Etienne de la Boetie2 on the Higherside Chats with Greg Carlwood Exposes the Statism Psyop & Mind Control Techniques Used by "Gov't" & Monopoly Media

The Article is Illustrated with Etienne's Slides, Memes, and Visualizations

Greg Carlwood:

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, people. From the Sunshine State, I’m Greg Carlwood. And though we have it drilled into our heads from an early age that we live in the best nation that ever was, the land of the free, blessed with God-given rights that make the rest of the world envious, with an easy path towards sleepwalking our way through the American dream, you still have to wonder, is any of it really true? And how few even ever ask that question.

When you take a look under the hood, what really makes this American hot rod run is a cold, harsh engine of exploitation interlocking gears of cradle-to-grave cogs in a loud, harsh machine spewing toxic sludge and leaving many exhausted, beaten-down individuals choking on fumes as it redlines its way to the scrap heap. What is it all for? And how pervasive is the propaganda in our lives that convinces us all not only to participate, but that we’re actually lucky to be able to? Well, today we’re talking once again to Etienne de la Boetie2.

He’s the founder of the Art of Liberty Foundation and the editor of The Daily News from the Art of Liberty Foundation. The first time he was here, we covered his highly visual book, Government, the Biggest Scam in History Exposed, which breaks down how intergenerational organized crime families use central banking to rob and control the population using a technique called government, with puppet politicians and monopoly media perpetuating the lie.

Now he returns to talk about a new highly visual book titled, To See the Cage is to Leave It -25 Techniques that the Few Use to Control the Many, which pulls back the curtain on the subtle conditioning and manipulative mind control techniques used to keep us all under the control of the nefarious few. Sounds good to me, so let’s get into it. The Freedom Fighting, Cage Revealing, Big Machine Exposing, Sovereign Individual, Etienne De La Boetie Squared. Welcome back.

Etienne de la Boetie2

It is great to be with you again and with your audience, Greg.

Greg Carlwood:

Yeah, man, I appreciate you sending me this care package of the new book and the 64GB Liberator for people who can’t see it. It is a credit card shaped thumb drive. You can actually pop out this side. And it actually plugs into any computer. I was a little surprised that it fit into a USB slot myself, but man, there is some really spicy things on here worth talking about from school shootings.

I weren’t even on my radar to Sandy hook to alternative energy devices and converting cars to run on alcohol and water and just all sorts of wild stuff that would be very handy in an apocalypse or just to remind yourself what the system really is. But let’s also remind the people of why you do what you do before we dive into the new book and this The Liberator thing. Talk to us about the main goals of the Art of Liberty Foundation. Sure.

Etienne de la Boetie2

So we’re a startup voluntaryist think tank. And really our thesis is, is that government was never really intended to protect life, liberty, or property. It’s best thought of as a technique for robbing and controlling populations. And it’s always illegitimate because it’s impossible to have a moral, legitimate, logical government. We’ll get into that in my presentation in a little bit. But our other thesis is that the government is being run as a criminal enterprise. It’s a form of kind of tax slavery where the people that are running the government are funneling trillions of dollars out the back door, and then they get away with it because they’ve created this monopoly media system and an algorithmic censorship of the internet that is controlling the information that the population receives across screens. And this theft is primarily through something called fractional reserve banking.

And so the government legalizes a technique called fractional reserve banking, where the banks, when you get a mortgage, or where you get a car loan, or you get a consumer loan or a credit card, they’re not loaning you their money, they’re not loaning you depositor money, they’re tickling the ivories, they create the dollars out of thin air, And that process is inflationary.

And so it’s stealing the value out of everybody’s dollars. That’s why it costs more and more to buy the luxuries and the necessities of life. And if you can imagine the analogy I use a lot is if I have a dollar and you have a dollar, dear listener, you know, or viewer, and we have the only $2 in the world, I own 50% of the world’s wealth. You own 50% of the world’s wealth. And then a bank, or a government comes along and creates two additional dollars through fractional reserve banking or through quantitative easing or digital dollar creation or printing press or whatever it is, all of a sudden they’ve stolen 50% of the world’s wealth and you and I have been reduced to 25% of the world’s wealth. And so that’s the essence of the scam. And then there’s a variety of other scams from buying overpriced weapon systems that we don’t need to fight wars based on lies and manufactured intelligence or ethanol subsidies or mandatory vaccinations that are actually harmful for your kids.

Whatever these scams are, there’s specific groups that are making billions to trillions of dollars through the government And it’s being slid out the back door to these identifiable groups that are then paying to have the politicians elected, funding the political process, and they own the media. And then the media is never, ever going to tell you that this is going on, that they’re never going to explain to you the scam of fractional reserve banking. And they’re never ever going to tell you the kind of good news message of the Art of Liberty Foundation, that we really don’t need government, that everything the government does would be done better, faster, and cheaper by the free market, by nonprofits, by mutual aid societies, by armed protective services companies, by dispute resolution providers.

So everything the government does from armed protective services that they call the police to dispute resolution that they call the courts, all of that could be done by the free market and everybody would be dramatically, dramatically wealthier if the government wasn’t stealing the value out of everybody’s money and the government wasn’t waging a kind of economic warfare against them with the confiscatory taxation, with the property taxes, with the death taxes, with all of the hidden taxes on everything from every time you get a gallon of gasoline to a beer, if you’re a smoker, a pack of cigarettes, you know, your telephone bill, your cable bill, Every time you get an airline ticket, I can go on and on, there’s a gazillion hidden taxes.

But between the overt taxes, the covert taxes, and the inflation, they’re stealing more than 50% of everybody’s income. And we would all be crazy, crazy wealthier. Prices would actually be going down if we had honest money and we had an honest monetary system. And instead, the prices are going up, which is stealing the purchasing power out of the people, out of the dollars that people earn and save. And that is the biggest secret that the monopoly media will not tell the population.

Greg Carlwood:

Yes, that is a really great summary there. And I agree. And it is more than 50% of our income because you do have to factor in all the sales tax. You have to factor in, as you say, all those bills, they haven’t added tax. It really never ends. And then just the taking of our money and giving it to other countries that are in the club without really ever asking us. I know your recent sub stack was about that recent story. of us now sending 40 billion to Argentina because we’re bailing out basically one guy, one billionaire who made a bad bet on Argentina, but it’s all being masked. And it’s like, no one wants to do that.

Everyone’s already mad about sending so much money to Israel. We’re looking at the trillions of debt and they’re talking out of both sides of their mouth because the government is saying, well, we have to cut all these costs to deal with this crazy debt that we’re in. Well, then let’s start with the 40 billion. That goes to Argentina. Why not start there on top of everything else? So it is really crazy, but I don’t want to distract away from the fact that you have some slides to show us. I think the easiest way, best way is to do a screen share through Riverside and we will talk about them. All right, well, here it comes. And we’ll smooth this out in editing so that there’s no dead air. And Sue, are you getting my slides? I am. For me, it’s showing backwards, but I don’t think that’s a huge deal.

Etienne de la Boetie2

I’m just going to roll and just kind of take the audience through my presentation. But I guess the first thing that I would say is we call it, at the Art of Liberty Foundation, it’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s an organized crime theory, and the basics of organized crime theory I’ve already touched on. Government was never really designed to serve and protect. It’s a technique of intergenerational organized crime to rob and control societies. We don’t really need government. Monopoly media has been controlling the information the population receives to hide the illegitimacy, illogic, immorality, and criminality of the government. since the 1700s in the United States.

