Why YOU May Be A Libertarian with Spike Cohen

Are you ready to rethink the political landscape you've known and challenge your existing beliefs? Our special guest, Spike Cohen, Libertarian candidate for Vice President in 2020, joins us in this revelatory exchange. He shares his journey to libertarianism, his relationship with the Libertarian Party, and his early work experiences that shaped his understanding of money and politics.

In the face of today's dilemmas, how do we go about building change within the government and the community? Spike candidly discusses how government interference intensified the Covid-19 crisis, and how the Liberty Movement is strategizing to amend this. We also examine Spike's innovative activism efforts with You Are The Power, their challenges with government restrictions, and how ordinary individuals can instigate change.

We conclude by dissecting the media's role in shaping political landscapes, particularly around Trump and the Libertarian Party. We discuss the prospect of a presidential run for Spike and the growth of his organization, You Are The Power. Finally, Spike shares his Bitcoin encounters and the potency of diversified investments. Tune in for an episode filled with thought-provoking discussions, captivating tales, and priceless insights.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:32

Welcome back to the whiskey and wisdom podcast, everybody. This is your co-host, tyler y'all, and today I'm with Chris Kellan, and our special guest for this evening is I am spike Cohen, and thank you so much, spike. We greatly appreciate you coming on. This is actually a super exciting episode for myself to have you on here and for everyone else who may not know, you can introduce yourself.

Speaker 2: 0:53

Sure, I am the founder and president of you are the power, and also in 19, in 1920, in 1920. I was the Libertarian candidate for vice president.

Speaker 1: 1:06

Yeah, that's awesome and I am member of. You are the power, thank you. So, yeah, absolutely so. Learned about you during the 2020 presidential election. Yeah, kind of start following the journey and like what you're talking about and, when the opportunity came up with, you are the power I like to be involved with and support and everything as well, too. That's awesome yeah we'll get into more about what stuff that you're doing more actively as well, but you're involved in pretty neat stuff. Right now too, I'm involved in all sorts of stuff.

Speaker 3: 1:34

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:35

And since we are on location today in Myrtle Beach to come and visit you, we did not pack up the whiskey to come down here as well, so we are sitting on water today.

Speaker 2: 1:44

Officer. This was for a podcast, it's perfectly fine.

Speaker 1: 1:47

No, it's okay.

Speaker 3: 1:48

I also forgot you can't buy like her on Sundays.

Speaker 1: 1:52

Oh, that's right.

Speaker 3: 1:53

Like, my brain was like oh, I'll pick up a nevermind, it's that way in North Carolina too, yeah. But I know there's some like South Carolina has weird rules, so there are some counties where you could buy it on a Sunday and others you can't, so I didn't know. Yeah, you can also go to a bar and order it, and then just run out when they give it to you.

Speaker 2: 2:13

It's not legal but you can't you can't do that you absolutely can't do, that it's only illegal if you get caught. It's that stress you can. If you run fast enough, it becomes legal again. Yeah, right.

Speaker 1: 2:25

So before we get to into the libertarian side of everything, and you are the power Sure. So how did you get started and involved with the libertarian party and what did you do before becoming a politician?

Speaker 2: 2:39

Yeah, so there's kind of two parts to that. One is when I? When did I become a libertarian and or how? And then the other one is how did I get involved in the party? Right, if you go far enough back, it turns out I was always a libertarian, I just didn't really know it. I changed my name when I was three.

Speaker 3: 2:53

That was a good indicator that I was going to do whatever the hell I wanted.

Speaker 2: 2:57

And then I started my own business when I was 16 again, I had done some before that. I was doing child labor, so I was. When I was 13 years old I started busting tables during the summers, and completely illegal, there was no, that's not legal at all. But I, when I would do it, I was learning the value of a dollar. I was learning the value of networking, because the waiters and waitresses would tip me out if they like me and stuff like that. So you learn, you know very quickly. But the other thing, other thing I learned was I'm here busting tables sometimes I do flex work in the, in the kitchen and stuff like that, helping prep stuff and I'm seeing people who are two and three times my age doing the exact same thing, making a little bit more than me, but I was getting under under the table. So I was probably making the same thing as them after taxes and I thought, well, I don't want to do this for the rest of my life. So I started my own business. When you're in the business world, very quickly you learn you hate the government because you know the better you do, the more they're punishing you for it. I'm like here I am, I'm providing a necessary service. I was a website designer, creating jobs, I making money, being self. Sufficient. I was told this was the American dream. Why are you punishing me? Right? So I was always kind of I wouldn't say necessarily anti government, but I was certainly on the leave me the hell alone side of things and always the Second Amendment absolutist. I never even dabbled in supporting gun control. But then, when 911 happened, I bought the media narrative that you know. This happened because the terrorists hated us because we were just so darn free and they never really defined what freedom was. They make vague references to women wearing tight shorts, which I am all about to this day. I think we should fight to the end for women and booty shorts. But you know I there were these terrible evil people. They just sort of spring out of nowhere and they were going to kill us all if we didn't stop them first. And I bought it because I wasn't hearing anything else. There were these kind of annoying libertarians on the internet that would try to tell me that you know, if you look at the history, al Qaeda was actually funded from the Mujahideen by the CIA and this is actually backlash for decades of US imperialist policy. And you know, I didn't want to hear that stuff. I was angry about 911. I was scared it was going to happen again and I didn't want to hear it. In retrospect they were 100% right. So as their predictions that they made continued to come out, it turned out they did lie about Iraq. They did lie about Afghanistan. We were not greeted as liberators. Thousands of people were coming home dead or you know, or with PTSD and things like that. That made me realize I was wrong and that led me on a journey to kind of discovering what I did think about things and that led me to libertarianism. What got me into the party was that I'd always seen party politics as kind of useless, and I especially if you're doing it with a third party because we rarely win anything and in the few things that we do, when are at the local level, and I was more busy with business. And then, when I was diagnosed with MS in 2016 and decided that I had reached a point where I didn't need to be working anymore to make ends meet and I decided to retire from that, I thought, well, now what am I going to do? I started podcasting yeah, you guys are on the same journey there and that got me more and more involved in libertarian politics. And then a very interesting character named vermin supreme asked if I would like to be his VP running mate. When he got was seeking the nomination, I said what the hell? I'm certainly not going to win it with the guy with the boot on his head so I don't have to worry about actually getting nominated, but I can go in there and give my thoughts about you know what I've learned in the world of sales and marketing and how we can apply that to the way that we spread the message.

Speaker 3: 6:33

I apparently sold it well, because then they made me the nominee and the rest is history.

Speaker 1: 6:38

So that's awesome. Yeah, so before we get to too far in there too. So we did have one of the. He was running for senate. We had him on the podcast for North Carolina. So Shannon Bray, shannon. Bray, yeah, so we had him on the podcast a while ago, and so he's actually running for governor now yes so we had a little bit of experience as the podcast for libertarians, but in your voice, what would you describe is kind of the laboratory and platform in a nutshell we recognize that people do best when they're most free right.

