[The following is an interview done by The Daily Bell with TDV Editor-in-Chief Jeff Berwick]
Introduction: Jeff Berwick is an anarchist, libertarian and freedom fighter against mankind's two biggest enemies, the state and the central banks. Jeff is chief editor of The Dollar Vigilante, an anarcho-capitalist, Austrian economics based newsletter focused on surviving The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI) and CEO of TDV Media and Services, which provides internationalization information and solutions for yourself and your wealth. He is also host of Anarchast, an anarchist video podcast, and is a contributing editor at many of the world's largest financial and precious metals related websites.
In 1994, Jeff Berwick founded Canada's largest financial website, Stockhouse.com. A prominent speaker at many of the world's freedom, investment and gold conferences as well as regularly in the media including CNBC, CNN and Fox Business, Jeff expatriated long ago from his country of birth, Canada, and considers himself a citizen of the world. He has lived in numerous locales since including Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Bangkok and currently lives in Acapulco, Mexico. In essence, everything he writes about for TDV he has done or is doing.
Daily Bell: Hi. How are things?
Jeff Berwick: Could you be a bit more specific? When you break things down to an atomic level there are an infinite amount of things and I am not sure we have the time here for me to comment on each one. Although the concept of time itself could be an interesting discussion.
Daily Bell: Ha, yes, let's distill it down to something a bit more manageable. How are you?
Jeff Berwick: Ah, myself? That is something on which I do have some experience and can comment! I have never been better physically, mentally and spiritually, thank you. Aside from that I find myself incredibly excited on an increasing basis lately about the future of humanity. I think many people go through stages of awakening and those stages can bring about all manner of emotion and feelings. There have been times over the last decade, since I've really been focused on understanding the world and realizing what forces are at play, that I have felt somewhat depressed. And for good reason.
We live at an amazing time where the survival and future of humanity lies in the balance and in the past there were times where I wondered if it wasn't hopeless. That has been changing dramatically in recent years, months and days, however. You talk about it a lot at the Daily Bell and I do as well, how the Internet has changed everything and we are finally seeing the results flourish of humanity's first ever ability to access all knowledge and to communicate with every single human on Earth.
Daily Bell: What are some of the things you are seeing in this regard?
Jeff Berwick: As some background, I was attracted like a moth to a flame to computers from a very young age in Canada, which I spell with a K, in the late 1970s. I can't pinpoint exactly why but I think it came as a result of somehow identifying that many things in my life and the world I saw seemed totally incorrect from the standpoint of human prosperity. For starters, I was only a few years into being forced into the government indoctrination camps for my 12-year sentence when I realized that it was immoral to force me and others to go and, secondly, a complete waste of time in terms of its stated goal of "education." I was unfamiliar with Mark Twain at the time but his quote, "Don't let school interfere with your education," came to embody my belief about it.
At the same time, I would turn on the television programming – and it is called programming for a reason – and saw things that made little sense to me. Of course, back then, in a time that my young children can't believe even existed, we didn't have remote controls and there were only three channels… and one, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) was blatantly a government propaganda channel… they didn't even bother to hide it as so many people in that geographic region seemed to think it was a good thing to have your owners take money from you in order to give you the "news" as they want you to see it. Heck, many of them seemed to have no problem at all with having owners. Thankfully, back then, TV channels would turn off around 1:00 a.m. but as a last insult to injury, they would end the day with the nationalistic propaganda singing of the national anthem.
I always suspected the things I was hearing and seeing in school and on TV weren't exactly the whole story. And, at the same time, if they were telling the whole story I questioned why the world was so awash with wars, violence and poverty.
I did spend a short amount of time looking into the only solution that was made immediately available: a political solution. I still remember trying to choose a side of the only two sides that there seemed to be. I remember thinking that I liked the left side because they seem to be more open to allowing people to do a lot of things they want to do but I didn't like their take on "welfare." On the other hand, I liked the more business-like right side but didn't like how much they seemed to like war and punishing people for doing things they want to do.
I quickly gave it all up, as I couldn't figure out why there were no better options. That's when computers came in and I was enthralled at the ability to interact with people worldwide and to access information I couldn't find elsewhere.
Of course, it was very slow and hard to access back in the '80s. But, finally in 1993, the Internet came out and I was adamant that this would change the world greatly for the better. However, I may have jumped the gun a bit in how long it would take for most people to use this great new power.
I figured by the year 2000 most of humanity's problems would be solved through this new technology… but I was wrong. And that's where I began to get a bit depressed at times throughout the 2000s. I couldn't figure out how people have access to all knowledge at their fingertips yet many people just used it to share photos of cats or their dinner.
