Jason Hartman’s guest is Adam Taggart, co-author (along with Chris Martenson) of Prosper and The Crash Course. Adam talks about the trends that will affect our future, citing that a small shockwave can affect the entire global monetary system. He also discusses the book Prosper, which describes the eight types of assets or capital. Investing in these eight attributes will allow you to weather the storm economically, physically, and environmentally. Adam also encourages the listeners to put their wealth into things that can’t be inflated away.
Announcer 0:00
This show is produced by the Hartman media company. For more information and links to all our great podcasts, visit Hartman media.com.
Announcer 0:13
Welcome to the creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You’re about to learn a new slant on investing some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world’s most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine self made multi millionaire who’s actually been there and done it. He’s a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who’s owned properties in 11 states had hundreds of tenants and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason’s footsteps on the road to your financial independence day. You really can do it on now. here’s your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.
Jason Hartman 1:03
Welcome to the creating wealth show. This is Episode 619 619. Thank you so much for joining me today. This is your host, Jason Hartman, coming to you from Las Vegas. Yes, Sin City. I finished meet the Masters this weekend, we had an awesome event. Thank you so much to all of you who attended, it was our largest meet the Masters event yet. And thank you so much for all the kind words and the excellent feedback. And you can probably tell my voice is hoarse, because I’m talking all weekend. So I’m looking forward to sitting in this conference today and just listening. Not talking so much. But it was a great event. And I just thank everybody so much. We just absolutely love you clients and listeners and so much appreciate you. I just I just can’t tell you how much I appreciate you. But yeah, fantastic event, some great contributions, fantastic speakers, you know, everybody says every year this is your this was your best meet the Masters yet, I guess I take that as a bit of a challenge. But it’s going to be tough to keep up with because you got to keep making them better. So next January, we will have our next meet the masters and we’ll try to top this one.
But hey, our guest today is a super interesting. Adam is the partner of Chris martenson. And they’ve got a new book out called prosper. And it’s kind of a, I don’t know, maybe it’s a bit of a non sequitur because Chris martenson, who you may know from the crash course, which got him some fame, you know, he’s a bit of a mouthful, and then points out some real, real significant problems in the world. And you know, mostly from the economic perspective, but also from some other perspectives as well. And I just interviewed Chris again, I think for them maybe the fourth time on the show, and today we’ve got his business partner and he’s a fascinating guy, I think you’ll really like what he has to say, and the interview is rather lengthy. So I am going to make my intro extremely short.
The one thing I will say Well, two things I will say before the interview. Number one, if you missed meet the Masters, or you want a review of last year’s meet the Masters, go to Hartman education comm that’s Hartman education comm you can see the entire event from last year from last year, the last one, beautifully segmented into, you know, nice modularized videos. And again, I love the audio format video, you need it sometimes because you need to see something and and refer to a visual aid. We also have the audio download on that site as well. So you can just buy the course. And I think you’ll really like it, we spent a lot of money with a designer making this course that’s at Hartman education comm where you can get the audio and the video included. So you have the portable format, and you have the visual format, so that you can listen to the portable format while you’re out and about and then reference the video as you need to. I think that’s kind of the best way to do it. Use it as you wish. And again, check that out at Hartman education.com. And if you want to join us for the Dubai trip next month, just a little over slightly over a month away, go to venture Alliance mastermind.com that’s venture Alliance mastermind calm.
And one of the things we definitely, definitely settled on this weekend once again is that income property is the most historically proven asset class in all of world history. I started off the weekend with a speech on the dogs that don’t bark and how you can’t hear them and how the there is an incredibly profound impact of things unseen of things. unheard. Consider that in life. We try to explore that when it comes to investing and just life in general on the show here. So more to come on that.
But without further ado, let’s get to our guest and jump in and talk about prosper. So you’ve heard past episodes I’ve done with Chris martenson, who I think has some brilliant and really fascinating ideas. Today I’m going to have his co author and co founder, Adam Taggart on the show. They are co founders of peak prosperity, calm developers of the educational video seminar series, the crash course, and co authors of a new book entitled prosper, how to prepare for the future and create a world worth inheriting. Adam, welcome. How are you?
Adam Taggart 5:47
I’m great. Jason, thanks so much for having me on your show.
Jason Hartman 5:50
Good to have you on and you’re coming to us from the San Francisco area, I believe.
Adam Taggart 5:54
Yes, I live up in Sonoma County. It’s about an hour north of San Francisco, but has a lot better wine and better food.
Jason Hartman 6:00
Yep, the wine country, it’s beautiful out there. It really is. Well, so tell us about the book prosper if you would, I really cannot wait to dive into the different forms of capital. And the way you distinguish those, how it’s about so much more than just just money or currency? I guess we should say to be more accurate. But yeah, give us an overview of the book, Prosper.
Adam Taggart 6:22
Sure. So you mentioned my business partner, Chris earlier, who wrote the crash course. And for those of your listeners who are familiar with the crash course and the framework that it presents, that work is really a problem definition work. It talks about the major macro trends going on in the world around us. And we particularly look at the economy, our energy systems and key natural resources in the environment, specifically, depletion of key natural resources. And we talk about the implications of these trends and how they’re going to affect our future. And this story can get a little bit dark for people in terms of there going to be some real problems, or sometimes we call them predicaments, because some of them don’t necessarily have solutions. They just need to be managed. And so anyways, as people come to grips with that information, the number one question they ask us is, oh my gosh, well, if that’s what’s going to be shaping the future, then what should I do? Well, that’s where the new book prosper, comes in. prosper really is a solutions oriented work. And we talk about what people can do, both at the societal level and as communities but but really specifically, we’re talking to the individual here, what individuals can do to take steps in their lives, that will insulate them against these forces that we see shaping the future. And we’ll talk about this a bit more in detail. But what’s great about the advice in the book, as we see it is that even if we’re totally wrong about these forces in terms of the timing in which they’re going to impact the future, even if the rest of our lives, look and feel very much like they have to date. These are life enhancing steps that we’re mentioning, these are investments that you will never regret making no matter how the future turns out.
