The following is an interview with Captain Capitalism, who wrote Enjoy The Decline…
1. First question I must ask is how’s the decline going? What are you filling your days with?
The decline is going good and bad. “Good” in the sense there is unlimited freedom and I do pack my days in with stuff I truly enjoy. My sleep has been not only improving, but increasing. I’m averaging around 9 hours of sleep a night. I run and work out every day and feel much better health wise. I play/blog on the internet and get paid. Have taken the occasional trip south to avoid the cold. And once it stops snowing here in Minnesota I’ll be able to head out on a couple motorcycle treks I’ve been planning.
The “bad” part is that having such freedom and liberty is the excess of time you have. You really need to work at keeping occupied and if you don’t, your mind will atrophy and you WILL get down. Nobody else is around as most of your friends are working 9-5 gigs and stuck in traffic till 7. And even then, when people get back from work they’re tired and don’t feel like going out. You are on a completely different time schedule than they are and must adapt. It is very much like what older people experience when they retire. After 50 years (in my case 15) of a day in, day out schedule, it takes a while for your brain to deprogram and adjust to a retirement-esque lifestyle.
2. Recently the big news was how Cyprus savers were going to have 10% of their money confiscated to bail out their failings banks. What advice do you have for Americans who hold savings accounts? If things get rough here, which assets do you think they will go after first?
My advice to people with savings accounts, checking accounts, and any kind of retirement fund is to diversify, diversify, diversify. You need to prepare for the chance that the government will come in and confiscate you bank and retirement accounts. At the same time you cannot convert all the money in your checking account into silver bullion. And as it just so happens I believe 401k’s and IRA’s (since they ultimately derive their value from the future earnings of the underlying stocks that compose them) are naturally hedged against hyper-inflation, so I wouldn’t liquidate those either.
What you want to do is have some “non-traditional” investments such as silver bullion, gold bullion, guns, skills and trades AND you want them in physical possession. The reason is two fold. First, such investments would dramatically increase should the government opt to nationalize your various savings and investment accounts. Second, in PHYSICALLY possessing them, the government cannot merely with a flick of a switch, transfer your electronically stored retirement account to the US Treasury’s coffers. A lot of people recommend owning “paper” silver or gold (meaning mutual funds that invest in gold or silver mining companies), but again, if that is on electronic record, you will be helpless to stop the feds from taking your investments electronically. You don’t need a ton (because if that happens prices of physical commodities will skyrocket), but you at least need SOME.
3. In my review of your book, there were many critical comments about libertarianism (I remember one saying that libertarians should move to Somalia). Why do you think there is such a knee-jerk reaction to this ideology?
You got me. The libertarian ideology is what America was founded on. Both SOCIAL and ECONOMIC freedom. You leave me alone, let me practice whatever religion, marry who I want, smoke whatever I want, and let me keep the vast majority of the fruits of my labor – as long as I’m not hurting anybody, it’s all good. How you can argue against a system like that, I don’t know because it is the most adult and successful political model ever devised. I believe it is either people who are too lazy to read up on basic libertarianism or libertarians themselves who speak poorly and give the rest of us a bad reputation.
4. I gave my 16-year-old brother your book Worthless, where you advise against picking a liberal arts major that will not lead to a good job. You advise students to pick a STEM major instead, but with the economy going the way it is, do you still think STEM is safe? What advice would you give my brother today?
You are absolutely correct and I do try to address that in one of the chapters about how not all STEM degrees are safe depending on economic circumstances. For example computer programming was the cat’s meow back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s until somebody realized Punjab in India can do it for a fraction of the cost than somebody in Palo Alto. There was a bio-medical bubble that (though outshone by the Dotcom bubble) left more than a handful of biology majors high and dry. And petroleum engineering (considered the highest earning field) can suffer as oil booms and busts occur.
A good bit of advice when considering a STEM field is to ask “does the job require a physical presence or can it be outsourced over the internet?” This makes even a trade like being an electrician a much more lucrative and stable field than computer programming. However, overall STEM majors are a better bet than liberal arts even if you choose one that is not in demand in that you can re-purpose your original degree into another STEM field that is in demand.
5. Your newest book has sold well and your profile has risen. How do you see your role in the next five years as a critic of liberalism and feminism? What do you hope to accomplish?
Mockery, ridicule and “I-told-you-so-ism.” There really isn’t much I can do to stop the overall educational, demographic, sociological and political trends in the United States and Western societies. This IS a democracy, and if people prefer to watch “Teen Idol” rather than educate themselves about government finances then it is a fool’s errand to try to break through to these people. My life is too short for that.
