There are many kinds of currency in our society. We tend to focus on financial currency, and our governments emphasize that measurable standard because it’s easy and obvious. But many currencies are instigated to measure value. So when I criticize people like Ray Dalio for all his Chinese investments, or George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerbucks, and many others, it’s because I don’t have a lot of value for the way they measure currency. Most of the people I know, people I associate with, are millionaires or more. I know what they did to get the money, I don’t think of making money as being hard, and it’s easy to see the faults of their life from my perspective because I value a different kind of currency in life. Because they think of finance as their most important measure of wealth, most people believe that a billionaire is at the top of our pecking order in society. But I don’t think that way at all. I think money is easy to make, and I make what I need to get through a day or a year. I see those types of people as an evolving group, and they are not as free as I need to be in life because with all their financial entanglements come claims on their time and energy, which I find objectionable. Making a million dollars is not hard. Just do something that people want to pay a million dollars for, and you’ll have it. No, there is a lot more to currency than just financial, and for me, the most significant measure of value in human scale is what I call “intellectual capital.”
My oldest grandson has a currency that he invented that lets me know that he had a good time visiting with me. He allows me to buckle him up in his mom’s car when he leaves. That’s his way of showing value for our visit without getting all mushy about wordy exchanges. When a wife grants sex to a husband even though she may not feel like being poked and prodded due to the stresses of life, it’s usually to express appreciation for a nice lawn mowed, a car fixed, or a paycheck deposited into the bank account, one less thing to be stressed out about. Sex is a kind of currency in a marriage that has value and promotes a healthy economy under the roof of a house. Humans have many ways of generating currency and showing that they are willing to pay something to get something that everyone agrees is of value. In the video above, I tell a little story about a very beautiful woman I know who is married, but she’s always on the lookout for male attention. She’s not really interested in men for men’s sake, but she does have a love of exotic cars. She loves Lamborghinis. And she has traded her womanly traits with other men who have bought her a few of them. What her husband thinks of these cars in her driveway is a good question. But people work the currencies of their lives in their own unique ways depending on their values. So when it comes to politics, we must deal with all the kinds of currencies there are, not just the financial ones. And if we could point to one thing that is the source of all corruption in politics, our value for politics is not the same as our politicians have. They measure things in financial capital, looking for more intellectual capital from elected officials.
So, when its said, “well, you’re not a billionaire. Who are you to criticize Ray Dalio? He does a lot of good in the world, gives his money to lots of charities, makes a lot of people wealthy with their stock portfolios, and is a generous man who writes books to share the wealth with others.” I say, yes, he makes a lot of money and shares it with others like some global grandparent. But there’s more to the story, he has invested in China at the expense of America and is perpetuating a global system of government that erodes American sovereignty. The values of that American sovereignty are not measured using financial capital but of intellectual capital. Our right to think, do, and say what we want in our lives and to produce GDP based on our vast imaginations and intellect is what is harmed by people like Ray Dalio. Those types of investments don’t show up well on a stock portfolio. But they show up in mysterious ways to financial planners blind to those measures when they count the product that is made, money. People like Ray who work strictly with financial capital often miss the ingredients that make money. They know how to measure money once it is made. But they don’t really understand what makes money to start with, which is intellectual capital.
Most of my life has not been built around financial portfolios or banking relationships. I view the making of money as a secondary thing. What is valuable to me, and what people often are willing to pay for in regards to me, is my intellectual capital, my portfolio of ideas that have been built by a lifetime of experience in thinking outside the box. There are talks of boycotting people like Elon Musk, an intelligent guy, but if China needs a massage, Elon must give it to them because he requires their car batteries. Suppose some billionaire must take up climate change as a political position to keep government out of their pockets with excessive taxation. In that case, they are stuck uttering things they don’t believe so that they can stay in business. The point of the matter is that our current political movement needs to understand that the battle is fought not in financial capital. Governments and mobs have found ways to capture financial capital and to manipulate all of society based on their ability to steal it. But for me, I purposely don’t have millions of dollars in the bank. I could put millions of dollars in the bank tomorrow, and so could anybody who has developed their intellectual capital to such a degree. But the world’s governments cannot steal what’s in my head. They can’t steal my thoughts. They can’t tax what I have invested in to put knowledge in my head. What’s in my mind is mine, and that is the wealthiest attribute a human can have. Once people understand that, the power of government loses all its ability, and they will wither in front of us like dried leaves in autumn. The purpose of this story is to express to you, dear reader, that the way to beat these oppressive forces is not to play their game of financial capital. Instead, stick with intellectual capital. It’s all valuable, and to my experience, intellectual capital is far more beneficial. It can make millions of dollars. But it can also do much more, which is what real freedom looks like. It’s not just property rights and physical inventory that give power to people. It’s what they think, what they know, and how they apply it to wealth creation that genuinely matters. Ray Dalio and all the other billionaires secretly know this, and they are always in service to those who can think of new ideas, which makes them inferior in every way humans measure value. And those, my friends, are the rules of the universe. Use them to significant effect and maintain your personal freedom accordingly.
Rich Hoffman
The Gunfighter's Guide: 