Larry Sharpe: How to create a freer society and how the US dollar could crumble

Larry Sharpe [00:00:00] Think of, think of how the, the system works, right? If you steal something or hurt somebody, the first thing they say is, we gotta have a lawyer to put that guy in jail. What about the person you hurt? They don't even talk about that. That's not even part of the conversation. What about you becoming a better person? So you don't do it? Again, not even part of the conversation. The conversation is, what can we do to punish you? And then when we punish you, we pat ourselves in the back. Justice is served. This is Jordan Gaul, a senior communications associate living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and you are listening to the Vance Crowe podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:00:34] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Today is an interview with a character. This guy, from the very word go, is going to blow your mind with the way he thinks about liberty. We talk all about economics and how the dollar is being inflated, and why is it that people have so much faith and trust in the US dollar, and we talk about ways that people can actually reinvent community in their own areas around them. This is one of the most interesting conversations I've ever had, and I do not say that lightly. Larry Sharpe is an excellent guest and I am very excited for you to check out this interview. Before we go to that interview, I just wanna let you know about the VR workshops that we've been putting on. You've heard me talk about it a whole bunch. We did a book club inside of VR the other day, and we've been hosting workshops to teach people how these things work. So if you have a small business and you're starting to wonder, is this an area it's gonna impact my business? Am I going to be able to do speaking here? Will I be able to interact with other people? Then head to Articulate Ventures slash vr and sign up for us to create a workshop for you? It's a fantastic experience and I think you'll like it quite a bit. Also, this month in the Articulate Ventures network, we are reading the book, alas Babylon, which many people read in high school, but it's no longer a part of the high school curriculum from what I'm told. So we're reading this book and it is a barn burner.

Vance Crowe [00:02:05] It's a conversation about what would happen if nuclear war happened, how would society reform itself? So it's a little apocalyptic, but it's from the 1960s and it's a really engaging read. When we get done with this book on the last day of the month, on the last Sunday, we are going to hold the book club in vr. And if you'd like to, to dip your toe in, you're more than welcome to. We do it in a place where if you don't have vr, you can get there on your computer. But if you do, this is a chance for you to actually see and feel what it's like to be in a virtual environment and why I think this is the future and something people that are trying to get one step ahead should be experimenting with. I am going to head to the interview now with Larry Sharpe, thank you so much for joining me. I'm so glad you're here. Larry Sharpe, welcome to the podcast.

Larry Sharpe [00:02:56] I'm here. Thank you,

Vance Crowe [00:02:58] Larry. I heard you on a podcast, and it's very rare that I hear somebody on a different podcast and think I should have them on because they're like, well, yeah, you've already done a good job. You've explained something, but you are so fast moving and did such a good job describing things that I know. 'cause I've studied them deeply, but I think you have a particular ability to articulate them well. So I wanted to start off with kind of a tough question for you, the Libertarian economist, which is, why are people not running and screaming for the hills right now because they're so terrified that their money is going to be inflated to absolute hell?

Larry Sharpe [00:03:33] Well, just to be clear, I'm not, I'm not an economist. I'm a libertarian activist and candidate.

Vance Crowe [00:03:38] Okay? Which,

Larry Sharpe [00:03:39] So just, just so your, your audience doesn't think that I'm somebody I'm not. Right? That's, I'm actually a consultant, a trainer, a teacher by day, I'm, I'm now a podcaster by, by night, and I still run for office help, help candidates. I'm a big fan of Liberty movement. So why are people not running away? There's a lot of reasons why, but the number one reason is fear. When people are afraid, they don't think right? That's the number one issue. They're afraid. The a person is afraid that I can't pay my bills. Why do I care what my dollar is gonna be worth tomorrow when I can't buy the bread that I want today? It's irrelevant. I'll deal with that problem later. That's number one. Second, you have to realize something. The, this is institutional. There is so much data out there, so much information out there. What's actually happened is people have become so inundated with data that they can't function. If you look at the people who are the most successful, they aren't people who have the most data. There's, they're those who curate the best, right? I want to curate my data the best. So what do I do? I don't know what's right or wrong 'cause there's so much stuff going out there. So I'm gonna listen to Vance, 'cause Vance is smart, and Vance is gonna tell me what I need to care about. And when he tells me that, okay, good. I need to care about that. Well, I would ask you, is there any mainstream media outlet that's going, inflation's going to get us. No. So why would the average American, Australian, Brit, why would they care? No one's, no one's screaming that they're not doing it. If more were people would care more.

Larry Sharpe [00:05:12] The funny thing about, you know, this type of situation in America specifically, we are so ignorant to the Fed. We have no idea what the Fed does. This is a true story. I, I'm a, I'm a teacher, as I say, and I do some work for city agencies, and I'm doing work for one city agency. I'm doing a leadership class, and I never talk politics unless it's during a break. Some people know that I've run for office before. I ran for Governor of New York in the past. People know that. Some people do, some people don't. But during a break, I, I, a couple of people are talking and they say, I'm so glad we have the Fed. If it wasn't for the Fed, we would've been destroyed in 2000, 8,009. They saved us, right? That's what the person said. And they looked at me and went, right, you're, you're a political guy. You'll jump on this one. Right? And I literally looked at, at the room, the room was about 25 people give or take. And if you can imagine who it was, these are educated, credentialed workers for New York City, educated and credentialed. The youngest is maybe 30, the oldest is maybe 60. So that's kind of where it is. Mostly men, but also women, probably 60 40. That's who I'm talking to right now. And I said, do you guys know that the Fed is basically just a a, a bank? It's basically a banking cartel? And they went, no, no. Everyone said no. I said, just Google it. It's not part of government. It's literally a banking cartel. Just Google it. You get your phones and they put their phones and all of a sudden you hear, huh? Yeah, none of them knew that. Not one. Then I said, you're the Fed just magically makes money. It just decides to make money and just puts it into the economy when

Vance Crowe [00:06:46] It

Larry Sharpe [00:06:46] Feels it should do so. Did you know that? No, that's not true. Yeah, it Google it. They couldn't believe it. Now why do I tell you that story? Because that's the average American, again, credentialed and educated. You would think, oh, it's only the, the backwoods people who don't know. That's not true. Some of the most backwoods rural people know more than the people in the city.

Vance Crowe [00:07:06] Oh, I absolutely know people in the banking industry that don't realize that the Federal Reserve is not a government agency.

Larry Sharpe [00:07:13] Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:07:14] And there's a weird thing that goes on, if you type into Google right now, is the Fed a government agency? It will say something like, it's both. Yes, it's both public and private. That's like saying this glass of cold water has both warm water in it and cold water.

Larry Sharpe [00:07:30] You can't be both. Exactly. Yes. So that's a big problem we have. I've had people say, you know, what do you think you know about a central bank, a US central bank? And they say, we don't need a central bank. We don't have one. We have the Fed. Like, they don't even understand that it's a central bank. They don't even get it. So we are far away from, from understanding any of this, and I think that's one of our biggest problems. So why would, you know? Look, all I know is I want a good job. I want to, you know, put my kids through college. I'm gonna pay my bills. And more and more in the Western world, because of the, the gap in wealth, we're finding more and more people move only towards, you know, what I call a renter's, you know, ideology, a rental, a renter's mindset where all I care about is can I make my, my monthly note, you know, every month I'm not even thinking about the future anymore. I'm not thinking about owning anything. I'm not thinking about the value of my dollar. Who cares? Do do my dollars match my, you know, my credit card bill? They do. Then I'm good. And I, and I know that sounds a bit sad, but I think a lot of it's true. We have to, we have to do a better job of talking about it, which is why I try to talk about it more and more.

Vance Crowe [00:08:38] Well, I, I think your point about the too much information or information overload is totally true because I am even involved in a community bank. So I am aware of what goes on with PPP and even I myself did not understand we had entered the second round and there are so much money to give away. Yep. That they can't even give it all away right now. And it didn't even hit my radar screen because like you said, the news isn't talking about it. You're not reading about it in the paper or on Twitter. Why do you think that this is not something that people are ringing a bell about? Because to me, I feel like chicken little, because I am definitely terrified of a Zimbabwe style inflationary collapse. Why are other people not afraid of this?

Larry Sharpe [00:09:22] Always remember the Roman Empire didn't know it collapsed until it collapsed. Right. That's what I always say. They didn't, do you think the Romans was sitting in Rome? Right, right before the hoards started coming across the border. They weren't going, you know what, this is gonna collapse. They weren't thinking of that. They were like, pass the grapes. Right. That's all

Vance Crowe [00:09:39] They were saying.