Speaker 2: 7:10

We recognize that the problems that we face are usually either created by too much government involvement or made worse by too much government involvement, or sometimes both created and made worse. And we recognize really it just boils down to there's way too much power in the hands of way few, too few people, and those people are not respecting us as individual human beings and the only way that we're going to get out of these problems is to take that power back and demand the respect that we deserve.

Speaker 1: 7:39

That's libertarianism yeah, perfect, very sustained.

Speaker 2: 7:42

That's an awesome club for us someone accused me of having said that before, but that just completely came off the cuff just now. I've never said that before, of course not because I am a person outside of politics.

Speaker 3: 7:56

I'm like Max, I'm just like I'm here, I listen to all the sides. Yeah, I'm like mmm, I'm not gonna vote for this person or that person. Yeah, but I totally agree like most of the problems, if not all of them, that we have nowadays are government interference.

Speaker 1: 8:11

I think I'm not sure if it was you or someone else that I heard say this before too but they basically put the government into a box that said the government is someone that gives you a crutch and say, here look, without me you wouldn't be able to walk, but they're also the ones that shot you in the leg yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 8:25

So Harry Brown was our presidential candidate in 1996 and 2000, one of the greatest messengers we've ever had, and his phrase was government is good at one thing they break your legs, steal your wallet, use some of the money to buy you some crutches and say, hey, if it wasn't for me, you couldn't walk. Well, obviously it's easy to see what the problem is it. We just saw it with covid. Yeah, it is very increasingly likely that the US government, through gain of function research, created the virus that ended up accidentally leaking in a lab and, rather than come out front, go. If that's indeed what happened rather than come out front go, something bad really happened. They said everyone stay inside until further notice and if you, if anything, happens, it's your fault. While they're shoving covid patients in nursing homes, while they're ignoring these regular guidance on how to deal with viruses, while they're incentivizing using respirators, even though that doesn't work for a highly pathogenic respiratory virus, like all the things they did at every step, even if this did turn out to be a completely zoonotic illness, at the very least, government at every step made things worse and created all of these other problems by getting involved instead of just giving us the information they had and letting us make decisions for ourselves. People were still gonna die, people are still gonna get sick. There were still going to be problems with people losing their jobs and all of that. That was unavoidable. Once that big was caked, it was unavoidable. That cake was baked, it was unavoidable.

Speaker 1: 9:49

But government involvement made it worse and on top of that, as well, as they kind of interfered with all the social media companies, and if we had this podcast?

Speaker 2: 9:59

now back in early 2020 would be taken off the internet like that, my saying that I routinely during the campaign had to be careful with how I was saying and I would just say we need to investigate the origins of covid. I didn't know nearly as much as we do now, and meanwhile I'm getting white papers about gain of function research and all this stuff and I'm like, yeah, I gotta be very careful how I say this, not because it doesn't need to be said, but if I say it I literally will be kicked off of all social media. So I would say we need to investigate the origins of covid. You know we shouldn't. We should look at history of what happens when we just blindly accept the narrative from government about how something happens. We shouldn't be doing that with this and and even then I was getting backlash. But you know, if you don't speak the truth, then you're relying on someone else to do the thing that you're not doing right.

Speaker 1: 10:46

So so kind of going back to the campaign trail a little bit, how? How was that just being a on the trail for that whole entire experience?

Speaker 2: 10:55

because that's something that very, very few people ever experience in their whole life, and we only get to see the clips online yes, and I don't believe anyone else in recent times anyway, has experience running for national office in the United States where the vast majority of the things they were doing were, at least in part, in open defiance of local regulations, like we were very often just showing up and, you know, no one ever got arrested or anything like that, I think because they just didn't want us to get the media attention that would come with it. But yeah, I mean, we were very, you know, not applying for permits. If they, if the office was open, we'd apply, but very often the office was closed. Alright, well, we still have a First Amendment affirmed right to peacefully assemble and and engage in political speech, and and so we would do it. But it was the most challenging and one of the most rewarding things that I've ever done in my life, especially in an era of lockdowns and mandates and social distancing and two thirds of the businesses being shut down. Anywhere you went, it was like some kind of weird dystopian thing where you're traveling a country that just about everyone else is locked up and here you are, like literally I visited 35 states inside of a few months, two states a day If you counted. Each time I visited a state, even the duplicate. It's probably like 75-80 times going from state to state to state and a time when many people weren't leaving their county, weren't even leaving their house. So it was definitely a very surreal time, but it's also one of the most rewarding things I've ever done. It was what allowed me to do what I'm doing now with you, were the Power. Building that network and that base of support across the country is now allowing me to do what I'm doing with you, were the Power. Yeah, and so since you kind of went into that, what is you Were the Power, so you Were the Power is the answer to a lot of issues that the Liberty Movement has been dealing with for quite some time. We have solutions. I like to say libertarians have all the answers. But then the next question we don't have a good answer to is very often okay, but how are we going to do it? And the thing is, because we're libertarian, we very often like to do our own thing, and that's perfectly fine. People should do their own thing. But we haven't had a really good blueprint on how to do that For a long time. Our blueprint was we were going to run presidential candidates and we were going to do a Hail Mary pass every time. Hope they get on the debate stage, and then, when they didn't, we'll see in four years we had the strategy of, more recently, of getting people elected locally, and that is working. We are getting them elected locally, but that's a much longer process and it doesn't address the cultural issue of what happens if most people don't actually want to be free. What if they don't tie freedom to better outcomes? What if they think that being free is actually a dangerous thing and that the cage is actually protection, that the gilded cage that they're in is protection, and so while we're in this status quo that people are increasingly frustrated with but also are increasingly, you know, reliant on or believing that that's the only alternative, that there is no alternative to it, people are suffering. We hear it all day long. People are suffering under a government that is way too big and powerful now, and libertarians are often infighting with each other and blaming who do we blame for the fact that we haven't gotten ahead, instead of finding and working on a viable blueprint. So that's what we're doing with you or the power we're finding those people who are being harmed. Now we're organizing the liberty community and just the general public of their local community. Wherever that cause is to get justice for those people, we're using this as an opportunity to say look, this is what happens when government is too involved in your life, when they're not respecting you as individual human beings, and we're giving people a thing to work on. Instead of trying to convince someone to be a libertarian and then encouraging them to join us, I'm giving them a cause they already agree with us on now getting some results now, getting them essentially weaponized to do more now and then, along the way. They realize they're a libertarian. They realize and this isn't just about their party just philosophically they realize that they don't want government in their lives. They don't think it's a good way to organize people. They do want to be more free, and so that's what we do, with you or the power.

Speaker 1: 15:15

So one of the examples that I saw most recently is kind of right down the road. Was it with Erica Brown?

Speaker 2: 15:19

Yes in Columbia. Yeah in Columbia.