However, the change I was expecting 20 years ago has really come into fruition just in the last few years. A real awakening has been occurring and I am seeing the signs of it everywhere.
Daily Bell: What kind of an awakening do you mean and what signs are you seeing?
Jeff Berwick: It is a general awakening of people realizing that most of what they have been taught or told in their lives isn't true. In many ways it has been a bit like living in the "Truman Show" in the past except everyone in the show is Truman except myself and a few other people. We were the strange ones who knew that it was all a big façade.
It was only a few years ago that I would say things like the dollar will collapse, central banks are destroyers of the economy, taxes are extortion/theft and governments are an unnecessary evil and so many people would laugh and call me crazy.
Then just a short time later I would get regularly attacked. People would attack me for my ideas of self-ownership and the non-aggression principle. They would say I was a dangerous radical. But even that didn't last long. I rarely hear that anymore, either.
Now, many people consider what I am saying to be self-evident. Of course, there is that saying from Arthur Schopenhauer that truth goes through three stages: "First it is ridiculed, second it is fiercely opposed, third it becomes self-evident."
I've seen the ideas I talk about go through all three phases in just the last five years! That's how fast the Internet has accelerated change. Prior to the Internet, I likely wouldn't even have had access to information to come to this understanding. And, even if I had, my ideas wouldn't have spread much farther than to a few people through word of mouth. Today I have a large and growing audience of people worldwide who have not only caught on to the message of freedom but are now spreading it themselves.
Just think – twenty years ago if you brought up the "Federal Reserve" amongst friends no one would even know what you are talking about. Today, many people in the world are aware of what a power for evil central banking is and movements like "End the Fed" continue to grow. Ten years ago you'd never even hear the word libertarian. Now, that word has become a regular part of daily jargon and all kinds of people are gravitating to it. Even a person like Glenn Beck, who I would have described as a neocon a few years ago, now has anarchists on his show regularly and talks about things like bitcoin being a great thing to end the tyrannical fiat currency central banking system.
And, five years ago if you described yourself as an anarchist many people wouldn't even know the meaning of the word and think that you are a person who throws bombs and breaks storefront windows while dressed in a black balaclava. Today the word is becoming understood for its true meaning: a person who does not believe in nor desire to have a violent ruler and one who believes the best system for human prosperity is one that isn't a system at all but allows human beings to create wealth and interact however they like, as long as they do not initiate violence against another's self or property.
Of course, nothing happens in a vacuum and much of the reason people are becoming aware of alternative forms of human interaction is because all of the anachronistic and inherently evil collectivist systems of the past, governments and central banks, are all in a state of collapse.
And so, with the rise of human awakening to the evils of government happening at the same time that those communist style (in that governments are centrally planned) systems are collapsing it is sparking a revolution, or better stated, an evolution, that many still don't see but one that will shock the world.
Signs of the biggest paradigm shift in human history are all around. Secessionist movements are growing worldwide including just recently, Scotland, Venice, numerous states and counties in the US and the entire Eurozone looks to be about to completely disintegrate as a political unit.
One of my favorite sayings is: If at first you don't secede try, try again. And keep doing it until we have seven billion governments on Earth. People ask if we had seven billion sovereign governments on Earth wouldn't that be a bad thing. I like to say that the only thing I can think of that might be bad about it is that the opening ceremonies of the Olympics would be more tedious, lengthy and boring than they are today. Other than that, I think a collapse of inherently violent and thieving power structures, which is government, will bring about a world of peace and prosperity unlike anyone can imagine.
Today, all kinds of innovations are being created that will further increase the downfall of violent statism. Bitcoin is a massive evolution in money and banking and it has led to technological innovations that are now creating a completely decentralized Internet. If you thought the Internet changed everything… and it did… just wait until it and the money system become completely decentralized.
That is the only weakness of the Internet: things are centralized and therefore governments and central banks can use violence to shut certain things down just by showing up with their gang of thugs to where the servers are and destroying them. Once there is no physical server to destroy then government, which as Mao said, "comes out of the barrel of a gun," will find that their guns have no power here.
In the Bible was a statement saying, "Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the Earth." If what they meant by meek were those who believe in the non-initiation of violence (which are anarchists) then perhaps thanks to technology this may be coming true, as violent forms of action, which is what government is, will become powerless to stop non-violent forms of action.
Daily Bell: We've been generally skeptical of bitcoin but you make some good points.