That’s something that I break down in both Government, The Biggest Scam in History, and in the new book, To See the Cages, to leave it. But also the third leg is the media or the academia. And you’re going to go to a mandatory government school where the government is going to teach you that the government is legitimate, desirable, and necessary before you’re old enough to really question that. And even if you went to a private school, the private school has to teach the government’s curriculum. Most people are going to go to a state-run university.

They’re going to learn the exact same thing. And really, the biggest lie, the basis of the whole thing, is this idea that it’s possible to have a legitimate moral government. I’ve got a little quote from Hitler: “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed”. And so the idea is government is legitimate, desirable, and necessary, even though it’s impossible to have a legitimate government. What I mean by that is, And I’ve got like just a little visualization, you know, if John told you that you had to obey him or that he would violate you, that would be wrong. If John claims because he and his friends are in the majority. So if there’s two of, you know, if John comes to your door with two people and he said, or three people, and he’s like, well, there’s three of us. one of you and the three of us vote that you have to give us all your money, and that would be, of course, illegitimate. And so even if John and his friends are able to trick, indoctrinate, propagandize, and pay off enough people to vote for an institution to work on their behalf, and they all claim that you must obey its dictates, or be punished, it would still be wrong.

That’s still wrong. And so there’s no magical additional person that makes that scam of two or three people voting to rob a single person moral and legitimate just because you hit you know, oh, well, that was, you know, we got 50 million people that are voting now, or we’ve got 100 million people. And so it’s immoral. It’s illogical at its core. Nobody can be bound by social contract, the constitution that they did not sign. So if you didn’t sign the constitution yourself, you’re not really, you know, bound by it. And if I don’t have the ability myself to steal your money and call it taxes or to make up rules for you myself and call it laws, then it is 100% impossible for me to delegate a right that I do not have myself to steal your money or make up rules for you to a government or a representative to exercise on my behalf. And so government really has been the biggest scam in all of human history. And so they get away with it again through this.

Greg Carlwood:

Let me ask you this. So you say it’s morally and logically impossible to have a moral, legitimate government. Voluntarism is the only political philosophy that is fair to everyone. I agree that it might be fair to everyone, but even in that system, couldn’t someone say, well, Hey, I was born into this and I didn’t sign up for this. And I don’t agree with voluntarism. I actually want to be more aggressive and I think I should get a bigger share of the pie. I mean, anyone can decide that. And there’d have to be some form of checks and balances there. I assume that the punishment in that case would be like, well, if that’s your attitude, then you aren’t in this system. And you would be kind of excommunicated. Well, there wouldn’t be a system.

Etienne de la Boetie2

And so in a voluntary world, you can have governance without government. So you can have everything that you want out of government. And so, you know, because everybody wants to be safe and secure in their own home and in their business. You can have armed protective services because that’s a right you have yourself. You have the right to defend your life, your liberty and your property. And so you can hire a company and people do today and they provide, you know, like companies like ADT and Garda and West Tech, they provide armed protective services today. But the guy doesn’t have rights that you don’t have.

He can only exercise the rights you have on your behalf. And so he can’t come over to your house. You can’t call him because somebody’s breaking into your house. And he gets there and he sees that your neighbor is smoking a plant, which isn’t really a crime, even though the government likes to pretend it’s really a crime and arrest people for things that aren’t really crimes.

So he wouldn’t have the right to go over and arrest your neighbor for smoking a plant. or for gambling or for doing things that aren’t really crimes, he would only be able to help you with the, you know, with your armed intruder or somebody that’s threatening you or, you know, the good things that the police do when the police are actually, you know, catching bad people. Everybody loves the police.

It’s the fact that the police are violating people’s natural law rights by arresting people for things that aren’t really crimes, which is why people hate and despise the police, because the police are willing to set their morality aside and use violence on peaceful people for things that aren’t really crimes that gets everybody mad at the police. In a voluntarist world, you could have an armed protective service company, but if they’re rude to you, you can fire them. Unlike the monopoly police today that can be rude and abusive and whatever, and you have no say, but if ADT comes to your house and the guy is rude or is violent or something that is not cool, Well, you can fire ADT tomorrow and you can hire Garda and they’ll provide service. And in that world where there’s not a monopoly, ADT and Garda now competing in your city and in your town to who protects neighborhoods the most, who gets the most restitution for their customers. And now you’ve got that market dynamic that everybody loves when it comes to restaurants and supermarkets and, and, you know, toy stores and hobby shops and things like everybody wants that, you know, competitive market dynamic where you can go to different people and, and the people have to please the customer.

You don’t have that under monopoly government. You have one size fits all, you have no choice, take it or leave it. You get social security, even if you want to invest in gold, you know, even if you want to invest in Bitcoin or whatever it is, it’s tough. You’re stuck with social security, this is the retirement system. and it’s going to only pay you a tiny fraction of what you would have earned through a private investment. And it doesn’t matter because that’s the way it is and that’s what you’re going to take.

And by the way, it’s a Ponzi scheme and it’s actuarially impossible for it ever to pay out the things. And so we’ve all been hoodwinked by this organized crime system that has stolen all of our money and then blown it on weapons systems that we don’t need and ethanol subsidies and a bunch of bullshit. They’re stealing the money out the back door. and the monopoly media isn’t really telling us what’s going on. But the core of all of that is it’s impossible to have a legitimate government. I’ve been doing this for five or six years now. I have never, ever, ever had anybody disagree with that.

There’s never been anybody that said, hey, you’re wrong because of X. I mean, there’s nobody that in a kind of logical train of thought says, hey, the little example you gave with John and his friends is incorrect because of you know, A, B or C, you know, everybody, like once you really think about it and once you really unpack government, you’re like, Hey, wow, you’re right, man.

It is a scam, but people can’t get their mind. Like a lot of people, I’m sure you’ve got a very intelligent audience, but like a lot of people, they just can’t wrap their mind around that. They can’t imagine everything that’s taught in the schools. everything that’s taught in the colleges, everything that the system has built into it over decades and centuries has been a lie on its face.

But this is the core of the lie. This is the Hitler’s big lie. This is the thing that gives government rights that you don’t have. This is the inherent unfairness of the system. This is the illegitimacy of the system unwrapped and laid bare naked for everybody to see. It is impossible to have a moral, logical, legitimate government.

Greg Carlwood:

Fair enough. And I don’t want to be the first one to break the trend of nobody disagreeing. And I don’t argue that our government is moral or legitimate necessarily, but that word impossible, you know, that’s a big one. Impossible is a big word. And I feel like there could be a configuration in there somewhere, but I get what you’re saying. Like society should be more like a collection of bespoke services that you opt in and out of whichever ones you want to your level of comfort rather than force compliance. So yeah, I don’t want to get hung up on definitions and semantics and you got this presentation. Sorry to derail you. Uh, here’s the next slide. Let’s get into it. No, no, no problem.

Etienne de la Boetie2

So we’ll get to that. You can have governance without government. And so like the HOA is an example, like you can, you can write. it together with your neighbors and you can say, hey, we’re, you know, we’re going for, you know, protect all of our own property values. We’re going to agree that we’re not going to paint our houses pink and that we’re not going to have junk cars in our yards. You can have standards and things that are optional, but there’s not a gun that says you can’t leave.