Speaker 1: 15:21

That's right. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about how that worked out, because I thought that was a really neat story about how that all came together and how the people that were supposedly supposed to enforce it or ended up, at the end of the day, helping.

Speaker 2: 15:33

Yes, or at least not getting in the way. So Erica Brown runs an organization called Be Kind, be Great, and she is in Columbia, south Carolina, and she's been doing this for a few years now. What she does is she goes around the areas that tend to have lots of homeless people and initially all what she would do is just go with some food and some water and basic necessities her and maybe a couple of other people. As she started doing that, she realized that their problems didn't end there. They also felt completely disconnected from anyone, even the other people that were homeless. They felt completely alone, and so she started when she would get together with them, started trying to build a sense of community amongst them and invited other members of the community in Columbia to come and not just feed them and serve them, but also show them we do care about you, you do matter, you do belong here. We're glad that you're here, and Be Kind, be Great has reached a point where they've hosted fish fries where hundreds of people have come out. They've partnered with local universities to where they allow the students to volunteer for credit hours. They have partnered with churches. They've partnered with local sports teams, other charitable organizations, and they're doing all this great stuff by literally going out where people are, meeting them where they are and providing them with what they need in that moment, but also helping to connect them with the things they need to eventually not be homeless. Right, not just a handout, but also a hand up as well. And everything was fine until, I think, three weeks ago now not that long ago the police showed up one of the times that Erica went out she goes out every Friday to do this and the police came out and said you know, technically we could interpret this as you blocking the traffic on this sidewalk, even though they would make sure not to block the traffic of the sidewalk, and we could consider you an obstruction, and so if you do this ever again, we're going to find you. You might even do some jail time. Oh wow. So literally everything was fine. In fact, people were being helped. We often hear about this homelessness crisis, but here's someone who's trying to help solve it or at least alleviate the harm of it. Everything is going well until the government shows up and says you're not allowed to do that. So without government, who would tell us that we couldn't help people that are in need? And so we found out about it. Through our social media connections, we are getting a constant inflow of people telling us about different abuses that are happening across the country, and so when we found out about it, we immediately announced that we were. You know, we contacted her and then, once we talked with her, we immediately publicly announced that we were going to go do the thing that the police told us not to do, and we invited the police and the mayor and the everyone to come out and we reached out to local media and we weren't quiet about it. We were like, hey, we're going to do this thing. That this lady was just told that is illegal and that she's going to go to jail for, or get fined for, helping people Like the horrific terroristic crime of helping people. That's what we're going to do. So we did the event the following Friday and this was a week ago now, and we are activists showed up and be kind, be great, showed up and we were expecting the police would come out in force and stop us, and we expected to disobey that and basically tell them make me stop helping people while everyone's watching on this live stream. That didn't happen. Our people were there for, I think two or three hours, and they gave out food and water and necessities until there wasn't a single person there asking for it. Wow, there was no one left to need several. I think well over a hundred people were fed there and were given water and necessities. They were there for hours. Police never came. Then, as they're starting to wrap up, because while we were there we also had a few people some of the kids and some of the people that came out we gave them some signs to hold up, saying things like feeding people should not be a crime and stuff like that. Real insurgent, really subversive stuff. As we were wrapping up, the police showed up here we go. So they got out of their cars and our activists offered them some water and they went. No, that's fine. We just wanted to let you know we really love everything that you're doing.

Speaker 3: 19:41

Oh, wow.

Speaker 2: 19:43

We're not the same cop, but the same department that had threatened fines and jail time now suddenly really liked everything we were doing. And then, shortly after that, the mayor and city council members. They came out and said oh, we greatly support what we are doing as well with some caveats which we can get into. But they said we love it, we love that you're doing this. Probably all of this happened because we got enough people together and said make us, your job is to enforce what you think is against the law. Great, then come out and, as a human being, tell this human being that they can't help this human being and that you're going to essentially kidnap them and rob them if they try to do it and wonder of wonders with cameras on them. They didn't do that. So we're actually going this Tuesday, we're going back to the next city council meeting and we're going to say, hey, this shouldn't have to be a thing anymore. We shouldn't have to come out in force for you to not bully someone who's trying to help people. So, just back off for good. Whatever you have to pass a resolution or whatever that you're not going to interpret these ordinances to be weaponized against people who are helping other people. Do that so that we don't have to keep doing this anymore and so that when we come out, we don't have to worry about if the police are going to come and arrest people. That's what happens when you can organize a community that very often feels powerless, like there's nothing they can do about it. I guess I can vote, but they're lying anyway. So who do I even vote for? You can show them. No, you don't have to wait to vote. You can literally show up, and many people just showed up online. I like to say cyber bully the government. You can browbeat these people into doing the right thing If enough of us show up. It doesn't have to get violent, it doesn't have to be anything like that. We can literally just insist that they do the right thing, and the longer they refuse, as they like to say, the longer you resist, the worse it gets for you. So just comply.

Speaker 3: 21:46

Right, that is the funniest thing. I was watching a video and somebody I guess it was in PA like the person who's in charge of their senate and trying to pass the budget, was like hey, I'm not going to show up to work because I'm going to take vacation time and literally was going to dip out for like seven weeks straight and enough people bullied her into showing up to work. She showed up for like one day, handed over the budget and then disappeared again. Yeah, I was like it's not that hard to do what's right, but people just don't want to do it because politics have gotten so big that you have a face for most politicians and they're like, but there's so many people behind them pushing a certain agenda that they're not doing anything to help the people at the bottom. They're only helping people at top.

Speaker 2: 22:35

Well, and that's the thing it's. Once you realize, Chris, that government is an organization that at best incentivizes ineptitude and at worst incentivizes malignant behavior, and that when you give too much power to a small handful of people, they're inevitably going to just use it to further entrench that power they have and pay off and enrich the people that put them in office, Then you start looking at government entirely different. You know government I forget who coined this but government is essentially a mafia that's masquerading as a charitable organization like this. You know, without government you wouldn't have parks, you wouldn't have libraries without government, how would we feed the poor Without government? How would we do this and how would we protect you? And you know how would we have roads and all of these things? But really, government is just politicians, enforcers, bureaucrats and the cronies who pay them all off. So if, instead, you say, how would we have a park or a library or a road without politicians, bureaucrats, cronies, enforcers and the cronies who pay them off? Suddenly that sentence doesn't seem as to make as much sense. Right, and the libertarian answer is we want all the same things that everyone else wants. We just want to cut out this, this, like bad middleman that doesn't serve anything, doesn't really serve a good purpose. Have you ever seen the office space? Yes, and there's that scene where the two, the two, the two people that are bringing into fire people, are interviewing that guy and they go what do you actually do here? And he's, like you know, getting all worked up trying to explain it what he does, but he really doesn't do anything. He just has this person talk to this person, and that's politicians and bureaucrats. That's literally their job is to say is, when they hear people say we need a thing, they go yes, yes, okay, we're going to appoint a committee to find out who does that thing, and we're going to take money from you and hire these people over here to do this thing, and, of course, we're going to skim from it and we're going to, you know, put some of it aside for our pet projects and things that no one wants. That's literally what they're doing. They're skimming from the top. We could be doing these things without so much government involvement in the first place.

