Comments

Episode-759- Listener Calls for 10-10-11 — 41 Comments

  1. I think it’s unfortunate that you are apparently trying to be all things to all people, covering a slew of general topics that you feel might be of interest. Jack of all things and master of none. Why not pick one topic to concentrate on each episode? That way you could cover it with sufficient depth to be of value.

    Edit by Jack – This guy is really just a spamming asshole anyway, for your consideration I submit

    http://www.google.com/search?q=tramparthalf%40gmail.com&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

    • @Michael, you sound like a bitter little person to me. If you don’t like the call in shows don’t listen to them. This IS ME SERVING MY AUDIENCE and as about 300-400 calls a month come in I don’t plan to ignore them. I feel I cover these topics in sufficient depth for a call in show. Also based on the time of your comment I know for a FACT you didn’t listen to this show before you bitched about it.

    • I disagree, I like to hear the wide variety of topics, thoughts and ideas from other listeners for the listener call in shows. I think there is a lot more to survival then just food/water/shelter/defense and you never know what topic/question/suggestion will stimulate areas of thought and interest that can be expanded on in later episodes or via google if I want more information on something now. Of course I still love the other episodes too when you delve deeper into one subject Tue/Wed/Thur, but the call in shows are a nice break just to get other ideas into our heads. Just like you have said in a previous episode, if you never heard about a hammer you would still be nailing stuff in with a rock, or something along those lines.

  2. Michael,

    I think Jack freely admits when he isn’t an expert on a subject. He provides a reasoned opinion, that’s it. As he’s said many times, he’s not Yoda. If people have more expert knowledge of the subject or some additional information as a follow up, they tend to post that info here on the blog or on the forum. I like the general questions, because they make you consider you either might not have considered before, or that perhaps you’ve wondered about but never have bothered to dig deeper about.

  3. I’ve always wondered about the high-mileage oil because I own all of my vehicles and generally, they are all high mileage. I’m debt free except for our house which is ultimately a key to survival in this economy. Would I want to listen to a whole show dedicated to high-mileage oil? Er, I don’t think so. I like this format. Basically, Jack is serving his audience as our own research assistant covering topics that we care about as modern survivalists. I appreciate the heck out of that because I can’t sit down and research everything myself. Plus, I play the podcast at 2x speed and it’s like Neo in the matrix. “Whoa…I know Kung Fu!”

  4. re: failing transformers,

    This is a good google search [ Aging Power Transformers ]

    Quick read of a couple pages and I learned that a lot of transformers were installed in the 60s and 70s during the suburban expansion of cities.

    Disconcerting.

    • I worked a transformer manufacture for 37.5 years, the present transformers are just replacement only. This is because the 60’s-80’s transformers have PCB’s in them. The newer ones do not(90’s-2011). This includes all typs from 25kva and up!!! This includes regulators which boosts the voltage as it goes down the line, in rual areas. I do agree that the grids are not up graded. The only way you tell this is that the voltage cables are above ground. The underground transformers are the upgrades. This is the best you can get at the present time!!

    • This summer the power went out at my work 3-4 times and one time for a couple of hours. This is the most since I have been there, and only the one that lasted for hours was on a very hot day. I know this is anecdotal, so I am thowing it out there to see if anyone else has notice a similar increase.

  5. I’m not in the slightest surprised by the family response to the garden, especially in southern California. I gardened the whole time out there. I got a variety of responses. Some would say “ooooh *eyes wide* You know how to grow plants? What’s wrong with my *stupid decorative foreign plant*”. Others would say “But WHY, you can just walk to Trader Joe’s?” (which I could, actually). You get the idea. Anyhow, I had two defense mechanisms. One, I emphasized the gourmet nature of what I was doing. Suddenly, I wasn’t halfway to the soup kitchen; I was a foodie and doing the garden to support my “gourmet kitchen”. That gets a certain level of respect in soCal, especially if you have enough knowledge of the Food Channel to sound foodie. The second was to appeal to history. I could do this because I had historic grove orange trees, so it was easy to go from there.

  6. Thanks for that Bankster Magazine link – I am sharing it everywhere I can. As disgusting as that text is, maybe a few more people will wake up to what’s really going on. Great show today.

