Episode #25 A Key to the Mormon Counter Culture W/Ben Shaffer

0:04 Okay, so on the show today, I want to start out with a thought experiment, wherever you are. I want you to get comfortable and close your eyes, unless you're driving. But everyone else, get comfortable and close your eyes. Everyone comfy good. Now, when I say the word counterculture, what comes to mind. Now if you're like me, it's dirty hippie sitting in the park and the Haight-Ashbury District of San Francisco, the smell of weed, wafting through the air as Grateful Dead. It brings out and the lead hippie talks about reaching a higher ethereal plane, man. Well, we're not going to talk about that today, but we are going to talk about the term counterculture because I think we as fundamentalists and traditional Mormons, we better start taking that that term a little more, seriously. Let me get this plane.

0:54 You what? The dictionary classifies, as a counterculture quote, a way of life, and a set of attitudes opposed to, or at variance It's with the prevailing social Norm. So if you read that you're like me, you're probably thinking. Wow. Maybe we as traditional and fundamentalist Mormons are a counterculture. Well, before you get freaked out, let me tell you, the good news, we aren't the first and we might actually be in really good company accepting, of course, the the drug culture of the 60s, if you take a look at first century Christians, the founding fathers of the United States and even 19th century Mormons. These are all example of Culture somewhere along the line, a lot of Mormons decided they just wanted to be like everyone else today. However, we're in a place that is Mormons. We need to re Embrace this idea of being and actually start taking actions to strengthen a gospel Center Counter Culture. But to do that, we'll need some tools today. I have on the podcast Ben Shafer to have a conversation about an alternative currency that might be an important tool to help us reach that goal.

2:00 It can help strengthen not only each other but also Local Supply chains and small Independent Business and who knows. It may even help us establish the counterculture of Zion. And that's next on this episode of the Mormon Renegade podcast. So, I just want to take a moment to thank you. The Listener, when I started this podcast I wasn't sure if anyone would really listen. Now to my surprise, this thing has taken on a life of its own and that's all due to you the listener, spending your time here with me, and it means a great deal to me now, as a husband and father, I'm keenly aware of how important time is. It feels like there's just never enough of it. So when you are spending your time here, listening to this podcast, I feel a responsibility to never waste your time in that Spirit as this podcast has grown. I feel like I need to do you the listener. Justice, I want to continue to produce good content and upgrade the audio quality that takes better equipment and better software and that all takes money. Now, I've tried to advertise, but you'd be surprised. There's not a lot of people want to advertise on a Mormon fundamentalist podcast.

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3:48 If you're not in that position to do. So I completely understand. We're all squeezed right now with high gas prices and high inflation. So even if you can't please keep listening and maybe keep the podcast in your prayers, so we can continue to grow produce. Good content and better audio quality. Thank you. Your listing to the Mormon Renegade podcast. Welcome back to the Mormon Renegade podcast as always you can get ahold of me either by email at Mormon Renegade at gmail.com.

4:45 You can also get a hold of me on Instagram and Twitter and getter under the handle. Mormon Renegade. Also we have a website up and that's Mormon Renegade.com. So go check that out. Okay, before we jump into the conversation, I just want to start with this and make it abundantly. Clear, I have no financial interest at all with gold backs. I simply find this to be a potential tool to help us do business with one another and at the same time, strengthen local communities and Supply chains. So with that, here's the conversation with Ben Shafer. Well, been how you been man? You've been kind of a world traveler would doing your thing here, late.

5:25 Yeah, gold backs have really been taken off and so I have to travel to different states where things are getting launched. I'm very excited that the Wyoming gold backs are coming out on Monday. So, so there's the Utah ones, and then there's the Wyoming ones. Now, are the values different on those know, they're exactly the same. The idea of the gold back is to have a certain set amount of gold, right? So it doesn't matter if your, you've got a, you toggle back, Nevada, Gold back of Wyoming, gold. Back in New Hampshire gold back. They're all interchangeable. You could think of it like a different artwork sort of like the state quarters, right? If you've got a Louisiana quarter, Or a Tennessee quarter, it's still a quarter even if you're not in not in Tennessee, right?

6:14 So it's the same thing with the gold backs. They are a local currency for local markets but it's just different art. They're all the same amount of gold. They're all interchangeable. You know, when you first told me that you were getting into this and you kind of told me that the premise behind them. I thought, I just remember thinking, okay, there's something important there at the time, I didn't know what it was. And I have an idea now and I could be all wrong and we're going to do that in a few minutes. But as I just remember, you telling me, and I just, I actually kind of felt the spirit say, you know, there's there's something to be had here, there's something important here. And at the time, I didn't quite grasp it and, but as Times Gone along, I can I can kind of see where maybe it could could come into play where it could kind of, almost be a safe. Safety net.

7:09 So to speak, right? We're recording this now on September 14th and just yesterday, I mean, the market had a 1300 Point drop. It was the worst drop since I believe in the midst of covid. During the shutdown is what I was reading. So you get the feeling that there's this volatility in the market, right? I've had Kelsey Williams on, and we've talked a little bit about gold, but we haven't really talked about maybe some of the ways you can buy gold, right? A lot of guys will say, you know, I buy gold as an investment and I tend to think, no, it's really kind of like fire Insurance in some way.

7:55 It's right. That you that's your hedge. Before everything, goes bad. What I like about Gold's backs is that it takes it. It takes it from fire insurance and then brings it down to something that can be used in everyday transactions. Is that is that right? Yeah, that's right. So the gold back is a gold currency system. It's a gold monetary system and so it isn't just an investment in a commodity. If you buy gold coins, their gold bars or something like that, it's a great way to save your money. Gold is real money, but it's not. Um, it's not very usable as money, so if something's going to function as a monetary system, it needs to be able to be retain its value, and that's what gold does.

8:45 But it also really needs to be something. You can actually have that's divisible or interchangeable so that you can so that you can find the right price. That's what called using it as a measure of value. Gold isn't always hasn't always been a great measure of value because what how how much gold is say a haircut Worth or a sandwich or a dozen eggs. It's really hard to measure those things in Gold because the amount of gold they would be worth is very very small. You know, one gold coin in today's market especially with the premiums, it's going to be still be around two thousand dollars and you can if you can't measure anything smaller than two thousand dollars worth it makes it really hard to actually just use it and so you know, When I was listening to listening to the Mormon Renegade, as I do and listening to your guests Williams, who was on Trey Williams. I was thinking really about the times that we're in, you know, we're in some very interesting times. There's a, that's my favorite.

9:51 So, what is it? The Irish blessing / curse is, may you live in interesting times. I tell you, we live in interesting times right now, and we've got these stock market, crashes. We've got all these volatility is going. Going on and so much of the market is just completely divorced from reality. It's really hard to know what something really worth. You know, your house is worth something. You have food that you own is worth something because you have it, but the markets, the markets are just so erratic and with things like War, looming on the horizon. Hopefully Russia backs down and the Doesn't turn into a major global conflict but, you know, that's that's how I hope. That's not a guarantee with with the markets. So unstable.

10:45 Here's another one, a new one, the the railroad workers strike. They're saying that today may be the last day until that Strikers resolves, that grain is moved by rail in this country until it's resolved. Well, think of that resolved quickly, then maybe that's not that big of a problem. But if our rails Let's start shutting down, that's, that's over 90%. I think I know it's a large proportion. If it's not, if it's not over 90, it's still a huge amount of our Goods. In this country, moved by rail. If you stop moving grain by rail food prices could really go crazy. Right? And so we've got inflation, we've got supply chain issues. Yeah, it's unstable times.

11:31 And that's really led to the fact that I think Aller has become an extremely unstable, measure of value. And so you just, this is why, I guess this is why, you know, as Mormons we've been warned not to trust in the arm of the flesh. If you're putting your trust in your hope, that the Federal Reserve is going to save you, that the IRS is going to save you that the system of Babylon is going to save you. Then I'm sorry to let you know, sorry to The Listener who's been who's been putting their trust in those things? I got some bad news. For you you got you can't trust in the arm of the flesh. We've been warned again and again and again especially in the last days, they'll all of those systems are, just not going to be reliable, right?