There’s not a gun that says that you have to pay. If the rules change in the HOA, you can actually, you can move. You’re not being forced to participate in these rules other than the fact that you’ve bought into the community, but you can sell your house and you can go somewhere where you can put junk cars in your house or you can paint your car pink. So you can have your house pink. You can have governance without government. But you can’t have government, and here, you know, here’s an example. So, you know, what I do in the book is I break it down with a lot of visualizations.

And in the example that I use is, you know, Lysander Spooner, who was a famous abolitionist and legal theorist who wrote one of the most famous books in American history called No Treason, the Constitution of No Authority. And he wrote this book in 1870, and in 8,621 words, and in 70 to 126 pages, depending on which edition you’re reading, he breaks down in no uncertain terms the complete impossibility of the Constitution, the fact that it doesn’t You can’t grant rights that you don’t have yourself.

You can’t be bound by this social contract that you yourself did not sign, that the people that signed the Constitution, I mean, they can be bound by it. They can all agree that they’re going to participate under the rules that they just created, but nobody else can really be bound by it. Now, in the book, what I do is I do a lot with memes and visualizations, and so here is a meme, and for the people that aren’t looking at the presentation, it shows the signing of the “Con-stitution”, and James Madison is leaning over the table at one of the delegates of the 1787 Philadelphia Convention, and he says, sign right there, where it says we give ourselves the power to make up rules and take the wealth of others.

And right off the bat, in 21 words, it makes the Constitution just shows the ridiculousness of the idea. Well, of course, you can’t just write down on a piece of paper that you alone get to make up rules for everybody and steal the wealth of others. But that’s what they did. And then I have another one. You know, I’ve got another meme as an example, and it’s the Constitution condensed version, and it’s a napkin. And on the napkin, somebody scrawled, I have authority over you because it says so right here on this napkin.

Give me your money. And that’s essentially what the Constitution says. And then what happened back in the 1700s is that they hijacked a convention, the famous Philadelphia Convention, that was convened only to amend the Articles of Confederation And after over half the delegates wouldn’t attend or left early or wouldn’t sign, you know, at the end, they produced an unauthorized replacement that became the Constitution and that gave the government the power to steal and tax and things like that. And then they said, OK, we’re going to have an election. And so then they trick and propagandize a bunch of people into participating. At this time, there are about three million people living on the continent.

In the colonies, there were about 3 million people across the 13 colonies, and less than 1% voted. Less than 6% were eligible to vote, but less than 1% voted. So a very, very tiny majority of people were tricked into participating in this election, and then the newspapers go, oh, we have a new government, and they just begin pretending it’s valid and it’s legitimate. They’re controlling information that the people, you know, receive about the legitimacy of this. It’s the bankers, they own the newspapers. I break it down in “Government” - The Biggest Scam in History… Exposed!. But they’re controlling the information. And then most people believe we’ve got a new government. They’ve never, ever thought about it. And back then, it was a monarchy. They thought monarchy was legitimate.

They thought the divine right of kings is legitimate. So, oh, I guess the fact that we get to vote is better than just having a king. So like essentially the population was tricked into it and then they’re keeping on running. Those memes are an example of how I design books. Cause I know a lot of your audience, intelligent people, they already know all this. And so I, if you already know all this, I apologize. I did not write the book for you. I wrote the book for your friends, your family, your neighbors. And what I do is I design these books to wake people up and shake them out of the kind of complacency of, oh, this is the way it is. This is the way it always has been.

Well, of course, I’m not a free human being that lives on the planet. I’m an American. No, you’re a free, independent human being that lives on the planet. You don’t owe anybody any money or any allegiance by where you were born. And so the government is kind of tricking people into an artificial tribe. They’re using the fact that most people are tribal. And they’re creating and they’re giving people an artificial tribe using the media to propagandize them and thinking that if you live in Florida as you do, Greg, that you have something in common with somebody that lives in Alaska or Hawaii or Oklahoma. And they’re trying to convince you that like your real tribe is your friends, your family. It’s your family, number one, and then it’s your neighborhood, it’s your church. Those are your real, real tribe. Somebody, you know, if you live in Florida, you know, somebody that lives in the Pacific Northwest in Portlandia, they’re not really in your tribe, okay? The government and the monopoly media can try propagandizing you and thinking that you’re in the tribe and we’re all in this together and everything.

Like, no, you’re not. You’re getting propagandized and robbed. But to get that across to people, I create these books that have a lot of visualizations and memes and expand the amount of people that will read a book significantly versus a text-only book. And then I’m leveraging a lot of human beings’ innate pattern recognition capabilities to expose the historical patterns, the monopolizations, the repetition of the propaganda techniques.

And I’m using visualizations to make what was invisible now visible using visualization. So an example that I’ll get to in a little bit is if you didn’t know that there were six monopoly media companies on the old school media side, not the internet, but like newspapers, print, television, et cetera.

If you did not know that there were only six companies running hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of subsidiaries, you may or may not believe me, but if I show you an actual media ownership chart where you can see that News Corp doesn’t just own Fox News, but News Corp owns 175 newspapers, and they own satellite companies, and they own movie studios, and they own movie production, and they own movie distribution, and they own television programming, and they own magazines.

You can actually see all of the companies and subsidiaries rolled under that. You’re like, holy crap, there’s six companies running hundreds and hundreds of subsidiaries to give everybody the illusion that there’s all these different media sources and society, but it’s really a monopoly. It’s really a cartel. And all six are working together to censor certain information from ever reaching the public. And this is it. You’re over the target right now. This is the number one thing that you will never see on the monopoly media. You’re getting it right here, right now, unfiltered, raw, that government has been a scam. You don’t owe anybody any money, but you know what you’re doing. And as we’re about to get into, they’re running unethically manipulative techniques on the population that creates a cult.

And we’ll get into that in a second. I’m just going to say that the last thing about the book is seeing is believing presentations using visual aids are 43% more persuasive. So if you want to wake up your friends and your family, you really do have to show them that media ownership chart. You really can be impactful with with those Molotov memes that I just showed you. And ideas presented graphically are just easier to comprehend. They come so quick that you can just kind of flip through the book and you’re going to understand what you’re looking at versus, you know, it takes you twice as long to read. You know, it takes about a quarter of a second for the human brain to process and attach meaning to a symbol. But by comparison, it takes us an average of six seconds to read 20 to 25 words that describe the exact same thing. This is a different media ownership chart that’s in the book. So let me stop in here just to say.

Greg Carlwood:

Yeah, sorry. I do think we have a little bit of a delay, but great points. I just wanted to step in and say, yeah, I’ve heard a little bit about that history that people don’t really realize how few people actually voted for the infrastructure that has risen up all around us. And it is something my dad used to say all the time. I don’t know if the numbers are exactly right, but he would say. You know, the largest group of people is the people who don’t vote. So, you know, it seems like he got 30% Democrat, 30% Republican, but then 40% not voting for either party.

And if those people could come together around an idea, which is, you know, a very tall order, then maybe some change would happen. But as you say, you don’t make these books for the people who are awake and aware. You make them for our friends and family, and you hope to wake other people up? Well, I agree with the sentiment. Obviously that’s what this show is.

