Ron Paul, libertarian former congressman and presidential candidate, joins me on the show to talk about Bitcoin, Libertarianism and Freedom in Money. 

Ron Paul Links:

• Twitter: @ronpaul
• Site: RonPaulLibertyReport.com

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• Show notes and website
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Podcast Transcript:

Stephan Livera:

Dr. Paul, you’ve been an inspiration for many of us. Welcome to the show.

Dr. Ron Paul:

Good to be with you today.

Stephan Livera:

Dr. Paul. So we are, this is a podcast mainly about the Bitcoin world, and I’d love to get your thoughts on where we are in this whole Bitcoin revolution. We are, as we speak today, it’s December 2020, and Bitcoin started in January 2009. And so it’s come a long way. So I’m curious as to your views on you know, as someone who’s not necessarily deeply into the world, what’s your view on the Bitcoin world and the chances for increased liberty as a result?

Dr. Ron Paul:

Well, I think there’s you know, a lot of questions to be answered. I don’t think the conclusion is there yet. I’ve been impressed with what’s happened in these few years, because I think some people predicted it would be this popular other people who are skeptical. And I think that still exists. And my introduction to it has been mainly more philosophic. And legalistic because I knew about this when it was coming into vogue when I was in Congress. So I thought the important thing is that we should do whatever we can to make it legal because and that’s why I had a bill in that would be legalizing competing currencies because of it’s to be used as money that you’re competing with the dollar. And you know, there are some people who don’t like that, you know and they want to know what’s going on.

Dr. Ron Paul:

And then sometimes there are tax collectors out there too that want to know exactly what people are doing on alternative currency. But I was mainly interested in to make sure that it was legal. And I think basically is a lot of people are trusting. A lot of people are buying and selling, but that doesn’t totally reassure me because I have a skepticism of government all the time. See, I don’t even have a total reassurance that the government is not going to come along and want to confiscate my gold, you know, this sort of thing. Governments are pretty ornery. So since, you know, the more successful crypto is going to be, and Bitcoin is going to be, I think the more you have to be aware of what’s going on and the government will become more aggressive. I about in education.

Dr. Ron Paul:

You know, if you, if you’re doing private education outside of the government education, such as homeschooling or private school, if you’re too successful, the government’s going to want to close you down. And the government schools don’t want the competition, I think that’s the way it is in finance too. But as of now, it looks like a lot of people who believe in the marketplace believe it can work. But I think I would, my advice is yes be vigilant, because you know, there’s information collected, the exchanges aren’t totally anonymous. And I read the stories about you know, the IRS checking up on things and, and, you know, for somebody like myself, I don’t even believe in the IRS. Let alone being flexible enough. Well, as long as I have the IRS investigating me and we followed the rules, well, you know, in 1932 in the depths of the depression people were allowed to own gold, you know, and we were on the gold standard, but immediately, what did they do then they closed shop and they made it illegal to own gold for all the way up until 1975, that’s why, you know, I got into politics and that’s why I’ve remained a skeptic.

Dr. Ron Paul:

And I think it’s legitimate. But nobody claims that we’ve ever had a perfect system, but I sort of strive for that. For me, the perfect system is freedom of choice then you and I can decide exactly what we should use as our monetary system, but today that’s not here, but I like the idea that cryptocurrency has made people think about it. One other thing I like about it so far, it looks like there’s going to be a limitation of the creation of new currency. And that’s the big thing. If this occurs and you just can’t expand it, that’s the biggest evil. So when I endorsed cryptocurrencies I always admonish and say, yeah, it’ll work. If fraud is prohibited, because governments are used to doing the fraud and that’s why the systems always go badly.

Dr. Ron Paul:

So I think that would be very bad, but that’s human nature. And there have been, you know, episodes of people taking crypto that they shouldn’t be taking. But that’s good that, you know, in the marketplace, it’s sort of like you, if you’re if your business is being robbed in a free market, you’ll get some (inaudible). So I think the protection has to come from the technological viewpoint so that people can remain sure. Because if there’s not, I don’t think the government’s gonna to come to the rescue and say, we want to make it secure in a way you don’t lose anything. They’re not going to do that. But if there is a problem, there’s a tremendous incentive, you know, to have security. And of course there are some that are very satisfied with it, and I’m sorta cautiously optimistic about that.