12:17 And also, I think it's important to realize it, this point the dollar, it's not like the old days when you could take a dollar into the bank and know that that's tied to a gold standard, right? Right. Now, our dollar really is built all on faith, right? The second, somebody questions that Faith, right? Let's say Saudi Arabia says you know just don't think your dollars good for much or China does or something like that. Once somebody calls the emperor out and says you got no clothes everybody else is going to do it too.

12:59 And the bright is that we have not only have we done It, we told the rest of the world. Hey, you Peg to our dollar and we'll just keep the gold safe. Well, that's not necessarily what we did and and now we're playing with Fiat money. Been like you were saying, if you're thinking the FED is going to fix this good luck, I believe it was Einstein that said those who create the problem. Very, very, very seldom can fix the problem and we know that the FED has been the major Of our wealth dwindling because of inflation and because of, you know, liquidity in the market and printing more money than we actually have right. And, you know it here's another interesting thing, I want to say something about inflation, a lot of times people instinctively think they know what the statistics mean, but they get it wrong.

13:58 So for example, this year inflation, got as high as This is according to official numbers, it got over 9%. Now, most people would say that's, that's really, really not even scratching the surface of what the real inflation rate is. But according to some of these Consumer Price, Index, things like that, they're saying, you know, it's about double-digit. It's just about 10% and then we're putting out new number saying, guess what? It's only about eight. Now, the problem is that people assume the wrong thing about that instinctively, I think most Americans when they hear it was nine. Now, it's a tiff. Oh good, it came back down. It went from 9 to 8. That means that there's 1% that we've regained of what we've lost.

14:43 That is not the way this works. It's cumulative. If we had nine percent last year, and eight percent this year, then you add those two together and it's 17 percent over two years. And if the next year after that, it becomes three percent that doesn't mean that. Oh, things are getting back to normal. It means Is now. It's 20% over three years, right? Unless you have deflation you've never even reached zero. So there's no subtracting. It's not rolling backward unless we're experiencing what's called deflation and that would be below the zero Mark of the inflation rate. And so I don't think a lot of people realize just how bat inflation is because they'll say oh well inflation's only only about 6% and they're assuming that there's some kind of gold standard, right?

15:32 That was that was Zero point and that were six percent above that zero point. That's not how it works. That is not how it works at all every year or every month or every quarter where they report a new number, it's cumulative over the other numbers that went before it based on whatever scale they're using if its quarterly then it's quarter-over-quarter. If its monthly it's month over month, right. But what people don't realize it unless it goes into deflation, we're not talking about it ever going. Down. We're talking about how fast is it. Accelerating How fast is it accelerates or talking about? And so if you think about like the speed of a car, if we're accelerating at 9% and then we start accelerating at 8%.

16:19 It's not like we went from 65 back down to 62 know, we went from 65 to 75 and then we're from 75 to like 83 we're still speeding up. We're still going faster and faster into those problems. We just might maybe we won't be accelerating quite as As fast as her before, it doesn't fix the problem. And the problem, of course, like you mentioned earlier. What's the fiat currency? A fiat currency, right? Is something with nothing to back it up, just an order or a Fiat, which you're literally just means an edict or decree somebody. In this case, the Federal Reserve board said, these pieces of paper are now money. You should treat them as though they're valuable and we obeyed that order and said, okay we will now play along with this. Of rules with this game, we're going to pretend that these pieces of paper.

17:10 Now represent value, but that doesn't mean that it's objectively. True. It's just, it's just a kind of a system that we're all playing along with. But the moment someone says, I'm not playing your game anymore, I'm doing something else, then it isn't worth anything because it's only worth it if you're subscribing to it, essentially, if you're choosing to use it, hilarious that they ridicule. Cool people of religion and spirituality as silly because they just put their faith into something. They can't see. And these are the same people to say, oh no, our dollar, we're totally good for it. Don't sweat it, right?

17:53 The other thing I want to touch on inflation tube in is that a lot of times when those numbers come down? Not only do they fail to tell you that, hey, this is on top of what you already had, but they play with the numbers. Right? So how sure they'll like takeout food. Sometimes, they'll be like, well, that's an outlier. Well, last time I checked eating isn't necessarily an outlier activity, right? That's all right. - we all have to do that. And so those numbers are, as you said, first off, they don't tell you what they really mean. And then to, we're not even getting the real numbers. Right, right?

18:35 Because anything that's really been the place that hurts the most. The most acute crisis in an inflation is going to be the thing. They're not going to include in the number because it's the outlier, right? So it's like, oh well, everything's fine. Except the people who are dying, but we're not going to talk about those people because they're outliers. So the exception and it's like, actually I think that's probably the most important part of the number for most people is where Is the pain, the greatest and instead of ignoring that we should be addressing that. So yeah, you're right, there's there's a bunch of funny things about it and of course so we're not even necessarily getting the real numbers. So what can you do in that environment? If you don't know what's real?

19:20 If we do get to the point where someone starts to question the game and say, you know what, I don't want to play along with the dollar anymore, I don't want you to pay me in dollars, give me something else. The problem is that right now, what else do you do? Where is there? An alternative? I'm going to, I'm going to say this in a Mormon way that may upset some listeners. I remember a conference talk, a general conference talk. I'm trying to remember who it was. Who gave it? I want to say. It was Oaks, but it might have been a might have been Holland. They said, where else will you go? if you have a testimony, And that's Joe Smith was a prophet. If you've read the book of Mormon and you have a testimony of it, where else will you go? You can't leave the LDS church, no matter how upset you might be about a policy matter, how upset you might be about what we do. No matter how much you might disagree with something, you have nowhere else to go.

20:15 Where else will you go? And that, of course, made me really mad because I was like, actually, you know, you're only one of like a hundred active LDS Church's you know you don't have a monopoly. On the truth here, made me mad because it was dismissive. I guess of those of us that are Mormon fundamentalists But it's the same situation we have with the dollar right now. If you think, okay, I'm tired of being manipulated, I'm tired of being double or triple taxed on the same money. I am tired of the instability. I don't like the inflation. The Federal Reserve is saying the same thing to everybody right now.

20:56 Well, where else will you go, what else you gonna do if you don't accept dollars, you have no alternative. So you're either going to play our game and do it our way and let us do whatever we want or you're not going to have Thing, right? Because how are you going to survive as a business? If you don't don't use dollars. I think this is kind of where gold backs comes in. I think you raise a great point there, right? And we don't have to go that far back in time to really see that this was understood by our Founders as well, right? One of the things that gets glossed over in history, is that prior to the full-fledged Revolution starting, you had guys like Sam Adams, you had John Hamilton or excuse me.

21:44 Not Hamilton Hancock. And you had a doctor that was back in Boston, and they actually started using a different currency, understanding that. One of the ways you can have influence as just a citizen is to be like I'm not playing your game anymore. Right. In fact, if you think about it, in terms of like passive resistance, what was it that Gandhi did that was so powerful. He was able to liberate his entire nation from British rule the most powerful military on the planet. The most powerful Empire on the planet. He defeated the most powerful group on the planet, how through nonviolent resistance.

22:26 But what does that look like? What? It looks like is saying. Your rule doesn't look like a good one to me. I Not going to subscribe to that rule. I'm just going to ignore it. And it's not like you have to do anything violent to overthrow. You don't have to do anything. You know. It doesn't have to be trees in a rebellion against the government. You just have to say when you look at certain programs, if you don't like the way it's working and you don't think it's going to work for you. Well, then don't do it. Don't participate in a system that is harming. You don't Empower. It's just simply say, I'm sorry I'm not interested in doing that. Thank you, but no, thank you. You, you know, kind of kind of thing. And that's really what they were doing.

23:07 These early American. Revolutionaries were looking at some of the ways in which the the crown in England was trying to basically make exorbitant profits off of the colonies, right? The King George was basically trying to see how much, how many resources he could milk the colonies for and they were basically just saying We don't want to do that. So we're not going to participate in that system and we can't of course do anything about it. There's nowhere else to go unless we build our own system, our own alternative infrastructure and it needs to be something there for that that has some real value to it. And that's really where the difficulties were with these alternative currencies.

