stay alive on a daily basis.
And then they talk about the earth temperature going up by one degree or some say 2.4 or
something
like that. I mean,
shoot, I'm from California. That's a desert. Like in Arizona next door, it's 125 degrees in the
summer. And people
move there in droves. They have air conditioning. And I think one or two degrees is not going to
hurt them at all.
They've already moved there when it's 125 degrees. So with enough technology, we can manage
things
to make them
better. And I think that's an important thing to understand.
And like I said, also by bringing people up, like we've increased our food supply, we've brought
people into the
cities, and they live cleaner. There's less attacks on the earth. As a matter of fact, we're
getting
more green
spaces in the world as people leave the pastures and the farmlands and move to the cities. And
so
we've seen a
positive impact. But some people, I think, are still left on this old way of thinking and I
think
it's partly to do
with what you were talking about with the politicians, what's in it for them. I think there's
two
parts to that. I
think some people nowadays start teaching kids this in school. It's really this fear-based
system
where one, you're
a bad person; two, you live in a bad world; and three, everything we do is bad for the earth.
We're
teaching them
this as a kid and so a lot of people have been raised to just think that and they believe that
to be
true. But I
think then there's also people, maybe the Klaus Schwab or in the World Economic Forum, and the
Mark
Carneys of the
world who probably just want to use this tool of fear to get more control.
Addison:
Well, there's something that you and I have in common that I wasn't aware of. Between the
ages of, I think,
five and 11, for me, my parents, one of the sources of income that they had was rehabbing
colonial homes in New
Hampshire. We moved into this one when I was a young kid. It didn't even have indoor plumbing.
Because they were
spending the time rehabbing the home, we didn't have a source of income at that point so we
literally lived off
the food that we grew.
Mark:
Oh, wow.
Addison:
Chickens. We grew all kinds of vegetables and stuff like that. My mom grew wild flowers and
sold them at the
stand on the side of the road. That's a formative experience for me. Maybe that's why we agree
somewhat on the
perspective of the world.
Addison:
I wanted to get to carbon credits because this is a theme that's been debated a lot during
the climate change
debate. That is getting a lot of news coverage these days, but no one really knows what's going
on. It's a
watered down debate that doesn't actually get discussed for any reason. But carbon credits seem
to be a thing
that snuck in the back door. Cap and trade is a thing and now there's a lot of people that are
using it. They
have opinions on carbon credits. The one thing I do like about the concept is that it's a market
for something
that you can trade in markets, but the fact that they have to cap things, cap carbon emissions
in order to make
the carbon credits viable means that they have to artificially create the market. It's like a
fake
market.
Mark:
I think that goes back to more control. So if you really want to control a nation, I mean,
control
their energy. The
money, the energy, the food, those are the three attack vectors. And so, if you can't control
the
energy directly,
then you could at least tax it. I think what we're seeing in this culture across the world is
that
there's this
virtue signaling. People pretending to be this virtuous, this good person without really doing
anything. And a lot
of the carbon credits we see are what they call greenwashing. Companies will still continue to
just
do everything
that they were doing before, but now they go by these carbon credits and they feel so much
better
about themselves.
And all this money is now going to these carbon credits when they could have probably just used
some
of that money
to clean up the processes that they were doing, for example.
Warren Buffet's partner, Charlie Munger says that, "You show me the incentives, I show you the
outcome." And so this
is kind of like this cobra effect, if you know that story. That India had too many cobras. They
said, "Hey, we'll
pay you if you go pick up the cobras." People did. Then, people wanted more money so they
started
raising cobras.
Then India is like, "Dude, what the heck? You're raising all these cobras. This is stupid. We're
ending the
program." Then, all those people that were raising the cobras just let them all go. Then, the
problem was worse than
when it started.
And so, these unintended consequences. You do this thing like carbon credits, what they thought
is
like cigarettes.
If we put this huge tax on cigarettes, people will smoke less. And so they thought, "Hey, if we
put
a tax on
emitting carbon, people we'll emit carbon less." But really what we've seen is companies have
just
bought these
carbon credits. What it's done is it's increased their cost to everything, compliance and
manufacturing, et cetera,
which of course, gets passed down to you and I as consumers. So all they've done is they've just
bought these carbon
credits. They're virtue signaling that they're doing something good. And it's created this
market,
to your point. I
saw this article a few weeks ago, I was going to dig into a story on this. I haven't gotten into
it
yet. But
basically, these giant funds like BlackRock are now starting a new asset category. I think it's
called the natural
asset category, where basically they're going to start financializing the earth, and literally,
the
air that's
coming off of it so these can then be sold into these carbon markets. I just think it's a way to
make things
expensive. It's a way for people to virtue signal that they're doing something good. It's a way
for
them to control
the companies. I referenced Mark Carney a few times. For people that don't know, he's the
previous
head of Bank of
England, Bank of Canada, UN Special Envoy for Climate and Finance, advisor to the UN, advisor to
the
World Economic
Forum, advisor to Boris Johnson and Justin Trudeau. He's a pretty connected guy. He wrote a book
called
Value(s): Building A Better World For All. In the book, he tells you what he
expects the world to
be. He said that companies that don't get in line with this will be what he calls "economic
roadkill." And so,
basically, if you don't fall online, then you get no money.