Jason Hartman 8:09
Okay, so good stuff. Tell us about the different forces that you address, you know, in the in the associated predicaments, if you will. And you know, this really may be a little bit of a review of the crash course, which was the impetus for all of this work, but give us a sample an overview of the predicaments and the forces.
Adam Taggart 8:27
Sure. So at this point, I’ll try to quickly summarize each area I mentioned earlier. So from the economy standpoint, the world has been operating on a debt based fiat money system, pretty much for about exactly as long as I’ve been alive. President Nixon took essentially the world off the gold standard in 1971, and August of 1971, which was about two weeks after I was born. And since the world was basically on $1 standard, when the dollar went off gold, essentially that the world went off the gold standard. And we’ve been running a monetary experiment experiment ever since. And as we go into great depths in the crash course, we talk about how, under a debt based monetary system, the total credit outstanding has to grow. For the economy to function, well, it must keep growing, and anything that grows at any rate for any given period of time, grows exponentially. And we are far enough along in this monetary experiment where we are getting to the point where it is getting harder and harder to grow that global pool of credit, and we’re beginning to see, you know, basically the instability of the system increases that that credit has trouble growing, and that really is sort of at the root of what created the 2008 credit crisis. There’s been a lot of efforts since then to try to get us back on track, but they’ve come at great cost, and we can talk about this feel like but but you know, very debatable whether they’ve actually been successful. So we feel that we’ve got an economic system that is rooted in the problem of having too much debt. And we are now basically faced with the need for that debt to be cleared out. And it’s either going to happen on terms that that we set for ourselves or terms that natural market forces will eventually set for us. And from our perspective, it is increasingly probably going to be solved by the latter. And that is probably going to be more vicious and more violent. And then people hope, particularly because the longer we try to extend that correction out into the future and pretend that it might not actually happen someday, we’re just setting ourselves to fall from a greater height when the inevitable correction actually happens.
Jason Hartman 10:47
So when you say we, are you referring to the United States, the entire world? I mean, everything is fiat money now. I believe every currency is Fiat. I don’t, I don’t think there is any non fiat currency anymore. I was thinking maybe there’s some little Podunk country that I don’t know about, you know, that I’m forgetting. But when you say we, you’re talking about the US?
Adam Taggart 11:09
No, I’m talking about the entire world, for exactly the reason you mentioned. So we are we are basically all running the same monetary experiment that I mentioned earlier. And world economy, the world economy has become so interconnected now that it is virtually impossible to understand how interconnected it is. And because of that, you get into situations where the failure of a smaller player can actually ripple across larger players and threaten the entire system. And I think Greece is a really good example of how, you know, a very small company, a country whose GDP is a, you know, extremely small, single digit percentage of the entire EU GDP, you know, was a large threat to the system. And while we don’t see Greece as much in the headlines anymore, you know, it is still not a resolved situation. And you know, there are there are smaller but larger countries waiting in the wings to potentially create even bigger shockwaves through Europe when they get to their point of failure. And largely those are the rest of the pigs country out there. You know, Portugal, Italy, Spain, etc.
Jason Hartman 12:18
Yeah, right. Right. But you know, you don’t have to just look at the pigs. I mean, I think all of Europe is pretty much a disaster. And it’s hitting there a lot quicker than it’s hitting in the US. The US has some pretty special characteristics. But man, having, having been born in Europe, myself, love, absolutely love visiting there. I am not optimistic about Europe’s future, especially in light of the refugee disaster, and the terrorism issues. And the fact that, you know, they just sort of let their their continent be overrun by who knows who who knows who they’re letting in, you know, I mean, it’s, I mean, we have Mexico, in the US, but that’s a totally different dynamic in Europe.
Adam Taggart 13:01
Totally. And you and I could have had this discussion about the potentially mortal weaknesses of Europe, you know, six months ago, or a year ago?
Jason Hartman 13:09
Well, I got ahead with you 15 years ago, actually, but okay.
Adam Taggart 13:12
Right, but, but, but now, to your point at the current refugee crisis in there, I was just commenting to Chris the other day that I think that the Europe that we have all grown up with, and known and loved, you know, for its cultural distinction and whatnot, I think that Europe has actually gone. It just doesn’t know it yet. I, I think we’ve hit the tipping point where, you know, they have led in so many refugees, which both are going to, you know, shift the cultural dynamic. But to your point as well, tax the social systems beyond the point of their ability to, you know, service, their populace where I really think the the change that’s going to come there, both demographically and economically, is inevitable at this point.
Jason Hartman 13:58
Yeah, absolutely. Okay. What else? Is there more to cover there? You really talked about the monetary thing. You didn’t talk about species extinction.
Adam Taggart 14:05
Sure. Yep. So that was the economic side. The energetic side really is the biggest part of the story for us. It’s a little bit murky right now, given how low oil prices are. So we definitely do ascribe to the the peak oil or peak cheap oil view of the world. And I think that that the data, as we see, it still very much confirms that, that we are now headed down the wrong side or the unpleasant side of Herbert’s peak. We are seeing this sort of short term. I hate to use the word glut but it’s being used so frequently in the media, I’ll use it but I’ll use it with air quotes of oil right now. But one thing to be really clear is it’s a it is a single digit oversupply of petroleum in the world right now that’s largely caused by the you know, strong ramping production in the US from the US shale plays, as well as OPEC, basically refusing to decrease its production in light of that and keeping the world over supplied. But as I’m saying, Here, it’s over supplied by a few few percentage points, that’s created in over the 50% correction in the price of oil. And from our perspective, that’s, it’s a way to outsized response by the market. And what we’re seeing right now is a lot of production beginning to come offline because it’s simply not profitable for people to, to drill for oil at these prices. And we contend that for it from the US shale story, for most players, it was never profitable. So we’re seeing the steps being laid now for a lot of future supply to come off the market. And meanwhile, world demand for oil still continues to go up year over year. And we think we’re setting ourselves up for a really nasty supply crunch in the next one to three years, and we could be affected 150 dollar barrel oil, or worse.