23:55 Benjamin Franklin had one of my favorites. Benjamin Franklin's alternative currency was going to be based on the idea of the value of the land. And that the people on the land, we're creating value. Because at the time, of course, the colonies were mostly made up of small farmers and things like that. And he said, look, if your average American who is this, this farmer is out there, improving the land and and growing crops, the land is bringing forth to the yield or an increase. If we can use that as our measure of value. Not just gold or silver, for example, or the power of the Fiat of the crown to give orders and You should do what I say. What if we just looked at it and said, okay, the land brings value, let's have everybody be able to use that land and that value from the land, as their credit to create the basis for a currency and created the Continental dollar and it works pretty well.

24:55 But but essentially what you have to do is you have to have an alternative, you have to have somewhere else, you can go, if you want to Be able to reclaim your freedom in those types of situations. And so we've got a really interesting opportunity here in using gold as money because after all gold is the original Money, the real money, the gold back makes it possible for people to have a monetary system where it's not manipulatable, not even by us who meant it. The gold back is just real gold money and the gold. The value itself is in your hand. You actually Trade it for your transaction. So it's not just a currency which represents value somewhere else. The gold is actually in your pocket so that means that the goal back is basically like a very thin or very small coin that you can use for for transactions. When you've got a system like that, it can't be manipulated. It can't be taken away from you.

25:52 It's just gold. It's real gold. Real value in your hand. So explain to me real quick for anyone who haven't hasn't seen it. These look like dollar bills that have gold built into kind of the artwork and the border so that there's an actual weight of gold built into this currency. Correct. Correct. So yeah they're thin like paper so you could you can put them in your wallet for example, right? Because they're very very thin but they each gold back. One goal back is Some of a troy ounce of pure gold, 9999, fine, gold or 24 karat gold, right and, and so, yeah, it looks a little bit like what we call a bill but instead of being a bill, it's actually a thin gold coin, it's sort of laminated so you could think of it like a laminated piece of paper except that instead of it being paper inside its laminated it's gold and so one gold back has 1/1000 of a troy ounce.

26:56 There's multiple types of these notes, right? And so there's a 15 attend, a 25, and a 50. And the 50 actually has 50 times as much gold as the one. And when you hold one in your hand, if you got and get get one for yourself, if you go out and buy a set or a handful of them, you can actually feel that weight difference. The 50 is 50 times heavier in the gold. It's the same amount of plastic I suppose but as 50 times more gold and you can just feel that thickness and weight The flexibility difference in your hand is, is dramatic. You can tell. And so I like to say, you know, when it comes to like counterfeiting or people worrying about false currency paper notes, we use paper for cash right. A blind person, can't tell you if a bill is a 20 or a 50 or a 1 when you hand it to him but a gold back. Even a blind person can tell you if it's real and which denomination it is because you can feel that weight difference and the texture difference and the size, Is difference. And so, the basic idea.

28:00 Yeah, go ahead. So so we, so the general premise is that these are actual weighted units, right now. Yep, that that actually solves. A lot of problems that people have had with gold for years, right? I can't remember who it was but I actually have one. It looked like a credit card, right? And so you could like chunk off little pieces of this thing which was just basically like a gold card. Essentially right card made a goal. Old. And that was supposed to get you through, but it never really had any. It didn't tell you what it was worth, right? It was just one of those right break in case of fire, sort of a thing. Still didn't allow sure to do with that. Like what we're talking with gold backs, right? You have a denomination attached to that? Right?

28:53 And that's the basically, the problem, right? If I mean, gold is valuable. And so, in an emergency situation, let's talk about this in terms of like preparedness. Let's say you're in a situation where the banks are closed, what do you do? Well, people say well, I could trade gold or silver. Well, imagine that you're in one of those situations and you've got a handful of gold nuggets and you know, it's worth a bunch. But how much is each one works and what's the purity of that gold Is that 18 karat gold? Is it 14 karat? Gold is it? 22 karat? Gold is 24 karat, gold makes a big difference on the value of those nuggets, and there's no way to really tell and if you get one of these Volcom, be makes a thing where you can break the bar or cut it into pieces.

29:40 And then each of those individual pieces are still supposed to be worth like quite a bit. Frankly, the little, the little pieces you could break off. One of those bars would still be worth, maybe $100 or more. Maybe two hundred dollars for just a little chunk that you break off. And then how do you know how much it's worth? Exactly. Well, I guess you have to weigh it. You have to be able to a say it. Meaning you have to be able to test it for its Purity and and then it's weight and then you still have to negotiate a price as to what that you think that much gold is going to be worth for your transaction. The old bat and that's just too much work basically, right? That's too much work. For your average person to be able to do a regular transaction with, you know, if If the banks are closed and we need to do business and you've got an apple tree and I want to buy a bushel of apples from you or something, right? We can't do all those steps.

30:30 We need some mode, some medium of exchange where we can say, okay? I think this is worth X price and I can give you that price and you know, that you got it and then we can do the exchange otherwise otherwise you're sort of just bartering. It gets really confusing gold backs. Really solves that first because they're in. A changeable, if I owe you say 30 gold backs, I can give hand you a 50 and you can give me change with you know, with with two tens for 20 gold ex back and then I paid you 30 or we can, you know, do it in any other ways you can break that down, I you do 45s or a bunch of ones or, you know, all those things you can't do that with like these little broken bits or gold nuggets.

31:19 Very easily, right? And then also, how much value does it have? Well, the gold backs actually have an exchange rate right now. That exchange rate is based on the price of gold and the market for people who are spending the currency spending, the gold backs as a currency, but even in an emergency situation, you know, the exact weight and exact period of what you're being handed. Got to tell you a quick story about a guy who told me I'm not worried about inflation. He told me I'm prepared. Even if the banks closed I'm not worried, even if the total stock market crashes, I'm not worried. Even if the dollar collapses, I'm not worried because I've got gold bars in my safe.

31:59 You told me and I thought, hey, that's great for you man. Gold bars are that's, that's a lot of value right there, right? But I said, but imagine this, imagine one of those scenarios. You just said happens. Imagine the banks are closed and you need a dozen eggs. Are you going to give somebody a gold bar for a dozen eggs? I'm going to gold. Cars worth like eighty thousand dollars or something. You can spend eighty thousand dollars of value on on a dozen eggs, been give me that guy's name. And number after you're done with this show, I want to get them off me, right? I want to get with him him some eggs, right? And he was like, well, no, that would be terrible. And I'm like, so, what are you gonna do? You can't sell a gold bar.

32:45 You don't want to trade it for some small purchase you. So here's the problem. If the banks are closed Or if you want to use gold as money. Right now, what most people are doing is they have to sell their gold bar for dollars, which means all the bank's got to be have to be open all the gold dealers have to be flush with cash, which means the stock market's got to have to be pretty good frankly. So he so that somebody has can actually cash him out of that and then he's going to spend paper dollars. Well that's not going to work. And then some people say oh well what if you just chips off a piece and be the worst thing you could do you chip a piece off? The gold bar and now we don't know how much the gold bar is. We just know that it's less than what it says on it. You know, if it's 100 ounce, gold bar and you've chipped a piece off it, now I don't know how much is left and then once you've got this little chipped off piece, this little gold flake or something, you still got it. You got to test it.

33:41 You've got a way it at least one was attached to the bar. I knew that it said, 24 karat gold on that bar, but the the little tiny flake doesn't doesn't say it. What its Purity is. Now, I've got a To, I've got a I've got a say that, right? And this is where you got to ask the test things. Are you got to use these Touchstone methods or all kinds of stuff to figure out if it's actually, real gold. People don't have time for that. That's not going to work and I said but but here if you have a gold back I told this guy then you know one gold back is worth about a loaf of bread, a dozen eggs, something like that because this much gold has always been worth that much.

34:21 And probably always will be. So let me ask you this been because I think you bring up a good point here and I just want to get the stats right on this. How is the gold that's used in Gold? Max? How is it verified so to speak? He were talking about having work needing to be a see, you know, saying that sort of stuff, right? Blame me. The process about, you know, the verification process at the Gold. That's going into the gold backs, is what they say, they are So, there's for this, for this, for things that go into every go back and this is, this is really part of major. Part of the value of a goal back, right? Is that when you get one in your hand, you have to know that it's the real deal.

