It's my fault.
Those who have been reading some of my internet scribblings over the past months or years know I've been going down a very interesting path. Having graduated with a Masters degree from the school of hard knocks in Austrian Economics and political "science" over the last decade I've begun to dig even deeper into an understanding of the very question of life. Heck, we'll see if I am still alive by the end of this blog entry. Yes, I am serious about that (I think I will be… but I'll explain below why I haven't killed myself yet).
I also want to state that I am not drunk and am just a few sips in to a glass of red wine right now and won't be drunk by the end of this article. This is all coming straight from my heart after a year of looking in the mirror daily and asking myself who is this person and does he deserve to be here and after spending most of the day today meditating in my underwear and a lot of eye water .
This may get wacky or weird by the time I'm done writing. But before I drizzle digital ink upon you I do want to clarify a few things about the Galt's Gulch Chile (GGC) clusterfuck.
It appears that many people have taken Wendy McElroy's and my writings as being that GGC was and is an outright scam, all the money has been stolen and fuck you very much. That is not the case at all if everything I currently know about it is true. I have a fairly high degree of certainty that GGC owns the property where it has been selling lots and that that property has water rights. This is information I have been told by GGC's past lawyer about a year ago… which was also the last time I had any access to information to anything related to GGC. It has more or less been verified by others investors over the course of the last year as well.
Unless things are even worse than I know about GGC, it can and should be fine and saved. There may need to be $1-2 million brought in to shore up some things, pay contractors and probably renegotiate some incredibly unbelievable contracts but if GGC owns the property (and it should… I know millions have gone into it) this can and should be an epic turnaround story after a period of incredibly horrendous management.
The investors and buyers at GGC, as I stated before, are more than passionate about fixing GGC and as soon as we can find a way for them to get control of the company they invested in it may be relatively easy to fix everything. By relatively easy I mean a number of months of untangling a mess, stress and work… but that will be easier than what many of us have gone through at GGC over the last 1-2 years.
So, with that said, here we go.
IT'S MY FAULT
One thing I think I can say fairly concretely after nearly 44 years on this planet is that the more you know the less you know.
When I first pondered the idea of starting a Gulch, Doug Casey told me, "I would be very careful about that."
As I look back on my life (and by the way, I know some of the comments below will say 'he's so narcissistic all he does it talk about himself… well, sorry, I can only write or speak of my own experiences!) you really notice certain moments when someone who you trust/love/admire told you something profound and you did not give it the proper weight it deserved. That moment was one of them!
That, and my shamanistic wife telling me, "I have a bad feeling about him"… that "him" being the person who has been "managing" GGC… Sorry, this post is going to go all over the place, try to stick with me if you can. But I also want to state that I do not want to make GGC's current problems out to be a character assassination of Ken Johnson. In fact, unless I have to, I don't think I'll ever mention that name again. Anyone who knows or has met him knows what he is and I'll leave it at that.
But I always take personal responsibility for ANYTHING I am involved in and am doing so again here. I've found that living life that way has never led me wrong… it's at times unbelievably hard, especially when you created something that people invest in that doesn't go as planned. That's one of the reasons I nearly took a 10 year pilgramige around the world after an internet company I started in Kanada ended up losing some people some money after we were side-swiped by the tech bubble (which I didn't understand at the time but now do). I could barely live with myself after that even though every action I took was always, given the information I knew at the time, the most honorable and honest action possible.
I have friends who are very wealthy and have created companies that have made a lot of people money and lost a lot of people money. They always tell me that I can't be 100% responsible for every thing that everyone does in every situation. That never sat well with me and still doesn't. I understand their viewpoint but any time I do something and someone, somehow, gets hurt either directly or indirectly, it causes me direct pain. That is actually a real problem for an entrepreneur like myself that pushes boundaries constantly. There just, simply, is no way to always make things go perfectly and make sure no one, ever, is harmed. Anyone who has operated an enterprise knows this inherently. Shit happens.
But, actions always have reactions and consequences.
That is why those of us who have empathy can never understand people like Barack Obomber or Dick Cheney. How can they live with themselves knowing that their direct actions are causing people to be killed, tortured or ruined?
The answer is quite simple, actually. They clearly have no empathy or conscience. While problems with my past internet company and the current problems with GGC have caused people stress and possibly money (as far as GGC is concerned, but like I said above, I think it will be repaired without any serious financial damage being done to anyone) I can barely live with it. No one is being raped, tortured or killed… how can people like Barack Obomber live with themselves?
It's called psychopathy/sociopathy as I have learned over the last few years. There are certain people who simply do not feel empathy. If something they did ended up destroying tens, hundreds or even millions of lives it means nothing to them.
David Icke is an incredibly interesting person (who is currently one of my favorite people on this planet) who says they are actually not human and provides a very substantial amount of evidence to show that. I'm reading and watching as much as I can get my hands on in this respect and is part of my journey to trying to understand the meaning of life… but in either case, it is clear, some people just don't feel anything for others.
I, unfortunately, am not one of them and this GGC problem has been a weight greater than almost any I have had to carry.
The questions are beginning to come in, rightfully so, "If you suspected there was problems there over a year ago why didn't you say or do anything?"
I described in my post earlier this week part of the reason. As GGC grew and as more investors and buyers came in it was truly a coinflip on who would get hurt the most by me saying or not saying anything.
The stories are truly unbelievable. One investor put all his money into GGC at the earliest stage and is currently living in his car with his family.
Yes… that bad…
And he, amongst many others who also weren't comfortable with the way GGC was being run all but begged me to not go public. Many of them, at that time, about a year ago, all figured the problems were temporary or would be fixed… and as I posted, there was countless times where I thought so too. There was a major mistake that would shock many of us and then there would also be a posited resolution… countless times. Problem-ReAction-Solution. Until about two months ago when finally everyone involved in GGC saw what I saw a year ago and said, that's it, we have to go public as the only way to get this resolved.