Instead I will continue to point out the absurdity of both religions (leftism and feminism) not just to increase the blood pressure of their adherents, but do what I can to help the younger generations avoid the fate that most leftists and feminists suffer. I also plan on living my life to it’s maximum level of enjoyment and fun. Not just for my sake, but to lead by example and provide people not so much “hope” as much as it is some general guidelines or advice that will make their lives easier. Besides, nothing angers a feminist or a socialist more than a bachelor who refuses to work, refuses to pay taxes, refuses to have children, refuses to “work for the commune,” and instead lives life solely for himself, achieving things they never will.
Read More: Captain Capitalism
Good stuff.
“Worthless” was the most informative book I ever read. Had I not picked it up, I’d still be majoring in film.
“The libertarian ideology is what America was founded on.”
This is false. The man responsible for early economic policy was Alexander Hamilton, who was far from a libertarian. He created high tariff walls, a national bank, subsidies to industry, etc.
Sorry, but Jefferson was much more influential, in writing the D of I, Bill of Rights, and serving two terms as president where he downsized the military and abolished the then-equivalent of the IRS.
Jefferson preferred state governance to federal governance, yes, but he was by no stretch of the imagination a libertarian. More importantly, it’s impossible to understand the origins of the US without either Jefferson or Hamilton…Hamilton almost certainly had more influence in some areas and Jefferson undeniably had more influence in others, but to dismiss either of those intellectual giants is quite misled.
I think Jefferson and Hamilton were both good so long as they could find balances between their different philosophies. I’m not a historian, but this is what I’ve learned about the two men so far:
Jefferson represented horizontal, agrarian, libertarian values. Values like self-determination and voluntary associations between people within communities – REAL communities, where people knew each other well and genuinely cared for each other. Jefferson was a small-farm, small-town kind of guy.
Hamilton was cosmopolitan. He represented vertical, urban, financial interests; more centralization of wealth, more clique-y associations between moneyed interests. Hamilton’s banker-types were necessary for financing the construction of ambitious, expensive projects like bridges and shipyards.
To the American people, the Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian interests were symbiotic. Jefferson looked out for the little guy, championing individual liberty, while Hamilton’s financiers and tycoons helped provide valuable infrastructure to boost the GDP and trading power of the colonies.
Unfortunately, as Jimmy Conway pointed out, Hamilton’s people basically crushed the Jeffersonians, destroying the delicate balance in the process. America today is a society of lonely atomized individuals, cut off from long-term, meaningful relationships with neighbors and even family (How many of your neighbors are strangers? How many of your immediate family members live a 1,000+ miles away? Doesn’t this seem a little eerie to you?)
With no horizontal Jeffersonian forces to restrain the Hamiltonian forces of centralization, we now live in a society that relentlessly marches towards bigness. Bigger banks that get bailouts when they fuck up their risky investments, bigger government that intrudes into people’s personal lives, bigger standing armies that require constant tribute from tax payers whether they’re fighting or not.
In a small town, a hobo or drunkard is still a human being you talk to face-to-face. If you need your chicken coop painted, you can hire him and give him a meal. In a big city, these lowly people are mere abstractions. The elites go to $10,000 a plate charity banquets to celebrate the creation of an action-committee to “make poverty history” by hiring a bunch of social workers who don’t really give a fuck and won’t accomplish anything. You can’t really make a difference in an unfortunate person’s life without spending time with them personally, which is exactly what insular, sheltered elites want to avoid.
The best solution I’ve got is to save some money, learn some practical skills, get the hell out of the cities, and find a nice rural community where people rely on their fellow man instead of system, where people look to each other instead of television and facebook for companionship, where people go to Bob the local mechanic instead of the car dealership if their car breaks down, where your neighbors would even run to pull you out of your burning house instead of just calling 911 and standing on the street, watching your house burn. I know people who live in such communities, and whenever I visit them, I’m shocked at how calm, optimistic, and content they are compared to city-dwellers.
In short, I would aim for going Amish-lite. The social unrest accompanying Cap’n Capitalism’s “The Decline” will be much, MUCH worse in SWPL cities than in small towns where people trust and rely on each other.
Seems like a luddite philosophy. Cities, big cities, are part-in-parcel to the development of great societies. They represent the strongest human efforts economically, culturally, politically. They are what define regions and nations and by extension entire continents.