We're already starting to see this. We saw the Exxon was taken over by activist investors, for
example. Now, Exxon is
going to start producing less oil. And so, there's no funding and we've seen this continued talk
about companies
that don't fall in line, don't get funding. And so, I don't know, it's a dangerous form of
control
that's only going
to create more climate emergencies, or I should say, energy emergencies.
Addison:
I think hand in hand with this is the proposal for a Global Minimum Tax on corporations,
because that allows
governments to control where corporations do business and then they can enact the policies that
affect climate
change and those kinds of things.
Mark:
Well, I think what they're really trying to do is, going back to the eight stages of the decline of
an empire, as
they start losing grip, they try to grip even harder, which then makes them lose grip even faster.
One of the last
stages is capital control laws. They can't allow the capital to escape the country. And so, what
they're really
trying to do, it seems like, because now we're moving to this globalist agenda, is they're trying to
make sure
there's no safety valve. There's no release valve. And so as long as I could leave the United States
and go to a
different country with lower taxes or no taxes, then I might be willing to do that and that capital
is leaving. And
so, if we can enact this Global Minimum Tax, then we don't give anybody anywhere to go.
Addison:
I think, your point earlier about the pandemic, just making these things more obvious, that's
something that
I think has been happening because not only can you not move your capital, you can't actually
move your person.
The pandemic, for me at least, has just given a real world example of what it's like when you
can't move your
capital around. The thing is 135 countries, I think, have signed on to the GMT. That's insane.
There are no
safety valves. There's only four and there's probably, those will be the next four countries to
get
invaded.
Mark:
I'd always thought and commented a lot in regards to Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, that people
say,
"Oh, the
governments will make it illegal." I'm like, "You think the whole world's ever going to agree on
anything. That's
never going to happen." Then, the pandemic came and then the whole world locked down at the flip
of
a switch. That
was pretty interesting. And as you just pointed out, 135 countries have this GMT, which is scary
as
well.
I think one thing though is we are starting to see this globalist agenda break up a bit. I mean,
we're starting to
see Russia really push back. I don't think there's any world where China goes along with the
rest of
the world that
they don't control and deals with Russia. We're seeing Turkey now, which is I think the second
largest contributor
to NATO starting to pull out. And so, a lot of this, it's also cracking apart. It's going to be
interesting to see
how it plays out if they're going to get their wish.
Addison:
I had been making the case that even though there's a global agenda and there's the elite
class that is
perpetually trying to stay in office and tell everybody else what to do, that we have a
tradition in the U.S.
that just kind of bucks that trend. I think that this is just, I don't know, maybe it's just
faith in the
constitutional government, but I believe that after a while, we're just going to be like, "We're
not doing that
anymore."
Mark:
I believe that's true.
Addison:
I don't know if that's true because history has a way of doing funny things.
Mark:
I believe that's just humankind. If you go back as far back in history as you can find, it's just
a
repeating story
of man's drive for freedom, but then some guy's greed for power and then oppression. Then,
oppression's too bad.
Revolution. Freedom. Oppression, revolution, freedom, and it just kind of repeats over and over
and
over.
I've studied it and it seems like there's a 250 year cycle. About every 250 years, we see this
revolution happen,
which we can see 250 years ago was the American and French revolution. Two hundred and fifty
years
before that was
the Protestant Reformation. And those represent rejecting that centralization, that
globalization,
and pushing back
and moving to decentralization. The American Revolution rejected the centralization of the
monarchy
and set up a
Republic, a decentralized government. Here we are 250 years later in that cycle and we can see
that
we're at/or very
near peak centralization or peak globalization. At the same time, the whole world is erupting. I
mean, if you're not
watching mainstream media but you're on social media, you see that almost every country in the
world
has people in
the streets, marching, pushing back against this agenda. That drive for freedom, that drive to
be
free, it's not
just an American thing. I think it's a human thing and I think ultimately it wins.
Addison:
Well, when I'm making the comment about the American thing though, I think that it's baked
into the
constitution. The checks and balances, Montesquieu's idea that nobody could actually take over
the government. I
mean, it looks like it's being challenged more than we've ever seen certainly in our lifetime.
But, I don't
know. Maybe it's just from a classical perspective in philosophy and those kinds of things. I
just think that if
the revolution comes again, it'll just lead to more checks and balances and restraining,
restrictions from
government and even more. And maybe I just believe that that's the way it should go.