Larry Sharpe [00:09:39] Right. They didn't, they didn't know. Right. They were like, pass the grapes, we'll be fine. I think that's kind of where we are, right? We don't realize how bad things are because they aren't crushing us right now. And it's, I know it's sad, but I think that's true. But there are several other issues I I kinda wanna bring up that are around this. And that is, we're not realizing that, you know, things like P-P-E-P-P-P-P-P-I should say, things like the checks that go out to people, those types of things, you know, they're not the answer and they're not the answer. Not because they aren't good. I mean, I get that people want the money, great, but it's actually really a bad thing when someone's in financial trouble. It isn't the the daily dollars that are the biggest issue. It's their debt. That's the issue. If you could magically stop someone's debt, you could go on less money. Americans will absolutely tighten our belts. We'll go without, you know, we'll do that and survive and keep going and actually even find joy in our lives. It in, in, in a poorer world. It's what Americans have done for, for decades. And we'll still do that. But it is the crushing debt, the, the, the attack and the panic and the anxiety we feel of owing more than we can pay. That's what destroys not just our social structure, but also our mental health. And of course in our financial health. So throwing more money at somebody is nice. Thank you. If you give me a check, I'll take it and I'll spend it. Thank you. But I still have my debt next month. I still have my social pressures next month.

Larry Sharpe [00:11:10] I still have my mental pressures next month. You're, you're seeing the damage that's coming from our, our financial lockdowns, from our physical lockdowns in America because of this aspect. Throwing money at a problem has never worked, never will work. However, it is a short term solution. And when you're thinking short term, as I keep saying, we're thinking short term, it's perfect.

Vance Crowe [00:11:32] Have people been paying down their debt with the checks that they have?

Larry Sharpe [00:11:35] No. They're giving Jeff Bezos more money. They're going to Amazon.

Vance Crowe [00:11:39] You know, one of the things that strikes me about our, our current system is that with interest rates being as low as they are, there is no incentive to save. And people are like, well, that's fine. The smart thing to do is to put your money in the stock market. But I feel like you have a gun to your head on, on putting the money in the stock market because what else are you going to do? Unless you have a big enough pile to buy land or something that you can make productive, there's nowhere else to go.

Larry Sharpe [00:12:05] It. It's that or real estate. Because when you can borrow money so cheap, you can get real estate cheap. Right? That's why you ha that's why we had the, the last bubble. The last bubble was real estate bubble. Right? There's so many problems. Jack, I'm, I'm gonna go down a a couple of roads if you don't mind. The first one is the interest rates being so low. I'm old enough to remember walking into a bank as a teenager where my, when my first paychecks and looking and seeing, I can get a, a cd a certificate deposit for two years and I could get 10% on it. That's unheard. That's like magic. Now, if I told someone that now they'd say, what planet are you on? But that's, that was a real thing when I was a teenager coming in with my, my paycheck. I could put it into a CD and I can get 10%. My parents' mortgage in their house was 13%. That was their mortgage rate. Yes. Because that's how things used to be back when, back before the ending of Glass Eagle. Right. Glass Eagle was, was the end. That was actually the end of it. Right. Once that happened, the ballgame was over.

Vance Crowe [00:13:08] Let's talk about glass stegel. 'cause that's a term that gets thrown around all the time. Yep. I remember when I was living in Washington, DC, people would stand with signs. Yep. Either for or against glass stegel. What is that?

Larry Sharpe [00:13:18] Yes. That, that was the end of our, of our finances. That was, that was the end at that point. Now we are doomed to, to, once that happened, we as a nation are, are doomed to either bankruptcy default or just turning out our money into a cryptocurrency or something like that. That was the end. And what happened was, if, if you go prior to Glass Eagle, a bank could be one of two things. Either a savings and loan or an investment bank, one of two. That was wonderful. All this other deregulation and regulations weren't that important. The critical aspect is when you had life insurance, a mortgage, your savings account, it was in a savings alone. That's what it was in. You couldn't gamble with that money that was against the law unless you chose to. Then you would say, Hey, I wanna Rolodex of my money. Let me go to an investment bank. Throw it in the market. Let's do it. Right. You can do it if you wanted to, no worries. Your option, your choice. I'm a good libertarian, I'm happy about you doing what you want with your money when you, when you see fit. But right after the glass eagle went away, it was okay to put your mortgages in the market. It was okay to put your life insurance in the market. In fact, why would a retail banker care about your, your, your money in, in your bank account when he makes way more money, if he throws it into the, if he throws it into the market and starts making transaction trading fees, of course he does. You look at retail banking prior to that. Again, when I was a kid, they would give you a gift to open up an account. Like I got like a, I got electric can opener if you don't remember that. I got electric can open. I gave to my mom.

Larry Sharpe [00:14:49] I was like 16 and I, and I gave electric can open to my mom because I got it at the bank. The bank gave me an electric can opener for opening up an account. Now, try to open up an account in a, in a bank. Now, if they can't sell you life insurance, open up three more accounts. If they can't get those transaction fees, they're mad at you. You don't get any service Now retail banking, unless you have at least $2 million in assets, at least 10 millions even more that Now, they might pick up the phone, maybe, probably not, but they might pick up the phone at 10 million. Right? That's how that begins to work. Retail banking was destroyed at that point. But more importantly, America didn't know it. America had no idea. Look, I, I'm a bit radical in this, but I believe it. The stock market's a casino. That's what it is. It should not be regulated by the SEC. The SEC is the pretorian guard of the bankers. It, it supports them and no one else. The SEC is an embarrassment. It's a joke. It should be shut down tomorrow. It's horrible. It should, it should be run by a gaming commission. I'm not joking when I say that

Vance Crowe [00:15:52] Gaming commissions

Larry Sharpe [00:15:53] Are fairer and better and at least you'd have to put the odds of what you're doing to the person who's putting their money in.

Vance Crowe [00:16:01] Yeah. I I used to get in this argument with my brother quite often, and I was working for a large corporation, Monsanto. Right? And so this is the largest seed herbicide company in the world. Yep. And I would go talk with the investor relations people. They're good people, they're smart people, they're hardworking. But there is no possible way to value a corporation at the size and the shape that these companies are and do that with hundreds or thousands of companies. And all these reports that they're writing, they mean nothing. They're nothing. They might as well be EE etched on in sand or something like that. And we're living in a world where the, the quarterly reports and the numbers and whether not mean not they hit the, they mean not nothing. You can do anything. You want to make those numbers work as long as over a period of time you don't get caught with your pants down. But that's it.

Larry Sharpe [00:16:51] And as long as you can predict the past, you're a genius.

Vance Crowe [00:16:55] Tell me more about that. Right.

Larry Sharpe [00:16:56] Well, what does happen? Something happens in the market. And then what does everyone go on tv? See, the reason why that happened is this thing I've just made up to make myself seem smart. That's what we do. Or the reason why that happened is this thing that will hopefully make you believe this is not a casino. And that there's actually something behind this. Stock prices go up and down on only one thing, only one thing perceived value. That's it. Desire. Do I want to buy it? That's it. If I don't wanna buy it, the stock price goes down. If I wanna buy it, the stock price goes up. It could be a, the biggest dog of a company could be the best company on a planet. It doesn't matter. That's what the status stock market runs. So as I call it a casino, if you know what you're doing in the market, then it's like playing poker, right? 'cause you have some savviness, some skill you're playing against others still gambling. But now it's poker or maybe blackjack household always wins. But you, maybe it's that if you don't know what you're doing, it's literally roulette or slots. That's all it is. So all I'm saying is let's let people know that the average American doesn't know that their mortgage is in the market. Would you put your mortgage in a casino? They all are our life insurance. It's in a casino. Would you take your life insurance and go down to Harris and spin the wheel?

Vance Crowe [00:18:17] So let's see what you mean. Behind the metaphor. When you say your mortgage is in the casino, what does that mean? If

Larry Sharpe [00:18:24] The market crashes, your mortgage is gonna be screwed somehow, somehow your dollar is gonna become less valuable. Somehow your house is gonna become less valuable. Somehow you're gonna have to pay extra or less on your mortgage. Something's going to happen to affect you and those around you based upon the market, not based upon your house. How well you upkeep your house, not based upon what a good owner you are. None of that stuff's gonna matter. The housing crash happened in 2008, 2009. And it wasn't because homeowners were bad homeowners. It wasn't because it wasn't because of any of that. It was because they had spent so much time turning over, reselling debt, reselling debt, reselling debt, bending it again, betting again, double down, double down, double down, double down. Eventually you lose. And when you lose all the people who put their money in, they get hammered. But the worst part about this situation is, and people don't always know this, there's a thing called burning your books. And what that means is that the, the heavy hitter financial advisors, for the sake of argument here, I'm just using numbers for sake of argument. They have a hundred people who they have assets with, right? The top 10 are their heavy hitters. Those are, excuse me, people who have $10 million and more on their assets. All the rest of what they consider the jumps 2 million and less. They don't care about those people. They have them, they need to, they whatever. Now all of a sudden they see the crash coming. 'cause they always see the crash coming be clear. They always, always 100% see the crash coming. When they see it coming, they then tell their top 10%. They say, Hey, time to get liquid stuff's getting bad. Top 10% begins to get liquid selling assets, whatever the case may be.