Jason Hartman 16:01
Okay, so just to summarize here. Monetary, maybe monetary collapse based on the debt based Fiat, monetary system. Peak oil. And, you know, I mean, of course, there are alternatives to oil. And those seem to be making, you know, some headway, but peak oil. Okay, what else?
Adam Taggart 16:18
And then, you mentioned, the environmental degradation or depletion that’s going on. So whether this is the depletion in, you know, drinkable water, especially in key aquifers, we’ve got a number of areas across the world, big areas, populated areas across the world, but specifically in the States, we’ve got urban areas like Phoenix that have been draining the water from their aquifers, basically, to support, you know, the population center there that have less than 20 years of life left in them. You know, we’re basically pursuing as fast as we can non renewable resources or resources that renew over decades or millennia, and drawing them down, you know, at a rate that is, we’re never going to see any progress in terms of reversing that in our lifetimes as humans. So whether it’s that, whether it’s arable soils, whether it’s species and extinction, you know, in previous generations, previous human generations up to say, the past two, there used to maybe be one to two species that would go extinct during an average human lifespan, we’re now seeing dozens of species go extinct, per year, in some cases per month across the world. So there’s, I mean, there’s literally charts and charts and charts of data that I can show you, Jason, that show that we are pulling from this earth resources that are not renewable at an increasing exponential rates, and at the same time, leaving behind pollution or environmental destruction, that is going to, you know, basically, you know, take those resources that that had been producing for us and, you know, within our lifetimes, turn them into, you know, barren providers of the essentials that we need. I think that the modern American way of farming, for example, you know, it what it does is it strips the micronutrients from the soil, which forces farmers to have to come and bring in, in most cases, fossil fuel based fertilizers, to then replenish those nutrients in the soil. And after time, the soils get burnt out by that process, and can no longer be used to grow food at all. And at the same time, the runoff from that soils goes into the rivers and whatnot, and then creates algae blooms or creates overly dense concentrations of key minerals in the waters that then create dead zones. So again, the business as usual practices that we’re using, and way too many parts across our style of living is essentially killing those natural systems that we rely on. So we’ve got this this sort of triple threat, we’ve got the the economic risks that we talked about, we’ve got the declining net energy that’s available to do the things that we want our society to do. And we’ve got depleting natural resources that are being destroyed or not restored, you know, in human lifespan, all at the same time. And while the world population continues to grow and grow at an exponential rate, so you know, my business partner, Chris is a little bit older than me. He was born in the 60s, when he was born, there were 3 billion people living on the planet, there’s now 7 billion people. If you live to a ripe old age, the UN is predicting there’s going to be nine to 10 billion people on the planet. So our whole story really is based in this resources per capita equation. And we’re seeing increasing number of threats to the finite resources we have all the while a lot of Capita part is continuing to increase. So as we project out into the future, the math just shows us we are going to be living in a future where there is less resources per capita on an ongoing basis. And so our general question is as if that is the case, how do we, today, prepare for that future as individuals?
Jason Hartman 20:00
Okay, so I can’t wait to hear the answers to those. So we’ve got this, you know, this triad of disaster, it sounds like, you know, that we’ve really got to be very conscientious of, but you know, aren’t you and Chris Adam, looking at new technologies and new resources? And I mean, you must be thinking about that when you when you think of this, this Malthusian ethic, you know, that, that seems to pervade The, the thinking here that, you know, certainly throughout history, I mean, for hundreds of years, I mean, one was Malthus, like 300 years ago or something?
Adam Taggart 20:38
Yeah. The 1700s.
Jason Hartman 20:39
I don’t know. 1700s. Okay. So 300 years ago, you know, he thought, Oh, the world’s gonna end because we’re gonna run out of stuff, and there’s too many people and blah, blah, blah. But the reality is, or at least so far, the reality has been to be more correct, is that all of these terrible people that screw up the environment and, you know, create more debt and consume resources, you know, they actually are the resource, they think of great new technologies and ideas. And, you know, the, the air is cleaner in, in most places, at least around the US than it used to be in the 70s there were lots of movies like Soylent Green, and, you know, we were running out of resources, we’re gonna eat people. And, you know, none of this came true. You know, all these apocalyptic movies. They just were so wrong, the future now and maybe it’s a game of smoke and mirrors. Admittedly, I’m open to that discussion, for sure. Because I think a lot of the prosperity is false. Okay, I’ll give you that. Okay, that’s the way our system is. But I mean, life is better now than it was in the 70s. Right? You know, in the 70s was this real gloomy time? That’s why I pick it, you know, we had stagflation. You know, you look at any 70s movie, and in a lot of ways, life kind of sucked, you know?
Adam Taggart 22:00
Sure. Did the, you know, crying indian tv commercials, and, yeah, stagflation and all that.
Jason Hartman 22:06
Jimmy Carter? I mean, what could be worse than that? Right? Well, maybe Obama, I don’t know.
Adam Taggart 22:13
We get this. This is a very common counterpoint that’s raised to us and, and most, most the time people reach into their pockets and pull out their iPhones and wave their iPhones. It does
Jason Hartman 22:23
Well, you can’t eat your iPhone, as they say. But, but go ahead skewer my argument. Come on.