Speaker 1: 24:50

Yeah, especially the committee part. Right now it seems to be even more popular than it has been before. There's always there's a new committee for everything now and you're just like wait. How much money did you need to investigate this?

Speaker 2: 25:01

Yeah, because they learn that they can defer to it. Yeah, politicians love to be able to say that they love passing the buck. Really, everyone likes passing the buck. But if you can pass the buck and get like rewarded for it, if you can say listen, we put together a blue ribbon panel of all the people who paid me to be on that panel and I just listen to them because they're the experts and whatever they say, I'm just going to go with. Meanwhile they're in the back, influencing it as much as they possibly can. They're outside lobbyists who are influencing as much as they can, but then they show up at the end and go listen, I'm just doing what the panel told me to do. Again, we saw this with COVID, right, right, how many times do politicians go? I'm just listening to the experts. Well, you appointed those experts, right? Anytime those experts said anything you didn't like, you replaced them with experts who did say what you like. You're not listening to the experts, you're hiding behind them and they're hiding behind their lab coats. No one is taking responsibility for what is obviously a completely nonsensical and horrific and tyrannical and counterproductive policy that's making everything worse. But because, no, you know, the cop who enforces it goes listen, this isn't my job, I'm just doing my job. I don't like this anymore than you do, but I'll use whatever level of violence makes you comply with it, because that's my job, and the politician you know was the one that did it. Now, this human being who just made you do a thing that they know is going to hurt you, and the only reason you're doing it is because they threaten to hurt you more They've now completely wiped himself of any responsibility because the politician told him to. Then the politician goes hey, listen, I'm just listening to the experts. I am but a public servant. I'm just here to I'm letting the experts say what needs to be done here. And so now they've this human being who has ordered this other human being to threaten you with violence If you don't do something. That's terrible. Now they get to wipe themselves of any responsibility. And then the expert goes listen, we're just leaning on the science. So now, what have they done? They've now deferred it to something that that is this, you know, esoteric thing that isn't even a human being. So no one gets any blame. And, of course, the science we've learned is whatever. They have made the narrative fit to be, and they've silenced anyone who presents any anything to challenge the science. But they get to say you know, the cop defers to the politician, who defers to the expert, who disfers to their own narrative, and so no one takes any responsibility. And we see that with everything, that's what government is. It's just people deferring to, ultimately, to a thing that doesn't really exist.

Speaker 1: 27:29

So kind of taking that and then taking a small pivot on how people can get more involved with it as well is. A lot of people probably agree with a lot of what you said, especially our listeners. But then the next question is why would I vote for a libertarian? Because, like you said before, a lot of people think voting third party is like a throwaway vote.

Speaker 2: 27:48

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 27:48

So what's what's kind of the comeback to that too? So, like I have my own reasons, but I like to hear what.

Speaker 2: 27:53

Well, I agree. I think this election, every single election cycle, becomes far too important. Exactly. And there's a reason for that government governs by crisis, and we have two parties who have contributed to this environment where each election is more crucial than the last because things keep getting worse and worse, and I would argue that this election is far too important to waste our vote and throw our vote away for either of the two parties who have made this mess Right. We have to give up on this notion that one half of the ruling class is the only half to blame and the other half is the only one that can stop them. It's a scam. You're being scammed. You know? We have a phrase that we use the foxes in the henhouse, right, and the reason we use that, that, that imagery, is because it's so foolish, right? Like why would hens hire foxes to protect them when those are the predators? And then we turn around and vote Republican and Democrat. But we have decades, centuries, at this point of history, of what happens when you elect Republicans and Democrats the government gets bigger, it's more in your wallet, it's more in your business. Things get worse as a result. The value of your money continues to diminish. It doesn't matter which side wins. Whoever gets in, they blame the other side. Yeah, this is what voting for the status quo gets you. People tend to think in binaries and right now, the binary they're thinking is Republican or Democrat. We need to shift that binary. There is a binary, it's the status quo Republicans and Democrats, and a stark alternative to the status quo, which I would say is the libertarian party. And if we don't win this, whatever the election is, then I know I was already going to lose anyway, so why not vote for what I actually believe in, knowing that if I'm going to lose, I'm going to lose, but at least if I win, I'm actually voting for something that we all win? Now, that's going to be. A lot of people are going to say, okay, fine, but I still need to vote for the lesser evil candidate. You know if it's, whether it's the Republican or the Democrat. And I would argue that if you keep voting for evil, don't be shocked when you get more evil, even if it's lesser evil. But okay, fine, if there are going to be some people that they're still going to vote for Trump to stop Biden, or Biden to start to stop Trump. And there are some people that I'm not going to be able to convince not to do that. Which is why I've said, within libertarian circles. We need to focus on changing that narrative by focusing on races where we can win, where we are already winning. We have won hundreds of local races, and when you win a local race, you get someone that these people actually know elected. So it's not some like person they've never heard of showing up every four years saying vote for me for governor, president or senator, whatever it's hey, I'm your neighbor. Here's my idea of how we can make things better in our city, our county or whatever, our town, our school district. Oh, also, I'm a libertarian and these ideas are libertarianism, and so when they get elected, we can actually show not only can we win, but when we win, they win for a change too. Right, it's no longer just deciding which flavor of lies you like more, it's, you actually get a return on your vote, you get freedom back, you get more prosperity, you get more harmony. As a result of this, like things get better. You actually say I voted for this person and things got better as a result. Not just you know, I like their lies better, or at least the other side didn't win. And now you've built a stable of candidates who can go from city council, county council, mayor, state legislator, congress, governor, senate, maybe even president one day. But we have to do that work to start changing the narrative from you can't win to wow, they can win, and I'm winning too. And I don't want to vote for this side anymore because that's completely different than what happens when I vote libertarian. If we keep putting all or most of our focus on races that we go into knowing that we're not going to win, then we are reinforcing the narrative that we can't win True yeah, that's a very good point, and so that point as well, at least for right now anyway, these local races are the ones that are actually impacting us the most anyway.

Speaker 1: 32:03

So just taking that effort and putting it towards races that we can win, that does make the largest impact, you think, would kind of start eventually catching fire, you are far more likely to have your rights infringed upon by a local cop or sheriff sheriff's deputy than you are by, like, an FBI agent or an ATF agent.