Larry Sharpe [00:19:55] Freeing up funds so that they cannot buy stuff. Now the crash hits. They then tell the other 90%, oh, crashes here, sell your stuff. You're in trouble. Well, who's gonna buy your stuff for the top 10%? Right? And you had, so Larry, you're making this up. Remember the, the story just from last year when the COVID crash was gonna hit our congress, our, our congressman and senators here in, in in America, what were they doing selling off their stock and Google that, that actually happened. Happens all the time.

Vance Crowe [00:20:23] Well, and people don't realize that one of the incentives you have for being a senator is that you do, you do not have to follow insider trading rules. So if you find out something in a hearing and you decide to go trade on it, there's nothing wrong with that. Now, if you're an executive and you find out about your competitor doing something, but it's secret information and you go trade on that, you'll be like Martha Stewart clapped in handcuffs Yep. And sent to jail.

Larry Sharpe [00:20:47] Absolutely. So the elites get what they want and the others don't. That's how that works. Then you might say, well Larry, are you, are you saying that's why there's a massive wealth gap that is a major reason for a, the wealth gap? Not the only reason, but it's a major reason. After every crash, you see a massive wealth gap. It's not 'cause Democrats are bad, Republicans are bad. That's not the reason. It's the reason that when the crash hits the middle class and the working poor have to sell assets to survive. Who buys the assets? It's the wealthy usually do things like private equity firms, hedge funds, those are the vehicles they use to purchase all the assets. Real estate, they purchase everything, cars, loans, they purchase everything. They purchase debt, they purchase all these things using these vehicles. So that you can't know. You don't know. It's, oh, it's that guy, you know, doing it. They do it through other vehicles and they buy up all the stuff and now they have it again. And now when the economy comes back, you, you used to be a guy who owned a diner. Now you're the guy who manages the McDonald's. And that McDonald's is now, that is owned by a holding company that actually controls 50 McDonald's. That's the hedge fund piece.

Vance Crowe [00:21:51] You know, it's common when somebody is as negative on the market as somebody like you or maybe my inner self, for people to say, well, yeah, Larry's going to be right eventually, because you know, it always crashes and the naysayers are always right. Eventually. How do you respond to that? Like, are, are you just waiting

Larry Sharpe [00:22:08] To be? Right? I'm talking about last year. I'm talking about last year. I'm talking about right now. I'm not talking about before last year. Right Now, if anyone who, who's, who's watching says, this guy's a naysayer, I have an idea. Google anything I've just said it's true Google anything I've just said. But, but I don't just do that. I, on my, on my YouTube page, the Sharp Way YouTube page, I actually put together, I think it's 10 videos on the COVID-19 response. This is from last year, last March. And I put down the 10 things you have to do to make sure things don't go completely sideways. We did none of them and things are going sideways. But if you would've, if you listen to anyone who cares, you can watch those videos. 11, 10, 15 minutes each. You'll go, wow, that guy's, right. This is what he said, this is what he said. This is what he said. I put stuff down in, in, in, in video all the time so that you can think I'm a naysayer, whatever. I'm putting my money where my, where my mouth is. So,

Vance Crowe [00:23:04] So gimme an example. What are some things that you thought should have happened when COVID was happening? Yeah,

Larry Sharpe [00:23:09] I, I said several things, but one thing is I was talking about how do you, how do you handle paying for all the damage? And I came up with what I call the three half plan. And the three half plan was as follows. The first thing you do is you make a announcement that every financial institution in the United States, you may not demand payment for six months, period. You may not demand payment for six months. If people want to pay their bills, they may, but otherwise you may not demand payment for anything. Credit card, mortgage, car note, nothing for six months. That's piece one. That's the only part. That's piece one. Once you do that, you then go to the next piece and you say any landlord, any, any, any renter. If you want to, you can pay half your rent, half your rent, regardless of any deal you've made. You may pay half your rent for six months. And I may say, Larry, how is a landlord gonna survive on half the rent? He's not paying his mortgage on his, on any of his bills. He can survive, he can still do maintenance costs and things. He can survive with half, with half rent because he's not paying his other bills. So it is survivable Now for an owner or a landlord, and now I say every business regardless, unionized or not, you may now pay half salary for six months. Well, Larry, how am I gonna survive on half salary? You're not paying your credit card bills, you're not paying your rent on your mortgage. So now everyone can survive for six months. What does that do? The government doesn't have to write checks to anybody, pay any cronies or do any of those things. And everyone can stay in place and doesn't lose the stability required to survive.

Larry Sharpe [00:24:42] What we've lost is stability. Am I gonna have my job? Will I have my job? What's happening next? How do I function? Businesses shut down. I have to move all those things. Now you've just allowed everyone to stay in their job if they want to, to decide they wanna move if they want to, all those things. But then Larry, how do we pay for that? Very simple. Banks are literally filled with actuaries. It's what they do. They are filled with actuaries. Tell us financial institutions, what did it cost you for this six months? Where'd it cost you? It's gonna cost us this amount of money. We use our government actuaries, make the right amount. We write half of that magic money from the Fed. Another half of that. We write a check. We pay 'em while we do that because now the banks are now confident because they're getting their money. What, what do banks love more than anything? Guaranteed government money. Nothing do they love better than that? So what would they do? They'd loan again. And as they start loaning over that six months, people can begin to rebuild. This is how you can recover from this. Only writing one check. We're still bailing out banks. We always bail out banks. That's gonna happen no matter what we do. And I'm libertarian saying that I can't stand that idea that we're bailing 'em out, but we're going to, what we wound up doing was bailing out cronies left and right, writing checks to institutions for nothing. Preparing nobody for the future, not teaching anyone to fish. Not giving anyone the opportunity to retool themselves or rebuild for the future. We basically just said, here's a bunch of money, now we're in lots of debt and we've built no value to pay it back. And my goal is if I'm gonna give out money and create debt, I want to build value so you can pay it back, not just give it out.

Larry Sharpe [00:26:15] So this plan actually builds value to pay it back. The banks actually will be, begin to loan again to make money on even that. So everyone will begin to make money again over the cost of six months. But more importantly, so psychologically people aren't displaced. That destroys your psyche. I don't want you displaced. And now on top of that, now people have to figure out how to function in this contaminated environment. I spent seven years as a Marine during the Cold War, right? I I was a Marine in the eighties, right? During the Cold War. So we were taught that when the, when the Soviet Union back then was gonna, you know, drop chemical weapons all over the place, that we had to function in a contaminated environment. We were taught that you have to function, you had to find a way to still do your job and complete your mission in a contaminated environment. America has not done that. America has said, when things get bad, go on your house. Cower, be afraid government will take care of you. Wait till put on a vaccine, let everything collapse. When we should have said, this is hard guys, how are we gonna fix this? What is the right way to open up schools? Let's start figuring it out. What is the right way to keep our businesses open? Let's figure it out. What are the tools and protocols required to keep people safe in nursing homes? We don't know still. And people are fighting because the government decided, lock it all down. Let's not figure it out. Now we have trust problems, trust issues. The, the country's in big trouble from this. Instead of saying, guys, let's figure this out. There are ways of making these things work. And we haven't done a good job of it at all. That tho that was a lot of my plan. It was that concept of using government for what I think it does best, which is a central repository for information.

Larry Sharpe [00:27:52] That is a wonderful re way to use government.