Jeff Berwick: If you understand the true power of decentralized cryptocurrencies and see what is happening in the space with your own eyes you will not be skeptical. I have had the luck to have been introduced to bitcoin early on, in 2011, when it was near $3 per bitcoin. It is currently near $600. But that is not what excites me.
This technology has captured the imagination and passion of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide who see the power of what it is. You can take me at my word for this: bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general are not going away and ten or twenty years from now we will look back on them as being just as important, if not more important, than the Internet in terms of changing the world for the better.
Daily Bell: Maybe so, but in the meantime people are going to have to navigate themselves through the collapse of the current monetary and financial system.
Jeff Berwick: Absolutely. As optimistic and excited as I am about what I am seeing happening and what I think will happen in the future, I am also very aware that before we get to a potentially much better world we will have to get through what I call the Great Transition. Many, many fortunes will be lost during this transition… and many will be made.
I believe this is the most dangerous time in human history for capital. That is why I started The Dollar Vigilante. The tagline is: "Surviving and Prospering During and After the Dollar Collapse."
A massive amount of wealth will be lost as these systems collapse. I don't think anyone realizes how bad it is going to be… including myself. I expect it will be worse than even I think… that is the chaotic nature of these collapses. The next 5 to 10 years will be one for the history e-books. The Great Depression will look like Disneyworld in comparison. It will be written about in the future as The Greatest Depression.
For this reason, I am advising people to get as far away from the current monetary and financial system as possible… and to physically remove themselves from what I believe will be ground zero for this collapse, the US. No country or people has ever been less prepared for what is about to come due to the massive amount of indoctrination and propaganda in the US. Even in the Soviet Union everyone knew almost everything the government did and the media said was propaganda. They had two newspapers, run by the Communists and the Soviets, called Pravda (meaning "the truth") and Izvestia (meaning "the news"). A popular saying in the Soviet Union was, "In the truth there is no news and in the news there is no truth." In the US today, people actually believe what they see in the mainstream media. They are going to be very shocked when they realize that not only do they not live in the land of the free but, in fact, live in one of the least free places on Earth and in the midst of turning into a complete fasco-communist police state.
That combined with the incredible number of people who are dependent on the government to survive in the US today, with one in six people on food stamps and 11 states where there are more people on welfare than have jobs, will mean a very abrupt wake-up call. I would not want to be in close proximity when they turn off the EBT (welfare) cards or when the dollar is so hyperinflated that the monthly welfare check can barely buy a can of catfood.
I sometimes feel like Harriet Tubman who was instrumental in the "underground railroad" trying to free slaves who said, "I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves."
Today, slavery is epidemic in the US. People in the US have half their money stolen from them in the form of taxes, pay rent to live in their own homes in the form of property tax, are not permitted to own pets, drive a car, travel outside of the US or in nearly half the occupations in the US even have a job without permission.
However, some are starting to wake up and realize what it is going on and, like Harriet Tubman, I am a modern day neo-abolitionist and running my own underground railroad trying to help people get out from their slavery.
We help people get their money outside of the US through services offered at TDV Offshore and TDV Wealth Management. We help them get foreign passports so they can renounce their US citizenship at TDV Passports. And we offer all manner of other reports and information at The Dollar Vigilante newsletter including, for instance, reports on internationalizing precious metals like "Getting Your Gold Out of Dodge."
Daily Bell: Yes, one of the big things you have been on the forefront of covering is the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and why it is important to understand for people who wish to get their assets outside of the US.
Jeff Berwick: Yes, FATCA is an incredibly nefarious form of capital controls that the US has been putting in place since 2010. In essence, it plans to enforce incredibly egregious, expensive and illegal penalties on foreign banks if they accept US citizens as clients. The point, they say, is to find "tax cheats" and force every bank on Earth to report all information on any US client it has. However, the expense and amount of work it is for every bank on Earth to do so often is more than it is worth so countless banks around the world are beginning to just stop accepting US clients.
We hear about banks, on a daily basis, that are closing US customer accounts and/or not accepting new US clients. Just today, for example, Mexico's largest bank, Banamex, began closing US client accounts. For this reason we have held a number of urgent Crisis Conferences, including one in Panama and one earlier this month in Cabo, helping those with significant assets structure themselves properly to internationalize their assets before FATCA goes into full implementation on January 1, 2016.
The US government has been working incredibly actively to stop the outflow of assets from the US, including via FATCA, and also making it more and more difficult to expatriate. We've seen the US put pressure on a number of countries including the Dominican Republic, Paraguay and St. Kitts to make it harder for Americans to attain citizenship.