Speaker 2: 32:22

And, honestly, even a lot of the time when the ATF or the FBI is cracking down on you, it's being done through a local cop. True, most of those people something like 90%, 93% of enforcement of federal law is being done at the local level. So these people wearing FBI jackets and stuff, they're deputized. These are the local cops, right? So that's another thing. If libertarians take over a county, now it's a libertarian sheriff. Now it's a libertarian school district, or maybe even multiple school districts, now it's libertarian. Any cities that are in there are libertarian, with libertarian mayors and libertarian council members. Now you can show how liberty looks on even just a small area scale. But you can also nullify a lot of the bad stuff coming at the state and federal level, which shows people how much more power they have than they thought People think. Okay, I'll vote for my congressman, I'll vote for my senator, I'll vote for president, but these multi-billion dollar cronies, they're gonna just control everything anyway. It's useless. They can't make you if your sheriff's on your side. True, yeah, and so I really, for a variety of reasons. We need to be focusing local. We need to build this from the ground up. Yes, we still need to have a presidential candidate. Some states wouldn't even let your party be on the ballot if you don't have a presidential candidate. Yes, we should pick a good candidate who's a firebrand, who gets people excited and who actually looks like, if lightning strike 15 times in the same spot and they actually got elected, that they wouldn't screw it up, that they'd actually do a good job at it. Yes, we still need to pick good, engaging and viable candidates for these larger races. But we need to understand that, while the narrative is that, while most people live under the narrative that there's no reason to vote for them, they may just be the messengers for now, and our focus needs to be on the races where we're actually going to win dozens or hundreds of these races, whether or not we even really try. So let's try and get thousands of them elected Right.

Speaker 3: 34:22

So I have two questions. Sure One would you be opposed to local level elections not having any party on it, just going person versus person?

Speaker 2: 34:35

I support going back to what we originally had, which is it would say president, all the way down to city council, whatever, and it would just have a blank line and you'd write the name of the person that you wanted in there. And the purpose of that was explicitly to try to stop political parties and to try to stop the railroading of a candidate just using a bunch of money to get their name recognition. So people would just press the thing that they saw most often or press the letter next to their name, or I guess back then it wouldn't have been pressing but checking a box saying this party it was. You write the name of the person down. Then they introduced well, the political parties introduced well, we're gonna have names of any candidates who apply to have their name on the ballot, or you can write one in. And then eventually they said well, it's gonna be untenable to have all these different candidates out on there, so we need to have some minimal ballot access restrictions. You need to be able to get at least a few signatures on a ballot access petition. We just wanna make sure these are serious people and they're not just brigading the things so that there's a thousand names on there. And now you reach a point where in Tennessee, if you're a Republican or Democrat, you have to get 25 signatures to get on the ballot. If you're anything else, you have to get 50,000 signatures to get on the ballot 2,000 times the number of signatures. Even if you're running for something that doesn't even have 50,000 people in it, you have to still get 50,000 signatures. And because the courts that verify those petitions, those signatures on the petitions, are all Republicans and Democrats. They've all been appointed by the people that are opposing us. You really have to get 100,000 signatures in Tennessee, which means we never have libertarian candidates. They have to run as independents. This is what happens when you let them control who's on the ballot. So no, not just at the local level, at every level. I propose completely eliminating all of the party, everything and simply having a line there. I also propose ending the public primary system. If your organization wants to decide who your nominee, is great, you pay for it. Why is the taxpayer paying for this? We don't make the taxpayer pay for our decision on. We spend tens of what am I saying? Hundreds of thousands of dollars on our convention, sometimes millions out of our own pockets, whereas the Republican and Democrat parties get hundreds of millions I think in this time around upwards of a billion dollars to fund their process. Then, on top of that and this also needs to end the candidates get taxpayer money if they're Republicans or Democrats. So while the people that are in charge literally get to rob you to fund their campaigns, everyone else has to fight to even be on the ballot. We need to end all of that stuff.

Speaker 3: 37:19

See, I totally agree. We were sitting there because we had one of our friends of the podcast Catherine was on here and she's running and it's a conversation of like everyone looks at Republican and Democrat and I'm like you don't need to look at that. We're at the point in the world where I just wanna vote for the person who has my best interest at heart, whether it be a libertarian or like me. If I'm running eventually, or anything like that, I'm not gonna be like, well, I'm a Democrat Cause I'm like no, these are my personal points of view and I think that's what you should be voting for, not for a specific party.

Speaker 2: 37:57

And the problem? That's 100% what we should be doing and the problem is, increasingly people are voting against. So negative partisanship is incredibly powerful and we can thank, we can blame whichever you wanna do. I would say blame. We can blame the fact that people respond better to negative messaging than to positive messaging. So you get more bang for your buck telling people why you should vote against this person instead of why you should vote for you. Problem, and what allows that to exist, is a two-party system, because instead of saying here's why you should vote for me, it's more cost efficient for me to say why they shouldn't vote for Tyler or why they shouldn't vote for Chris. But if it's me and Tyler and Chris and five other people running well now, it's not cost effective for me to try to attack all the eight, nine, 10 other people running for that race who have a serious shot of winning, and in fact, it'll actually blow up in my face If all they ever hear from me is about how everyone else is a piece of crap. Eventually people are gonna say, hey, maybe it's you now, like, maybe you're the problem here, like you're the only one who's attacking everyone. Maybe it's you. So that's another thing that getting rid of the you know, the locked in bipartisan, two-party system gets rid of is to allow to actually incentivize candidates, saying why you should vote for them as opposed to against someone else.

Speaker 1: 39:21

That makes a lot of sense. I've always seen the data that kind of reinforces what you were saying there too, where you actually get more of a bang for your buck, saying why someone else is horrible and why they should be like throwing off the face of the earth but I never really understood why that was. But that makes a lot more sense now, and it's also because it's easier to convince someone not to show up at the ballot box, as it is for someone to show up for you.

Speaker 2: 39:43

Yep, and that's the other thing they would love. They love low turnout races because now they're only talking to their base. They're only talking to the people who are completely indoctrinated into their ideas. They don't have to convince you if you don't show up, so they get to do that. And the problem is it also reinforces a good cop, bad cop routine that they're playing with each other. Keep in mind Republicans and Democrats are in on this together Anytime. It's time to raise the debt ceiling, run up more debt in your name, diminish the value of your currency, continue the endless American imperialism across the globe Any of their main goals. They come together in record time when it was time to lock everyone down and spend tens of trillions of dollars, transferring wealth from those with the least to those with the most, and giving you a check for 1200 bucks while giving you $36 plus thousand dollars per person in debt that's gonna take 40 years to pay off People that haven't even been born yet. They did it together in record time. They pretend to be against each other, so you feel like you have the illusion of choice, and part of that illusion is the good cop, bad cop routine. They play. Donald Trump, joe Biden, spend most of their time saying why you should not vote for this person. And here's why, if they focused on why you should vote for them, you're gonna go. Well, you didn't do that last time. Yep, right. If Joe Biden says I'm going to fix these problems of inequity that we're seeing in all this abuse of the justice system, people go. You built all that for 40 plus years. This is your system that we're living under right now. Why would we pick the architect of everything we're protesting right now? If Donald Trump says I'm going to cut spending and I'm gonna keep this government under control and I'm going to protect your rights, they're gonna go. No, but you didn't. You literally let Anthony Fauci run rough shot over us. You ran up $9 trillion in debt. You ran up as much debt as Obama did in two terms. You did this in one term. You're lying. But if instead they go you can't let Joe Biden get an office then the people that are kind of amenable to that side go. Fine, I'll vote for him. At least he's not Joe Biden. And how many people? A record number of people did not vote for Joe Biden. They voted against Donald Trump. It's a good cop, bad cop routine, and the thing to remember about good cop, bad cop routines is that they're both cut?