35:03 And the nice thing is, is they really can't become counterfeited. So, when you want you all to go back in your hands, you'll see it has security features on it. And those security features at this point. We do not believe that anyone with the technology to make a fake, okay? So, but Do you know, the real gold back is really what it claims to be. Well, there's there's four things first, it's a very exacting process. We use to create the gold back. Instead of it being minted by like being Stamped Out like gold foil or gold leaf, or even a gold coin. That's stamped to its weight. It's not a subdue. Those are all subtractive processes.

35:44 It's called in manufacturing, right? All of those, you start with a bunch of gold and then you cut it down to the value. The gold back is actually done the opposite way. It's an additive process. We actually, it's sort of like, 3D printing the, the, the the manufacturing process called vacuum deposition is like 3D printing. But were using for our filament is pure gold and what we're using for our nozzle is a laser and so this laser essentially picks up gold, atoms in the side. This vacuum chamber so there's no other atoms in there. Only gold atoms and that That laser then carries the atom with along with the photon to the surface and then uses the energy of that laser to fuse it onto the surface. So first of all, the reason we know how much gold is in there is because this is a very exacting process. We're literally applying these gold atoms one atom at a time. Now, obviously, we do it very, very quickly with multiple lasers.

36:43 Otherwise we would still be counting the number of atoms dicks to make one gold back. Right. But But it's a very very precise process extremely precise. The second thing that we do is that every gold back is then x-rayed and these x-ray a saying methods make it so that we can measure the exact density and thickness of the gold and because we can measure its density, we're actually also measuring what it is made out of right whether or not there's any impurities in that gold then would come out in this type of type of Process. A spectrometer is something fairly similar. There's a lot of gold testing machines that are out on the market.

37:27 You can buy the cost they usually cost well in excess of a thousand dollars sometimes in excess of three or four thousand dollars but it's basically doing the same thing. It's it's it's proving the Purity the density and the thickness so that gives us another picture. An independent picture of whether or not that first process was done accurately so that we can see exactly. Exactly the waiting period of the gold. The third thing we do is a fire assay. Now, this happens at random out of every batch of gold box that's being created, some of the gold backs are pulled out of that batch at random and then melted down. So we put them inside a crucible.

38:09 Wheat that Crucible up to about 4,000 degrees at that temperature not only is gold a liquid but some the polymer that we're using, that's basically like the lamination I was talking. Outlets on the outside of the gold back and the inks that we use for the artwork. I think that those all vaporize turn into vapor at, you know, less than 2,000 degrees. Most of them quite a bit less than 2,000 degrees and then the gold at two or three thousand degrees is a complete liquid. And then we cool it back off again. And we end up with this little tiny BB of pure gold, we then take that BB of pure gold and do the same things with it. We x-ray it and use the spectrometer. And we weigh it and then when we way that that little ball of gold, it has to weigh more than what was promised in those gold backs that way, we know a third way that it is actually. And in general it is slightly in excess of what is Promised. So, one gold back is 1/1,000 of an ounce. It's usually two percent or so more because our Target is to be at about 2% more.

39:17 Now, if the asset is come back and say it's only 1% more than most Must were still more than was promised. So we'll still send those out, right? But the idea is it can't be too much more. I can't be more than say four or five percent more than what we promised otherwise that that's our entire profit margin and we'd be giving away money in order to make the gold backs. So so if that ever, if it cover comes back more than that, then will melt them down again to be sure that we aren't overdoing it. But basically, that destroys the, the individual Go back. So we do it with but what it what does it do? It confirms the other two methods and the fourth way and final way that you know you're getting what you're getting with the gold back is we don't just do that ourselves in house. We do that ourselves in house all the time but that's not that's not all the fourth way.

40:10 Is we actually hire independent, third-party, Auditors to do all of it all over again. They melt them down, they use the spectrometers in the x-rays, and they verify the Purity. And so, after it's gone through all of that and and multiple different third parties, all the major Boolean houses you can buy gold Backs from almost any major bullion dealer at this point. All of them have double-checked and our confidence that the gold is really there. So once it's in that form, once it's inside the gold back, you basically have it in a form where you have proof of authenticity of exactly what this gold is worth. Otherwise, you know, if you're trading bits of gold chains, or, or gold nuggets.

41:02 Yeah, you can't really be sure. You know what you're getting honestly. Sadly counterfeiting is rampant. Even amongst gold coins. So even if someone brings you a gold coin, that says, the United States of America and, and you think this is From the u.s. mint. This is a u.s. minted gold coin. I'm sorry, there's tons of fakes out there where people will put a cheap metal on the inside like a washer or something like that. You can usually find those cheaper, counterfeit fakes by just putting a magnet on it and it's like, oh, this is magnetic. This isn't this isn't real but some of the really, really good fakes actually will have tungsten on the inside and gold on the outside.

41:42 And honestly about the only way you can prove that those are real or not is the Melt them down. And that means that even a gold coin. You can't necessarily trust it. I'm sorry to say it, but you just can't, but the gold back. You can. It's so thin you can't hide anything else inside it, and it's, and it's independently verified by multiple parties before it goes out. So you can see essentially when it's in that container, you know, you've got the real thing. Dude, that's awesome. Because that's that's always the trick, right? Is to make sure that that if if you're trading something, you're not just doing what we're doing with the dollar, which is just saying, I'm sure where the, I'm sure it's fine, right? How it's probably fine, right?

42:24 You're right. Exactly. Again, really some misplaced Faith there, but anyway, it's good to know that. Now, let me ask you this, how many businesses right now are using gold box that you can kind of go into a Place and buy, buy something with those gold box. And what kind of Industries are they in? Are, are those merchants? And I guess, right? Well, we while we probably could use more big retailers right now. That's been the hardest of the nuts to crack, but right now already there are hundreds of businesses across four states that accept go back side.

43:07 Say in Utah, all alone, we're in excess of 300 businesses. Now where you can walk in and pay with gold backs, right? At the cash register. Just like you would with paper dollars, but you can just pay me in Gold peyman the gold backs and out of those 300 businesses. I mean, I would say that it's probably at least 60 40, maybe it's maybe it's 7030. Weighted in favor of services. Things like restaurants. We've got accountants and lawyers and plumbers. Hours and HVAC, guys. We've got landscapers and Artisans, but then, you know, we've also got, you know, the at least Thirty forty percent are going to be things.

43:53 Like we have car dealerships, people who sell food even, not necessarily big Grocers, but we have a bunch of farms, and butchers and Orchards and there's several people. Have honey or some other specific thing. And so yeah, while we're not at Universal acceptance yet, it's been growing by hundreds every year and it's been growing exponentially. So we're hoping that we can approach something like Universal acceptance, hopefully in the next five years or so, where maybe you could spend them everywhere anywhere. But yeah, for right now, I would say though everybody should have a few in their wallet because it it moves forward the cause of sound money.

44:41 One of the things that my boss likes to say is people are sad about losing missing the gold standard. And if you're waiting for the feds to just bring it back here, waiting in vain, but you don't have. But here's the good news, you don't have to wait for the feds to bring back the gold standard. We already have the gold medal standard. We're bringing it back right now with the gold back. All you've got to do is one understand the problem. Well, if they're listening to this podcast, they understand more about the problem. To the second step to bring us three easy steps right to bring us back to the gold standard one. Understand the problem to you have to actually have some gold. Now that's pretty easy because one gold back is worth less than four dollars. So for less than four dollars, you can become an owner of gold. Well, it beats the heck out of buying coins, like I was just saying generally if you wanted to become a gold owner, you had to have at least two thousand dollars to go in and buy one coin.