Like we’re trying to get more people to see through the lies and acknowledge the truth on a whole host of subjects. But let me ask you this. So if you think about the American population or, you know, we shouldn’t say American because that’s part of the label propaganda, but the people who live on this landmass, If you think about them as a pie chart, you’ve got a certain percentage of people that are like us and like most listeners who know this stuff and are awake and aware.

And then you’ve got another. percentage of people, a section of the pie chart that are ignorant, but would become awake once they are presented with the information that you’re presenting that they haven’t heard before. And then there’s a third contingency of people who will not look at the information. It doesn’t matter if you hand them the liberator, plug it into their computer, they’re not going to look at it.

They don’t want to confront Sandy hook. They don’t want to confront 9-11 or any of this other information. I’m just curious what kind of percentages of the pie chart you put at these, these different categories, because to me, the largest category is the number of people who won’t even look at the information. And I don’t know how you can get through to them, no matter how much stuff you present. So, uh, Leonardo da Vinci said, because we need those people, right?

Etienne de la Boetie2

We do need them to make a significant change. Well, maybe we’ll, we’ll talk about that in a second, but to answer your question, I, first of all, I just wanted to say, you know, Leonardo da Vinci said, that there are those who, there are three classes of men. Those who see, those who see when they are shown and those who do not see. And so that’s essentially the dynamic that you just described. Yes, exactly.

Now with, with respect to what’s going on, there is a huge psychological resistance called cognitive dissonance. where the human brain refuses to accept new information that either conflicts with previously learned information or causes psychological pain.

And so that’s really the dynamic that we’re about to break down. The government has been running these unethically manipulative techniques on the population that make the population look dumb and foolish for falling for the techniques And now we’re coming along and we’re trying to say, “Hey, there’s been this monopoly media system and this monopoly academia system and everything that they’ve taught you is wrong.”

And everything that you taught your friends and especially the people that are into the patriotism and into the constitution and everything like that, and they’ve reveled in explaining to their friends: If we just did the Constitution the way it was supposed to be, everything would be great, and the problem isn’t the Constitution. The Constitution’s great. It’s the fact that we will abide by the Constitution.

Well, no, the Constitution didn’t work. The Constitution is an abject failure. It was not able to limit government in any way, shape, or form.

We have the largest government ever, so it was not able to restrain government at all, at all, at all. And it was not able to protect even the basic natural law human rights that are outlined in the Bill of Rights. So it doesn’t protect rights, it doesn’t limit government, it doesn’t work at all, and it’s illegitimate on its face. But there’s been a lot of people that grew up their entire lives explaining the wonderfulness of the Constitution because they were tricked because all of the books and all of the things they saw on television and a lot of these controlled opposition voices that are being funded with studio environments and public relations teams. and tier one studios and PR people and producers and things like that to where they’re dominating the airwaves so that you’re only getting that viewpoint and people are never ever exposed to the other side of the argument.

This really is the biggest secret that is being kept from the population And it’s being kept from the population because it’s being algorithmically censored on the internet. The people that are like me are being demonetized, we’re being de-indexed, we’re being de-platformed, we’re being shadow banned on platforms like Facebook and X. And I could tell you so many different examples of how we’ve had our content suppressed over the years. I mean, dozens and dozens and dozens of examples. We had a conference, they wouldn’t allow us to, you know, just like an academic conference where we had world class, you know, academics and authors and economists talking about how you can have everything you want from the government without government and the illegitimacy of government, and Facebook and Google ads would not allow us to, you know, to buy advertising for an academic conference. Like it’s just a tiny, like little example, but again, you know, that’s the thing. Oh, you want to talk about anything more about that or you want me to roll?

Greg Carlwood:

Well, I definitely don’t want to run out of time before we get through your slides, but I just wanted to say like along those lines with this latest book and these 25 techniques, I mean, some of these things are more obvious than others, but. Yes, it is largely about just controlling what people are allowed to be exposed to. And it does start, as you say, early with the kids, you know, you gotta hit them with The flag worship, the pledge of allegiance, the uniforms. And then you go into the junior ROTC. Like I didn’t even know it started that young. And I think it’s actually really disgusting that parents would condition their children to be soldiers from like eight to 12 years old.

Like what the fuck are you doing? But anyway, that’s its own sickness. And then you go into the scouting programs and all that. It’s the uniforms and scouting always seemed like, Oh, wilderness stuff. That’s kind of nice survival skills. Yeah, but that’s under the surface. What it really is, is more indoctrination into the rah-rah America system and a forced coercion, as you say, into this collective and this pressure that’s put on again, children to participate in this collective. And what I think is really interesting is when you start going into the anchoring, the term you use is anchoring of the flag, and this is where it kind of goes all across culture.

The paid for flag worship woven into stadium events and sports. I did not know this. You say that the organized crime system pays teams and the leagues as much as 53 million a year to add flag worship and military jet flyovers to important games to anchor the excitement and good times of an outdoor event. to the flag and the government overall. And you go into Hollywood, which is something we’ve talked about before that in order to make certain films that involve the government or have military equipment, you know, before all the CGI, if you wanted to make a movie that had the military in it, they had to be the good guys, or they wouldn’t let you use the tanks, the jets and all that stuff. It had to be basically.

You know, the Tom Cruise rah rah America stuff, but you even talk about Rocky and the American flag specifically placed in the scene that everybody knows. And just this, this notion that people are not allowed really to see films even where the government is the bad guy. There might be a rogue agent within the government. There might be someone co-opting the government, but it’s not the government’s fault. And I just think that this anchoring of the flag is really interesting.

Another example, Matt Damon escaping from Mars in the movie, the Martian, where the entire film builds to his escape from Mars and then immediately cuts to earth where people are. Ding, ding, ding, waving American flags and mission control. Has a giant American flag on the wall going back to sports.

Another thing that you say in the book that I did not know. Okay. We want to get to the meat and the potatoes. We’re going to, yeah, we’re going to jump to the meat of the pit. So, all right, here’s the, okay. This last example though, I want to point out. So in basketball. I did not know that there’s an American flag on the backboard of every NBA backboard. And I didn’t know there was an American flag on the back of the helmet of every football player and that they are not allowed to remove that American flag. I wonder if Kendrick Or what’s that guy’s name who did the kneeling? I went, did he try to do that? Has anybody have ever tried to say, I want to play in the NFL, but I want to get this flag off of here. I don’t know if that fight has ever been fought, but it’s curious. Just yes. The flag is ubiquitous and it’s all mind control to anchor us in the illusion of America. Okay.

Etienne de la Boetie2

So what is the big reveal in my new book To See the Cage is to Leave It - 25 Techniques the Few Use to Control the Many? And the belief in government is being secretly and unethically indoctrinated as a religion. Now, they’re not calling it a religion, but they’re using all of the same tricks and techniques that an unethically manipulative religion or a cult would use on their followers.

And so the basics of the religion, it’s called statism. And statism is the 100% indoctrinated belief in having a state or having a government. Nobody is born thinking that having a government’s a good idea, you’re taught it in the mandatory government school or the accredited private school or whatever it is. It’s 100% indoctrinated idea. So the government, the state is God.

Politicians are prophets. The flag is the equivalent of the idol. It’s the artificially created religious icon that has meaning woven around it. The laws or commandments Voting is the equivalent of praying, and taxes are the equivalent of tithes. And for those that are following that can’t see the slides, I’m sharing some visualizations that just very quickly bring you to this understanding.