Vance Crowe [00:27:54] Wow. Say more about that. They are a central repository for information. What we,

Larry Sharpe [00:27:59] What we don't do. And, and if I was governor of New York, I wouldn't have said lock it all down. Let me tell you what the CDC says. That's all rules. Do it. That's what we did. The problem is the CDC is just a scientific organization and science changes, information changes, things shift and adjust. It's how it works. Not that they're bad people. That's how science works. So what And when you just say my way's the right way, you by default get rebellion. It's just human nature, right? People fight back and that's what happened. If you look at New York City where I live, when COVID first hit prior to the lockdown, people will already starting to find ways of making this work. New York City has many large cities, has a very large East Asian population and East Asians because those who've come recently from East Asia, they've already gone through SARS and you know, different viruses. So they naturally would do things like distance and put on masks. Before this even happened, you could see that within the communities, people who are ill or sick would put on a mask and walk around. It was a common thing in many East Asian neighborhoods in New York, and I'm sure in many large cities. That's true. So they were already doing it. Well now all of a sudden the non East Asian communities in New York were going, maybe we should do what they're doing. And they were doing it on their own. They were already buying stickers on the ground, six feet away, stickers to be in stores and stuff. Then the mandate came down and the mask came off because now you're telling 'em what to do. Now you, now I'm not listening to you anymore. Now, now it's a rule. I don't like it. If I was the governor, what I would've done is said, here's a website of what I think is right here is what the CDC says.

Larry Sharpe [00:29:34] Here is what the F-D-A-F-D-A says. But also here is what other countries are doing and what they think is correct. Here's what holistic groups think is correct. And it's all here for you to pick. I'll give you three or four to do. Why? When I only give you one, you assume it's conspiracy. You don't trust me when I give you two or three, you'll pick the one you want. Not just that as a government agency, I shouldn't be what what we did, which we now decided what the rules were and then went around and started punishing businesses. You didn't follow the rules. Thousand dollar fine. You didn't follow the rules. $5,000 fine. Meanwhile, this business is already struggling. So now you've just finished them. Government has literally put the final bullet in them. And so what should have done is went around saying, oh you've got, you did these things. You get a government stamp that says you followed government rules and regulations and now the community gets to decide, I trust the government. I'm going into that store, or I don't care. I'll go into the other guy's store anyway. And what would've happened in every community? Very simple. Hey, you know, who got CO, the industry people, what were they doing? They went to Johnny's liquor store. Oh, that guy's not following the rules. Boom, he's gonna shut down on his own because no one's gonna go or he is gonna change and adjust his rules. Anyway, that's gonna happen anyway. Each community would've found out what works on their own without government rules. Right? Without crushing the economy had to do it. People done natural.

Vance Crowe [00:30:57] Where have you been for all of COVID? I mean I am a hundred percent with you on this. Yes.

Larry Sharpe [00:31:01] Soon

Vance Crowe [00:31:02] As the mask became a mandate, now all of a sudden I am being forced to do something. Yep.

Larry Sharpe [00:31:07] That

Vance Crowe [00:31:07] Like the inside of me, all the way down to my most core moral fibers say, you should resist this. Yep.

Larry Sharpe [00:31:15] Because

Vance Crowe [00:31:16] This is a bad path. Yes. When you start having it where the government can tell you what you have to put a cloth on you. I don't care for safety or whatever, but all the way down into my deepest recesses of like Vance, what do you have to stand for that's larger than yourself. Yep.

Larry Sharpe [00:31:31] This

Vance Crowe [00:31:32] Would be among them percent. And if somebody had just said like, Hey, we're gonna do that. These are the best practices. I had to put it on. I had to show another people how to put it on. Absolutely. I'd have walked around. But it's, and like you can't raise a society of people that are gonna be strong entrepreneurial thinking, kicking, breathing, fighting people. Well you're

Larry Sharpe [00:31:52] Assuming that the government wants that.

Vance Crowe [00:31:53] Yeah, that's probably true.

Larry Sharpe [00:31:55] That's your, that's your problem. You think the government actually wants that? It doesn't remember, we are still, the government has an advanced house. Humanity has advanced. We are in a post-industrial world with an industrial government, with an industrial school system, with an industrial education system, with an industrial everything system, with an industrial police system. We have an industrial system for everything when we are not in an industrial world anymore. That's why it's so backward. That's why government can't ever function well. It's living in the wrong world.

Vance Crowe [00:32:24] Very, I love you. I'm so glad you're on here. So what does the world look like if you try and have a post-industrial police, post-industrial education system? What is that like? Absolutely. And is there any way to get there without terror collapse that we're headed towards?

Larry Sharpe [00:32:41] Yes. And well, let me, let me tell you how. Hmm. Let me tell that there's two separate parts. Lemme first tell you what it, what it could look like. Lemme tell you how you get there. What it looks like is understanding that in an industrialized world, I care far more about your arms and legs. I care about that far more than your brain, right? I'm much more worried about your arms. That labor is critical. Labor's everything in that, in that world. And what does, what does the average person do in that environment? The average person goes to school and then gets a job and works usually in a factory or some form of factory. Whether that's a pa paperwork factory, meaning admin work or an actual factory building something. Right? And if you look at our education system, that was perfect. What did they teach you in school? Sit in a room with a bunch of other people looking the same doing as you're told. Well done. That works perfectly. If my, if my life is gonna be in a factory, you, you're prepping me. Well, well done. Thank you. Right. People were happy with that. You taught me how to be, you know, work in a factory and I went to work in a factory. Life is good. Those days have been over for decades. It's why our college system sucks. It's a joke. It's embarrassingly bad and almost useless. It's why most of our K through 12 is useless. Most of it is because labor, meaning just your body is nowhere near as important as your imagination, as your intellect, as your desire, as all the things, your ability to take charge of things. Things change so fast that if you do exactly what I tell you to do, all right, you're my junior and I'm the senior and that you do, we're done.

Larry Sharpe [00:34:12] Because you're just gonna go do what I said and then I'm gonna say, why'd you do it? Well, you said do it, but you saw that it changed. I know boss, but you said do it well now we're screwed. Look what you did. I need much more of that. So I need people to be influenced. I need people to want to do it. I need volunteerism. Right? And I look at this even from my Marine Corps days. A marine doesn't, A marine doesn't get out of his fighting hole and attack an enemy position because he's ordered to do so. He does it because he knows he should. He's volunteered to join. He cares about his brothers and sisters. He cares about the man or woman next to him. And that's why he gets up and he charged deposition. Not because he's ordered to. He has a gun. He can shoot the guy who gave him the order. Literally. Right? He could do that. And he doesn't. He gets up and goes and sacrifices his life and or those of others when he doesn't have to. He does it not because he's ordered to, not out of fear because he knows he should do it. We need more of Americans to do that, right? That's what we need to do. Think that way. Now how do we do that? Understanding what government is, and my libertarianism is gonna scream at you right now, but it's fine. It's who I am. Government is always two things. A monopoly and a jobs program. Whatever it creates, it creates two things. A monopoly and a jobs program. If you accept that as true, and I do, some people don't, but I do. If it creates a system to, you know, clean something, they become the only cleaners and their jobs program. If it creates a system to help someone, it becomes the only thing to help.

Larry Sharpe [00:35:45] And a jobs program, that's how it works. So if I remove it as main libertarians would, would yell, they're all wrong. Those who say that, that's not the right way of doing it. You ask, how do I get there if I remove it? Well, people still need services. People still need help. There's nothing there. It was a monopoly. So now I either they don't get help or I created a black market, bad and bad, both bad

Vance Crowe [00:36:09] And an enormous number of people work for the federal government. People don't realize. Bingo, the largest gov, the largest employer in the United States is government, is the federal government.

Larry Sharpe [00:36:17] The about one in seven. One in eight Americans work for the government right now. Yes. Huge. I totally agree. So not just that, how am I gonna get it removed when the people who have to vote to remove it are literally working there? You're not gonna vote against your own job. So here's the answer, accepting this monopoly. The goal is to create another option. Leave the monopoly there, and then create another option. Allowing the market and people to go there if they want to. Community can go there if they want to. Now, if I'm right and I hope I am, people will choose my option. When they choose my option, then the government option will either get better or go away. Because community has picked up the slack. When you add government, you remove community. That's how it works. Guaranteed. Every single time more government goes in, more community goes away. And there are now communities in America who've been supported by governments for so long. The communities have lost the, the institutional knowledge to support themselves. They can't anymore. They don't even know how.

Vance Crowe [00:37:14] I totally see what you're saying. Like when you get into a city, so I, I grew up in small town America. If you call the cops on your neighbor, they will never forgive you for that. That will last. And every single other neighbor will know you had a problem with them and you called the cops. So it it better be serious. Yes. For the most part you figure out how to solve those problems. But you get into the city and you don't really know if the guy you're telling, Hey, I, I saw, I saw a video the other day where two people got in a fight over shoveling snow. The guy pulled out a gunshot. Both of the people out in the street. So like you don't really know whether they're gonna do something to you. So every in interaction that you have with a stranger where confrontation is, there you go get the police. Yes.

Larry Sharpe [00:37:54] And

Vance Crowe [00:37:54] They start trying to mitigate it. And then you, you lose. I I had never heard that idea, but every, everywhere where you add government, you get rid of community always is 100% right? Yes.