45:41 That's how much it cost you to become a gold owner but now with the gold back you can you can come in with 44 dollars you can show with four bucks and get it one gold back and Bam. You're gold on her and then step number three. Once you've got some gold backs in your wallet, you got to go and spend them. And the moment you've done that, you've completed the cycle. You've actually added to circulation circulating money, that is sound money, that's real money, that's actual gold. And then you're on the gold standard. That's that's all it takes three steps. Let me ask you this then real quick. If I'm a merchant of any sort, is there a tax nightmare? That is associated with with gold backs, right? I mean, because look, you have to pay the government, their share or else you're, you're going to be up against the IRS who just, you know happened with hired 85,000 new agents. They're coming, right, right?

46:42 An armored and armed a bunch of them and they didn't hire those guys just to sit on the sidelines and, you know, bring coffee to the real agents, there there, there for a purpose. So, we're going to what Justice when it comes to taxes and that sort of thing. If I'm a merchant that wants to get involved with this and take, this is right? How's your real question was, should you be worried goodness? No, please don't. Be worried at all. In fact, that's one of the best things about the Gold backs is that the tax situation is great? Now, it's not it's not perfect. In the sense that it's not that there's no taxes, you still have to pay your taxes. I'm afraid. But the nice thing is, is that gold back is a legal tender instrument. What that means is, it's basically treated as money by law, especially in the states, in which its operating. Now, and there are some states that were not even operating in yet, that also have similar laws that will treat the gold back and just the same even if there's State designed for them. But basically, what is that?

47:44 That scheme, there's something that is called the Utah legal tender act and that's a Utah state law. That really gave us the idea for the go back in the first place and that Utah, state law basically said, gold and silver are real money. They have always been money and they'll be recognized by law as money. And that means that, for example, if you buy a gold back, I'm doing air quotes here, you're not buying something. If you turn your paper dollars into gold backs, you're exchanging one form of money Fiat, money into another form of money, sound money, which is gold.

48:24 And so therefore the state doesn't treat that as a sale. So for example, you don't have to pay sales tax, to turn your dollars into gold backs and when you accept gold backs, you don't have to do any special pain in the butt tax things. Now it is true that if you take payment in Gold backs and you would have owed some kind of sales tax on a sale, had it been done in dollars, then yes, you still owe your sales tax on the sale that you made in Gold backs but there's no special tax. And here's one of the reasons why that's especially interesting, is that say, you know, for example, you could own you could o state capital gains tax on an investment.

49:08 Let's say you were to even gold. Old for the until the legal tender actress past, you could say by a bunch of some assets, say it's stocks or something like that and then it goes up in value and you sell it at a higher price and then that difference becomes your capital gains, right? And then if you have 0 capital gains on the difference between the price, you bought it for and the price you sold it for well with the gold back, you're not actually ever going to realize capital gains because you're never going to sell them for dollars. If you turn, let's say you have 10 thousand. You're worried about inflation right now. You want to opt out of that so you turn your ten thousand dollars of paper money into ten thousand dollars of gold money and gold backs.

49:50 Well now you don't have to worry about inflation generally because gold maybe not instantly but eventually generally keeps up with inflation and then you just spend your gold backs instead of spending your paper dollars, will you still never realize the game, right? You've never realized the gain in is you sell it for dollars at a higher price than what you bought it for. We never have to do that again. You can just opt out in which case you won't actually owe any taxes. I think the IRS would agree with that assessment. You only owe taxes when you have a gain and then on top of that, state of Utah will not charge any special taxes. Now, the state of Wyoming has probably the best and that's why I'm so excited about the Wyoming goalie gold back coming out next week.

50:41 Is that Wyoming's law actually says? No. Taxes will be charged on gold or silver that all their will. The the there should be no taxation whatsoever essentially. And there's an argument to be made that, that gives it even greater protections than the US dollar has if you use the Wyoming gold back in Wyoming. But but yeah, so it's not that hard and honestly people think I run into business owners. Sometimes they say, well, why should I sign up for to do gold back? It sounds like it's going to be a real pain in the butt. I've got to worry about exchange rates or counting. It sounds hard. The good news is really not that hard. The gold box can be accounted for in the same way that you account.

51:22 For coupons. They can be accounted for in the same way you count for a gift certificate. They can be accounted for the same way you would account for cash, you might have to keep them in a separate envelope and say, this is my gold back cash account versus my Dollar Cash account. But if you keep us any simple Ledger system, You're going to be fine. And you know, it's perfectly legal to use them. They're actually legal tender, frankly. I think that, you know, most people assume that that means that everyone has to take them. The, I mean, I do think it technically means in a very loose sense that everyone should accept them as payment, but, you know, we're getting closer and closer to a digital economy and a digital currency system.

52:05 There's already a bunch of places that don't take cash. This doesn't affect us Mormons nearly so much, but I was so, Prize to see the news, Starbucks Starbucks is going cashless. They're no longer going to accept payment in cash, and they can do that. Even though cash is legal tender, they can still choose how they want to take payment. So so, you know, I worry a little bit, I kind of Envision a future where there's sometimes Central Bank digital currency or everybody goes to using digital. Transactions in the danger with that is it's so manipulatable. It's so controllable even if even if digital even if everything digital was set up by a perfect Saint an absolute, you know, philosopher king, who never wanted to do anyone harm, who was the most benevolent being imaginable with their powers.

53:01 What do you do about the fact that they're not going to be in power forever sooner or later? I think you need a cash option. You need to be able to do Your business, without anybody else being in your business. Absolutely. And when you were describing that per perfect King, I'm like, far, as I know Jesus hasn't come back yet, right? So, we can rule that one out right now, right? And, and, I know that, this sounds a little bit crazy or paranoid of me, but even if Jesus were our King and Jesus gave us a digital currency system, we would still have to watch out for the fact that the devil be loose for short season. After the Millennium, there will still come a time or And then that wasn't good enough. Right because right.

53:44 Absolutely, you did bring up a good point, right? Everything's going kind of to an online model if you will, right. Is there any plans to take gold backs to online stores or something like that? Well, there are some ways you can do online transactions. There is a organization called the United precious metals Association or upma. And so yeah, if you go to like upma dot-org, you can open up an account. That's Gold backs and you can transfer those gold Backs from one account to another, not just for yourself. Like you can, you can use it like venmo essentially, and transfer some of your gold axe to someone else. So there's ways that you can do those transactions and I would kind of like to see the blockchain used more effectively for money and maybe have a blockchain did not Som some blockchain token or whatever denominated in Gold backs or even Bitcoin but denominated in Gold axe instead of being valued in dollars.

54:41 But I think the real Real value of a gold back is the cash transaction because you're exchanging real value for real value in the gold will actually be in your hands that way. But know there are some solutions out there already and the and I think that some of those Solutions will be improved on with time to be able to do digital transactions and go backs. So you have an online business. You can actually be part of the gold back Network and have an online-only business, where people pay you in Gold backs. Digitally through like the upma type system. But but yeah, I think the real value comes in to the fact that if the if there's no electricity you can still trade a gold back.

55:22 If there's no Bank, you can still try to Gold back. If there's a digital currency, you can still trade a gold back because it's just value in hand. So, that's what really where I think the strength of the project lies. Absolutely, absolutely. So now Ben, this is the part where I talked about early on and you can see jump in here. If you think I'm heading down, maybe I don't know on the wrong track so to speak. But I told you at the beginning here of our conversation, that that when you first told me about it, I have this feeling like, okay, there's something there. I don't know what it is, but there's something there and it hit me one day as I was just watching at work because of my position, I can kind of watch how money comes in and out, right?

56:10 And it's all just just, you know, Ones and zeros essentially, right Captain it goes out, make payroll all those things and I thought how do we ever as a people spit ourselves out of this system and I just mold on it and and that's probably part of my problem is I tend to get to analytical and I tend to go down some rabbit holes at times. But my my thought is that if we as a people and I'm not just talking about one group of, Fundamentalists or to Independence. I'm talking about you know, us as fundamentalist or mainstream LDS folks who are more traditional. There's got to be a point at which we kind of come out of Babylon.

56:57 Right, where we say enough's enough, let's spit ourselves out of the system and I think the gold back could play a huge issue in that right there are. If there's one thing I know about fundamentalists as I've become better. It with them all. It's that we tend to be a people who are diverse in. What it is, we do really well. Right, some folks are really good in agriculture, others are good at building, but We're kind of splintered were fractured in a lot of ways. Yeah, one of the ways I thought we can we could start to spit ourselves out of the system is by doing business together with a different currency.