There’s sacred symbols and texts. So the Constitution is the holy document of the religion. The Pledge of Allegiance is the common prayer. You’re going to sing the hymns of the National Anthem and the Star Spangled Banner. Washington, D.C. is the equivalent of Mecca in the Islamic world. You’re going to be brought there as impressionable in middle school. and they’re going to take you into the cathedral of the capital that looks like the Vatican.

A Sample Page from To See the Cage is to Leave It

They’re going to, you know, take you to the temples. They’re going to show you the deities of Lincoln and Jefferson, and it’s going to be in a Greek temple. Literally, like, if you’ve been in the Lincoln Memorial, it’s almost like an exact replica of the Parthenon, which is a Greek temple to the goddess Athena. And in Jefferson’s temple, It’s almost the exact same statue as Athena, but it’s Jefferson instead of Athena, as you would find in the Parthenon.

You’re going to do common prayer at the sports games where everybody stands up together. There’s a huge social pressure to participate and stand up and to participate. And like you said, they’re paying the teams to do it, which is part of the reason that you know that it’s illegitimate and artificial is they’re having to pay the teams and all of this is is being paid for in the movies and in the television, and they’re making the government the hero. The school is the church. The teacher is the priest. You’re gonna do mystical rituals like voting and everything, and you’re not really voting. They’ve got it all rigged with the black box voting and the mail-in ballots to be able to make anybody win anytime they want or anything like that.

But that’s the basics of the religion. And the number one technique is the mandatory government school system. So they’re gonna force you into this worldview before you’re old enough to really evaluate the logic and the morality of is government legitimate, desirable, and necessary? They’re going to tell you that not only is it legitimate, desirable, and necessary, they’re going to get you pledging your allegiance to it in a religious worship of common prayer where there’s a social pressure to participate.

You don’t want to be the kid that he doesn’t do it kind of a thing. And they’re going to take independent human beings and they’re going to give them this worldview before they’re old enough to really evaluate the logic and the morality. Which, interestingly, is the exact same technique that they ran on the Indians after they conquered the Indians and after they stole the Indians’ land. And so if you know anything about like, you know, what happened in the frontier wars and everything is after they conquered the Native Americans and they stole their land, they would send the Indian children to mandatory government schools called Indian boarding schools, and they turned the once free Indians in one generation into quote-unquote citizens taxpayers and soldiers. And so it didn’t work on all of them.

There’s always a small minority of people that are able to, you know, they’re independent thinkers. They’re not going to go along with it. I’ve got a cool t-shirt here that says boarding school dropouts that shows some pictures of some Indian warriors that did not give up their culture, did not, you know, join the army, did not become taxpayers or whatever. But for the most part, they ran this technique on, after they conquered the Indians, they turned the once free, proud Indians into taxpayers and citizens and soul dyers. But it doesn’t work on everybody.

Now, you mentioned earlier, too, you know, you mentioned that, you know, the young Marines take kids as young as eight years old, eight years old, and they begin this process of indoctrinating them. So I’ve got a quote from Hitler where he kind of describes the Cub Scouts, the Boy Scouts, the Explorers, the young Marines, the GROTC, AmeriCorps, and the U.S. military, but he’s really talking about Germany, but all the exact same programs that Hitler was talking about In Nazi Germany, we’re using the exact same equivalent on our population today.

In the Hitler quote, he says,

“These boys and girls enter our organization at 10 years of age. and often for the first time, they get a little fresh air. After four years of the young folk, [which is the equivalent of our Cub Scouts,] they go on to the Hitler Youth, [which is the equivalent of our Explorer programs,] where we have them for another four years. And even if they’re not complete national socialists, [statists, believers in government,] they go on to the labor service, [AmeriCorps,] where they’re smoothed out there for another six or seven months. And whatever class consciousness or social status might be left, the Wehrmacht, the German armed forces, will take care of that.”

So that’s the government’s JROTC, ROTC, and military and police training. And by the time you go through the Cub Scouts, the Boy Scouts, the Explorers, the JROTC, the ROTC, military and police training, now you’re willing to set your morality aside and you’re willing to murder whoever you’re told.

And that’s the stone cold truth. is they’re running these unethically manipulative techniques to produce something called an order follower that will set their morality aside and either murder people for the state in other countries or domestically, in the case of the police, will use violence on peaceful people and throw them in jail for things like smoking plants. or gambling or things that aren’t really, really crimes. And if you want them to goose step, they’ll goose step. If you want them to beat up old ladies and move a crowd back with riot control stuff, they’ll do that.

They’ve been indoctrinated that it’s legitimate, that they have rights that other people don’t, because they represent the government and they can use violence on peaceful people, even though it’s immoral, because they’ve been put through these various techniques. Now, we talked about the Cub Scouts and the Young Marines and everything like that, but really, they turn up the heat when it gets to the police and military. The police and the military, I could talk about dozens. I broke the police and the military in the book. We break down 25 techniques. But I, you know, I did one technique for the police, one technique for the military, but, but assumed under those are actually dozens and dozens of unethically manipulative techniques that are used on the police and on the military in their training to create this obedience. And these include verbal and physical abuse, excessive stress, degradation and humiliation, sleep deprivation, isolation, the artificial conformity of the uniform.

So a uniform, if you break it down as uniform, single form, they’re going to shave the head and they’re going to put you in a uniform to remove your individual appearance and compact you into an artificially created group dynamic. They’re going to move you on to a military base, or they’re going to move you to a state police barracks. They’re going to separate you from the rest of society. During training, they’re going to curtail your communication. They allow the troops to call your family when you arrive at the military base before training, and then you’re not going to be able to talk to the outside world until it’s over. And then they’re going to, in the case of the Marines, in the slide that I’m showing, it’s a picture that they’ve taken all of the doors off all of the, all the toilets. So you’re never, ever, ever allowed to have a private moment. You’re never, ever allowed to think for yourself and sit there and contemplate, you know, is this moral? What am I, what I’m being asked to do? Do I really want to kill whoever I’m told to kill? Do I really want to participate in this war?

Greg Carlwood:

Yes. I just wanted to step in because on the slide there, that was one of the most impactful images to me reading the book is all the toilets lined up without any dividers or walls or anything, because it is like a prison and you reverse engineer the structures in which you’re talking about and all the protocols. And it’s like, well, why would you do this? It is absolutely mind control. I think something that we don’t think about a lot is how In the case of the military and police, like you said, they’re removed from society.

You take them to a separate place to do all this stuff to them. And personally, a lot of it’s like, this stuff is the stuff that has always been easy for me to avoid. I saw full metal jacket probably way before I should have. And this idea that it was all, uh, breaking people down and manipulative. Like it was kind of obvious to me really young, but the stuff in the book that I think is. even more impactful is the stuff that affects us all. Like if you don’t like the aggression of the military and the police, then just avoid it in your life. Fine. I mean, as much as you can until you’re on the receiving end of a baton or something.

But when it comes to the sports and the other stuff I mentioned in movies, like it really does seem like all of culture is created so that the more you engage with it, the more affected by it you are. There is one slide. It’s actually. Technique number 10 in the book, you have a QR code that you can scan and be taken to this video that I just thought was crazy. So it is a television sign off message from the 1960s. So obviously the further you go back, the fewer. Programs are even on TV. I used to be a film buff and I could have basically watched all films that were created. And now there’s like no way you can keep up with the shit that they’re pumping out. But you go back to this time and yes, that’s the QR code right there.