  7. WOW!! No comments about the federal reserve stealing the peoples money?
    In my opinion, this is the most important issue in the next election and there is only one person in the Republican debates even making mention of the fed and he is getting my vote, Ron Paul.
    Until the people realize what must be done (abolish the fed) we will continue to slide deeper into a state of total control by the elite bankers.
    I’m a fairly new listener to TSP and enjoy the shows and was wondering when we might hear more shows about the corruption in the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank.
    Maybe you could tell everyone how important this issue is ans how they can help spread the word.

    • @Craig, search this site for federal reserve and if you really want to find a good one on it search for federal reserve shell game. I have beaten that horse pretty good, my gut though is you REALLY need to watch The Secret of Oz, many that hate the Fed don’t really understand the issue. If you think for instance hard money will fix it, you really need to watch that film.

    • I watched the Secret of Oz movie and it was very educational. I don’t think the movie’s proposed solution is a good idea though. While it might be better to have the government controlling money rather than private bankers, I still prefer precious metal-backed currencies.

      When you have the government controlling the money supply, it is very easy for them to print money to fund wars.. if you notice in the movie some of the times when money was taken off the gold standard was to fund wars. I think by taking money creation out of the hands of government you reduce their ability to wage wars. This can only be seen as a good thing.

      You would also be restricting the ability of govt to waste money on big projects by having hard money. This could be seen as a good thing or bad thing depending on the project (e.g. interstate highway system, space program, etc).

      Another benefit of hard money (gold backed money) is that it endures multiple changes in government. If the government controls the money, then you lose all your savings every time the government collapses. Maybe this hasn’t happened in America that often but in Europe some countries have gone through several types of currencies and every time the citizenry loses all their money.

      I don’t want my wealth to be beholden to the (in)stability of a government.

      I also am a little skeptical of the point of view of the movie… they say a lot about farmers losing their land in the movie, but they don’t explain how it was that the farmers got into so much debt to begin with? I am not familiar with the history but it seems to me the farmers wouldn’t be losing their farms if they took on more reasonable levels of debt. I am sure there were some abuses by bankers constricting the money supply, but I think the farmers have to bear some responsibility too, for taking out the loans on their land in the first place.

      Everyone who makes this type of youtube movie seems to have some political angle on things and that makes it hard for me to trust whether the history is factual or it is being spun for some political agenda. Maybe the history being reported in the movie is correct but I’d like to hear some opposing views as well.

      • @Matt, but where has a system backed by gold actually worked to the benefit of the people. Please name one and if you do so, prove it to be so.

        • That might be an unfair question. Has anything ever really worked against those in power and for those not? I don’t know. Some more than others I guess. Would you say that our system since going off gold has worked more for the people than beforehand? I think we can identify that a good system would have the banks act as intermediaries where you are borrowing from your neighbors rather than banks acting as casino houses. Since banks are always leveraged, I’m not sure why money contractions would help banks in the absence of government bailouts. So much of the government effort is used to prop up banks that they seem pretty weak to me.

      • @Matt and the farmers got into debt because those controlling the gold contracted the currency so that debt was the only solution. It was in the movie, you just have to think about the facts presented.

        • With gold we don’t get the money/debt expansion that leads to the debt deflation, so I don’t entirely believe one video. A gold standard is a government price control on gold. Sure, I can see that being a problem there. This might be why I (and Ron happens to agree) want money freedom and competing currencies. That way you can work your way around shortages of money. It wouldn’t be perfect, but perfect isn’t on the table and the current system involves inflating away debt which won’t work either even if we wanted to bankrupt the pension funds.

        • Sorry to double-post, but I wonder if we are talking about a more local time. Banks today would have a lot of trouble squeezing anyone without a national currency shortage because if your local bank tried, you’d just go across the street to another national branch and get the funds. We have accepted The Fed under the pretense that it solves a problem that may not exist anymore because money, like electricity, cannot be kept local. We also don’t have mill villages much anymore for similar reasons. It’s not because of Federal laws against mill villages.

        • Btw, I’m not disagreeing with anyone, I just figure no one has this stuff figured out yet, not even (especially not even!) the guys with PhDs on the subject (and probably because of their mis-educations), so a lot of discussion needs to take place.