Larry Sharpe [00:38:04] So my goal is, but the problem is I can't just move government now because many communities don't have the institutional knowledge to support their people. People need support. People need help. Right? Just because I don't want government to do it. Doesn't mean I don't want it done. I still want it done. But remember something when anyone's in trouble, financial trouble, physical trouble, mental trouble, any kind of trouble, medical trouble, the first thing you need is not a program. The first thing you need is somebody who cares. So they can then get you to the right solution that you need to solve your problem. But the first step is somebody who cares. If you join a nonprofit, you surely care. That's why you joined a nonprofit. If you join the government, you might care. I'm not saying they don't, but the odds of you joined it 'cause it was a good job. But not just that can government care. No, it can only check a box, which it does very well. So what government

Vance Crowe [00:39:06] Does, and we don't want the government to care, right? Like any, anytime they're doing that, it can't. They're a corporal body, right? Correct. They start caring. What that actually means is they're showing preference, right? They're

Larry Sharpe [00:39:15] Correct.

Vance Crowe [00:39:15] They're, they're changing the tip. They're, they're putting their elbows on the table and they're slanting it one way over another.

Larry Sharpe [00:39:20] Caring always means punishment.

Vance Crowe [00:39:23] Always

Larry Sharpe [00:39:24] Remember that caring always means punishment when the government cares, someone's being punished. That's how that works. Think about our justice system. We don't have a justice system, we have a punishment system's. What we have, we don't have a justice system. Think of, think of how the, the system works, right? If you steal something or hurt somebody, the first thing that says, we gotta have a lawyer to put that guy in jail. What about the person you hurt? Don't even talk about that. That's not even part of the conversation. What about you becoming a better person? So you don't do it? Again, not even part of the conversation. The conversation is what can we do to punish you? And then when we punish you, we pat ourselves in the back, justice is

Vance Crowe [00:40:01] Served.

Larry Sharpe [00:40:02] That's what we say. Literally. That's what we say. What about the person you hurt? Well you've, she got justice. No, she didn't. She still lost whatever you took from her, whether that was a human property, whatever that was, she still lost it.

Vance Crowe [00:40:17] Yeah. And I think that this is like something that goes all the way back in western civilization, probably preen enlightenment, which is we discovered that if you have a society based just on what you're not allowed to do the 10 commandments, right? You're not allowed to do these things. You can set up a system where it's somewhat more stable, right? Because you can have a, a dictator in that says you didn't follow those rules, so therefore you get punished. But in order to have a society that flourishes,

Larry Sharpe [00:40:42] You

Vance Crowe [00:40:42] Have to have a system where when you do good, you are rewarded. And as I think about your integration of the, if you have government, you don't have community. A community can reward people that behave well, but a government can't. Absolutely correct. And so you're exactly right. Once we started doing more and more things where the government intercedes, you're destroying the very foundations of the enlightenment that allowed us

Larry Sharpe [00:41:05] To work. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. You should be tough on systems, easy on people. That's really how you should always be. Right? Better systems make better outcomes, worse systems make worse outcomes. That's just the way it works. Always. So, so

Vance Crowe [00:41:18] Larry, I I often ask people, what, what is driving you, right? Like you have this passion. You're in, you're in this, in this weird space where you're advocating for things that other people do not agree with. Like at all, you have a voice inside of your head that's saying, this is your responsibility. Why are you doing this?

Larry Sharpe [00:41:35] Well, let me, can I, can I go back and quickly give you one example of what I talked about?

Vance Crowe [00:41:41] Yeah, sure. Of course.

Larry Sharpe [00:41:42] One example, just so, so it's not just, this isn't theoretical. I actually have, if you care, everyone cares can go to Larry Sharpe and.com, all my policies from my 28 20 18 runner right there. Click on policy detail, white papers are there. All my stuff's there for how I, I can do things. And I, I'll give you an example of that. Splitting it, right? I came up with the idea of child gardens versus childcare. Right now, childcare in New York state, you must be licensed by the government to be a childcare provider that is super expensive. And since it's super expensive, if you happen to be a, a mom who's a single mom and has two kids, you would be a fool to go to work. You'd be a fool to go to work because you're gonna spend less time with your kids, make less money if you go to work. But if you don't go to work, you'll make more money and spend more time with your kids, why would you go to work? It makes no sense. So I said, how about we don't just have childcare, we also have child gardens. And that is the idea. Vance, you have children, right?

Vance Crowe [00:42:38] Yes.

Larry Sharpe [00:42:38] Do you ever take your kids to a park?

Vance Crowe [00:42:41] Well, she's like six months old, so we don't, we don't go out too, too much. But you don't, we put her in stroll, we walk around. Sure. There

Larry Sharpe [00:42:46] We go.

Vance Crowe [00:42:47] Neighborhood. Yeah. So

Larry Sharpe [00:42:48] If you ever decide to walk your, your, your little one around, and I say, do me a favor when you go to the park next time, can you take my daughter with you? If you go, yeah, sure Larry, I'll do that. I'll give you five bucks. You get'em some ice cream or something or whatever. Oh yeah, Larry, all good. You do that. You come back six hours later, four hours, whatever it is, I grab my kids, say, thanks Vince. Was any license required for that? No. So what I'm saying is why don't we have the option of replacing you with a nonprofit with a local VFWA local church, a a local Knights of Columbus. Insert the thing that is locally in your community. You, you can do that if you want to and say, oh, so you could drop your kid off your local church. Yeah. If you want to, but Larry, they won't have background checks then tell them to, well, they might not get it then Don't drop 'em off. You still have daycare? I haven't gotten rid of the monopoly. It still exists. I've given another option. So now if some, if some, in this case we made up was the, the, the mom who wants to go back to work and get us off back into the workforce, because you and I both know that in today's world, if you're out of the workforce for five or six years, things change so fast, you're in trouble. So mom decides, you know, when I wanna stay active, I wanna do some work so I can stay active in my field so that when I wanna go back full time, you know, I can still, I can still rock and roll, but missed everything. Right? So she drops her kids off at the local church, right? And I bring up the idea of, of reviving the black church in many poor black communities, right? Revive the church, have the kids show up. There's tons of people with senior citizens who would watch kids all day long, right? You feel comfortable, drop your kids off. And they say, well, how much, well, here's your pre, here's your price church service on Sundays at 10, be there bingo's at nine 30 on Friday, and you're calling the numbers.

Larry Sharpe [00:44:24] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:44:25] Done.

Larry Sharpe [00:44:25] And that's how that works. You

Vance Crowe [00:44:26] Coffee at Sunday after brunch. Yeah.

Larry Sharpe [00:44:29] Bingo. And you begin to build community again, but it's voluntary. If you don't trust it, go to the old one. No worries. But if I'm right, and I know I am, what will happen is those small things are gonna pop up all over the place. Child gardens. And as that happens, you will have to either relinquish some of the harsh rules on child care or it will wind up going away by default. But either way, the community is still serviced and it voluntarily can become to grow that institutional knowledge it needs to support itself.

Vance Crowe [00:44:57] And in truth, like the thing that you're talking about with it being children gardens, like there's no parent on the planet that wants to drop their child off with somebody they don't care about. And in fact, like when, just like with a bank, once you got FDIC insurance, now I don't actually have to go look into my bank. I don't need to know whether they're strong or not. It's the same thing with childcare. You're like, well the the state said they're okay. It's gotta be okay. But when I'm inviting a babysitter into my house, I don't just say like, ah, just gimme whichever one the government's sealed on. I want to talk with her. I want be around her. I wanna see how she interacts. Yep.

Larry Sharpe [00:45:28] And

Vance Crowe [00:45:29] And you do that multiplied across a community.

Larry Sharpe [00:45:32] Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:45:32] You'll start having all sorts of variation and the absolutely. And the sort of difference that allows new good ideas to pop up.

Larry Sharpe [00:45:40] So that's how you actually do that. I have literally dozens of ideas like that, that I put on the website. If you can't, please enjoy. You ask what, what moves me? I love my coun country. I love my state. And we are so divided right now that the only way we can ever get together is through a third party. There is no other way to get together except through a third party. We need a referee, someone who can get between both. And the liberty movement is the only answer. There is no other answer.

Vance Crowe [00:46:08] Excuse me.