I suppose anyone can, I’ll try to play it in the wrap up just so they can see it. But you say in this message, which is. Basically them doing the pledge of allegiance, I believe at the end of the broadcast of the news and the words come up on the screen, but the words come up in a way that random letters come up kind of first. It’s very fast, but you say that when you decode those letters that pop up first, the messages that are embedded are. Trust the U S government. God is real. God is watching believe in government. God rebellion will not be tolerated.

Obey consume, obey, consume by Naomi worship, consume, obey, believe, do not question government. And I wasn’t able to pause it to like actually catch that stuff. But subliminal messaging to me is some of the most fascinating. I’ve seen the old example of the Coke ad they ran where in the glass of Coke, the ice cubes spell sex. This is deep stuff. They play off our biology, they play off all these things that are innate to us, and they manipulate it for their own goal. Man, just think about if this is the 1960s and anyone watching the news is getting these messages embedded into their subconscious, how sophisticated is it now? If you’re engaged with anything on a screen.

Etienne de la Boetie2

Well, it’s even deeper because these television sign-off messages for your audience, that are a little bit younger, you know, television didn’t used to be 24 seven. And so sometime around midnight or one or two o’clock, depending on the channel, they would, you know, they’d roll these, these messages, but, but by 12, one, two o’clock, if you’ve been watching television for hours, you’re already in an alpha state where information is going to, you know, flow through uncritically. And so in the screen, you know, like in the in the banner that we have stopped, it says, oh, say, does that star spangled banner yet wave? And then there’s an effect where that will kind of, you know, materialize out.

And as it materializes, the next line of text will come, and in between this, oh say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave, and the next line in the national anthem, they will put, trust the U.S. government. God is real. God is watching. Believe in government God. And you can actually freeze it. It’s hard to do, because like I said, it’s only for a second, and it comes in you know, in a way, but you can actually, if you sit there and you press, and I’ve done it for people that like, like, I didn’t see that. And you have to actually, you know, just hit stop, start, stop, start, stop, start until you can see it, but you will be able to see it. And in the video, they actually break it down and they’ll actually do it at a frame rate where you can actually see it, but you can actually go to the original, which is still on the internet. It’s still available, and you can actually do it and see it yourself. But this is another example of the government is kind of running all of these different techniques using the media, including subliminal programming, including these unethically manipulative techniques.

I wanna go back one to technique nine, which you mentioned earlier, where the government and the Department of Defense have direct involvement in over 1,000 major movies and 1,000 television shows that we know of. where they’re product placing the flag at moments of high positive emotion using this advertising technique called anchoring. And so they’ll build the audience up to a moment of high positive emotion. This is the trailer for a movie called Theaters of War. where they’re breaking down the scholarship behind all of these claims and how the Department of Defense has script control. And they’re actually changing history. And so, like, if you want to shoot a movie about Vietnam, you can’t have a scene about the My Lai Massacre. You can’t have a scene about a lot of the crimes that the troops committed in Vietnam, or you’re not going to get the money, or shoot on military bases, or military equipment, or anything that you want. The first part of the process is you give, the Pentagon actually has an office in Hollywood, and you have to give them your script, and then they read the whole script, and then they excise out, like, you can’t do this, you can’t do that. And then they give the script back to the director. And if the director wants the military bases or the extras or the F-18 jets, like in Top Gun Maverick, you’ve got to make the government look good.

You’ve got to make the military look good. You’ve got to make the whole, you’ve got to sanitize the whole thing. The government’s got to be the hero. And so the government is providing millions, hundreds and hundreds of millions, if not a billion dollars worth of you know, gear and in, you know, in some cases they’re providing ships and carriers and everything like that. And you can’t make the movie. And, you know, if they are providing it, you’re able to make the movie for a fraction of what you would have been able to make it for otherwise. So directors go for it and they make the government look good. They make the CIA look good. One of my friends from high school is one of the top directors in Hollywood. I won’t say his name, but he’s constantly making the CIA look good. It makes me throw up in my mouth.

The CIA is Murder Incorporated Organized Crime and that during the Vietnam War they were doing something called the Phoenix Program where in Vietnam they were scooping up school teachers and politicians and they were just having execution squads murder people during Vietnam without any kind of trial, without any kind of things. It was called the Phoenix Program. It’s well known in American history. It’s got a Wikipedia entry. Books have been written about it, but that’s the reality of the CIA. It is not Tom Cruise saving the world and Mission Impossible, but most people, if you don’t know that this dynamic is going on, you’ve been raised your entire life in this soup of propaganda where every movie the government is the hero, whether it’s Mulder and Scully, the FBI, whether it’s the ATF. There’s a movie we saw the other day that makes a hero out of the TSA. It’s like a TSA agent that saves the world from, or saves a city from a nerve gas attack. It’s like unbelievable. The TSA is the hero.

Greg Carlwood:

Yeah. There was also that movie that came out this last, uh, this last Christmas season, I think called Carry On that was had Jason Bateman in it. And that was again, like a TSA. Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. Okay. There you go. Another weird example. They made the TSA the hero. It’s unbelievable. It’s unbelievable. I don’t know if you, and then here’s another one, the accountant, you know, now the accountant with, uh, Oh, what’s his name? I can’t remember. One of the guys from Goodwill hunting Ben Affleck. Ben Affleck connected to the CIA. That’s another one that comes to mind. He was in Argo. He was in, yeah, he was in Argo.

Etienne de la Boetie2

He made the CIA look good at Argo.

Greg Carlwood:

And this is not what we’re talking about, but just another semi-related thing I saw recently. Cause if you control the movie studios and you control the money and the budgets, Then you control what media gets made because nobody has a million dollars to make anything. You just say, Oh, this is what it costs. Buffet craft table doesn’t just serve itself.

You know, we need this money. So another one that came up recently is I saw a video where they interviewed the head cameraman or cinematographer. from Eyes Wide Shut. And everybody knows Eyes Wide Shut has a lot of weird stuff about it because Stanley Kubrick died before it came out. And there’s always been speculation that the movie was re-shot or re-edited. And sure enough, this guy says that the movie he filmed, the scenes he filmed are radically different than what came out as Eyes Wide Shut. Basically reading between the lines, he kind of confirms that the movie was supposed to be about pedophilia rings and high places.

And they just kind of cut that out. There are some like allusions to it, especially towards the end, but it was way more overt originally. And they said, you can’t make this movie. We’re going to reshoot it. We’re going to kill you. So you never talk about it because you know, you just. spoke about the unspeakable thing. And sure enough, I just find that to be interesting because even with people who have clout at the end of their career, they might think, you know what, I’m going to go there. And then that’s what happens to you when you try to do that.

Etienne de la Boetie2

Because it’s murder incorporated organized crime and the technique that you’re describing. So what I described as the most powerful weapon in the U.S. arsenal is not a hydrogen bomb, it’s control of perception. Can we control the information that society receives to get them to go along with something that is not in their interest, being tax farmed and being ruled and having a ruling class that has rights that you don’t have and everything like that. And so part of that is the ability to put something on the screen, but part of that is also the ability to kill Stanley Kubrick and take those scenes out. and to censor certain pieces of information, whether it’s the Department of Defense doing it for the movies, whether it’s the news networks doing it to cover up Epstein, whether it’s the Trump administration doing it to cover up Epstein, whatever it is, the ability to control the information that society receives is the most powerful weapon in the world. And it’s why most people don’t think of themselves as just a free and independent human being that was born on the planet in this area that some people are calling America.