57:41 Is that something that's possible with gold back? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. In fact, you know, it's not a Mormon fundamentalist project so to speak and it's not even a Mormon project, the gold back. It's much bigger. Bigger than that. But I've found that to anybody who has a sense of wanting to think about things in a higher way, a higher law seems to really love the gold backs and in fact we really put a lot of intentionality in their designs. So for example, each gold back has the artwork on it right and the artwork symbolically depicts gospel principles and virtues. In fact here I'll give you one.

58:23 I'll give you a hint that's never been published yet. If you look at the 10 gold back, there's a there's clouds in the sky and if you look at it sideways, so you turn the 10 on its side, you'll notice that the outline of the clouds creates an image of the Salt Lake Temple. So there's there's like hidden pictures, there's hidden meanings. And then each one of them has a more obvious message to in Latin is written the name of a virtue. So for example. The Utah series the one has Prudence as the one and what is that? It's symbolically depicts her virtues. So Prudence has symbolic things, like she holds a mirror for self-reflection and so there's all these symbolic things and they're supposed to teach good principles and and I think that we really, when it comes down to it. Yeah.

59:19 If you want to be able to, you know, hang on to your Liberties, hang on to your freedom if you want to be able to Have a system that isn't going to be controlled or manipulated or taken away from you, you have to have an alternative energy infrastructure, you have to have your own your own Market, your own systems, otherwise you're just dependent upon whatever the globalists are doing, right? Because that's the only way you're going to get your food or something. Absolutely. You know I find there's a there's a word that was used a lot in the 60s and 70s that I think could apply to two Tons of all Stripes really well, and that that words counterculture, right?

1:00:03 We tend to think of the word counterculture and we met we instantly go to Haight-Ashbury with some hippies sitting in the park smoking some, you know, smoking a joint, and yeah, the drums, right? Right. But realistically even the founders had set up the kind of a counterculture before before things kind of went off the rails. And we were when You know Into Revolution and so I think I think we replace now Ben and again, correct me if I'm wrong. I think we have to start thinking of ourselves as more of a counterculture, right? And that means that we're going to have to start adopting, not just social norms and our our own vernacular which we already have. But we're going to have to start maybe looking at trying to do business with each other, right?

1:00:52 Get out of the world and start. We need to build local Supply. Chains. We need to do Business with other good God-fearing freedom-loving, people. You know, if we're going and that's the only way that we can really support each other and there's nothing wrong with that being economic, right? It's a good thing for us to support each other's businesses. Let's be let's build these networks and that's really what. Yeah, that's that's exactly what go back is all about. We are building local community, networks of local Supply chains so that, you know, people can small businesses can actually process. A Spur, you know, a lot of times when people, when I just want to go back, they'll say, so this is money. I'll be like, yes, it's legal tender.

1:01:33 And then they'll say, well, can I spend it at Walmart or take it to the bank or like two of the most common first question since like, no, actually, you can do almost anything you'd ever think of doing with money, except those two things, why? Because the banks are shipping our money outside of our community. And Walmart is part of a global supply chain shipping money outside of our communities. Gold backs are Early used by local Mom and Pops by people who have a local interest in the local economy who live here and work here, right? And that's kind of where the local currencies get their starts. Any of them including the other local currency projects that exist in the past. And that's really part of the point is to strengthen the people that, you know, and make that local economy vibrant and yet on the and of course, you know, the gold box, just have the added benefit.

1:02:27 It of being made out of gold means that you're you're not taking the same risk. You would normally be taking on accepting a local currency or a new currency because you know, the gold box cannot be inflated because they're gold. The gold is real and it's not just going to disappear on you and it's gonna be worth something the matter what happens. I mean you know a thousand years ago the English language didn't even exist, most people don't realize that English language didn't exist a thousand years ago not in the present form but you know what did exist gold is money, thousand years before that people are speaking Latin and gold was money and the thousand years before that and a thousand years before that and a thousand years before that all the way back to the beginnings of civilization in Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, people were trading gold, gold was still money and I bet you in a thousand years gold will still be money. Absolutely.

1:03:24 And I think your pet can give you a confidence. Right there. There's a history there. It's reliable. Absolutely. I think you bring up a really good point about the supply chain, right? It wasn't more than a couple years ago, where you couldn't find anything on the shelves, right before. And during covid right there are part of that problem was and we're still experiencing that today, right? It was just a couple months ago that you couldn't get baby formula, right? NYU. Right? That's because we have built. I kind of talked with Kelsey Williams about this off are. But uh, I think we have built a in economic Tower of Babel, right.

1:04:07 And what we're seeing now is that it's too big and it's coming down and we saw that in Earnest during covid, right? We saw that in Earnest after covid that if If we're that massive, it's really hard to get, get the the goods that we need. We go back to all those shipping all those shipping ports, right, right. And part of the problem was is that no one stored anything, it was one of those things where we have right system to where you ordered it and it came in quickly and it's all well and good, right? When it's all about so long as it's working like perfect clock, right?

1:04:51 Call that just just-in-time supply chain. Exactly. And it's all well and good. Unless there's a Black Swan event, right? Unless there's a pandemic, unless there's war and which power or unless, unless there's a rail workers strike, like there is right now. Right. Absolutely. And so, let's just take covid. For example, they didn't shut Walmart down, they didn't shut big Grocers down. They went after the little Guy to shut them down. Why was that? Well, that was because they're there was no alternative right right. And that's and that's why the big guys like Jeff Bezos and Amazon and Walmart and all those guys got super super rich in in 2021 because all the competition was gone. You had to depend on their big Global Supply Chain because they'd wiped out so many local Supply chains. Right.

1:05:50 And everybody was, you know, while the gold back was around it wasn't around like we're starting to see it now well and it is still small. In fact let me give you a let me give you an idea of scale here in 2019. The gold back. Was launched there was probably only about a hundred thousand dollars worth of it. I'm in circulation at first 2020 of course now we're already talking pandemic right? Gold back still grew anyway exponentially we got to Point where by 2021. We were doing hundreds of thousands of dollars a month up to a million dollars, a month in sales of gold backs or I should say, not necessarily sales, right?

1:06:33 But people exchanging, that many more dollars into the gold backs into the go back system, we have been in the place. Now for six, seven months now eight months where we have been doing well in excess of a million sometimes as much as four million dollars in one month of new gold backs. Going into circulation and we've gone from one state just Utah. 24 States. Now where it's not only legal, not only is it legal tender by state law but and therefore, we have those tax advantages, but we actually have business networks in those states starting to function. So, yeah. It's like a snowball, right?

1:07:15 It's a very small at first but it's getting bigger exponentially. And so now right now where we're doing millions and millions of dollars every month, you know what, we're still actually pretty small snowball there's probably only about 20 million dollars worth of gold backs and circulation maybe a little bit more than that now may be as much as 30 million but it depends on on the calculations anyway, that's my estimate. But you know what? Even 30 million dollars is a very small part of the overall us. Right? That's not enough money to circulate all the transactions in yet. But again you know if we keep growing at the same rate will be, can double that in a year and then we'll double what we doubled in another year and so it really is starting to take off but because we can't print our currency out of thin air. We have to make it out of gold.

1:08:12 We can only make it grow as fast as we can manufacture and we're actually working on that. The manufacturing capacity has been been increasing over these past couple of years and I hope that we can make it grow exponentially over the next few. That would be awesome because again, I'm I'm more worried about that local supply chain but my angle on this is local supply chain and doing business with like-minded people because that's really all we got, right? I think I think the idea of a quote physical Revolution. Again, that's out the window. The the, I think, the best we can do at this point is start thinking, in terms of a counterculture where we do business with like-minded people.

1:08:56 Then we get goods and services locally, right? And well and like you said, it's hard to fix a problem. It's hard for the people who created the problem to fix the problem. We're at the point. Now we're in this post globalist World, almost that the globalism came with certain came with certain liabilities certain danger. Certain problems globalism isn't going to get us out of those problems. What we need is stronger communities, strong, local communities, and the global system can You to function. I hope it does. In many ways when it comes to having a global supply chain. I like being able to have bananas in the grocery store even though they don't grow here in Utah, things like that, but, but it's got to go beyond that.