Mark:
Well, I like that and I agree. I mean, the Constitution is the greatest document ever written.
The
guys that wrote
that were so smart. We'll never have smart people like that again, I don't think. But the
problem is
that it's just
a piece of paper and unless you defend it, unless people actively are willing to use that and
defend
it, it's kind
of worthless. And so, we're seeing an all out assault on that Constitution today and just
nobody's
really picking it
up and defending themselves with it. It's being dismantled. We were told by a certain president
about a decade ago
that there was going to be a “fundamental transformation” of the country. That's when the
constitution started being
dismantled. I see that. I think that's a big problem. I think the problem that we have, and
again,
the pandemic has
accelerated this is, that we used to have a rule of law, so the Constitution was that rule of
law,
and that rule of
law is supposed to be pretty easy to understand so both you and I can understand it.
It's also supposed to be set in stone so I can plan my life based off of that and you can plan
your
life based off
that. But today we're ruled by men who are constantly changing the rules all the time. So for
example, I'm from
California ruled by Gavin Newsom, and I don't know what the laws will be next month. I don't
even
know. You can't
operate like that. You can't plan a business, you can't plan a family, you can't plan a life in
that
ever-changing
system ruled by men. We have to have a rule of law. I think that's one place that this
revolution is
going to fix.
Addison:
Yeah, it's kind of interesting. When I was in graduate school, I read Marx's Manuscripts of
1844, and the
main point he wanted to make in those manuscripts, they never got put into a book, but they got
released later,
I think after he died, but the main point he wanted to make is that the American Revolution was
a revolution of
preservation of freedom, and that the Constitution was a huge step forward politically. Then
he's like, that's a
really important evolution because it took the power out of men and put it into law.
Mark:
Right. Yep.
Addison:
I'm actually using Marx to agree with you.
Mark:
Which is funny and ironic.
Addison:
But he said, we just didn't go far enough because they didn't figure out how to make capital
work for
everybody, including the working class. But I do think that I just find it fascinating and it
sticks with me
that Marx was one of the ones saying, yeah, the political revolution that happened in the United
States and the
Constitution was a huge advancement in the evolution of society.
Mark:
Yeah.
Addison:
Now you have those to inspire people to kill the Czar of Russia and stuff like that.
Mark:
Yeah, he was a troubled man. I mean, I've read a lot of his stuff, and I finally went back and I had
to read
the Communist Manifesto not too long ago. He was born at a particular time in
history when the
Industrial Revolution was just taking off. Obviously the working conditions, going from the farms
into the
factories, and mistreatment of workers, I think that helped shape his work. But if you actually were
to read it for
yourself, it's hard to imagine people taking that seriously and trying to bring that back today.
Addison:
Yeah, except they are.
Mark:
Except they are, yeah.
Addison:
All right, let's get back to the two main points we're talking about. First I'm going to just
ask you, do you
think that nuclear power is a good solution to the energy problem, because it is a clean energy,
but there is a
kind of political headwind that nuclear power faces as well? Then I want to ask you about
Germany shutting their
plant's down and now they need more natural gas from Russia through the Ukraine. There's
contradictions in
policy and the goal of providing energy for everyone. How do you do that? Since the energy
crisis is one of the
topics that we're talking about, how do you reconcile those two things? The politics with the
production?
Mark:
I think the first thing, and I'm not ready to jump into this debate or discussion right now, but
I
think there is a
debate that should be done about the science of the whole clean energy thing, period. So, that's
a
whole discussion
that can be had. There is no consensus on that. Let's not get into the science of it, but just
from
a perspective,
if the goal is to get clean energy, what we've seen is that, yeah, nuclear is the only option to
produce clean
energy.
It's weird that when you have that opportunity, you have all these people saying we have to shut
down
fossil fuels
because they're dirty, there's too much emission, and then we have nuclear, why wouldn't they
recommend it? So,
that's a question that I asked myself, and I think it really goes back to the seventies, or
probably
more of the
eighties, when the whole world that had this threat of nuclear war, the height of the Cold War
and
mutually assured
destruction, maybe the seventies when they were protesting against. I think a lot of people
looked
at nuclear
weapons and nuclear reactors, nuclear energy, kind of the same, and I think as the world was
pushing
back against
nuclear weapons, they also pushed back against nuclear energy.
So, I think from that perspective, it had that. I think also we really saw... You talked about
Germany reducing their
nuclear reactors, that really started happening a decade ago after Japan's Fukushima accident.
So,
after that
disaster, the world really turned on it, started removing nuclear power. Then I think it goes
also
back to the point
I said, which is a lot of these people that are really fighting for this climate alarmism, their
goal isn't really
human flourishment, because nuclear is a perfect solution to give them what they want, which is
that
clean energy,
and they don't want to accept it.