They think of themselves as an American. They wear the flag of the system that is stealing their money and oppressing them. and tax farming them and everything like that. And they don’t think about it twice because they’ve been so assumed in it. They’ve grown up, you know, the fish doesn’t understand that he’s in water the same way that if you don’t, if you’ve never heard these ideas before, if you’ve never been exposed to this before, if you did not know that this was going, was going on, then you’re somewhat shocked, but this is the pirate broadcast.

This is the Nebuchadnezzar sending out its pirate signal to expose. Finally, with the self-directed internet, now people can go and self-select their information. I grew up in an era, and we had four channels on tv and one of them was pbs and that was it you know there was no internet if you you know like there were news like if you wanted to find alternative news you had to subscribe to a newsletter The newsletter might cost you $100 a year, and it came in the mail. The CIA would frequently have them take it out of the mail. The CIA has censored books.

They very famously censored … I’m having a brain lock. Huckleberry Finn? It wasn’t Huckleberry Finn. It was Tragedy and Hope by Carol Quigley. that is a scholarly tomb by one of the most famous historians and professors out of Georgetown, which says there is a secret government, and there is a secret system behind the government, and there are a small amount of people pulling the legs. I had access to these people’s material and here’s an overview of how the system works and that book had the printing plates destroyed and that book was you know there’s different versions of that book where certain pages have been removed and things like that and so so it was easy to do it’s now much harder to stop the signal now they’re using techniques to get people hooked on the screens and they’re using this algorithmic censorship of the internet they call it freedom of speech without reach.

So if you were to post this, once we finish this interview, if you were to post this on your X account, X is not going to show it to your subscribers, even though your subscribers are subscribed to it. If you send it out over email, Gmail is gonna put it into their spam messages, or they might not deliver it at all. If you put it on Facebook, Facebook’s not going to show except to the people that you talk to on a regular basis, that they know that through messenger traffic. So that, you know, it’s very, very sophisticated. So it’s freedom of speech.

You can say whatever you want. but they’ve ghettoized everybody into these algorithmically controlled social media platforms where they’re able to stop the spread of certain pieces of information that they don’t want at the same time that they’re able to put information into your feed, your Facebook feed, your X feed, your Twitter feed, that is either going to distract you or deceive you. or propagandize you or something else. At the same time that they’re turning down the authentic voices that are trying to get this important information into the public’s conscious, they’re turning up voices that reinforce the propaganda narrative. You may see Lee Greenville may pop into your Facebook feed singing, you know, God, thank God I’m American.

Cause at least I know I’m free at the same time that even if you’ve subscribed to me on Facebook or X or whatever, they’re just not going to show you, you know, there it’s, it’s not going to come across the feed. It’s called a shadow band. It’s well recognized, but this is how they’re the most powerful weapon is control of perception. And this is the way that you do it in the information age. AI is going to make it much worse. And they’re just taking Americans that don’t understand what’s going on and they’re leading them around the nose on these control platforms.

Greg Carlwood:

Yeah. It’s very much true. I’m just curious. Have you ever thought about for yourself, like maybe expatriating to a place that has less infrastructure and more freedom?

Etienne de la Boetie2

Yeah. So I cover that in my book and I’m working on a new book where I’m covering all of the different, uh, in the new book, Voluntaryism - How the Only “ISM” Fair for Everyone Leads to Harmony, Prosperity, and Good Karma for All. I’m covering a lot of the different, you know, either network cities or places like Prospera in Honduras where they’ve negotiated a sovereignty with the government of Honduras where the laws don’t apply and they’ve got the lowest taxation rates on the planet.

I’m covering the Free State Project in New Hampshire, I’m covering Montelibro and Montenegro, and there’s a whole bunch of places where people are trying to get rid of government. and have self-government, have voluntarist, free societies. You can’t have socialism in a free society. You can’t have a free society in socialism. You can have communism in a free society. You can’t have a free society under communism. In a free society, if you think communism is the way to go, then go get a commune and talk a bunch of people into doing it and show us that it can work.

Don’t force everybody at the point of a gun to go along with your communism or your socialism or even your constitutional republicanism. Yeah. We want REAL freedom. When I say real, I mean REAL in all capital letters, bold, italicized, and underlined, not fake freedom like we’re taught in the schools or on the television. I’m talking about we want REAL freedom, 100% REAL freedom because there’s a group of people that can’t be tricked into servitude. We just want to be free.

We see through the tricks and the techniques. And so that’s what we’re doing at the Art of Liberty Foundation. We’re helping people that want to be free punch above their weight and get this message out in an effective way around the world using The Liberators, using the books, doing media like this. And so that’s what we’re all about.

Greg Carlwood:

Okay. I love it. Yeah, I used to think I might want to live in a co-op commune type situation. Then I met the co-op commune people and decided maybe I didn’t want to do that, but I’m sure I didn’t meet everyone.

I’m sure there’s a lot of great people doing that kind of thing, but either way, exciting to know about these pockets around the world where these kinds of principles are being implemented and. They’re at least, it seems like they have agreements to be left alone. That’s really exciting. And of course, people should check out the Art of Liberty Foundation. I appreciate your time. This has been really enjoyable. If we were all as committed to our beliefs and values as you are, the world would be a better place, but thank you for taking the time and take care.

Etienne de la Boetie2

Yeah. And thanks for doing what you do, Greg. It is appreciated and always a pleasure to talk to you.

Greg Carlwood:

All right, can you believe it, people? There it is, round two with the forever freedom-loving Etienne de la Boetie2. Most awkward name in the game, but it does sort of roll off the tongue when you practice it as much as I have. I know there will be some mixed feelings with this one.

I haven’t myself. I did try to keep the conversation focused on the areas that are interesting and the stuff like diagnosing the problems and going deeper into the content of The Liberator, though that was kind of second hour stuff. I did enjoy jumping right into a multimedia presentation. I tried really hard to keep the audio listeners in mind through that. If you found it annoying, of course, the whole first hour is available on YouTube for free.

But we were able to kind of keep it moving and highlight some obvious and some not so obvious aspects of the big machine. I do like the reminders of how we’re indoctrinated at every turn. I like stacking all that stuff up and thinking about aspects of it that I just haven’t thought about in a long time. I actually think a lot of his material works great for a generation like his or mine, but with the younger generation, I kind of think there’s been a different cultural shift in engineering, a sort of hate for the state or a distaste for America.

You know, America’s always the bad guy and it should burn to the ground. I hear that sentiment from younger people. And I know that it comes from a place of just feeling like there’s no way they can make it in this rigged game, which has gotten more and more rigged with each generation. So. The frustration is definitely something I resonate with, but at the same time, I don’t think they’re thinking it through all the way. And a lot of people that I hear talking about wanting to see collapse. Man, it tends to come from, I hate to say, young, naive, somewhat weak people who have always been comfortable and safe and really are just ignorant of what it would truly mean to see the system collapse. A lot of them don’t have the skills required or the kind of strength and grit it would truly take.