1:09:42 We've got to have strong and robust local economies. And when we do that, we actually protect our freedoms and we actually help our local communities to thrive because local money has much Bigger effect on the local economy because it just doesn't get shipped away. It doesn't go to Wall Street, doesn't go to China. Local that local value stays local. Absolutely and staying local gives I yearn for the days that I never saw been right, where, where my grandfather talked about going to the butcher, going to the grocer, going to the local hardware store. I hate going to Home Depot.

1:10:26 Right, I just hate it. Well yeah, well here's here's the good news since you. And I both live in Utah, County Ace Hardware takes gold backs, so don't go to Home Depot, go to Ace and paying well, thanks, absolutely perfect. Okay, so now, let's talk about folks who have heard this. They're like, yeah, that's, that's my jam. That's what I want to get to. How do they get a hold? Hold of you or what's the process to get set up in Gold backs. So I'm going to send you some links so that you guys can find them. The most obvious one, of course is gold, back.com, lots of info there. But, you know, you can buy go back from any major gold seller anywhere in the world, including online. So, there's lots of ways you can get them. If you want to get some additional Services, you should probably join the United precious metals Association. There's, there's a bunch of So that if you want to be able to do things like digital transactions, right. But yeah, there's a lot of ways you can get involved and even just on gold back.com.

1:11:36 If you've got a business, you can sign up that business. And it says, how'd you hear about us, right? Right. The Mormon Renegade, right? And that line and then tell us about your business. See if you can't become part of the business Network and then, of course, we can support those businesses with things like currency exchange. So that for example, if they are worried about some Bill and they Want to turn some of the gold backs into Dollars. We will do that as a service for those businesses and so that, you know, so that they don't have to face any liquidity issues from it. We can also help with best practices on accounting and all kinds of stuff. So yeah, those are some good ways to get involved. You go to any of your local gold dealers, and ask them for gold backs by gold Backs from them, that'll that help strengthen the whole network to.

1:12:23 And so, really, I think that the good news is Is that I want to point something to you. I want to say, I want to say that everybody hears this radical action. You can take, that's going to change the world. The good news is you don't actually have to take some radical action. All you've got to do is do what you're already doing, which is by spending money, and adding value to the community by doing whatever you do. The only difference is is start doing and gold backs instead of dollars stop voting. You know, they say you vote with your wallet and your or you vote with your feet, what you participate in is what you're indoors. Icing, if you want to endorse holdbacks you've got to vote with your wallet and just get some gold backs in your wallet and spend them and and accept them at your businesses and then it grows, right? And so the nice thing is you don't actually have to change your your habits really much at all. You just have to start spending sound money instead of spending Fiat money and it builds the whole project. And and really I do think you know you're talking about the long-term, how do we Out of Babylon. What's Zion going to look like?

1:13:28 And how did we get from point A to point B? How do we get from being the Servants of Babylon to being a millennial World? Well, it's not all at once and it's not going to be handed to us on a silver platter. We don't, we don't get given Zion, we have to build Sion and We're not just going to be Sanctified and began to design on a silver. Platter will become Sanctified by working toward Zion, right? And so part of that is just being more honest, having more accountability in our systems having more real, real money in the way we do our business already. Well, it keeps everyone on more honest. Frankly.

1:14:09 It just it makes everything more honest and firm. So yeah, just that's all you really need to do is just start trying to use these instead. And it makes it will eventually, I believe overtake, because there are so many advantages to using the gold box that pretty sooner or later, people are going to say, why would I want dollars? In fact, I think that now been so. Yeah, next time, someone's going to pay you on a job, Tom, you know, it'd be nice to be pay me in Gold backs. I wish I had that sort of say it. Those links you're going to send me, does it give a list of businesses that are already taking gold back?

1:14:54 So, people are like, you know what? Yeah, I want gold backs and I want to make sure I'm only doing business with people who have who do business and get back. Yes, there is. I'll go back to a calm, there's a list, and there's a map and it's searchable or you can just do it alphabetically or you can do it, a bunch of different ways to organize that list in order to look through it, and find what you're looking for. Find what you want to buy. We're actually getting, we're not quite there in my Onion. But we are actually starting to see the light at the end of this tunnel where we might get to the point where you don't need dollars and you could just do all your business and gold backs. We don't yet have enough of a diversity of providers of every good and every service you could want that you could do that yet. But we're getting darn close.

1:15:36 We're already at the point where I probably spend, I don't know, I'd probably spend half the money I spend. I spend in Gold backs, something like that. That's, that's crazy to think it's come that far that fast rhyming, right? And it's, and it's just growing so fast, I think that we may get to the point where, you know, you just just use gold box, you don't need anything else and that, that will be a great day if we can get there. Absolutely, that would? Because again, it just seems like it's built for that local community, that local supply chain. And if we can get there, I think Think not only will we feel better about doing it that way, I think will be healthier communities, right?

1:16:22 And that's one thing I think we're all striving for. I think, I think we miss, we've missed what real capitalism is about, right? I had a good friend whose dad was a rabbi, and he used to say, if you don't start your business every day with a prayer, you're not really a capitalist. He's like is given to service. Right? You're providing a good or service for exchange and, and in some ways I feel like we've really lost that with, with a big box stores with buying from overseas. We've just missed the point. And I think that's part of what is happening now. Is that everything seems just a little Halo and this seems like just one more way where we can kind of help to restore something that's real back to the system. Yeah.

1:17:16 Gives it a Touch, you know when you're dealing with Amazon you and Jeff Bezos aren't making friends, you're not serving each other, you're just getting something in exchange for something else and and even money's become so gamified, you know, it's all it's on our phones, it's on our bank accounts. It's in our, these little plastic cards we carry around. It's hard to even comprehend any more in this simplistic way that we need to exchange things of real value. For other things, things of real value with people, right? And then it has to mean something to those people because money isn't just numbers. Money is supposed to.

1:17:56 Those numbers are supposed to represent, the real value that we create in the world, and that we give to one another, right? And, and, and so, most people just don't even really comprehend what money really is anymore. I think for that reason, you know, they just see it as a numbers game, essentially, because it's become so impersonal. Theoretical. It's not real and it isn't. It is a game write it. It's absolutely a game. And and what we used to value in time and an effort, just seems like, I don't know, like a really good game of Candy Crush now, right? Where you're just rammed right points to level up one level and so then you get brag to your friends that you have more points than everybody else. But what are those points?

1:18:45 It's just yeah. Yeah, it's also a femoral, right? It's not real. Absolutely Ben, is there anything that we didn't talk about that you wanted to touch on, you know, I hope that I gave the The Listener, a good sense for to go back even is, I don't know that we kind of jumped into just talking about them as though we didn't really introduce them clearly. I think what. Let's go ahead and do that now. But yeah, I guess it starts with what the problem is, what is money. Money is some is something real. It has to be a be something of real value that we exchanged for other things of real value. And so when it really comes down to it, money is the good we do in the world.

1:19:36 And then we need a way of having money that isn't manipulated we touched on that to one of the things. Got me worried is like the trucker's protests up in Canada. All those truckers had their assets, seized extrajudicially. In other words, no judge was involved. No legal process, they just seize their assets without any rule of law. That's terrifying to me because that could happen. More and more in which case than what you have isn't money. It's social credit money, has to be something that you can own. That's what you're right to property is And so we were looking at these problems and saying there's got to be a solution.

1:20:17 We've got people, lots of people out there have been saying for a long time, like Mike Maloney, like like this Kelsey Williams. Is it that? I just listened to on the Mormon Renegade. Yep, a lot of people saying for a long time. Gold is money, gold as money, but gold was never useful as money. It was just too hard to use. So we thought, how can we break it down? And make it fungible fungible? Interchangeable. And that's why we invented the gold back so, yeah, I guess that really what is the introduction to Gold back? Is the very simple idea that gold is real money and it is now available in a usable form, a more usable format, it's ever been available in the history of mankind. Some ways were technology company. We made a technology in Gold that's never existed before to be able to verify.