Adam Taggart 22:29
Sure. Sure. Well, it’s an understandable faith and technology argument, right? That, hey, technology is always ready and to the rescue, you know. Are you, are you dismissing its ability to do so again? And and we’re, we’re not. And to be clear, you know, my partner, Chris is a scientist. He’s got a PhD in the life sciences. He is, you know, he’s been a big proponent of what technology can do for much of his professional life. I worked for about 15 years in Silicon Valley. So, you know, I, I’ve worked in the heart of tech topia. And let me put it this way, we are rooting in many ways for technology to play a big role in helping us address these big issues. So we need it to. But I think you really put your finger on the point where, you know, it hasn’t happened. Despite the prior warnings, it hasn’t happened yet. And it’s that yet that really gets us
Jason Hartman 23:26
What hasn’t happened yet? When you say it, what is it?
Adam Taggart 23:28
The arrival of, in your words, the sort of Malthusian challenges that were picked up by
Jason Hartman 23:36
The four horsemen have not come yet. Alright.
Adam Taggart 23:38
Okay, the four horsemen have not arrived yet. Yeah. And so it’s sort of this because it hasn’t happened yet. It’s not going to happen logic, which which we don’t ascribe to. What we say is, regardless of what hasn’t happened, yet, let’s look at what’s most likely to happen going going forward. And from a technology standpoint, the key thing to keep in mind about technology, and this goes back to the the laws of thermodynamics. Technology, what it can do is it can help you extract energy, it can help you use it more efficiently. But it cannot itself produce energy. And for us, that’s really the rub. So, in the past human beings have moved technologically from from one energy source to the next, the next always being a higher yielding, higher net energy fuel source. So you know, we move from, you know, wood to steam engines from steam engines to coal, from coal to petroleum. So the question is, is, well, what do we move to next, and that’s really where we’re scratching our heads. We don’t have that next higher yielding plentiful energy source to power the world figured out yet. And the world is still tremendously addicted to non renewable fossil fuels, particularly petroleum when it comes to transportation fuels for moving things from point A to point B. And so we look out and we say, look, if we don’t know what we’re getting to transition to next, but we do have a general sense as to what world oil stores are, and what with the cost of future oil extraction is going to be in what the net energy available from it is going to be. We know that that even if we were to find tomorrow in the lab, the next great energy source we’re going to transition to and the world lined up behind it, there’s going to be a period of transition.
Jason Hartman 25:34
Okay, so let me let me address that for a moment. So there are many things out there, but I want to bring up one that maybe fewer people have heard of, or even know about. So I want to address I mean, you know, many people are, of course familiar with solar and all these other energy sources and hydrogen, etc. Right. But, you know, nuclear fusion. Okay. Do you know that Lockheed has a patent now on a nuclear fusion reactor? Nowadays, we use fission, right, where we’re splitting atoms in reactors, but fusion is far more efficient, it produces maybe four times the amount of energy and, and minimal waste, okay? It’s just an it’s an incredibly efficient concept. And it’s experimental. Okay, still, but they have a patent on a nuclear fusion reactor that would fit on the bed of the pickup truck. And they say that they can roll this out within 10 years or less. That means basically, unlimited free energy. So technology can produce energy. I mean, it admittedly, I guess it uses some atoms, but I don’t think anybody’s going to notice that we’re going to run out of atoms anytime soon. So you know, I mean, there are amazing things like, you know, I had the co author of Peter Diamandis, his book abundance, the future is better than you think on the show a while back, Steven Kotler, and I’m sure you know, their work, and I follow Peters work a lot. I mean, man, it’s like, every week, I’m hearing about some amazing new technology. When you address species extinction. I was just reading an article literally last night about cloning, and admittedly, hey, we’re playing God. And you know, I don’t know what the ramifications are, nobody does, probably yet. But China is cloning cattle like crazy to meet protein meet demands. And so so they they are cloning cows all over the place in China. Okay. And, you know, the FDA has come out, I have issues with the FDA, nonetheless, with a statement saying that cloned animals, cloned livestock is, you know, is presents no different problem than live livestock in terms of diseases or issues, and, you know, whatever issues cattle have, right, so, you know, maybe, you know, and they say they can bring back to life species that have gone extinct, you know, through these cloning processes. Now. They’re cloning, cattle, dogs, race, horses, all kinds of things. So, I, you know, maybe that problem is going to be solved in this way. Maybe the energy problem will be solved by Locky, the monetary problem. I don’t know if that can be solved without either a debt Jubilee or you just kick the can down the road, you know, maybe maybe a reset of at some point. And you know, that that one’s not done through technology, or, you know, it’s not the same kind of thing. Because that’s a human construct, for sure. But what are your thoughts?
Adam Taggart 28:31
Yeah, so I might look at things a little bit differently than you, I see that the, the economic ones, I think, in theory are the easiest ones to address. Because we’ve chosen to have this monetary system that we have, we don’t have to have it, we could, there are different different types of systems out there. They don’t have to be dentists.
Jason Hartman 28:50
But but but you can see that we chose it for a reason. And when I say we really the powers that be the politicians, and maybe the Bilderberg or the Bilderberg Group, or people who really run the world, I don’t know, you know, what you believe on that. But, you know, they wanted to not have a limit on spending. Because if they don’t have to be responsible, then they can buy votes. And you know, the incumbency can usually stay in power. And if it’s not, the single person is the incumbent, it’s the party, or, you know, the greater Party, which is the, you know, puppet masters up there at the Bilderberg group or whatever. And so, you know, it’s a, it’s a pretty good deal for governments and politicians to to have a fiat currency. I mean, philosophically, I hate it, but, you know, you can you can see why it works so well for them.
Adam Taggart 29:38
Oh, sure. You and I look at it very similarly, it is a great system for concentrating wealth, which is it sadly has done very well.