Stephan Livera:

Thank you, Dr. Paul. And I’m also curious as to your view on obviously Bitcoin appeals to many libertarians, right? Libertarians we are probably the optimal demographic to be into Bitcoin. And yet I noticed there are a lot of libertarians who aren’t that into Bitcoin, and they don’t necessarily see the promise. I’m curious as to your view on why that is?

Dr. Ron Paul:

Well, I think that’s because people are individual, you know I imagine that there’s not one feature of the people involved because there might be some that just love it for the technology of it. And I think it’s a transfer system and others say, well, no, this is money. That’s gonna to compete with the dollar and this sort of thing. So it’s for different reason. And I’m mostly interested in because I see this not as a creature of the government, but the government’s watching very closely. So I think everybody gets involved for, for different reasons. Some people I’ve met some people who are really, really into it, they have made a lot of money in there. Their balance sheet is, has grown and their whole goal is just, well, I know what’s gonna to happen in 10 years.

Dr. Ron Paul:

I’m buying when I can, I’m gonna sit there and I’m going to hold. Well, maybe, but I’m not smart enough to know that for sure. And there’s going to be variation. That’s just human nature. And that’s why I want individuals to have this flexibility, because if your goals are slightly different than mine and you have all the authority, it might not please me. So if we have a system and I hope the system provides it that you can be involved in cryptocurrencies and work with other people that you have some agreement. And I would have to use mine, maybe a slightly different way. I think there’s just some time left before all this is ironed out, because I don’t think people know the absolute future. And that’s because you cannot estimate and predict human action. Human action is an individual thing, and it’s going to vary. What we want to do is to legalize. Human action varies. And that gives us the really good philosophic intellectual opposition to the authoritarians in government.

Stephan Livera:

Of course. And do you then see it as some combination of technology that helps enable a more libertarian future and also some level of politics and some level of activism or lobbying, or some level of political support to help enable the overall vision?

Dr. Ron Paul:

Well, yeah, I think both because I think the libertarian understanding they certainly were aware of this and knew about it and wrote about it, and they were excited about it, but I don’t know anything about the numbers, but there’s billions and billions of dollars invested and believe me, I don’t believe they’re all good libertarians. I think they’re smart people and they’re able to do it. And they see this as a vehicle that has a positive future. So they’re willing to make a business decision on it. And their attitude would be quite different, but that’s the way maybe it would be on gold and silver, everything else. Some people might think it’s a store of value only. And hold it. And somebody else might want to do it because they know it has a metallic value of a industrial value to it.

Dr. Ron Paul:

So there’ll be different reasons. And I think that’s the way it is, where I don’t think you can get everybody to agree exactly why you have crypto and how it works. You know there’ll be different motivations, but yeah, I still have full trust in free people making voluntary decisions. They’re not perfect, but when they make mistakes, it only hurts them. But when you turn it over to the government and put them at the federal reserve and they make decisions about savings and interest rates and all of this, you know when they make a mistake, it can be very, very painful. And that’s why we have, have the ups and downs in the business cycle and feel the fear of the crack-up boom and things like that. But all that now can be reflected in some people the way they use crypto, you know, they figure, you know it’s outside, it’s different.

Dr. Ron Paul:

And in some days you know, when I watched the markets very close, I think, crypto is a Haven and it is the alternative and everything is going in there. Then another day you have $2,000 dip, well, maybe it’s not decided for sure yet more time is necessary. And you don’t, and you want that because you don’t want a, because we’re talking about cryptos in dollar value as well. That’s still dollars that they’re dealing with that. So this is this is the thing that will be worked out and people will finally decide. But right now it’s I find it fascinating even though I don’t trade it we get donations for our foundation and the work that I do, and it makes sense. I speak a lot on the issue.

Dr. Ron Paul:

And sometimes I think, well, I don’t go to these conferences and talk about, well, if you buy this one and this one sell tomorrow and do that I don’t do any of that. And I think, well maybe why do they want to listen to me? And I think it’s because they know that my goals and my influence is always to make it legal, let people make their decision. And that’s why I want the environment, to me it’s almost a similar to if you’re dealing in in religious values, you might not have to take a religious value and promote, but you want to have the freedom of choice in religion or social activities or social habits and all this, and let people make these decisions. And that should satisfy. So I think the people who don’t get involved are really very valuable.