Speaker 3: 41:59

Yes, they're in on it.

Speaker 2: 42:01

They are both. You're dealing with two cops. When you walk in and the interrogation lights are on you and the two cops come in and one goes I'm gonna ruin your life, and blah, blah, blah, and the other one goes listen, listen, listen. They decided on the way there which one was gonna be the good cop and which one was gonna be the bad cop, or one's just really good at being one, but they're on the same. Neither one's on your side. They're emotionally manipulating you using fear, and that's literally what politicians do. And everything that we can do getting rid of the party identification on ballots, or even just getting rid of the names on ballots and adding just having a blank line, getting rid of the ballot access restrictions and allowing anyone to run who wants to run, introducing things like ranked choice voting and proportional voting that allows for there to be more, more than one party representation All of that kills that narrative and it's why they fight so hard against it.

Speaker 1: 42:51

Yeah, the other thing that I thought was funny, too, is the two parties that talk about freedom the most, or democracy the most right, or the ones that are fighting the most to keep other people off of the ballot.

Speaker 2: 43:02

I'm like isn't? this ironic, yeah, there's nothing more anti-democratic than saying you have to pick me Right, I love the, and right now it's. You know the Democrats who are leading that charge, saying you know no labels, and some of these other parties. They're literally saying, and they'll say it flat out, I'm not even paraphrasing They'll say you know, voting anything other than Democrat is a threat to our democracy. Single party, anything, any alternative to only having one viable party to choose from right is a threat to democracy. No, that is democracy like. You should have a multi, multi. You should have you go. If you went into a store and it only had two types of deodorant, two types of bread, two types of rice, two types of apples, two types of whatever, some of those things, okay, fine, you know they're rarer or whatever, and there only need to be one or two types. But if everything only had two choices and they kept getting worse the apples kept getting more rotten, the bread kept getting more moldy, the, the rice kept having more insects in it or whatever you know you're gonna stop going to that store. Right, that's what we have right now. You need it in a nation of 350 million people, the idea that the only two people who can possibly run our government are two of the biggest shmucks we've ever seen on earth, and that's it. That's all you can choose. That's foolish.

Speaker 1: 44:27

It doesn't make any sense and kind of going back to having the more parties and everything to when I lived in Pennsylvania. I always would go to the voting booth of my mom decks I wasn't old enough at the time when I lived up there, yeah, but it was always interesting because it was like back during like the, so you could actually go in and pull the lever and it would just go Republican the whole way down or Democrat the whole way down and even at like 12, when I was walking in there, I was like this doesn't seem right to me no right, who are these people? right. Who are these people? Do you even know who these people are that you just pulled the lever for?

Speaker 2: 44:57

and in almost all those states that have single-party voting and they don't tell you this. If you pick all Republican or all Democrat and then you go in and individually pick some of the people that aren't, that, that doesn't count no way so there was a candidate for governor named Donald Rainwater. He was a libertarian and he did the best as any gubernatorial candidate we've had in recent memory possibly ever and. But he only got about, I think, 14 or 15 percent. It was in the teens and he had so many people come back to him and go, hey, don't worry, but I've done. I voted straight Republican ticket or straight Democrat ticket, but I voted for you, for governor, and he had to inform them, or his social media team had to inform them. You didn't vote for me, you put it on there, but that didn't count. Well, they're like. Well, we didn't know that. So who know he could have won, for all we know, he certainly would have gotten more votes. Yeah, we know that. At the very least, maybe it would have only been in the 20s, but it would have shown more support. But yeah, no that the system is entirely rigged against anyone who wants to stop or even slow down the growth of the status quo and that's not Republicans or Democrats. I mean a good, a good rule of thumb to use on. Is this person really on our side? If the media is paying a lot of attention to them, probably not right. Even if they're vilifying them? No, probably not. That's who they're. They're vilifying them to make you pay attention to them. That was Donald Trump true yeah, the media loved Donald Trump as president. I got news for everyone. They want Donald Trump to be president again. Made tons of money. Did you watch the the town hall with Donald Trump that he did a couple months ago? no, okay, that's so he does a town hall on CNN, right, and I said, okay, this is gonna go one of two ways. It they're either. Or actually three ways. They're either going to just present a you know a very unbiased, you know presentation with Trump and ask him a combination of you know softball and hardball questions and let the audience ask them stuff or whatever, and really just try to stay out of the fray of bias, which we know is not gonna happen, right, or they're gonna do one of two other things. If they want to hurt him, they're gonna ask him questions that will hurt him with his base. They'll say, hey, you said you were gonna reduce the debt, but instead the debt you increase the deficit more than any other president in one term. You almost beat the previous record, which it took two terms for Obama to do. You said you were gonna protect gun rights, but you introduce more gun regulations and restrictions than the last three or four presidents before you and and cheer led for red flag laws across the country the biggest second, first, fourth and fifth amendment restriction violation that I can think of. You know, you? You said you were gonna do all these things, but then you didn't. What's with that? Or the third option is what they did, which is what you would do if you wanted him to get not just the nomination but to get reelected. You'd ask him about grab him by the pussy. You'd ask him about E Jean Carroll and Stormy Daniels. You'd ask him why he says all these mean things about Rosie O'Donnell or whatever. You'd say all the stuff that gets anyone who's even remotely on the right side of center to knee. Jerk, reactive, reflexively, defend him and get a kick out of his funny responses to it. And now he's you know you've assured the nomination. You'd also indict him on a series of bogus charges that are mostly just violations of his right to share his opinion on something, and threaten them with thousands of years of jail time, knowing that this is just going to get the base behind him. The media wants Donald Trump to be president and it's because they know they get 80 to 85 percent of what they want with him as president. They know that he gets to neuter the Republican opposition to it. When he was introducing things like the cares act and all this nonsense, he made sure that every Republican who didn't support that paid dearly for it. Right. So he gets to control the Republicans and instead of them fighting against it, now they're supporting it, allows the Democrats to go. This isn't enough. We need much more than this and their ratings go up, because when Donald Trump's president, media ratings go through the roof, everyone's paying attention and media gets to engage in their their favorite hobby, which is pretending that they've been personally victimized every time Donald Trump says something they don't like. Yeah, so it literally meets every goal that they have. So you know the media is going to push Donald Trump for president. They're gonna pretend that they're opposing him at every step, but that's what they did last time, right?