I truly believe that if you have significant assets in the US and don't want them to go down with the US dollar and want to get them out then you should be running, not walking, to do so now.
It is a time of incredible change, both positive and negative. We will see pension and IRA funds seized in the coming years, the US dollar collapse and capital and travel controls continue to be put in place. Yet, at the same time, there is so much opportunity in taking advantage of these changes, including investment into precious metals and bitcoin.
As another example of the great opportunities that are arising is the end of one of the most heinous "wars" in history, the "war on drugs." Due to a rise in awareness by the global population of how damaging the war on drugs is combined with a rise of awareness of how things like "medical marijuana" have substantial health and wellness benefits, we are seeing an entire, massive industry rise dramatically as governments worldwide lessen restriction and in some cases completely decriminalize marijuana.
This, too, is driven by the fact that most governments around the world are completely bankrupt and are looking for ways to try to get revenue in order to stay alive a little longer.
For this reason I have begun speaking about what I call the Killer "B's" for the coming years. The three main ones are Bitcoin, Bullion and Bud (marijuana).
Daily Bell: We have also been very excited about the potential of this new industry freed from the chains of state restriction.
Jeff Berwick: We have never, at least since the end of alcohol prohibition, seen such a potentially massive industry be decriminalized and offer massive gains such as the current global movement to decriminalize marijuana. Here we have a product that already has an amazing brand name and a massive customer base. It is a multi-billion dollar industry that was pushed underground for decades and limited regular investors' ability to profit from it.
That is all changing rapidly and there will also be fortunes made in this new, decriminalized market.
That is why this period of time is so exciting… so many things are changing so rapidly that if you are smart and ahead of the curve and protect yourself from the risks of the coming monetary and financial system collapse, generational fortunes can be made.
Of course, when you turn on CNBC or other mainstream media in the US what do you hear about things like bitcoin, bullion and bud? Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme, gold is a barbarous relic and marijuana is dangerous.
That's why people should turn off their TV and self-educate. They will not teach you about any of those things in the public schools or colleges either. Fortunes will be made by those who are aware of what is going on… and fortunes, and sadly lives, will be lost by those who remain unaware.
Daily Bell: You and your views are certainly growing in popularity. You seem to be everywhere nowadays. What's next for you?
Jeff Berwick: Well, they say when the sun shines make hay… and the sun is about to explode so I am working as hard as possible to make people aware of the Great Transition that is coming and The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI).
I'll be in Mordor, in the belly of the beast, Washington, District of Criminals later this month at the "Bitcoin in the Beltway." Then, a few days later I'll be speaking about the Killer "B's" at a freedom conference in New Hampshire called PorcFest. And soon after that, in July, I'll be in Las Vegas at Freedomfest where I'll be speaking and on numerous panels, including one with Doug Casey and Peter Schiff on "Big Brother and the Nanny State."
In the meantime, for anyone interested in hearing more about the information we discussed here I suggest they sign up for the free blog at DollarVigilante.com and, if interested in freedom and anarchy, subscribe to Anarchast on YouTube where I have interviewed more than 100 anarcho-capitalists from around the world.
Daily Bell: Thanks, Jeff.
Anthony Wile
After Thoughts
Congratulations to Jeff Berwick for helping raise the alarm over the instability of the modern system. Today, as almost never before, there is a great global struggle between people who want to be free to live their lives as they choose and those who want to control them – a struggle that may eventually have disastrous consequences.
Fortunately, as Jeff points out, the Internet has proven to be a great resource when it comes to more clearly understanding the manipulations of those who want to achieve more control and are intent on draining personal liberty to do so. Jeff, like others, has acted on this knowledge by constructing products and services that may help people protect themselves from worsening sociopolitical and economic trends.
Jeff's advice, during a time when Western governments are taxing more, trying to restrict travel, overprinting money and participating in undeclared wars, is much the same as ours: Consolidate assets, legally create redundant "official" documents and try to maintain as much flexibility in your personal and professional life as possible.
For most people, having enough money to maintain life-style flexibility is of great importance. The "Wall Street Party" we often refer to currently provides options for those who want to take advantage of a fleeting era of extraordinary monetary stimulation.
In such an environment, some public companies as well as private startups can generate wealth for owners and investors, perhaps a great deal. But the larger, ultimate reality is that people need to protect themselves and their assets within private, international facilities, as Jeff describes.
What is going on today is vast and complex – with many moving parts. But one doesn't need to understand each aspect of what is occurring to take "human action." Jeff's done it. You need to, too.