Dr. Ron Paul:

And I think of the drug issue for years, I was always against the drug war and I represented a Bible belt, very conservative district in Texas. And when I came out for that, I thought, boy, they’re going to kill me on this one. And when I ran a second time for Congress and they did, they tried to both the Democrats and Republican said, this guy doesn’t even want to have a war on drugs, you know, and this sort of thing, and people would come up and say, why do you want to legalize marijuana? And I said, no, you don’t have it right. It’s not, I don’t want to legalize you know, the single currency or marijuana. What I want to do is legalized freedom of choice, and you make up your mind and that’s the way it should be, whether it’s religion or whether it’s what people take in their bodies or what they put in their wallet.

Dr. Ron Paul:

And then they have to assume the responsibility. And, you know, I was always impressed pleasantly so, during the presidential races, then most of the university students that they, you know, get a lot of blame for some of the weird stuff they do. The students were good. If they heard this message that you and I are talking about where you can do what you want, but you can’t hurt people. And and you can get along, but you make your choices, but I thought what would turn them off. But if you screw up, you’re going to stop with the consequences. And that, they understood. So I think the I think we have a powerful message, libertarian message. And it’s very appealing and it just astounds me that we don’t do a better job in convincing people, because let’s say you and I had a total disagreement on crypto.

Dr. Ron Paul:

The important thing is, make sure it’s legal. We may have total disagreement, you know with people who have no faith, other people have different things, as long as you don’t use force, same way with our bodies about what we eat. And so it shouldn’t be hard with anybody with a slight libertarian leaning that we don’t look forward to the day when the government and Dr. Fauci is telling that we have to take a vaccine, or we can’t have a job, or we can’t travel. That’s the real danger, but I put that all together, whether we’re talking about marijuana or crypto or religion or personal habits, it to me is all one thing,

Stephan Livera:

Dr. Paul, you have inspired so many to want Liberty. I’m wondering whether you have any insights on as you mentioned, this idea of growing, you know, you’re calling out to the remnant, you’re trying to find those people who want freedom. Do you have any tips on how to find, you know, the Bitcoin remnant, how to grow that base of people who wanted to have, want to have freedom of choice in money?

Dr. Ron Paul:

Well, I was taught that if you have an understanding, do the best to understand that and explain it, if it’s worth anything, they’ll find you, you know, people will find you, I didn’t know you you know, three or four or five years ago. And I don’t know when you got really involved, but I didn’t call you up on the phone and say, Hey, look, this is what you have to do, no. It doesn’t work that way. You have to present it, and you obviously have done it, you know, with what your business is like, you have an issue and you have people wanting to know what you’re saying. And I think this is very good. So there, the remnant, then I might use the definition slightly differently because the remnant are the leftovers, the old leftovers, the people that knew what it was, I let’s say we might use it.

Dr. Ron Paul:

It’s used biblically. You know, in the old Testament, there was a remnant people, always their societies would deteriorate, well, our society is deteriorating right now. And we could argue the case that we have a remnant of those who understood what the founders were talking about, because they had a pretty good understanding about libertarianism. They didn’t call themselves libertarian, but they called themselves you know, defenders of Liberty. And and so there are people out there and it’s taught biblically that there’s always a remnant. The people are going to have memory. So even no matter what happens with the federal reserve and look at what they’ve done to the money, there’s always a remnant out there that wants sound money. And they hold things together. So yes, you want to appeal to them because movements occur by leadership and people in remnant that are still leaders and leaning away, even though they may be small, they may be clinging to the truth.

Dr. Ron Paul:

And so they are the ones. So they have to be used to popularize the issues. If he wants sound money, people have to know about it. If people want to. And right now, what I work on so much is is this crazy stuff going on with coronavirus. I want people to be more sensible with their medicine and through their care and you know, all this. So you have to finally get the people to come out and support, but you have to have people believing. And I was always on the assumption that if you look at it and say, well, Ron, this sounds real good, but when are you gonna get your 51%? So you can win all the elections. It doesn’t work that way. You have to, you need about an 8% of the people or so that are very supercharged and they’re leaders.