    • I don’t know enough about history to debate about when gold was the best system. I am still learning about monetary history but I find it really interesting. All I know is that gold has held its value a lot better than any private or public currency.

      However, I am not saying that gold doesn’t have a few problems too. One is what the movie was referring to, where the only increase in quantity is through mining, which is not inflationary enough to match up with economic growth. I can imagine how it could hold back progress if everyone just stockpiled gold and there was no free floating currency for people to trade with (massive deflation).

      In addition, it depends on what you mean by working to the benefit of the people — is the benefit to store value or promote the economy? There has to be some balance between those two, right?

      With a gold backed currency you could make a rule that the paper currency would lose value on an ongoing basis, but at some controlled rate. E.g. every year enough dollars would be printed to cause them to lose 1/4% of their value versus the nation’s gold vaults. The key is that there is still something backing the currency, and it is just not free for anyone to print in unlimited quantities.

      I guess my main concern is that I do not trust human nature enough to allow either a government or bankers to decide how much money there is in circulation. I would rather it be controlled by some mechanism, either backed with gold or a bitcoin-style mathematic formula of automatically controlled inflation.

      • @Matt you said,

        “I don’t know enough about history to debate about when gold was the best system. ”

        See this is my problem but at least you admit it. I have to ask though, if you can’t point to any particular point and time and definitively say, “during this time we had a gold standard and it worked well for the people” how you can believe it to be so? Such is an act of faith, faith is more akin to a religion then a logical decision isn’t it?

        At one time I believed all Fiat currencies failed, I have now studied actual fact and found that most currencies failed regardless of fiat, gold or iron backing them.

        Are we not told fiat currency killed the Roman Empire? Yet when one studies the FACTS it was going to a gold standard that collapsed the economy of the empire, the exact opposite of what we are told.

        The gold bugs tell us that “The Continental” failed because it was fiat but leave out the following…

        1. The right to print our own money was a bigger cause of the revolution than taxes.

        2. The reason the Continental failed was due to the British counterfeiting it in massive quantity and causing it to fail on purpose. There were literally printing them on ships off the coast and dumping them into the colonies.

        Facts are a bitch! I once believed in the golden bullet solution as well, yet the more I learned about FACTS about currencies the more I found that gold was a huge weapon against the people.

        Money should be public, period again the Constitution says so. Gold backing it won’t do a damn thing to make it stable, because Congress has the power to set the weights and measures anyway. Meaning a gold cap is meaningless. Don’t like 1oz to 1000 dollars well heck they just change it to 1oz to 2000 right? Seriously all the people clambering for gold really haven’t thought this out at all.

        Lastly have you ever met a single wealthy person that put 100% of their assets in gold? I doubt it, this nation is WORTH a hell of a lot more than the gold we dig out of one hole and bury in another.

        To me what works is a simple valuation formula on the nation’s value, each dollar is one unit of that number. Run the nation like a stock, each dollar is a “share”.

        I challenge you to take the next step and read my book at http://www.trtam.com and if you want to tell anyone gold is the answer, well great, but please be prepared to explain exactly how it will work.

        Lastly gold only “holds its value” because we as a people agree that it is so. I have seen gold drop 15% in a single day, to me that is not holding its value. I would say ammo, corn, pigs, land and trees hold their value as well or better than gold.

  8. Excellent show as usual, Jack.

    For those who may wish to learn more about the Federal Reserve and The Bankers, I would suggest reading The Coming Battle by M. W. Walbert. It covers the money-power’s persistent struggle for control of the people and government from 1776 to 1899. It can be a bit dry at times, but it is filled with a ton of information.

    Another good read is G. Edward Griffin’s The Creature from Jekyll Island.

  9. About 3-4 years ago in Richmond, Va., on the historic Monument Avenue, an old subterranian transformer caught fire, shutting down a major intersection and forcing the evacuation of a large apartment building. It was either Lee Circle or Stuart Circle, the locations of monuments of those generals. Most of Monument Ave. was built in the 1880s to 1920s, no telling how old some of those transformers are.

  10. Jack,
    Love you man but the caller that was openly admitting to breaking the law on air by ripping DVD’s from netflix is wrong.