So I'd say it's those three things, but I would say, again, leaving the science on the side for
now,
because that
doesn't seem to matter, the world is pretty much on a mission to have net zero emission energy.
The
only option is
nuclear, right? The only option is nuclear energy. So, I think we're starting to see the tide
turn
on that. You
mentioned again Germany getting rid of their nuclear reactors. So over the last decade, they've
been
shutting down
all their nuclear reactors, and then we've seen their energy prices go up like crazy. Their
energy
prices have
skyrocketed since then.
Meanwhile, France, next door, has 73% of their power from nuclear, and their energy prices have
remained stable and
cheap. As a matter of fact, they're over-supplying energy, so the Uk is trying to depend on
France
to get excess
energy, and now just in the last couple of weeks, we've seen France starting to get nuclear
energy
classified as a
green energy. I think if that happens, things really take off. The sentiment shifts, and I think
we
could see an
explosion of that type of energy.
Addison:
How should people think about raising wealth if there is a legitimate energy crisis like what
we saw in the
seventies? What recommendations do you make? I want to put that in the context of the market
disruptors event
that you're hosting, because there's going to be a bunch of different answers at that
event.
Mark:
So the answers, I think, are going to be a little bit bigger. First off, anytime there's
inflation or
supply chain
constraints or energy prices go crazy, it hurts the poor the most, right? The poor are always
the
ones that are hurt
the most. For example, I'm in Puerto Rico right now. Puerto Rico has serious problems with
keeping
the power on. On
my side of the island, the power was out for almost a week. About 800,000 people didn't have
power,
and it's hot.
They have no fans, their food's rotting and it's a bad situation. The water pumps stop working.
Well, I was able to
pick up and leave. I went to the city. I have money, right? The poor, unfortunately, can't do
that.
So the first thing is protecting your purchasing power. Energy prices are going up in Europe,
800% on
natural gas,
400% on electricity. The poor are adversely affected. The rich, they can afford that. They can
absorb those cost
increases. So one, how do you navigate this challenging time by increasing your purchasing
power.
So, thinking about
ways to grow your money through your investments, I think, is step one. Then two, by growing
your
money, by having
more money, not only can you offset those increased costs, but you can also have options. So for
example, in
Germany, the power's too expensive. I can go to France where it's much cheaper.
I would say those are probably the two ways to do that, and then also, as we talked about in the
beginning, through
these volatile times, it creates these wealth transfers, and so when the prices of natural gas
go up
800%, that's
bad for you as you're paying for your energy, especially if you can afford it, but that's also
tremendous investment
opportunities. When something goes up 800%, we have a way to profit from that.
I would say look for the opportunity to benefit from that, so obviously, in Uranium right now,
you're
crushing it.
We've been doing really, really good in Uranium. So I'm making more money and that money helps
me
offset those
higher expenses and move if I need to.
Addison:
Right. That sounds like a good point for us to give you another chance to just talk about
market disruptors,
and then we'll say goodbye. We're sending some people down to the event ourselves, and then you
can also stream
it too, right?
Mark:
Yeah. We're going to have it both live in person and a virtual option. About half my audience is
international, and
unfortunately, a lot of international people aren't able to travel to the United States anymore,
which is
unfortunate, so we are going to have that virtual option.
But I think it's super important to get there in person, because one of the other things that you
need to survive
these troubling times is you need to have a good community around you, and so getting out and
meeting people and
making friends that are on the same playing field that are looking at the same things I think is
super important. If
you can, obviously get there in person, if not the virtual option is good.
You'll learn about how to think about things differently, how to think about things in terms of
purchasing power. If
you're thinking about things, everything denominated in U.S. dollars, for example, and then they
dump in $6 or $8
trillion, it distorts the price signal, and so now, is real estate cheap or expensive today?
Well,
in U.S. dollars,
it's never been more expensive, but in oil or gold or rice, it's never been cheaper, right? So
you
have to learn to
think about things, learn to increase your purchasing power, learn strategies to increase that
wealth. Those are the
things that you'll learn, and go while you still can, because who knows what next year is going
to
hold?
Addison:
Yeah, the next lockdown. Yeah. Well, I want to thank you, Mark. It's actually good to meet
you. I've never
met you in person. Well, I still haven't met you in person, but now I've met you on video. But
we're going to
talk about your event after it's over, and we're going to put together a way for viewers, for
readers to get
access to the streaming. So the first thing is, if you can make it, go. Second thing, if you
can't, stream it.
Third, we'll have a package available for people to access the recording on their own
time.
Mark:
That's awesome. That's awesome. I appreciate you having me on. It's so great to meet you. Like I
said, I've been
following your work for a dozen years, so that's awesome, and hopefully I get to meet you in person.
It's going to
be great.
Addison:
Soon. All right. Thank you, Mark.
Mark:
All right, thanks so much