So it’s kind of just throwing a temper tantrum to some degree and regurgitating what I think has been the new engineered propaganda with this goal of tearing America down to make it more easily fit into a global control system. We didn’t really get into that, probably a little bit of a more nuanced conversation, but at the risk of sounding like a statist, I think we could just focus on a few specific things that would make huge improvements that would make our whole system kind of unrecognizable. And I think that’d be a better approach than tearing it all down. To me, the biggest bang for the buck changes would be of course, ending the fractional reserve system and returning to a hard asset backed currency.

Also, you got to get rid of all the government lobbying. Another thing would be making term limits for all branches of government just automatic. Making CEOs legally liable for the actions of their companies would probably go a long way too. And one that I don’t think gets enough attention is doing something to rework the publicly traded company system. because publicly traded companies need to grow eight to 10% every year forever, or investors just pull their money out and put it somewhere else. I think that’s a big one because that configuration alone is responsible for a lot of problems. And when I hear people making general criticisms of just capitalism and greed, a lot of times they’re talking about this incentive structure because they’re, motivated these companies by an obligation to put shareholders first and keep that infinite pace of growth.

It’s why things get more expensive and quality gets cheaper and shittier basically forever. Employees can’t get raises because it cuts into profits. How can we shave more off the bottom line every year for those damn shareholders? Well, You pollute, you exploit, you cut corners, you screw employees, et cetera, et cetera. It’s sort of baked right into the cake when a company goes public. But just those five or so things that I just mentioned would do wonders for this system.

Obviously we could go deeper and cut out all the bloats and lower taxes to the absolute minimum that’s humanly possible, and for fairness sake, keep the rate the same top to bottom, maybe 5%. Etienne would say that it should be zero or it’s theft, but this is just me being a bit of a realist. And those changes would never be on the table, of course, but I would rather see What could happen with those handful of changes, then dismantle everything and say, good luck, everyone. But I do appreciate what he’s trying to do, the awareness he’s trying to raise. And if I wanted to let the whole conversation devolve into a debate over if this is an effective strategy or if a stateless society is what we really want, yeah, I easily could have, because I have made that mistake before. I think maybe the last time he was here.

But it’s a much better use of the time to just stay focused on the common ground and at least help him make the case that he wants to make and just try to keep it interesting. There are obviously a few reoccurring themes that come up with guests over and over, over the years that I tend to get frustrated by. And I push back on and longtime listeners are well aware of what those things are.

So I feel comfortable letting that misalignment between the guest and myself on some of this stuff, just go without needing to comment much on it in the interview, especially comment as much as I might have in the past. Also, just to get in front of this now, I don’t have on everyone who sends me a bunch of stuff, but I do admittedly feel a sense of obligation to reciprocate oftentimes when that happens. And that often isn’t a good thing, but when I popped The Liberator into my computer and browse through the files, I knew that we could get to some really good stuff when the time came. And we did spend a little time on Sandy hook and the crisis actors thing. And some of the events in The Liberator, I tried to fit in some of the prepper files and alternative energy stuff, at least list that stuff. And that is mainly what the plus show got into.

As well as something I didn’t expect, but he spilled a lot of the Anarchapulco tea. He is not a Jeff Berwick fan. Let’s just say that. I know Charlie Robinson has been very involved with that conference and I love Charlie. I have no doubt that Charlie is a good dude and probably just excited to be involved with something so big with so many great guests as come to speak at that event. But Etienne’s insights into possible drug running and that sort of stuff was something else. Good material. If you ask me very spicy stuff. I haven’t actually seen the Liberty foundations piece: Chumped: The Unfortunate Truth About Anarchapulco and HBO’s Series: The Anarchists yet, but anyone who wants to know more about that stuff could check it out on their own or sign up for plus if you like what I do and want the full two hour uninterrupted interviews, always ad free and action packed. TheHighersideChats.com starts with a free seven day trial.

About The Higherside Chats Podcast:

THC is an interview-based podcast where Greg Carlwood hosts conversations with the best researchers, authors, and experts on a whole host of unusual, suppressed, alternative, paranormal, occult, and all-around fringe topics. Fun!

As a fan of both podcasts and conspiracy culture, THC tries to raise the bar, take the best of both, and avoid some of the major annoyances many people have with them.

THC has no ads or commercial breaks, a host who is always familiar with the guests’ work, and a lengthy format which allows us to go as deep as we can.

About Greg Carlwood:

Greg Carlwood had a pretty stereotypical mid-western middle class life growing up in Arnold, MO. After spending K-11th grade in the local Catholic School pipeline, causing a fair amount of trouble along the way, St. Pius X High School in Festus, MO kicked him out on the first day of senior year and he’s still bitter about it. Eventually making it to the University of Missouri, Greg studied nothing, dropped out, and wandered into corporate retail management- captaining such notable ships as Great American Cookies, Sunglass Hut, & Gamestop. Knowing this was a low-paying road to nowhere, and not feeling right in Missouri; he moved to San Diego, CA in 2010 with a desperation plan to grow marijuana. After growing a few successful crops, but not knowing anyone who actually buys marijuana by the pound, he started another desperation venture: The Higherside Chats Podcast. It was a success.

About Etienne de la Boetie2

Etienne de la Boetie² is the founder of the Art of Liberty Foundation, and the editor of the Art of Liberty Daily News on Substack and Five Meme Friday, which delivers hard-hitting voluntaryist memes and the best of the alternative media. He is an internationally recognized expert and speaker on voluntaryism and government illegitimacy, criminality and corruption. His original writings and research can be found at ArtOfLiberty.org and ArtOfLiberty.Substack.com

He is the author of To See the Cage Is to Leave It – 25 Techniques the Few Use to Control the Many which exposes an inter-generational psychological operation by the “government,” Hollywood, and the monopoly media to indoctrinate the population with the pseudo-religion of Statism using dozens of unethically manipulative techniques ranging from subliminal content in television programming to a hidden curriculum in the mandatory “government” schools, scouting, and police/military training.

He has also authored: “Government” – The Biggest Scam in History… Exposed! which breaks down how inter-generational organized crime centered around banking and central banking is robbing and controlling the population using the technique of “government” with puppet politicians and monopoly media/academia. His upcoming book: Voluntaryism – How the Only “ISM” Fair for Everyone Leads to Harmony, Prosperity and Good Karma for All! explains how REAL freedom (voluntaryism) can provide all the legitimate non-redistributive services provided by “government” without the waste, fraud, abuse, indoctrination and extortion. He was also the author and principal investigator for the monographs: The Covid-19 Suspects and Their Ties to Eugenics and Population Control/Reduction and Solving Covid – The Covid 19, Eugenics, and Vaccine/Drug Scam Timeline

About the Art of Liberty Foundation

A start-up public policy organization: Voluntaryist crime fighters exposing inter-generational organized crime’s control of the “government,” media and academia. The foundation is the publisher of “Government” - The Biggest Scam in History… Exposed!- How Inter-Generational Organized Crime Runs the “Government,” Media and Academia.

We publish The Daily News, a free survey of the best of the alternative media, censored videos, and documentaries, and the Daily News Digest, a once-per-day-summary of the Daily News as a premium service for paid subscribers of any Art of Liberty Foundation Substack and Five Meme Friday - a free weekly e-mail or Telegram summary of the best of the alternative media, censored truth videos, and at least five hot, fresh, dank liberty memes every week, and “Government,” Media, and Academia Exposed! - A Telegram summary of the best mainstream and alternative news stories proving our thesis that all three are being hierarchically controlled by inter-generational organized crime interests. You can read our 2023 Annual Report here.

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