Further, it’s all too obvious that the drunkard is still regarded as a drunkard and still acts like a drunkard in the small town. As you noted there’s no doing away with poverty, which means it’ll show up in the city or in the town or in the hamlet. Sure, in cities there’s a greater concentration of failures, but there’s also a greater concentration of successes as well.
Of course, if you prefer town or rural life to city life, there’s nothing wrong with that preference, I’m not trying to say that, just that cities aren’t the root of all evil.
Big cities are vain, effeminate, and ultimately tyrannical. They essentially exist because of idolatrous worship of skyscrapers and other elaborate and frivolous creations of large collectives. Initially their growth gives rise to a certain amount of pride and team spirit, but this fades and then they have to be maintained by huge bureaucracies that leech vast amounts of resources from the countryside, sapping individual initiative and reducing incentives for honest work.
It is no exaggeration to say that the growth of big cities leads directly to a feminist police state.
Nonsense, one may find worship of skyscrapers in NYC (which existed as a large city long before the first skyscraper was even drafted as a blueprint) but not in Rome or Seville or Quebec; one may find huge bureaucracies in cities but one may also find massive agricultural subsidies and bureaucratic involvement in the countryside (ie electrification as part of the New Deal) just as easily; one may find laziness and lack of initiative readily enough in the village and all manner of innovation and industry in the urban environment. Thus, to put it mildly, your assessment is as erroneous as can be.
The countryside gives to the city and the city gives back to the countryside. Perhaps you can consider that the next time you ponder why so many farmers prefer to use mechanized methods (sapping their “individual initiative” in the process, of course). Far from the simpleton’s answer of one or the other, it’s the successful combination of the contributions of both components that makes a society stronger.
Answer me this: what would Greece have been without Mycenae or Athens? What would Rome have been without Rome? Nothing, that’s what. Yours is a celebration of that nothing, a rejection of the complexity inherent in all civilizations. Get thee to the idyllic countryside, then, and leave the building of great things to those who understand them.
“If civilization was left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts”…
very true. all the gold in the world don’t mean shit if you don’t know how to reap and sow your food, kill and hunt, or learn any kind of tradeable skills WTSHTF. One of the best tradeable skills is social connections. much more valuable than any other commodity
if there’s a huge crash Grok and the luddites win. city slickers get fucked on.
markus is just pointing on how crippling dependency on the network the system, government and corporations are to city folk.
i have regular conversations with engineers wracking their brains over what will fuck us up first, debt or peak oil.
either way when its no longer profitable for say logistics trucks to carry food and produce round the country, or the gas price is hiked higher than the trucking firms can compete with. the system is fucked.
it goes to a standstill
only hope then is either making connections with people who have farms or having and owning one yourself.
and crucially guns.
you really think people are going to respect property laws when the current economy goes tits up?
You raise an interesting point. I would add a different dimension though. From an anthropological view, the rise of cities leads to economic prosperity, religious solidarity, regional hegemony, and military supremacy. Look at the Greek City States or Rome and see how they dominated their neighbors. This to me seems to ultimately be the natural state of humanity.
Hmmm, Interesting points I remember reading that traditional Sub-Saharan African societies were managed by women.
One advantage of the small town over the city is that the small town’s inhabitants are better able to distinguish the hobo from the drunkard; since everyone knows everyone else, folks will know who’s genuinely fallen on hard times through sheer bad luck and who’s in the position they are as a consequence of their own foolishness.
A guy holding a ‘Will work for food’ sign in a small town has a reasonable chance of someone offering a meal in exchange for a little manual labour (painting fences, harvesting crops, whatever). The same can’t be said for the same guy holding the same sign in a big city; the former is a genuine request for a hand up, the latter merely begging for a handout.
Concur. First ever to pay off the national debt and looked to abolished the Federal Reserve, then survived an assassination attempt for his efforts. …anyone see a pattern forming?
He also retained the national bank, purchased the Louisiana Territory and waged war on the Barbary pirates. And Jefferson was not more influential when it came to economic policy. We had high tariff walls for most of our existence as a country.
It’s interesting how the people who are quickest to criticize Jefferson for not simultaneously solving all the world’s problems– abolishing slavery, getting rid of banks, curing cancer, etc.– are the people least interested in the incredible things he did accomplish.
So what have you done lately for individual freedom?
I’m not criticizing him. I’m pointing out that he wasn’t a libertarian (neither am I). And my point stands that Hamilton was more influential when it came to economic policy.
Not to mention Jefferson’s ownership of human chattel, which isn’t exactly libertarian.