Jason Hartman 29:44
It has. It has. But, but wealth, you know, I mean, you could take issue with that too. I mean, wealth is probably far less concentrated than it was during the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. When you had you know, the the the antitrust laws come about. And the Melanie the melons and the Carnegie’s and the Rockefellers and so forth. I mean, wealth isn’t as concentrated as it was then, right?
Adam Taggart 30:08
Actually, actually, it is. It is actually the top 1%. Typically the top 0.1% own more of the nation’s assets than they have at any given time. And that includes with slavery.
Jason Hartman 30:18
So Adam, I guess my point is, okay, let’s agree, wealth is more concentrated. But what is really, how meaningful is that? In other words, how much does it hurt the people at the lower end of the socio economic spectrum, because I would say that in the past, when wealth was concentrated, those people really didn’t have access to things. And now they do, you know, they can publish their ideas, and in the hope they can be heard by the whole world, just like we’re doing on this podcast. I mean, I’m not a big media company, yet. People in 164 countries are listening to us right now. That’s an amazing thing. You know, you can go anywhere, I mean, pretty much everybody can travel now. And, and you know, travel has become very cheap. In a lot of ways, since you know, Reagan deregulated the airlines, I would argue that that’s the reason it’s not very pleasant, admittedly, but but, you know, it’s the Greyhound bus in the sky. But, but it is cheap and accessible. So in your book, I love how you address these different forms of capital. And maybe wealth is more concentrated. But if wealth, what is wealth really mean? Does it mean it means comfort, access to things like health care, education, and having your voice heard, I would say, and being able to go and explore the world, so how much does it even matter? Right?
Adam Taggart 31:41
Well, I so a couple of things wrapped up in that. And the one I won’t dive into right now, but is a really big believer in sound money. I think it when we’re talking about financial wealth, financial wealth, equality, and the system that gives the same opportunity to all players, is very, very important. And I think we could probably have a whole podcast over over that importance. But to I think the spirit of your question, particularly with the quality of life that we all enjoy today, and I totally agree is the you know, the the average person in the even in the lower middle classes, would be the envy of Kings of old, right in terms of what they’re able to do. And that’s, you know, a huge testament to the role that both technology has, has played in our lives, particularly in recent decades. But But I think really, at the core of it all, is the energy story is the fact that over the past several decades, we have had more net energy per capita available to the people living on Earth, particularly in the developed nations. We’ve had more net energy per capita than any point in human history, and then has allowed us to do many and wonderful things. And we have a lifestyle that is, again, it would be the envy of any generation that ever lived on the earth up until a couple of decades ago. So why does it matter? To your point? Well, this goes to our concerns, looking at the math that as we go down the back end here of the net energy cliff, that we are going to be able to do less and less of the things that we currently enjoy. And so the general premise of the book is if that’s something that is of concern to you, what are the steps? What are the investments that you can take today, to build resilience against this coming future? And I use that word resilience very specifically, it’s
Jason Hartman 33:37
Okay and explain resilience, as, as your meaning.
Adam Taggart 33:41
Sure, yeah. And resilience is really the ability to rebound from adversity. So that no matter what insult is thrown at you, you have the highest potential to return back to the state at which you started that, right. And we find that most people live very unreal, zilliant lifestyles, meaning that, though the loss of a job, meaning that sickness, meaning that a, you know, some sort of unexpected crisis, could really materially and potentially permanently change their status of living. So to your question about what is true wealth, really, we think true wealth is the ability to live with resilience and to be basically left able to pursue your own happiness. So when we ask ourselves, okay, so if that’s really what true wealth is, what are the components that make up that kind of true wealth, financial capital money, more or less is important to that endeavor, but it’s not all important. It’s not the only thing and we know a lot of people who, you know, potentially have a lot of money but are quite unresolved and are quite poor in the rest of their lives. And I’ll talk more about the other forms of capital in a moment. So you know, We’re talking about but but the key point to get across here is that money by itself is not the be all end all. And it’s very important to realize that it is an important form of capital, but it is not the only nor is it the most important form of capital. So what are those other forms of capital? Well, the framework we use breaks down eight key components that we focus people on. There’s financial capital, there’s living capital, material capital, knowledge, capital, emotional capital, social capital, cultural capital, and time capital. And I don’t know if we’ll have time to talk about every one of those in depth. But for example, living capital is the living systems upon which we depend. And no living system is more important to us than our own bodies, right. So it kind of goes back to the old adage, if you don’t have your health, you really don’t have anything to eat, right? So it doesn’t really matter how much money you’ve got in the bank, if you’re not around to enjoy it, that money is not going to do you any good, right? So taking, taking care of your own personal body, both in terms of a general health and wellness, but also its capabilities, because we can see scenarios in the future where you might need to do more things by yourself than we currently have to do today. Right?
Jason Hartman 36:11
Yeah, yeah. Okay. So listen to my longevity show for that one longevity and biohacking show, that’s good. Dive into these others, I’m dying to hear about the others.