At the time I thought that my silence on anything related to GGC over the last year would give enough people hints as to my happiness/involvement in the project that many would get the point.
Unfortunately many didn't.
Here's a tip for younger people or anyone who wants to grow as a human being. When you have a problem deal with it… never just put it off and hope it resolves itself. I have enough experience now to know that that NEVER works, ever.
I should have done what I am doing now a year ago. All who were involved, however, know that this was a heavy weight on me for this entire time. But, it's still, all my fault.
I saw the warning signs early enough that I should have removed this one person (let's just call him the devil) from my life two years ago. I think, in retrospect, that I had become so passionate about the libertarian/anarchist movement that I thought anyone who called themselves a libertarian were simply perfect people.
That has NOT turned out to be the case! Especially when you find out they even lied about being libertarian.
So, how do I pay penance here? If I kill myself that really doesn't resolve anything. Even if I kill the devil that probably doesn't resolve much.
If you want to kill me I constantly post where I am via countless social media and internet formats.
I will say, however, that over the last few years I have found an amazing and profound love that I didn't even know existed… and a lot of that is all tied in with my family. And, I know, they have put all their faith in trust in me and need me so if you do try to kill me I'll probably defend myself for that reason.
As part of my penance I want to apologize to John Cobin who was first involved in bringing the initial property to us. As I stated earlier this week I think many of their ideas and plans for the property were "patently insane" but I was there when the devil and I agreed that GGC would pay them a certain percentage commission for the property which was not paid. The devil made up all kinds of stories on why but I knew it wasn't right. That said, however, there were a lot of misrepresentations that I still can't figure out who was truly misrepresenting or who was just naive including all the aforementioned and even including some lawyers in Chile who told me to my face that the initial property could be easily rezoned and had water rights (neither of which were true on the first property but are true, to an extent on the main property which GGC appears to own). I guess, maybe, in that respect, we were the stupid gringos.
So, as you can see, there are a lot of characters involved… it's been a giant mess of things. That's why it's been so hard… you literally are getting different stories from different people whether they be lawyers, business associates or even staff. It's been a truly weird experience. I actually think it has a lot to do with energy. When you have one person who turns out to be just a really sick individual that person, if you allow them to be in your life, they gravitate a truly epic level of shit into a shit hurricane very quickly.
But it is all my fault for being derelict in not seeing this sooner. Now, with my knowledge of how people like this can really turn your life and many other's lives upside down I will be armed and ready to not be fooled again. But I probably will be.
So, what can I do? All I can do is admit my errors and work as diligently as possible to correct all past errors.
I also need to be much more humble and take less chances. The past five years has been unbelievable for me. While I have always been a fairly public person who is known by many through my past business affairs I have never been in this semi-celebrity sort of world before. I've seen it… when I lived in Los Angeles for a year we would hang out with people like Paris Hilton, Tara Reid and many others like that all the time and I could witness how their celebrity status brought in all kinds of hucksters, schysters and really seedy people… but I have never witnessed it personally until the last two years and while I was warned I did not realize how real it was.
So, again, where do I go from here? I've found a profound level of love with my family and have a massive passion for exposing the state and bringing freedom into this world. And, it's really happening. I'll write about that more later but I can see it happening in front of my eyes and I am excited.
But for now, all I can do, is get on my knees, humbly open up my heart and my soul to you, admit my mistakes and take the consequences.
And, make it right. Which is exactly what I and many others intend to do… the efforts have been simply amazing. I don't know if this one particular person in particular wants to be named, but he knows who he is. He has been moving mountains, all on his own, with a lot of his own money and time to fix this. And why? Only because he has met so many other people who have gravitated to GGC and loves their passion and soul and wants to help fix mistakes made by others. This person has really been almost like an angel sent from heaven for myself and many at GGC.
If GGC can not be corrected in a way that is mostly amenable to the needs of everyone involved I will have to decide how I move forward. The last time something I was involved in created problems for people I took off for nearly 10 years and tried to put myself into almost any situation that tempted death… and then, funnily enough, came to understand life, love and energy at a level where I could move on.
Now, I'm back here again.
The life of an entrepreneur and someone who works against the system is not easy. That's what makes many of us laugh or cry when Barack Obomber says "you didn't build that". The amount of stress and work involved in trying to create something new that bucks the system is not even explainable in words.
I can already see the comments down below, "He's just making excuses." You can say that but I also am doing everything within my power to fix the GGC issue and if I can't I will have to really have another look in the mirror and see if I even want to try to do these sorts of things again.
Most of the negative comments I have seen are actually from people who I know and are competitors or people who just hate me for one reason or another (anyone who takes a stance is always going to have haters/detractors… if you went through life and no one hated you then you probably didn't do much). Many of the positive comments are also from people I know… past workers for GGC are many of them. They all have heinous stories of how they were treated by the devil and many could quite rightfully say they have PTSD from their experience and many of them questioned me over the last year about how I could allow this to continue.
I can make all the excuses I want but the answer is that I fucked up. If I had listened to people like Doug Casey or my wife two years ago I wouldn't be here, nearly destroyed, having nearly become an alcoholic, started smoking and nearly losing my family and most of my assets in the process.
THE RISE
OK, now that I have blabbered on about my sob story here and thought about this nearly constantly for the last year, this is what I am really going to do.
I am going to stand up, head high, chest out, feel an extreme sense of humbleness and love and fight to make this right.
Whatever happens, happens. But I am not walking away from this.