    What he paid for was to rent (or borrow) the movie for the agreed upon period of time not forever. There is a market for people that would like to purchase a movie and keep it forever online. Yes it cost more but you are paying more for the that product. Pay the price and you can download the product immediately!! No waiting for the DVD to come to you. You pay one price to rent and one price to own. I don’t have the “right” to bring a video camera into a movie theater and video tape the film because I purchased the ticket, and that is the same thing that this caller is doing.

    That business transaction (Netfilx terms of service) is a contract, by violating that contract, one is not keeping their word, and yes, I will even say it. Stealing.

    • I agree. Ripping & keeping movies from Netflix is illegal. I won’t go so far as to say it’s immoral – everyone is entitled to their own opinion on that. And granted as long as you keep it for personal use and don’t share it on the net, etc. there is probably no way you ever will get caught. But by the letter of the law it is technically illegal, and we should be clear about that.

    • @Adjams and @metaforge,

      Oh cry me a river! Taking a silver coin in return for a bag of apples is also technically illegal isn’t it? I personally have NO PROBLEM with it as long as the person doing it isn’t distributing or reselling the content.

      What you are seeing in this model is what content creators should be doing on their own anyway but are too stupid to do.

      The genie is out of the bottle, content is portable and it is only going to get more portable. Drinking a beer was illegal in 1921 too wasn’t it?

      • I agree, and I’m not crying a river – I have no problem that you have no problem with it – as I said morality in my view is an individual choice, but one should also take responsibility for that choice not be ignorant of potential consequences. I’m just saying let’s be clear about the status – it is currently illegal. People can choose to do it if they want, hell I don’t care. But don’t call me from the jail cell if you get pinched doing it.

      • Bartering is illegal? If so it is wrong and I would say a little civil disobedience is in order. However, the illegality of it was not the main point of my comment, it was the theft.

        For the bag of apples analogy to fit, you would be deciding for the seller of apples the price of their Goods. They in confidence would accept your payment for X number of apples, but pay him knowing full well that when his back is turned (because he trusted you) that you will take more than X because thats the amount he should be selling for. That is not your call to make.

        Would you have no problem with anybody deciding for you that MSB members materials (Video’s E-Books etc…) are free because thats what content creators should be doing? breaking into your website and taking the material without paying your selling price or perhaps even making a pay pal donation of their own choosing, what they thought was a good price for your site?

        The issue isn’t wether the content should be portable. Again, the film makers are selling portable versions. You (or the caller) just don’t like the price. So then whats the ethical thing to do?
        a) Make up your own price and steal it
        b) don’t purchase the product until it comes down to a reasonable price.
        c) don’t purchase the product at all

        It seems that you are advocating stealing. I could be wrong, and honestly I want to be, I am a dedicated listener of the show and have been for years, and would be shocked if you came out and said that.

        On a less important matter. Like it or not it is illegal to do this. I have heard you give disclaimers many many times before when mentioning illegal and potentially illegal actions on the show. I think that call warranted a disclaimer if nothing else.

    • Aside from all the legal bickering, having the movies in a digital format served well the last power outage. I have an SSD drive in my laptop and 10hr battery, havign it all digital with no spinning drives allowed me to watch movies for more than 14 hrs. Anyone who has kids knows that’s a life saver when the power is out for a few days. Thank you caller for calling in.

  11. Thanks for the call in shows, Jack. I especially enjoy them because I always find new ideas or points of view that I had not previously seen. These shows are the best for expanding my horizons.

  12. Thanks for the link to BackpackingChef.com, I’ve got a bunch of veni-burger that I think would be ideal for dehydrating and need to make room for this season’s harvest. I’m thinking about adding seasonings to the cooking meat and labeling it as “taco meat”, “Italian meat” etc just to make it that much easier in the field. The tips there about dehydrating shrimp & tuna were cool as well and some things I hadn’t considered. .

    Imo, the listener feedback/calls shows are like a “shotgun approach” as opposed to the “rifle” interview shows etc. 10 or so small, medium speed pellets of info that can be further explored as we see fit/need in contrast to one high velocity bullet. Both have place in the arsenal of information.

  13. Jack I wish you’d do more call in and Email in shows or at least make them two hours. I think they spawn topics. I also learn a lot by simple little questions that could never make a full show. I remember when the Urban Farming Guys were a brief mention on an Email show. I’ve been following them ever since and have learned a lot from them.