Also, Jefferson didn’t write the Bill of Rights, though he was a supporter of it. Madison was most responsible for that document.
The more I read of Captain Capitalism the more I like this guy. Bright fellow.
http://www.zerohedge.com, another hard hitting econ blog with a libertarian bent. We’ve been talking about the decline for months and months. Depressing. Forget about marriage 2.0 the US needs its own reset to 2.0. We need an aesthetic revolution: read inner game as in self actualization.
I often read ZeroHedge. Good stuff on economics that is more understandable than the deliberately obtuse sounding MSM. Someone can go and actually understand what is going on, which is terrifying the first time you realize the implications of the system we live in. I would also reccomend survivalblog.com for its insights on disaster survival, both short and long term. it also has information for CC’s “non-traditional” investments.
always always upvote zerohedge. i’ve learned more from that then any other man, media or books ramblings in the last 5 years
The greatest Book in my Opinion on Libertarianism;
Hans Herman Hoppe “The Great Fiction”
“Besides, nothing angers a feminist or a socialist more than a bachelor
who refuses to work, refuses to pay taxes, refuses to have children,
refuses to “work for the commune,” and instead lives life solely for
himself, achieving things they never will.”
Best
line, but I worry about you being targeted by the IRS fascists who want
to steal men’s money and give it to women, single mothers, affirmative
action, public sector bums and college-funded man haters. I hope you
collect payments under the table and don’t report them to state thugs.
And who is white. They are only mad if he’s white.
Not true, black men have been driven out of their families by the state. That’s why ghettos are so violent and lawless, single mothers and sistas emasculating boys and turning into angry depressed men with something to prove. Hispanic men are the hardest workers in America, they’re routinely paid slave wages and send most of their money home to family. If you turn this into a white man vs colored man you shoot yourself in the foot and you’re not serious about fighting feminism. Keep your mindset on (all) men vs disrespectful cunts and manginas. I don’t prize white bitches over other bitches.
If your high net worth in the UK, you are setting up trusts in Belize. “Own everything, control nothing”. If this US keeps punishing producers, (divorce of the country) will steadfastly rise.
I’m serious about fighting feminism. But I’d still rather live in Sweden than in Hati.
In feminist police state United Kingdom, men pay 72% of all taxes and women only pay 28%, yet the majority of government funding and support goes to women and almost nothing for the benefit of struggling men. I bet the same sort of blatant ripoff occurs in the USA and other countries. Democracies just suck, they’re a woman’s system of governance.
that’s a fascinating statistic, where is it from?
See the table, last row titled “Proportion of collective income tax liability”
http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/government-tyranny/he-who-pays-the-piper-calls-the-tune-or-does-he/
It’s worse in Ireland!
Agreed, Just look at the demographics of any privately run shelter for that answer. If you said Social Democracies then I would agree but I disagree with more libertarian type governance.
Enjoyed this article thoroughly, especially the last excerpt: “nothing angers a feminist or a socialist more than a bachelor who refuses to work, refuses to pay taxes, refuses to have children, refuses to “work for the commune,” and instead lives life solely for himself, achieving things they never will.” Loop-holing the system seems to be the only sure way to achieve a wholesome life now in this declining western society. Like CC said, perhaps stop watching reality t.v. shows and focus more on a creative way to earn your living than texting Ryan Seacrest your vote on who will be the next Justin Bieber. Great read, thanks.
My main point of disagreement with the Captain is on libertarianism. He’s right about feminism of course, about avoiding worthless degrees, and many other things. But libertarians suffer under the myth of the self-made man. They over-emphasize individualism. When men band together into communities much can be accomplished. Society choosing to tax in order to pay for education, roads, police, firemen, etc that benefit everyone is a good thing, and something the founders were not opposed to in the least. Read the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, he launched many projects for the public good.
…the problem is that it has to be a VOLUNTARY banding together to achieve something that they all feel they benefit from; a value-for-value exchange.
No average working man would voluntarily chip into the parasite-programs out there today because they get nothing out of it. The only thing that happens is it frees up the parasite class to reproduce and make more mouths to feed for the working man.
I know we’re all supposed to feel privileged that we provided some “underprivileged” terd a 3-bedroom house, but I just can’t feel it.
Yep. Liberals have a bad habit of being deliberately obtuse when it comes to the one of the central libertarian ideas of voluntary cooperation. Most Libertarians will admit that there are times when that is not possible, but you give a liberal an inch and they will take a mile.
Fucking Spontaneous Order – how does it work?