Adam Taggart 36:19
Sure. So material capital is really the stuff that we have in our lives. So this might be your home, your homestead, it would be your energy systems, you know, are you providing some percentage of of your own energy yourself at home, are you using the energy you have efficiently, it’s the cars you drive, it’s the tools that you have at your disposal. It’s really all of the physical stuff that you rely on to do the things that you want to do in life, it’s probably the one we can all relate to the most. Then there’s emotional capital, which, which right up there with health is, you know, in contention for probably the most important, this is the ability to deal with adversity, and not basically be overwhelmed by it. A lot of people that that just don’t have the emotional fortitude, to deal with change to deal with setback. And we’ll talk I’ll talk about that kind of at a large level when I mentioned cultural capital as well. You’ve got social capital. So clearly, this is the relationships that are in your life, the role that you play in your community, who are the people that you depend upon to do the things that you can’t do? Well, on your own? And and in return, you know, what role Are you going to play in terms of providing those types of services and support for people who don’t have the strengths that you have? And, you know, if we enter a time where, you know, we begin to live a little bit more like past generations, you know, say like your grandparents, this would all have been totally normal for them. You know, what are those relationships that you rely on to be there for you when you’re in time of need? knowledge, capital is basically the stuff in your head, right? It’s what you know, as well as what you know how to do. Right? So this is basically your knowledge base, as well as your experience base. So you know, material capital, you might have invested in a bunch of tools. The question is, do you actually know how to use them? Right? Well, your knowledge capital would be, you know, actually being able to go out and, you know, conduct repairs on your house, if things broke, and somebody wasn’t available to come fix it for you. It’s your profession, basically, what is the what is the type of mastery you’re going to develop, that creates value in the world that others are going to compensate you for? And again, this this in the world that exists today? You know, this is basically, you know, what, behind your profession, and what your employer or your customers pay for? in the future? This might be you know, what, do you know how to do that? You know, let’s say there’s a period of social unrest or banking holiday like they had in Greece, what are you going to do to put food on the table when the systems that we normally depend on aren’t functioning as we generally expect them to? There’s time capital, which is essentially sort of how do you how do you manage your time? And how do you prioritize your energies in terms of accumulating all these different types of capital? You know, basically, how do you how do you use the the most valuable asset that’s out there, which is the time that you have on this?
Jason Hartman 39:22
So so that’s where I would say people are starving. That one – time capital.
Adam Taggart 39:27
For sure. Today is,
Jason Hartman 39:28
At least yours truly. I don’t feel like I have much time life. Yeah,
Adam Taggart 39:33
we don’t have that much time. And it pretty overwhelmed. In many cases, a lot of us are using time in unproductive ways, even even maybe in ways that that feel falsely productive that aren’t, but certainly certainly in a social media dominant, you know, Facebook, YouTube, you know, type society like the West lives in. You can make a pretty good argument that we are not using the time that we have to its best use. And then lastly, there’s cultural capital, and this is the one that you can personally influence the least. But it’s very important to be aware of what cultural capital you have at your disposal or don’t have at your disposal. And the best way to summarize this, is it sort of, how are the people around you going to react in under times of stress? And, you know, a really good way to, to give an example of this is we had Hurricane Katrina, right hit New Orleans, and within 48 hours, New Orleans basically turned into, you know, a hellhole, right, Lord of the Flies, people looting vigilantism. police shooting on American citizens really devolved quickly, right. In Japan, similar situation, we had a, there was a tsunami that created in fact, an awful lot more destruction and death than than when Hurricane Katrina did New Orleans, almost no examples of new looting. The police there were looked at as saviors in terms of their their relief efforts and rescue efforts and getting people to safety. Towns pulled together rebuilt very quickly. And same insult, just incredibly different sort of DNA cultural DNA in terms of how we rally around our fellow man during those times of stress. And I’m not making a point necessarily to say one culture is better than the other, I’m just saying they reacted very differently. And it’s very important for you to understand kind of the operating rules there with your culture and to, to, you know, ask yourself, Is this the culture I want to be in, given what I think is likely to happen? And you really, you really have sort of two choices, which are do either assimilate into the one that you have, and make the best of it or relocate?
Jason Hartman 41:48
So. Tie this into our prior discussion, if you would, now that we understand the forms of capital. What, what does that mean? And, you know, I want to kind of get back on the monetary track a little bit before, before we wrap up?
Adam Taggart 42:06
Sure. Sorry, did you want to set a stage or?
Jason Hartman 42:10
No, I? I don’t know. Exactly. I mean, look. You know, I talked to you, before you got into the different forms of capital about technology, and how it’s, you know, basically flattening the world, providing access to people who, you know, don’t even have much money, you know, but they still have a smartphone. And that is, I think, an extremely positive thing. So, you know, you were talking about a lot of these, you know, negative things that are certainly possible. And we’re just trying to kind of predict what, which way is it gonna go, you know, and so, you know, maybe tied mostly back into kind of the monetary side of things, because I think that’s what our audience is mostly interested in.
Adam Taggart 42:49
Sure. So let’s, let’s go back to 2008. Right. I think everybody still remembers what a scary period of time 2008 2000 2009 was for the country, right, and what we had, you know, job losses in the millions, deepest recession since the Great Depression. If you actually follow this stuff closely, you learned how close the financial system came to actually completely seizing up, meaning you would go to the bank, try to get money out of an ATM, and the money would not come out. Right. So I think we can we can remember that state of fear. So none of the underlying factors that created that crisis have been addressed since. Right, we have literally papered over them with
Jason Hartman 43:33
We always do that. We always just kick the can down the road.
Adam Taggart 43:35
Just kick the can down the road, right? But it doesn’t mean the problems go away, right. And these were problems that people like Chris and other people in this, this, this space, who really focused on this stuff full time were warning about for years beforehand, so that this wasn’t a crisis that appeared out of nowhere and caught everybody flat-footed. I mean, it did catch most of the world flat footed, but there were certainly a lot of people out there that saw the warning signs. And, you know, we’re warning that this was an inept mathematical mathematical inevitability if we continued along the path that we were and we did. And then, of course, things tipped over well, so now we flooded the world with a bunch of, a bunch of stimulus, we’ve created a false sense of prosperity, which, you know, when you look at the numbers, it’s really remaining concentrated in very few hands. So the average person is not feeling as flush as they were in 2007. Today, despite the fact that literally trillions and trillions have been pumped into the world economy since. So, from our perspective, we are concerned and increasingly confident that that we are tipping back into a another major crisis on the financial side, just like we did in 2008. Except it’s going to be worse this time. It’s like, we climbed up a ladder, we got to a point of instability and instead of climbing down a few rungs, we climbed higher and therefore the fall is going to be even more damaging when it occurs.