Larry Sharpe [00:46:08] Because we are the only movement that says you can be as liberal or as conservative as you want to be. Just don't force your views on others. Right? If you're telling me, Larry, I'm super liberal and I think that everything should be liberal, and I go, great. Do you think it's government's job to enforce your will upon others to force a more liberal society? If you go, yeah, you're a Democrat, if you go, no, it's not the government's job. It's my job through my works, through my example, through my community to get people to be more liberal. You're libertarian, you, you say I'm super conservative. Okay, great. Do you think it's the government's job to enforce your will upon others and make a more conservative society through law enforce? Yeah. You're a Republican if you go No, no, no. It is my, it is my, my job to make the world more conservative through my works, through my community, through my example. That's what it's about. You're libertarian. There's no other, there's no other political party that does that though. The movement that does that except for us. Now you might say, well Larry, that sounds good as always. I'm gonna give you concrete examples. Not, you know, in the future, last year when the death of George Floyd, when, when after George Floyd died, the left Yale defund the police, the right yelled back the blue and that's it. That's it. That's what happened. Except for one person. There was one libertarian Congress in Congress at the time. His name was Justin Amash. Justin Amash said, why don't I try to fix this thing? Because libertarians are always, always like what I'm doing about fixing things, making things better, not about calling the other guy evil. We're about fixing things. So he said, how about we start with an idea of ending qualified immunity? How about that let's try that.

Larry Sharpe [00:47:40] And what did he do? He was only libertarian. It's not like he could just all of a sudden make it happen. He had to cross both aisles. He had to, and he did. He had Democrats and Republicans both get on board, and he created the first tri partisan bill ever. And of course, Nancy Pelosi, Democrat and Mitch McConnell, Republican, neither of them wanted to vote on it. So it didn't go anywhere. Of course not, because that might have solved the problem. And we can't keep ourselves divided. And we have to just make sure that we're always divided. So we don't have to do anything except say, I'm not the other Libertarians. Don't do that. If you're a Republican, you can't cross the aisle to Democrats. You get primaried. If you're a Democrat, you can't cross the aisle to the Republicans. You get primaried. Only libertarians can bridge that gap. We are the, and I know this again for a fact, because when I ran for governor, there were only seven thou a word. Now there's more. There were only 7,000 ed libertarians in the entire state. I got over a hundred thousand votes. That means a bunch of Democrats, Republicans voted for me.

Vance Crowe [00:48:39] You know, I'm, I'm struck by the idea that liberty seems so obvious to me and the other people that I'm around, like, that's, that's the thing that I crave the most. I feel like that's the thing that I can give you. And it's good for you. It's good for me. Is it the system and the way that it's set up that prevents that from, because I don't, I, I find it hard to believe that the, I mean, you, you talked about people being primary. So what is it about the system that would need to change to allow liberty to flourish? Yes.

Larry Sharpe [00:49:07] The number one thing, and it's gonna sound kind of esoteric, but most people don't know about this, it's access to the ballot. Meaning me being able to get on a ballot. So you could have an option of voting for me, people think well just run for office. That's not how it works. If you are a Democrat or Republican, you should know something and you should tell your leadership how bad this is your party. I'm 100% sure of in every single state, every single year, literally sues people to get off the ballot, to take them off the ballot, to take away your choice. You might go, my guys will do that. Yes. I, I'm a hundred percent sure every single party, I'm sorry. The two big parties, small parties, don't, the, the Democrats, Republicans sued to get people pulled off the ballot every single year in every single state.

Vance Crowe [00:49:57] Oh yeah. I just interviewed a mayoral candidate for, for St. Louis. She was got, she got sued for that. Yes, a hundred percent.

Larry Sharpe [00:50:02] And I would ask you, what's wrong with you? If you're a judge, what is wrong with you? If you're a judge, what is the harm? There is zero harm. Even if you are wrong. Let's say this mayoral candidate is a total nut. I don't know her at all, but for sake of barbecue, she's total nut. And once the, you know, you know, give everybody a chicken, the wear in their head, that's who she is. Okay? Is she gonna get elected? No. So who do you care? And if the, if the city actually wants to have to wear chickens on their heads, good for them. They voted for the chicken on their head person. I think that's wonderful. What's the difference? There's zero harm to having more people on a ballot yet judges consistently, I mean, 90% of the time, air on the side of take them off, take them off, take them off. And there is, we have to change that concept completely. You change that, you will have a better democracy. The problem is, it is a two party system. And when it's a two party system, it is by default a good, good versus evil. Us versus them. So now, as a Democrat, Republican, depending upon how I've gerrymandered my district, I don't have to do anything. All I have to do is go, I'm not the other. That was literally Joe Biden's campaign last year. It was seriously, right? He, people said, what do you think about the economy? I'm not Trump. Well, what about foreign policy? I think I've told you already. I'm not Trump. Well, what about social issues? I'll say it again. I'm not Trump. That was his entire campaign. And it worked. And it actually works, not just there, I use him as the biggest example. But throughout the country, people are saying, I'm not the evil democrat, or I'm not the evil Republican.

Larry Sharpe [00:51:37] And they get elected. New York City is so broken. My city, we've put ranked choice voting in our, in our city. Which by the way is an amazing idea, by the way. Ranked choice voting means you get to vote for more than one person. Your number one choice, your number two choice, number three choice. This way you could vote for third parties. Doesn't, it doesn't mess everything up. It's not a wasted vote, if that makes any sense.

Vance Crowe [00:51:57] You

Larry Sharpe [00:51:58] Get your first choice, you get your second. Does that make sense? So that's

Vance Crowe [00:52:01] Good idea. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Larry Sharpe [00:52:02] However, they only did it only in primaries.

Vance Crowe [00:52:07] Oh, no, that's the defeats the whole purpose. That's within your, that's within the process.

Larry Sharpe [00:52:11] Yes. But they realize that in New York City, the primary New York City is the election, because Democrats always win. And they realize that whoever was the Democratic primary is the one who wins the election. So, so Democrats can be happy. They've made frank choice voting only in the primary. So Democrats only actually get an election. Nobody else does.

Vance Crowe [00:52:35] You know, I, I was a little bit naive. I was very hopeful as when Coronavirus hit, I was 100% certain that people would be moving outta cities. And that they would, they would say, Hey, there are a lot of things that are going on. But the thing that I was naive about is I thought other cities, places like St. Louis would take a look at the world and they would say, ah, now is our chance to revitalize and regrow and probably become the, the post-industrial city. Nope. By removing as many rules as you can. Nope. Because whatever city removes the most rules wins everything. Yep. 'cause everyone would move there.

Larry Sharpe [00:53:10] Yes, but no, you're totally right. The problem is, remember this still industrialized mindset. Government only knows one thing. Hit it with a stick so it knows it doesn't know anything else, right? Oh, it didn't work. Hit it with two sticks. Oh, it didn't work. Hit it with a bigger stick. That's all it know is it just doubles down. Prohibition has never worked. God tried it in, in the, in the in, in the in, in the garden of Bean. Garden of Bean, yeah. Didn't work then, has it? If God can't do it, you can't do it. Doesn't work. And that's all we ever do. That is the, that is the, the nature of government, even though it literally never works, we keep doing it again and again and again. That's all government knows what's actually gonna happen. I think my view is there's gonna be a renaissance in suburban rural America. Because what's actually happening is people from cities are moving back to rural areas and suburban areas. So I think there'll be a renaissance there if they're available and ready to, and ready to take it. Right. When you, when people move back to rural and suburban areas, the infrastructure there is broken. Since 2008, there's been no real recovery except in cities. Right? If you go to most rural or, or suburban areas, there's no recovery since 2008. Still trashed. It's been trashed for a decade. Still trashed. And that's why so many people move to cities. The country's been moving left for, for a while, but heavily in the last 10 years. Why? Urbanization. Everyone's moving to cities now. Now we're up to a point where I think it's 80% of Americans live in, in, in a built up either suburban or, or urban area.

Larry Sharpe [00:54:41] And now over 50% actually live in an urban area. I think that's where we are right now. That's gonna change, right? New York City, as finally started losing population as of, ooh, two years ago, is losing population. Last year it lost over 400,000 people. So the cities are losing population now. And the reason is, you can have New York City's basically a communist state, New York City. It's like a communist city state. But when the opportunity is so amazing, people put up with it because the opportunity is so great that opportunity's gone now. And COVID showed that more than anything, most of the people in my world, my in, in my world, I think I told you, I'm a a trainer, teacher, coach. I've taught of some colleges in the past. Baruch, Yale, Columbia. I've done a lot of training for city organizations, things of that sort. Well, since COVID hit, I am deemed by my, by my governor to be non-essential. So I don't get to train anymore. So most of my work now has by default become coaching. That's all I can do. I can do this. So it went from less than 25% of my business to like 90% of my business, virtually overnight. Well, most people like coach, tend to be wealthy. Not all, but many are. Or at least well off. Many of them are in finance, tech, law, they've all left the city. If you are wealthy in New York City, you have two homes. You have one in Manhattan and then one someplace else. One in Long Island, Jersey Shore, sometimes Texas, Arizona, and Florida. You have a home someplace else. Most of them have packed up and left and moved there. They've now, because the lockdowns have been so dumb, they've locked us down for so long, almost a year. That's now a new lifestyle.