1:21:13 Very small amounts of gold for regular transactions. Make them actually interchangeable. And so, yeah, that's what that's what that's what gold backs are, gold backs are real money in your hand and And there's a that matters, it really matters because all of our human rights, all of our dignities, all of our our laws, right? If you want to have your rights respected, you have to have the tools in place to do that. This is the one problem I suppose with Anarchy. You can't have a complete Anarchy because then what happens when somebody is taking away your property or is Elating, you you need some system, some tool in place to say, no, you can't do that, right? The problem is with our, with our fiat currency, there's no check about, there's no safety valve. There is no safety net.

1:22:14 They just do whatever they please. And we have to hopefully, go along with it. They're just hoping it will go along with it. There's accountability in gold gold has that, that quality of just being something real that scarce and objective and measurable. And that's what really makes the best god-given system we've ever had to use as money. And now we've just made it available to the masses. You know, you can go in it with 5 or 10 bucks. You can be a gold owner and actually use it.

1:22:56 So yeah, I guess that's my basic intro to what the gold back is and I hope that it'll be a tool it even if it isn't the final tool. I hope that it will be a tool that helps us bring a little bit more accountability and honesty to our systems. And leads us to higher principles, higher values so that we can bring about Zion, you know, I think that some people think that enzyme maybe there won't be any money because we won't need money. I don't think that's the case. I think we'll still need money will still need a way of measuring things and valuing things. And it'd be like, saying in Zion. We won't need the metric system or Pounds or ounces or inches, right?

1:23:40 It'd be like, saying we didn't need measurements. It's money. You need money. Just at least as a measurement in order to figure out what you've got and how to how to administer those Steward ships. Responsibly right? We won't have, hopefully we won't have greed in Zion but will still use the tool of money I think as a measurement tool, so that we can be good stewards over that which the Lord gives us and I just feel like we've created a form of money. That is better than any form of money that's ever been invented before. It gives us a way to Value things. If I give you a price in Gold back, say seven gold backs. This thing costs seven gold backs, it's going to be a more stable measure of that value. Than anything that's ever been invented in the history of mankind.

1:24:27 Because it's stable, it's real and it doesn't change the way that other currency systems have often changed. Do I think you're 100% correct? Because again, I go back to the to the whole Tower of Babel thing and I think there's a lot of things you can take away from that story, right? One of them is is it was interesting to me that that one of the things the Lord said when he was Getting ready to scatter the people there and confuse their language is he says they have become one and nothing is kept from them. And I thought that was so strange because one of the things we strive for is unit is right, is to become one, right?

1:25:10 I think they were unified around in, correct principles, and in that same Rabbi, I told you about told me he said, according to oral tradition that was the first time mankind ever tried. ISM. Interesting, they were one right and if you see if you followed, What Marx is idea, was now obviously the Tower of Babel was before marks but really there's nothing new Under the Sun then, right? That was the first time that that it communist type system was instituted and the Lord found it. So displeasing that even in their unit. He's like no this isn't going to stand. And so now we see it once again, creeping its head up, only this Time we have a currency that's not grounded to anything and we can build that currency Tower to infinity and it won't mean anything, but I have a strange because it's not built on the right principles is literally because the fiat currency, it has no Foundation, right? The dollar is not based on anything, it's a floating building in the air.

1:26:14 Like, like, what Nephi and Lehi saw in the vision, right? When they saw that the world was like, a great and spacious building, with no Foundation floating in the air. And see, I just thought that was you. What our economy is, right? I always thought that was City Creek, but I guess I'm wrong anyway. Yeah, I think we've just built this system. That is just so tall. Now that it's going to come down, right? The other thing is and we operate will be the fall thereof according to a. Yep. And, and yeah, the laws of economy are a lot. Like the laws of physics is some point. They're going to be obeyed, right? It's just, how long can you stall it out? Or comes crashing back down and I think I think if we don't diversify a little bit and that's the other thing, right? We all feel it, especially you know, traditional LDS folks or Mormon fundamentalist, We Know Something Wicked, This Way comes with the economy and we have some time yet. I'm not sure how much, but why not start getting Diversified and start building those networks now, Exactly. And besides all we're really talking about doing is growing more of our own food supporting each other a little bit better. And having something of real value against any hard times that may come and it doesn't necessarily take the actual Apocalypse of John, doesn't necessarily have to take a collapse of the dollar system to start doing something better when you can write absolutely

1:27:46 yeah, why wait until you have cancer to quit smoking. Looking exactly. You might as well do something a little healthy today. It doesn't mean you have to give up ice cream today. You know what I mean? You can do. You can just also remind yourself that you should eat your veggies, right? One doesn't necessarily preclude the other. And so, you know, I really have a great deal of hope that this is the beginning of something very big very, very big that could really, really save us in these times of Crisis and Why not band together a little bit more, a little bit better and, you know, and get that Mutual support.

1:28:28 Absolutely, I couldn't agree with you more. Like I said, at the very beginning of this podcast, there was when you described it to me. I knew there was something to it by couldn't put my finger on it. And as time goes on, it seems to crystallize and get more clear as to how this can be a benefit to us as a people. So and first Thanks for what you do with with that. Because again I feel like it's super important and while I don't have everything down on how it fits, there is something to it and and there is something of value there and then next and it's a continuing tradition, in fact, here's a fun little said, bit of history for me to end on in the earliest days of Deseret. The Deseret asks they house I think they called it essentially the The earliest form of money in Deseret when they were trying to establish, the United order out here in the desert and before the United States government was even really on the horizon.

1:29:30 Completely. As far as having any jurisdiction over the, what was essentially, I believe the Sovereign Nation of Deseret defacto. Even if it was an internationally recognized as such was that they decided they need to put together some money. And so they created, what is now known as the Mormon gold, Mormon, gold coins and on those merman gold, They put the inscription Holiness to the Lord and eventually they and later on, they even put the inscription Holiness to the Lord in the desert. Alphabet on those. On those on those on those coins with a lion for the strong Lion of the tribe of Judah, which is often usually interpreted as meaning the Christ. And so those those old coins are part of an important tradition. Well, gold backs are kind of a Revival or a continuation of that tradition.

1:30:19 Of Mormon gold. And if you look at the 50 Utah gold back, you will see that there's a lion and the lamb at Liberties feet for the lion shall lie down with the lamb, right? But off to the side by the lion, there's a stone and engraved in that stone. In the picture is an inscription in the desert alphabet and it says Holiness to the Lord So that's something for you. Yeah, that's awesome. That's like coming through full full circle again. So that's awesome. Well, that's on that. It's so that's on the Utah, 50 design. So that's awesome. All right. Well, Ben that was awesome, man.

1:31:01 I appreciate you coming on again. Yeah, thank you. And, you know, we're gonna have to actually talk about religion and theology sometime. I know, right, dude. I feel like we're just in this weird Mormon. This weird fundamentalist, Mormon moment, like I was just watching on Netflix. Now the the new pot shots were getting is about Chad and Lori day Bell, right? So now that is one sad. It's sad and that's one more thing that I feel like we have to address, right? We have to get the full story on it and then we have to talk about it. And right. And that's why you're probably going to have to link to my other episodes. You're on the Roman Renegade because I was talking about violence in communities and how How dangerous it is and how, and how invisible it is. Nobody thought.

1:31:50 When Chad day Bell was, you know, a lotta de plotted, Deseret book author vetted by the church that that that he was actually a serial killer. You know nobody thought that Lori valo was a serial killer, they thought that they were normal. Good Latter-Day Saints. You got to keep your eye out. Sometimes it's not the person you expect. And when you see dangerous warning signs you, man, you got to speak up because I'd be the only one who ever saw it as everybody else thinks everything's fine. You know, I saw that Lori, valo had her own podcast and I'm like, now I'm going to have to defend my podcast, right? No, I'm Mormon with a podcast does not equate. Sealer, serial killers, not a quite serial killer. There's lots of good people with podcasts or not crazy, right? But anyway, I love you.

1:32:41 And I always appreciate talking to you. Yeah, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Aeon, you bet, buddy? Bye everybody.