Jason Hartman 44:54
Okay, so So let me ask you this. When you say we, you know, you’re talking about the whole world. But mostly, since the US has the biggest economy, it’s the US. And most of our listeners are us or release Canadian, right? And so, you know, I’ve argued this before. And I really think it’s true. And by the way, this episode’s going kind of long. So, you know, maybe we’ll do it in two parts. But I think the US can get away with this. I don’t think it’s fair, right. But, you know, when you’ve got the world’s largest military largest economy, largest brand name, and pretty special piece of geography in the world, you can you could just probably do this forever, I or at least for decades to come. Again, I don’t think it’s right. I just think it’s the way it is. I think they can keep papering over. I think they can keep kicking the can.
Adam Taggart 45:42
That’s really what we come down to, which is the How long can this go on? Quite honestly, I don’t know too many component proponents who think it can go on forever. But some people say, look, go on for, you know, another decade or two look at Japan and what they’ve been able to do. From our perspective, we don’t think it can for a variety of reasons. One is that there are so many systems in play, that that impact economic growth, where there’s great instability, and we’ve talked about the energy space, we’ve talked about natural resources, which again, are used to drive economic growth. But we are getting to a point where the ability to service the debts of the system are what is going to bring it down. And that may not. You’re right. In fact, we agree with you, we don’t think the US is going to be the first to stumble. We have a philosophy that collapse happens from the outside.
Jason Hartman 46:35
Oh, and I forgot to mention the reserve currency, a minor little detail. But yeah.
Adam Taggart 46:39
We are going to stack the deck into our unfair advantage. We don’t disagree with that at all. But our general philosophy is that collapse happens from the outside in, and it’s the weaker players who fail first. The question in this world is, at what point does the marginal weak, weak weakest player, at what point is that player so interconnected into this new global system that we talked about earlier? where it matters, and it basically is that first domino that then topples a bigger Domino that then topples a bigger Domino, right. And again, we saw a little microcosm of how Greece almost played that role in Europe. So the question is, is, as the other players on the board start weakening, how quickly does their toppling begin to actually make its way into the center into the really large economies? And, you know, again, we have we’ve created this false prosperity through unprecedented money printing and stimulus. And and the world is still basically still stumbling along at, you know, two ish percent GDP growth, right? So things aren’t going gangbusters. So if we get to a point where, you know, the issues in Europe begin to drag down a country the size of Spain or Italy, that is going to matter for countries and economies like Germany, and if you know, Europe, as a major US trading partner, really begins to have major issues. What is the contagion effect going to be over here? And you know, same thing in Asia and same thing in South America. So we we think that there’s too much instability in this story, for us to be able to skate through this for the next couple of decades to essentially pull it Japan.
Jason Hartman 48:18
So do you think do you think the effect of this I, you know, I think it could be like a zombie economy or an inflationary economy? What do you guys think I mean, you know, kick the can down the road, you know, export our problems to other countries, which is essentially what the US is doing. You know, it’s like the concept of, you know, we get to enjoy all the fruits and the Chinese get to sweat making them, you know, that’s sort of a modern version of slavery in a way. What do you think will happen here? Like, what’s the economic malady that will be set us if it’s not an overall crash, which I don’t think that’s very likely? What will it be will be inflation, deflation, stagnation, zombie economy?
Adam Taggart 48:56
Great question. So I’m going to answer it with two parts. And again, I’ll try to be concise here. The first is, is the general trend that we think it will happen is, first, a very painful deflation, followed by a very robust inflation slash potential hyperinflation. And essentially what that what the market wants to do right with the what’s trying to happen with natural forces are trying to engineer here is a deflationary correction. Right? Where where asset prices have been overinflated by all this stimulus that’s been pumped into the system. And, you know, lots of lots of malinvestment, lots of lots of asset bubbles, that that can’t be supported indefinitely and need to correct that’s what the central planners are currently fighting. All hands on deck right now, and they’re keeping it at bay. So we think eventually what’s going to happen is those natural forces are going to win out. You’re going to start seeing price corrections and we could see another time 2008 style market decline. At that point in time, we think that’s when the central planners are going to basically go the nuclear option and just say, look, you haven’t seen anything yet, in terms of what we’re able to do.
Jason Hartman 50:12
We’re gonna print like crazy.
Adam Taggart 50:14
We’re gonna print like crazy. Yeah. And that’s when you know, high inflation is going to when we think you’ll see programs like quantitative easing, but instead of it being handed to the banks, it’ll be handed directly to the populace. Hey, everybody, here’s your check, right. And that’s the point at which we think money really begins to lose its value by all value. And that’s the point at which we say, look, if, when that happens, walk, not run to move from, you know, your paper wealth into tangible wealth or bug, I wouldn’t call it gold bugs, we certainly are proponents of owning some precious metals as a way to preserve wealth and preserve purchasing power. I think in general, though, we’re, we’re hard asset, bugs, if you will, meaning, we think the pendulum has shifted over the past hundred years, in the old days, very easy to point to the richest person in your town, he was the guy that owned the most land, right? Over the past couple of days, you know, basically the past two generations, a lot of wealth has become financialized. And it’s become claims on real forms of wealth. But we really think that the the smart thing to do going forward is to put your wealth into things that that can’t be inflated away. And they actually owned the tangible assets that yourselves so whether that’s real estate, whether that’s businesses, whether that’s, you know, hard assets, like precious metals, etc, we strongly advise that people, you know, consider putting a greater percentage of their assets into those type of investments.
Jason Hartman 51:43
So commodities. You know, asset, yeah, real real wealth. Intrinsic. Okay, anything else?