Dr. Ron Paul:

And they’re thinking about these things, and then they influence the others, and then you can get the crowds to come out and shift the attitude. So that’s really the way I approach it. And I think the remnant, whether what you could say, because I wanted the date, the remnant, yeah, there is true. I like it. When people join the remnant, you know, we were part of the residual of some beliefs that personal liberty is far superior to anything else to me, it’s individualism versus authoritarianism, voluntarism versus coerciveness

Stephan Livera:

When it comes to new industries, it seems that they can become captured by the government. And I know that in some ways as examples, I know previously, historically you have also railed against things like financial surveillance, financial controls, things like KYC and FinCEN. Do you see that those are also influences that are coming into the Bitcoin world as well?

Dr. Ron Paul:

I worry about that. Because at one of the conferences I met somebody, I said, well, hi, what are you doing? Well, she says, I’m a lobbyist for Washington. I want to make sure when they write the regulation that we get protection and that’s a practical thing to do. But because even though I believe in free market medicine, if they’re beating the bushes to have Obamacare, you know, for somebody to go in there and try to save freedom of choice, even in a small area, that’s legitimate, but it was sort of a little bit disappointing, but probably very, very practical. I want separation. So I I think that it’s hard to prove that it’s really autonomous. You have the IRS doesn’t know what’s going on. And I think they know exactly because the first time I even heard a discussion, I can’t remember.

Dr. Ron Paul:

It was probably Bernanke it was a chairman and we had him before the committee and the subject came up. I don’t know it sounds like a question I might’ve asked anyway, it was in dicussion and he was, he was not negative. You know, he said we’ll see how this works, because he didn’t come across a little harsh about it. So I always thought there was more tolerance but, and they know what’s going on. And I think that’s the thing, the ultimate thing of being anonymous and secretive that’s not easily achieved. And you can’t even, like I said, in 1933, even if you were well-prepared Roosevelt is going to call in the gold. Well, you know, and this is all the issues. What if people think that the ultimate protection is owning a gun, you know societies have taken guns from people and our governments are capable of doing that, to say the issue is personal Liberty. You know all these things I think about.

Stephan Livera:

And also, I’d also love to get your views on I know Mises is a great scholar that you know, we regard as highly influential, and I think he also saw sound money as a protection. What are your views on that idea? It’s like a protection of your rights against the government.

Dr. Ron Paul:

Well that’s it, but it should be, it should be automatic. The only purpose for government, if you’re looking for a purpose, and that is to protect Liberty. You know, making sure that if your rights are being violated, if somebody’s hurting, you are stealing from you or to burn down your house, that if you do have a local policeman, local government, that would be the purpose. But you know, that’s been long lost right now you know, I believe that individuals should not lie cheat steal or kill, but our government guess what it does lie on occasion. Does it ever cheat? Yeah. They cheat all the time. Do they steal? Yeah, inflate and taxes and and they assassinate people, even American citizens. So it’s the government that should be restrained. The government should restrain those activities of private individual.

Dr. Ron Paul:

And if the private individual is lying and cheating and stealing, you should have a recourse and some protection, but they shouldn’t be involved in the welfare state. They shouldn’t be involved in counterfeiting instead of protecting, you know, prohibiting counterfeiting, they become the biggest counterfeiters, you know, and that’s of course where so many of our problems are coming right now, because that’s where the big state comes from. And that’s where our Wars come from. That’s where the runaway welfare comes from. And then of course you could say, well, yeah, it causes chaos, but it gives the motivation to somebody think about cryptocurrencies. You know, maybe it’s an alternative. So the people will have a reaction to it. And they react rather quickly when government comes in and they put on a lot of regulations, usually, you know, even under the worst circumstances Soviet system or whatever, there is always a black market, you know, you have to survive surviving.

Dr. Ron Paul:

And of course the first ones to jump into the black market or the politicians, you know, to get away from the (inaudible). But, you know, if they have socialized medicine, everybody’s in a socialized medical system. Yeah. unless you’re a government official, then you’ll have a private doctor. That’s the kind of if we’re honest, that’s hypocrisy. And that’s one thing that we talk about on my television program is that this whole idea of hypocrisy right now is really getting people’s attention. You don’t even have, you know, it’s more powerful than arguing, you know, the details of what the government should or shouldn’t do, but the hypocrites that are coming in and saying, those are the rules, and you can’t do this. And at the same time, they don’t even follow the rules that right now we’re finding that is the greatest incentive for people to wake up and believe our side rather than theirs, because they’re hypocrites. You know, how about finishing up in a little bit? I got to go in a few more minutes.