Larry Sharpe [00:56:13] So they now all figured out how to function, not living in New York City anymore. They're not coming back. They're not coming back. That's not, I know. They tell me, literally I'm not coming back. And I say, aren't they gonna ask you to come back? I'm not coming back. What if they order you? Then I guess they're have to fire me then. 'cause I'm not coming back. They're like not coming back. Done. Not happening.

Vance Crowe [00:56:31] Oh, I know many, many people this way. And in fact, like, like people from dc even lobbyists have moved out and moved to the, moved to the countryside. And they say, well, I can can. So the hard

Larry Sharpe [00:56:41] About though is when that person doesn't come back, all the people they work for don't have to come back. But more importantly, all the people who service them don't have to come back. So all of a sudden, the entire ecosystem of the city begins to go away. It just doesn't exist anymore. So what will the city do? You would think, and I have ideas how to, how to fix this, but they don't, their goal, I'm not joking. My, my mayor here in New York City, the terrible mayor Bill de Blassio, his answer is, spend more on a brand new education plan. I'm not joking. Literally his plan, double triple spending on education. That's the answer. Meanwhile, our, our MTA is 12 billion with a b billion dollars in trouble with a B billion. Our state budget this year deficit will be $60 billion. They're saying 15 billion. That's a lie. Because what our government does is he changes the amount of money that the states authorized to borrow and then says he closed the gap.

Vance Crowe [00:57:43] Okay, Larry, we're in trouble. So let's, let's talk about a prediction, which has gotta be a hard one to be able to do. But I wanna put this to you. 'cause you've been very forward thinking. What does collapse look like? What, what happens where, you know, if you don't fix your, your subway system, what happens if cities, like, I know St. Louis City just announced their budget deficit is larger than it's ever been. Yep. There's no chance that they're gonna be able to make up the revenue. Yep. What happens to society? How does this, how do the dominoes fall? Yeah.

Larry Sharpe [00:58:11] The first thing is probably one state goes bankrupt first. Right? Cities have already gone bankrupt. Some more will probably a state. My gut says Illinois is the first to go.

Vance Crowe [00:58:20] Well, do you know that this goes with my, that's

Larry Sharpe [00:58:22] My gut.

Vance Crowe [00:58:23] My, my my position is we should have a pile of cash waiting to buy what's called Cahokia mounds from the state of Illinois. The moment,

Larry Sharpe [00:58:29] Oh, there we go. I like that.

Vance Crowe [00:58:30] And just start, bring that into the state of Missouri and we'll take that old heritage site.

Larry Sharpe [00:58:35] I love that. But my gut says it is gonna be Illinois, but I'm not sure about that. But one state goes, goes bankrupt after that. Couple more go bankrupt. Then the, the, the country finally figures it out and it then reboots the dollar. And my assumption is the dollar will be rebooted based upon a cryptocurrency, but it might just be magically rebooted. They might just go, ah, it's just this. Now they might just do that. Just literally just reboot the dollar. Basically. Just say it, it's this now, but we don't like it. Well, we have nuclear weapons, so that's what it is. Well, we have marines who will invade your country if you don't take it as, as the currency we say. I mean, right now our currency is backed by our military. Right. US marines are the reason why the dollar's worth anything. Right. Is that based on anything else,

Vance Crowe [00:59:18] Larry? I have never heard that in my life. Yes, but you're right. Yes. We're not backed by gold. We're backed by the Marines. Yes. That's

Larry Sharpe [00:59:27] Correct. Yes. Ev every country that decides it may not use our currency as, as the standard Marines hit that beach, Navy Seals come in. Yeah. By the way, Navy Seals trained by Marines. So Navy, Navy seals come in, Marines hit the beach. Yeah. So it's backed by that. So you are gonna take our dollar and we're gonna say it's worth this. Well, no, it isn't. We have nuclear weapons. It's worth that. You're right. I I was kidding. Of course. It's worth that. So, joking. We we're joking. We'll do that. Or we'll make a cryptocurrency. One or the other. We'll create whatever the US coin or something. We'll, we'll, we'll wa the the country. We are never gonna pay back China. That's just not gonna happen. Right. We're never gonna, we're gonna be about $30 trillion in debt, give or take this year. Maybe a little bit more. We're never paying that back. That's never getting paid back. The the issue is we'll keep running through the Fed. All the Fed does is delay payment. That's all it does was I think, is it seven years I think, or whatever it might be. I forgot what the number is. But it just keeps delaying payments. It's all it does. We're running through the Fed. See, it's not fiat currency. It's not just made up. It goes through the Fed. Great. So now it's seven years later, but it's still made up money. It's just not made up

Vance Crowe [01:00:44] Now. But why is China taking that debt? I mean, they're, they're not a dumb people. That why, why are they accepting this if they know

Larry Sharpe [01:00:49] They're able to build up infrastructure, which is what they need to do. Right? The China, China is building up infrastructure, which is what it needs to do. China's in trouble in many different ways. I mean, China's really in trouble. I mean, China's, the economy wasn't strong before this hit anyway. It was already in trouble. They've got a mass, they, they have too many men, which is a huge problem. Right. It's massive. Whatcha gonna do with all those men. They do something about that too. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:01:11] If they don't get married, they become bandits. They get into gangs, they get into all sorts of nothing

Larry Sharpe [01:01:16] But

Vance Crowe [01:01:16] Bare branches. Yeah.

Larry Sharpe [01:01:17] You, you don't want a hundred million men who have zero chance of getting, having a family. That's a terrible place to be.

Vance Crowe [01:01:23] China used to solve that problem by shipping 'em off to wars. They didn't care if they won or not.

Larry Sharpe [01:01:27] Bingo. And now

Vance Crowe [01:01:28] You can't do it with the nuclear bombs. Yes.

Larry Sharpe [01:01:29] You can't, you can't just decide you're angry at India again and send 10 million soldiers to die. It doesn't work anymore. Right. And plus combat nowadays is useless anyway. Right. What do you gain More territory mo territory mo problems. You don't want that. What you actually want is intellectual property. Intellectual property is the new warfare. Cyber is into warfare. Landing places is just to punish people, not to gain anything. And you only, you only go to war to punish. You don't go to war to gain anything anymore. Going to war is only hurtful. It's only hurtful.

Vance Crowe [01:02:03] So Larry, let's back up and go back to the, the dominoes falling. If a state goes bankrupt. Yeah, let's imagine Illinois goes bankrupt. Yeah. So what happens? They stop paying their workers.

Larry Sharpe [01:02:13] The federal government actually takes over.

Vance Crowe [01:02:14] Okay. Right.

Larry Sharpe [01:02:15] The federal government goes based on the receivership. The federal government takes over and now has to take care of all their debts. Now the problem is you have states like New York that right now have over $400 billion in debt. Just New York state. What happens when a bunch of state start going under, well, at what, at one point, the, the, the US government becomes $40 trillion in debt. $50 trillion in debt. That suggest

Vance Crowe [01:02:38] It. You're talking about numbers that, like when you say $400 billion in debt anymore, that sounds like magical unicorn numbers. It doesn't actually mean anything. That's my point.

Larry Sharpe [01:02:47] It's irrelevant. Right. And my point is, it might as well be 40 gazillion. 'cause it's never getting paid back. The number doesn't matter. I don't care. Right. 27 trillion. Okay, 27 gazillion. Is that a number? Make it that. I don't care. It's not getting paid back. No matter what number you give, it doesn't matter. It's not getting paid back. So what do I care what that number is? And my point is, eventually we, we reboot the dollar in some way, shape or form. We either do an actual default, which I think will be terrible. But that's one option. Depends upon who's in charge at the time we do an actual default or two, we create a cryptocurrency or three, we simply just say the dollar is now this. Who wants to fight. Those are the three options that I think we're gonna have eventually. Now the hardest part is in between that. Do we have an actual problem where states decide they wanna secede? That is my biggest worry. Everything else will actually be okay. And I know it's gonna sound terrible, but if, if we do a reboot of the dollar, there will be a lot of initial horrible disruption. A lot. The wealth will make a lot of money. They'll be sporadic violence. But it won't be horrible. The country can survive it as bad as it will be. But what happens when some state who's doing well says, I'm not putting up with this. I'm out. What happens when Alaska goes, Alaska has a secession party already. Imagine if Alaska goes, what we got oil by, we're not doing this. Are Americas prepared to send Marines into Alaska to say you're staying when your government is 40, $50 trillion in debt and is having trouble paying its soldiers and Marines?