  14. Hmm, should our money supply be controlled by the Fed, the Government or the mining industry?

    Allow me to cloud the issue further: minimally regulated competing monies for the all-around win. Central banks, governments and holders of various commodities can certainly issue money in a free-market system, but so also can everyone else.

    Decentralize the creation of money and you reset the game. Or at least you allow new players whose only resource is innovative thinking. In the long run, power will always reconcentrate, but that’s no reason not to take a shot at dismantling the current monopolies.

  15. I just wanted to chime in on the rabbit fat nonsense. There are few animals that could more appropriately be considered nature’s lunch box on legs. Get me enough healthy rabbit (the type anybody could raise on dried greens over a winter) and dried herbs (the type anybody could air dry and keep over winter) for cooking, and I could live just fine over a winter on rabbit. I’d certainly be better off than eating Twinkies on food stamps.

    First to point out a few things:
    – All accounts of rabbit starvation I’ve found are anecdotal accounts from pioneer days or earlier.
    – If you are wondering in the middle of nowhere and have NOTHING to eat but wild rabbit, chances are the rabbit isn’t eating much either (ya think that might make it leaner than normal?)

    Now to bust the first myth: RABBITS ARE NOT FAT FREE! The meat has less fat and slightly less cholesterol than commercial chicken but if it is not fat free. Then there are the actual fat deposits that stretch from just below the kidney up to the diaphragm in all healthy rabbits. No lack of fat there. I’ve gutted a whole lot of cottontail, and everyone of them had good solid fat deposits. The ones that had ready access to grass lawns had even more. I’ve gutted domesticated rabbits and the fat deposits are in the same place. That isn’t even counting things like the kidneys, liver, heart, lungs, and brains which can be eaten if needed (dogs appreciate them more than I would so they get them).

    The second myth is that wild rabbits (Cottontail and Jack Rabbit in North America) are the same as domestic rabbits. They are not the same. They aren’t even the same genus. You can’t cross breed them, and while the anatomical pieces they have are similar, domestic rabbits have much higher fat intake and storage requirements to be healthy. Ferrel rabbits (domestic rabbits that have been released from captivity) notoriously wreck havoc on ecosystems since they are out of balance compared to wild rabbits. Domestic rabbits with any history of use for meat have been selected for many generations (and continue to be selected) for being fleshier.

    So yeah, IF you only ate the lean parts of the meat, and that was all you ate, AND you were some sort of marathon runner, you might be fat deficient. If you only ate rabbit for a really long time, I’m sure you would become deficient in certain nutrients eventually. As for me, I’ll take rabbit over chicken any time it’s an option.

  16. Just a quick note upon re-watching Oz: Lincoln prints money to fund the war and this is considered the success of greenbacks. As Obi-Wan Kenobi might say, “from a certain point of view.”

    • @Andrew, short sighted. I don’t care why, I care what works.

      The fact is that no one can actually show a debt free public currency that failed unless it was counterfeited into failure.

      Germany after WWI was NOT a public debt free currency (gold backed and debt leveraged)
      Zimbabwe was NOT a public debt free currency (debt backed)
      Argentina was NOT a public debt free currency (debt backed)
      Rome did NOT fall while it had a public debt free currency (gold backed)

      Tally Sticks lasted over 500 years
      Bronze coins in Rome over 500 years

      Both were public and free from debt unless privately lent.

      Facts in the words of John Adams are stubborn things.

  17. Oh and of course both Tally Sticks and Bronze coins were replaced by leveraged and banker controlled gold at which point the economies of Britten and Rome both went into immediate recession and crushing debt.

    Revising history can fool people, it fooled me for many years I was a huge believer in gold. When I learned fact I saw it for the truth. Gold has many uses and value. So does a car but basing money on either only helps those who control the commodity itself.

  18. Just a quick note completely off the hornet’s nest above…

    Keep cursing!

    WWGVD? Gary V. shared the exact same “foul language dilemma” in Crush It. But it’s about being who you are. Pretending that whenever the record button is on, you’re just talking to your 2 best friends.

    Thanks for all the great shows J. Looking forward to many more.