Stephan Livera:

For sure. So I guess perhaps we could just close out with what your thoughts are on the outlook for Liberty over the next, let’s say five years, do you think where we’re going in a good direction or in a bad direction or neutral?

Dr. Ron Paul:

Well next two or three will be very, very bad on our civil liberties are in our realm. Then there will be, you have to liquidate debt when it gets out of hand. And that is the problem. And it’s been encouraged because of the monetary system. And when this happens, it’s not only the debt, but it’s the mal-investment too. And that’s why we have corrections. And I think when you stymie the correction, see last fall that you know when we had an overnight rate surge and they had a shortage and interest rates went to 10%, and that was before Corona Virus, but Corona Virus came in, I think to distract us from there, but it was way out of proportion. And it was a huge bubble there. It was bigger. It was already bigger than an Nasdaq bubble and the housing bubble.

Dr. Ron Paul:

So the correction was there. The debt has to be liquidated to correct it. And and the malinvestment bad mistakes, the investment and that’s painful. So that’s why politicians cannot tolerate that. They’d rather delay the inevitable and they want to liquidate debt, but they want to do it through a debasement of the currency. So they just print and print and print, and they get all upset. The prices aren’t going up fast enough. We want to liquidate debt and debt faster. But regardless of what happens, the debt gets liquidated and we’re in the process and everybody thinks it’s only a coronavirus. It has these businesses going broke there. You know, that’s a, if you take a thousand small businesses and 500 are gone because it went bankrupt and the Coronavirus and lockdown made the difference. There’s another group that was more frugal and they had been savers and they could do it.

Dr. Ron Paul:

And they might’ve been buying up some of those assets so that, you know, the assorting out of has to occur, but they they think that that this can go on, but it’s going to be resolved. So the answer is the next few years, regardless, even if they got more sensible about the lockdown, we still have liquidation, which I would say is going to open up two or three years. And if they really, really are stupid, they could prolong the depression like they did in the 1930’s, the depression really lasted for 15 years from the early through the 30’s. And till the war was over, you know, there was a, it took all that time for people to get back to working again. So if you did the right thing, now that’s the best part. If you want to do that.

Dr. Ron Paul:

And this is the bit of optimism. If we did everything right, if we bit the bullet and we knew we had to have this surgical treatment for our cancer and have it and be cured, that’d be one thing, but nobody’s going to do that. There’s no way the politicians will back off on spending and it’s not the Democrats fault. It’s a bi-partisan because one wants to spend the money on the Wars, the other on welfare. And just yesterday, there was another agreement it’s federal, all this hollering, screaming about what’s going on. Even in the midst of the impeachment hearings, there was a pause for the Republicans and Democrats to go over in vote for, you know, money to be spent. So that’s going to continue, but there will be liquidation. And I think the liquidation will come with a runaway inflation.

Dr. Ron Paul:

So the question, when’s that going to happen? And when will it work, we’re not going to do it the right way. They did it that way in 1921. And after a year, everything was back, they were back to work again. So it’s going to take a while. So I guess if we could get the liquidation down and then get into you know, sound economic policy would take at least 10 year, I think in longer terms for the correction, because I have a homeschooling program and I get the young kids that can’t even go to school now and the schools are horrible. And I work real hard with young people and we were doing better than they’re now, because the schools are closed. And, but I think the answer has to be found in education. And I think the great harm has been done by our universities.

Dr. Ron Paul:

So predicting the time of the crash, impossible Austrian economics said, you know, that it is coming, but you don’t know the day there’ll be some psychological or some event that we don’t know about will cause the crash and the, and the liquidation, the most important thing is what are you going to replace it with? You know, are you going to replace it with just a variation of Keynesianism or you’re going to go with the Marxists or Leninists who are already in our government or are we going to excite enough people to understand the difference between freedom and authoritarianism?

Stephan Livera:

Fantastic, Dr. Paul, for any listeners who would like to follow you online or subscribe to the Liberty Report, where can they find you online?

Dr. Ron Paul:

Okay. I do a daily live show on our computers and that is RonPaulLibertyReport.com. It’s 11 o’clock central time. And we’ve been doing quite well lately because we’ve talked about Coronavirus and the election and mostly current events and a lot of foreign policy.

Stephan Livera:

Well, Dr. Paul, I want to respect your time. I just want to thank you so much for being an inspiration for many of us. And thank you again for joining me on the show today.

Dr. Ron Paul:

Nice to be with you.