You’ve misunderstood Libertarianism. It’s all about non-coercion.
Sure people can come together – that’s what makes a society but it’s based on voluntary co-operation. Without the individual there is no society.
Walter Block explains it well here;
There’s been a few exercise types of articles on your website, I was wondering if you could do a few specific-subject types of articles about how to build certain muscle groups.
For example, a lot of men do flat bench presses and build a good lower chest, pecs, but their upper chest remains sorely lacking and so they end up with a kind of man boobs. Perhaps an article talking about how to build up upper chest mass?
Or an article talking about how to build different areas of the abs, and side abs (I don’t know the scientific name for that area)?
Or an article talking about how to loose weight, lose fat, from specific areas of the body, like the stomach, the sides of the waist, and so on.
Just a few nice ideas for a few new articles.
John, this product is the business (I have no affiliation with the company).
I just think the Golden ratio theory holds true
http://products.adonisindex.com/
Yea that’s cool, I don’t have any money to buy that guy’s stuff.
I personally have a decent lower chest but am going to switch to only Inclined exercises to help build up the upper pecs, which is a problem area for a lot of guys.
Rusty Moore’s program Visual impact muscle building is good too.
Again no affiliation
http://visualimpactmusclebuilding.com/?hop=jideneye21
you say no affiliation so why does the web address have =jideneye21 at the end of it?
nigga you lying
Haha that’s a clickbank link, dude. I know cause I use it too.
Anyway, if any of the editors of the site read this comment, could you also run an article about vegan or vegetarian diets? You’ve already run one about paleo, so let’s keep it balanced. I’ve seen pictures of some vegetarian bodybuilders, and damn, being vegetarian isn’t going to stop you from getting ripped or getting buff.
dude i think dangerandplay is your site for that sort of stuff man, he;s routinely put up a few links of select vegans he thinks are alpha.
if you can check out his twitter from a few weeks back he’s got a few links
“Besides, nothing angers a feminist or a socialist more than a bachelor who refuses to work, refuses to pay taxes, refuses to have children, refuses to “work for the commune,” and instead lives life solely for himself, achieving things they never will.”
I wish I could think like that, but I can’t, I really want kids. So be it.
You can have kids, just do it in another country that doesn’t have radical feminism.
Find a non-Western wife, have kids with her, possibly live in her country, or a country where there’s no institutionalized feminism. Asia would be ideal, but if you aren’t into Asian women there’s Russia, Eastern Europe, and some parts of Latin America.
“The libertarian ideology is what America was founded on. Both SOCIAL and ECONOMIC freedom”
are you out of your fucking mind- america was founded by people fleeing religious persecution and to set up their own christian dictatorship, worked ok till the jews funded george washington to war with the home country over high taxes— when taxes in american colonies were much lower than in britain.
libertarianism is nice idea, but human nature makes it impossible to implement.
When you say physically possessing gold, excuse my stupidity, but do you mean buying gold bullion and keeping it in your house per se? As i’m looking into buying gold myself.
I’d recommend storing some offshore. Why leave it all in your house for the government to make worthless if they declare it unusable… or confiscate it?
The best STEM degrees are electrical engineering, chemical engineering, and material science engineering. These degrees offer more flexibility and will open more doors than most other STEM degrees. They are also the most demanding in cognitive ability and study time. You definitely want work that is “hands on” and must be done on site. This is the kind of work that cannot be outsourced easily.
“A good bit of advice when considering a STEM field is to ask “does the job require a physical presence or can it be outsourced over the internet?””
this is some gold level motherfucking advice
right up with nassim taleb black swan non scaleable job type shit there
”Besides, nothing angers a feminist or a socialist more than a bachelor who refuses to work, refuses to pay taxes, refuses to have children, refuses to “work for the commune,” and instead lives life solely for himself, achieving things they never will.”
“Try looking into that place you dare not look, you’ll find me there staring out at you!!”
Good software developers are in high demand, especially those who know web or mobile. Moreover, while it’s true that a job not requiring physical presence can more easily be outsourced, anyone in the world can hire you. This means those with strong programming chops have a global market for their services. It’s not obvious a priori which effect dominates, but my intuition is that there is a sustainable boom in software. I predict that, if you learn how to write HTML5 web apps, you’ll never want for work.
Why is this such good advice when the USA allows companies to import STEM workers from abroad, called H-1B Visas? Granted these fields are better the jobs you might find with a liberal arts degree but thanks to unchecked mostly male illegal and some legal immigration no one job is safe until this problem is addressed.