Adam Taggart 51:48
Well, so your, your question to me earlier was, so what’s going to happen? Or, you know, we’re going to struggle along for decades, is it going to turn Lord of the Flies overnight? We don’t know is the honest answer. But we generally say we see it as kind of a slow grind. And the best analogy that we can think of is imagine like a bowling ball going down a staircase, where it rolls along a baseline for a certain period of time. And then there’s going to be something that comes along, that creates a period of change, some quick change. So you get that that’s dropped to a new state, a new lower state, and it’s during that drop, when you’re going to see the greatest turmoil, right. And, of course, as we say, local mileage is going to vary. So you know, if you lived in Detroit over the past 10 years, your your experience has been extremely different than if you lived in Silicon Valley. Right? So but we’ll, we’ll go through that, that transition will then be at a new baseline for a period of time, and things will stabilize, and then there’ll be another insult and boom, we go down another stair. So we think it’s going to be a slow grind like that. And again, it gets back to the general premise of sort of our Crash Course framework of, we’re entering this future of less. So as we do that, what are the things that you can do at an individual level to insulate yourself from these threats and enjoy your life, have a great quality of life, live with purpose live happily? And again, if if we’re totally wrong, and Jason, this is what you know, it’s important for me to say here, if we are totally wrong about this, but you follow the advice that we give in the book, you are never going to kick yourself for becoming healthier, for getting to know your neighbors better for managing your money more responsibly and growing.
Jason Hartman 53:20
I agree. I agree and becoming more self reliant.
Adam Taggart 53:23
Exactly. Yeah, sure. And you’re even if the insult turns out to be a natural disaster, right? It’s nothing that I’m talking about. You just happen to live in the next Katrina zone or whatever. If you have some of these investments in place, you are going to weather that far better than the average person.
Jason Hartman 53:35
Yeah. Well, listen, I you know, I host a survival show, too. So that’s, I definitely agree that just a prudent amount of this is not being some kind of paranoid weirdo. It’s just being smart. You know, I mean, it’s just being smart. And it’s so inexpensive to do you know, so absolutely good stuff. We’ll give out your website. Adam. It’s always interesting talking to you guys.
Adam Taggart 53:58
It was a real pleasure, Jason. You ask great questions. You’re definitely a very articulate curious interviewer. And I really appreciate it.
Jason Hartman 54:04
Thank you very much
Adam Taggart 54:05
So our website is peak prosperity, calm, that’s peak, like a mountain peak, P E A K. And we’ve mentioned our new book prosper a couple of times in this discussion. If you’re interested in learning more about the book itself and where to get it. You can go to peak prosperity.com, slash prosper. And one thing that was really important to us as we launched the book, we wanted to make sure that it was available in all the major formats. So it’s available as a print book, but it’s available as an ebook for you.
Jason Hartman 54:31
But it’s not on audible yet. Hopefully, it will be, by the time.
Adam Taggart 54:34
My publisher tells me it should be up this afternoon. So hopefully, by the time people are listening to this, it is already up. But yes, there’s also an audiobook as well. And for people that enjoy listening to podcasts, we wanted to make sure that we had the book in that format as well. So it should be on audible.com. But even if it’s not I know it’s up on audiobooks.com.
Jason Hartman 54:52
Good, good stuff. Well, Adam Taggart thank you so much for joining us and I hope the future is bright and I’m sure More than anything you guys would like to be wrong.
Adam Taggart 55:02
Exactly, exactly. Yeah, we think luck, you know, hope for the best prepare for the worst. It’s a good stretch.
Jason Hartman 55:08
Very, very good quote. I’ve always lived by that one. Good stuff. great talking to you, Adam.
Adam Taggart 55:12
You too, Jason, thank you so much.
Announcer 55:15
I’ve never really thought of Jason as subversive. But I just found out that’s what Wall Street considers him to be.
Announcer 55:23
Really. Now how is that possible at all?
Announcer 55:24
Simple. Wall Street believes that real estate investors are dangerous to their schemes because the dirty truth about income property is that it actually works in real life.
Announcer 55:35
I know. I mean, how many people do you know not including insiders who created wealth with stocks, bonds and mutual funds? those options are for people who only want to pretend they’re getting ahead.
Announcer 55:47
Stocks and other non direct traded assets are a losing game for most people. The typical scenario is you make a little you lose a little and spin your wheels for decades.
Announcer 55:58
That’s because the corporate crooks running the stock and bond investing game will always see to it that they win. This means unless you’re one of them, you will not win.
Announcer 56:07
And unluckily for Wall Street, Jason has a unique ability to make the everyday person understand investing the way it should be. He shows them a world where anything less than a 26% annual return is disappointing.
Announcer 56:23
Yep. And that’s why Jason offers a one book set on creating wealth that comes with 20 digital download audios. He shows us how we can be excited about these scary times and exploit the incredible opportunities this present economy has afforded us.
Announcer 56:37
We can pick local markets, untouched by the economic downturn, exploit packaged commodities investing and achieve exceptional returns safely and securely.
Announcer 56:48
I like how he teaches you how to protect the equity in your home before it disappears and how to outsource your debt obligations to the government.
Announcer 56:56
And this set of advanced strategies for wealth creation is being offered for only $197
Announcer 57:03
To get your creating wealth encyclopedia book one complete with over 20 hours of audio go to Jason hartman.com forward slash store.
Announcer 57:12
If you want to be able to sit back and collect checks every month, just like a banker. Jason’s creating wealth encyclopedia series is for you.
Announcer 57:28
This show is produced by the Hartman media company All rights reserved for distribution or publication rights and media interviews, please visit www dot Hartman media.com or email media at Hartman media.com. Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax legal real estate or business professional for individualized advice. opinions of guests are their own. And the host is acting on behalf of Empowered Investor network, Inc. exclusively.