Speaker 3: 49:16

so one of my last questions for you, sure, sure, talking about getting the libertarian party at our local elections, state elections, county, and when you have people from Liberty Party just helping and running the government, what does that look like? Because I know you mentioned like pretty much they don't want as much government and yeah influence. So what would that look like?

Speaker 2: 49:40

so you mean, like it, actual libertarian elected officials? What does that look like?

Speaker 3: 49:44

yeah, so if you had a county of this, all libertarian elected people, oh, what would they look like.

Speaker 2: 49:49

So I can dive into that. The nutshell answer is that they would treat you with the same respect as an individual human being in their capacity as a government official as they or anyone else would treat you outside of their capacity as a government official. So like, for example, we all the three of us have a reasonable expectation that no one is about to try to rob or kidnap or murder anyone because we have this sort of intrinsic respect for each other as individual human beings, even if we don't like or agree with each other or respect each other's opinions. I respect the fact that you're a human being and that you have these certain you know you have the right to your life and and your boundaries and the ability to make decisions. I'm not going to try to grab you and say you have to do this or I'm going to make things bad for you. So we have that expectation of each other and it's that expectation, that reasonable expectation that as we go about our day we should relatively expect no one's going to try to hurt us because of that mutual respect that we have for each other intrinsically as individual human beings, and that expectation allows us to have a more harmonious and prosperous and and happy society and happy as individuals as well, and to whatever extent that's infringed upon, and we have less of an expectation of that. That's when things are worse. So if you look at the neighborhoods that have higher crime, higher poverty, higher levels of suicide and depression and substance abuse, they have less of a reasonable expectation that their individual, human, you know intrinsic their life and their boundaries is to be respected right, they and that that bleeds out into everything else. I'm not avoiding your question, by the way, but I need to lay down a bit of a foundation here about what libertarians believe. So we have that expectation and we realize intrinsically that the more that we are not respected, the worse things are, and the more we are respected, the better things are. But then we are conditioned to put that expectation aside. If that human being that we're expecting it from is now on this side of a podium and calling themselves a city council member or a congressman or a president or a mayor, or they have a badge on and they're calling themselves a police officer, now it's not theft which is wrong, it's taxes, which are difficult but necessary. Now it's not someone ordering you to do something that's against your best interest. Now it's a policy failure and we need to look at this moving forward. And so when we have that expectation reduced, it doesn't suspend the fact that by them disrespecting us as individual human beings that things get worse. That still happens. We just sit here and go. I don't know why this is happening. Well, it's happening because we're not having that expectation of respect from people in their capacity as government. So, to answer your question, a libertarian in office treats you the same way in that capacity as they would outside of that capacity. So, for example, when there is a need for infrastructure or something like that a new road, a new bridge, new whatever they either are going to figure out how they can get out of it so that the stakeholders, the people who need that the most, can make that decision for themselves, or they try to keep that decision making as local as possible. Or, if it is a small town and it's really gonna fall on them to do it, they're gonna make sure that they are an excellent steward of the money that it is going to require to do that thing, the revenue that they generate. They're gonna look at making the actual process of getting revenue as voluntary as possible. They're going to remove as much coercion as possible and try to make government something that people are choosing to fund as much as possible, because they understand not only is that morally and ethically correct to ask for money and receive it voluntarily than to take it from you, but they also recognize that that's the mechanism that allows them to be held accountable, because if I can just rob you, I'm not really truly accountable, right, or at least the system isn't. You can replace me, but you're just gonna replace me with him and he's gonna rob you too. So we would get rid of the coercive and tyrannical things that are in place that allow government to be the bad thing that we don't like. And so, if we're looking at education, those schools, those decisions, instead of being made by some entity saying this is gonna be your standard, we would let the parents make that choice, because they're the actual stakeholders in that situation. We would let the parents work directly with the teachers and the administrators of that school, instead of saying no, no, no, at the county or state level, we're gonna make you do it this way. And when it comes to public safety, we're going to focus on punishing actual crimes with actual victims. We're not going to arrest you and steal your car to raise revenue because you have a plant on you or you have a powder on you. That would be legal if you were prescribed it, but you aren't prescribed it. But if you're robbing or attempting to rob or you've kidnapped or raped or killed someone now, we're going to hold you accountable for that, because that has an actual victim right. We're also not going to rob people of their ability to defend themselves, which means we wouldn't restrict your access to being able to have the tools to defend yourself. I'm talking about guns. So all of these different things at every level, the base of it is respecting that you as a human being deserve to be respected as an individual human being, and then building policy out from that, instead of saying, well, this is the outcome we'd like and here's what we'll do to force people to live in the way that we think they should to get that outcome. It doesn't work. It makes things work worse. It empowers the worst people among us, and we should be doing the opposite of it. That's what libertarian governance looks like.

Speaker 3: 55:25

Nice, yeah. So my final question Sure, what would success look like for you just in general, so with your party or with your business?

Speaker 2: 55:36

So, with you or the power, success looks like what's happening right now. We are steadily and, I would say, rapidly growing into a nationwide organization. We have thousands of members across the country. We are working on multiple causes at the same time. That's a Rubicon we recently crossed. It was really we were kind of focused on one or two things at a time. Now it's multiples. There are causes going on I don't even know that much about. It's really it's growing outside of me into this much bigger thing. We're opening a chapter in Australia and possibly one in Guatemala as well. It's becoming an international thing. Each organization is going to run itself locally, obviously, because I don't know what Australians need better than Australians do, but they're using our model of how to apply public pressure and how to build a movement around causes and around a set of principles. That's what success looks like for that. I mean, it's just. I'm not sure that there's an end there other than just continuing to grow and continuing to bring people into the movement and continuing to help people now and not wait for some utopian, distant future where we've taken over the world and left everyone alone. But so that's what success looks like for that. Success for the party longterm looks like the party having a libertarian president, a libertarian controlled Congress and libertarian controlled state houses and so forth. Not a single party system, but just one in which we're the main party and where the majority of people inherently recognize that our ideas make the most sense and they agree with them and that's what they want. We didn't get there by lying to people and watering it down and becoming what we hated along the way. We did it by actually changing people into becoming more libertarian so that they actually want what we're proposing. So we're not lying to them. We're saying we're going to make government smaller. I think success shorter term looks like getting thousands of local libertarians elected, taking over some cities I say take over. Having libertarian majorities in these city councils and county councils and things like that. Having libertarian sheriffs, more libertarian sheriffs who show what libertarian law enforcement looks like and what libertarian security looks like. Those are what the short term successes are. We can use metrics like number of members or number of votes that we've gotten overall and stuff like that, but I think it really boils down to libertarians getting into office and showing what that looks like.

Speaker 1: 57:53

Yeah, so are you running for president again?

Speaker 2: 57:55

I have not how to throw it in.

Speaker 1: 57:59

I knew that was your final question, but that was not his final question.