Larry Sharpe [01:04:26] No. No. And what happens when the, when the Chinese don't wanna fund our Civil War, then what? Then? No. Then Alaska goes away. That's the thing I'm concerned about. I'm, I'm, I'm afraid that when the time gets bad, that the country begins to break up in some way, shape, or form. And the problem is, I don't want any kind of violence in the, in the, in the country. Because this isn't state versus state anymore. This is all, we're balkanized. This is city versus rural. Right? We're like Yugoslavia and don't know where that, where that comes from. The Balkans are the southern area of, of Europe. Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, the former Yugoslavian states. When the Ottoman Turks came into that area, I don't know, was it gotta be 600 years ago? Whatever the, whatever the number was, I forgot actually, when it came in, whatever number of years ago, they, they came in, when they came into this area, they just controlled the cities. And the Muslim population was very savvy in how they converted. They didn't convert by the sword. They didn't go become a Muslim or we'll kill you. They didn't do that. They said, oh, you want a business? Yeah, if you're a Muslim, that's a whole lot easier. Oh, you wanna sell stuff? Oh, if you're a Muslim, it's a whole lot easier. Oh, you want lower taxes? Oh yeah, you gotta pay the infidel tax. They did that type of thing.

Vance Crowe [01:05:39] And that's been done for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.

Larry Sharpe [01:05:42] But the result of that is city dwellers who were about commerce became Muslims. And people in the outskirts didn't care about that stuff. And they stayed Eastern Orthodox Christians. They didn't change. They stayed the same. So now civil war comes, it's city versus rural. And that's why the world was so bloody. That's us.

Vance Crowe [01:06:01] Larry, you're dead on. I, I like, I spend a lot of time in the ag community and a lot of my work for the last couple of years has been, Hey, will you come here and help us understand why they are behaving that way in the city? Because we genuinely don't understand. I get it

Larry Sharpe [01:06:16] Completely. And,

Vance Crowe [01:06:17] And the, and like the longer and longer this goes on, things like the, the political stances that the government is taking now are the equivalent of going into the countryside and saying two plus two equals five. And if you don't like it, then shove it, it doesn't, doesn't matter. And these people are so principled. They have faith, they have tradition. Absolutely. They have things that have held them. They're not going to do that. Correct.

Larry Sharpe [01:06:43] And

Vance Crowe [01:06:43] It doesn't matter how many times you vote people into office or how many classes you make them take, they're never ever going to break that way. And I think that there is a misunderstanding of just how passionate those people are about holding on to the tradition and the culture that they have.

Larry Sharpe [01:07:00] No, I get them completely. I cross my state more than once. I cross my state every year. There are 62 counties in New York State, and every year I do an vet in every single county. And I meet tons of farmers, rural areas, the biggest cities. I meet them all the time. And you know the reason why they like me, because I don't pretend I'm one of them. I don't put in a hat and go, yeehaw, that's not who I am. So I don't bother doing that. I'm a city boy. That's who I am. But you know what I do tell them I respect you. That's all I say. I'm not trying to change you. I I always joke all the time, right? I say, look, if you're out in Wyoming County in, in, in western New York, it's a very rural county in western New York, you know, Wyoming County, why don't you be Wyoming and let Brooklyn be Brooklyn? The people who live in Wyoming, like living in Wyoming County, the people who live in Brooklyn love living in Brooklyn. So let's let them do that. Let's let each be each and only the libertarian movement says that Democrats say, no, you must be like the cities Republicans say, no, you must be like the rural areas. Libertarians say, we're all good. We're all good.

Vance Crowe [01:08:01] Why is it that the libertarians have not been able to organize themselves into a force? Because you're a hundred percent right. If you like New York Farm Bureau, man, those people, they just wanna farm. Yep. That's all they wanna do. Absolutely. They, they wanna raise their crops and they wanna be able to sell it. Yep. They like getting the premium of selling it in the city, but all they wanna do is farm. Yep. Why can't they collate and, and get a force together? That's a libertarian force that's big enough to, to push back on the, on the hardcore Republicans who are Democrats. There

Larry Sharpe [01:08:30] Are two important reasons. One is, as I talked about earlier, ballot access. It is rare. They can even get a, you running as libertarian, you often don't even get on the ballot. Like you can't get on the ballot. And the second piece is the media loves the, the duopoly. It loves the good versus evil. It, it makes money. It's good. You know, I didn't realize how hard it is to get in. Polls realizes how hard it was to get into, into the media. This is all about money, right? Libertarians have to raise more money. Most people who are big donors, they go into the big parties because better chance of actually winning people who are heavy hitter donors don't actually care about the party at all. They care about having influence. Right? If De Trump said it, he gave to both Democrats and Republicans. He just wanted in, he wanted when he picked up the phone that someone would answer his call. He didn't care if they were Republican or Democrat. He wanted influence. So they give to both all the time. Well, Republicans, libertarian don't have influence. Who wants to give to that guy? You gotta have influence. So it's all about a bunch of cash coming out. And it sounds horrible, but if you want the, the radio stations, TV shows to cover you, it's a very simple answer. Buy ads. You buy ads, they'll cover you. You don't, doesn't matter how smart you are. Good. You are what you care about. You're not buying ads. We don't wanna talk to you. It's about, it's about ad revenue. You wanna be in, you wanna be in debates. It's not about whether you get a certain amount on polling. It's about do people want to see you? It's about ad revenue. Yet again, if Kanye West had run an actual campaign, that guy would've been in debate stage because everybody would've loved to watch Kanye Wi Kanye West debate.

Larry Sharpe [01:10:02] You would've watched that. Oh, so would

Vance Crowe [01:10:03] I. A hundred percent. Yeah,

Larry Sharpe [01:10:04] Absolutely. I'd watched that. Yes. I'd have watched him go. He doesn't care about black people. I'd have loved to watch him say that. Whoa, we, we've had a watch party. Right? It would've been amazing to watch Kanye West yell and scream on stage. It would've been great. It would've been, it would've been a total farce for the debate. But man, it would've been a, a watching a train wreck and the, the, the, the TV station would've known that and they would've done it. So our goal has to be, to be popular enough. One of the reasons why I come on shows like this, because this is the new media, right? This is the new media. Local media has been destroyed. Again, as I mentioned earlier about, you know, the, the wealth gap. Hedge funds and equity firms have purchased up most of the local media and gutted it. So local media is almost non-existent now. It's basically

Vance Crowe [01:10:51] Only too big. Oh, and it's total garbage, right? Like there's

Larry Sharpe [01:10:53] Correct.

Vance Crowe [01:10:53] You never get any information that helps you make decisions in your day-to-day life. You maybe see about murders, you maybe see, but what news actually matters is what do I need to know to make it that if I need to go left, that I know in time to go to left. And no local media is doing that, right?

Larry Sharpe [01:11:09] Correct. That and that, and that was gutted based upon financial issues from the first crash. I'm just the first to crash before this. the.com bubble. the.com bubble crash is when that began to happen because that's when information became critical to grab. So now the, the, the bankers and the finance types say, oh, information's the answer. Boom, grab all these, they're cheap, they're all losing money, let's pick them up and gut them and get rid of them. So because of that, what has become the new local media, you, that's what winds up happening. So I'm here because you are the, you are the future of media. I get that.

Vance Crowe [01:11:42] Well Larry, I will have you on anytime. You will come on. If people wanted to learn more about you, I have a feeling you're gonna get a flood of new listeners. 'cause this has been fascinating. But how could people find out more about you and what you put together?

Larry Sharpe [01:11:56] Simplest way is Google, Larry Sharpe, and that's sharp with an E and the e stands for, I don't know, enlightening, entertaining, whatever you want. Exciting whatever the E but just make sure e at the end. 'cause Google, Larry Sharpe, I'm all over. I'm the first three pages in almost any place you do. I'm, I'm prolific in the amount of stuff that I put out. If you wanna see the show, you can check out the sharp way on all of the internet things. YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, me, we, all of them. I do a show almost every night, 7:00 PM Eastern. It's live. So if you wanna come on in talk, you can do that if you want to. And of course reach out to me in the pages, follow my social media. I'm happy to return. My team will always answer your questions. My team, it monitors everything.

Vance Crowe [01:12:37] Well, brother, I was so, so glad when you accepted to come on here. This was an absolute delight and I'll have you back on. Thank you so much, Larry. Thank you

Larry Sharpe [01:12:44] My friend.