Speaker 2: 58:02

I have not ruled it out and really it boils down to my process. Here is very open source. I'm not hiding any secrets from anyone. It really comes down to for the next, let's say, year plus, which would be now between now and election day of next year, is that time better spent doubling, tripling down on you or the power and continuing to grow it as it is and make it into something even bigger? Or would that time be better spent putting a good team in place to keep you or the power going and growing and taking that time to run for the president, run for that office and help the party and the movement as a result of that? I don't have the answer to that question yet and there's many much smaller questions that need to be answered. To be able to answer that, I suspect I will be deciding sooner than later and shortly after I'm deciding, and telling the main stakeholders who will be at the leadership of that effort if I do decide to run, or deciding not to, and letting the people that are running know you don't have to worry about me, I'm gonna be over here doing my thing. Come help me over here. Shortly after that, everyone else will know I have no interest in playing coy about it.

Speaker 1: 59:10

Right, that's awesome. So I do have one last question now. If you were to tell your younger self one thing, what would it be?

Speaker 2: 59:18

When you first heard of Bitcoin. It's not a scam.

Speaker 3: 59:20

Let me tell you that story a little bit.

Speaker 2: 59:23

Because I'd be. I'm happy with my Bitcoin and crypto portfolio, but I haven't been a billionaire, so I first found out about Bitcoin I think about a year after it came out, and they're explaining the whole thing in the blockchain and all of that, and I'm like this sounds a little bit like BitGold, which was the thing that had been around in the, I think, late 90s. But this makes intuitive sense and wow, this really is like a ghost ship thing that you're just gonna set off a drift and it's gonna turn into this. Okay, great, fine, I'll buy a couple of under bucks worth and this is it was worth. I think it was just it had either just crossed the one penny mark per Bitcoin or the 10 cent mark or something. Before that it was worth fractions of a penny and it had jumped up to I don't know eight cents or 1.3 cents or 10 cents or whatever it was, but it was still a couple of under bucks that could buy you thousands of Bitcoin. And so I'm like, all right, well, how do you buy it? And they're like, oh, you get a money order and then you do this and then you do that. And I'm like, oh, it's a scam, okay, it's a scam. So then I but this okay, so that's bad enough. Fast forward, I think. Two or three years later, I've now seen that Bitcoin has jumped up a little bit, whatever, but still not that much. I'm like, all right, that would have been a cool play because I, like you, know diverse investments I am very Jewish, but I'm on my computer and, for those who know Bitcoin, this is about to really infuriate them. This thing called a Bitcoin faucet came up, and a Bitcoin faucet was basically this pop-up and it looked as scamy as can be. But it was basically a pop-up that would come up or a website you'd go to that looked just as sketchy as could be and there was a button you would press and it would put five Bitcoin in a wallet and it would give you this address and all the different stuff. And so now you could have that in your wallet and you could either transfer all that information to some kind of storage, or you just have it on your computer and save your information. So you have your wallet. You could press that thing as many times as you wanted to.

Speaker 3: 1:01:19

Oh, wow.

Speaker 2: 1:01:20

And you could have a bunch of wallets or you could transfer them all. Yeah, no, exactly. And so I look and I went oh, it's a scam, because you know why would you have a, you know, to go from? You have to do all these you know ridiculous things to try to get some to. Oh, just press a button and you get it. And I'm like this is wonky, Like I know. You know, I know a scam. When I see it, I'm not gonna see how much. Shortly afterwards I realized that this wasn't a scam. Shortly afterwards I realized it wasn't a scam. But if I had pressed that thing until my thumbs bled or my finger bled, I'd be a multi-millionaire. And if I had done it initially, I'd be a billionaire. Like I said, I'm happy with my portfolio, but I would be lying if I said so. No, if I could go back in time, I would say there's this thing called Bitcoin. As soon as you hear of it, whatever it takes, as stupid as it sounds, buy like 10,000 of them. Like, buy, spend a million of them. Like, buy as many of these things as you can possibly get your hands on, and everyone will laugh at you for buying them. But just wait, Just buy them and then just wait. That would be my one advice.

Speaker 1: 1:02:26

And then your younger self would look at your future self and be like that's a scam.

Speaker 2: 1:02:30

Yes, knowing me and be like oh, oh, future spike, that's great. Oh, my hairline will never be that terrible. No, that's no way, that's me.

Speaker 1: 1:02:39

That's awesome. Thank you so much for sharing that story. That's great. We are coming up on an hour and you are respectful of your time as well, too, so we'll start wrapping it up here. But since you are down here in Myrtle Beach, we do wanna shout out the house that we are in right now. It is our good friend of mine, so Hemiina's husband actually own Black Ops Paintball, so one in Fayetteville and then also one down here in Myrtle Beach, and they're actually offering anyone who listens, who goes there, they get $100 off any of the parties that you wanna hold there. So if you wanna, have a party there, $100 off, even me, even you. Oh, I know who I'm calling.

Speaker 2: 1:03:15

Yeah, so promo code whiskey.

Speaker 1: 1:03:17

just let him know, and we're gonna have to do that. And they actually also just started a new North Carolina business for clearing trees called Abernathy Company. So he bought a bunch of land out there and he had to clear a bunch of trees and there was no one that was good around. So he said, you know what, I figured out myself and started his own business.

Speaker 2: 1:03:34

So he's got the equipment. He might as well do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:03:37

I mean potentially I might need that in the future. So yeah, I know who to go to.

Speaker 1: 1:03:42

Yeah, but thank you so much for showing up today Spike. I greatly appreciate it. And yeah, thank you to Eric and April Anise to use the house, black Ops Paintball and Abernathy Company for your tree clearing.

Speaker 2: 1:03:53

And if you would like to be a part of the fastest growing movement in the Liberty Movement, go to youarethepowernet. We'd love to have you be a part of it.

Speaker 1: 1:04:01

Anything else you want to shout out for yourself?

Speaker 2: 1:04:03

No, that was too much, I'm on all social media you can find me easily, spike Cohen. If you look for me, you'll find me. I'm on all the different things, and if you ever get lost and you can't find me, just go to the ATF's Facebook page or Twitter X account and just look for the most recent post, and there you will find me just ravaging them and that's our North. Star is ATF posts. Yeah, you ever get lost.

Speaker 1: 1:04:27

It is actually pretty funny so even on the local Facebook pages when they find a bunch of weed and money somewhere and you like.

Speaker 3: 1:04:35

Oh great, thank you.

Speaker 1: 1:04:37

Yeah, I flew for a good laugh. It's always a good way to go there too and learn a little bit more about the libertarian and Liberty Movement Absolutely.

Speaker 3: 1:04:43

Thank you everybody for listening to this episode. We'd love it if you'd like comment, share, subscribe. Keep an eye out, because we have a TikTok showing up all these fun videos and we will eventually have some stuff on YouTube. So yeah, definitely check us out and we'll see you in the next one. Cheers, thanks.