Welcome back to another T-Rex talk. My name is Isaac Botkin, but I want to introduce you to a friend of mine. As you know, a couple of weeks ago I talked to my brother, Noah, about his sort of not first impressions but sort of initial impressions spending a little bit of time in Europe and pointing out the differences between Europe and America. But we thought will be great is to talk to someone who lives in Europe and has spent a little bit of time in America, to get the other side of that perspective, to get the initial reaction, some of the obvious key differences. So I would like to introduce you to my friend, Ricardo. Ricardo, how are you doing?
Ricardo:Hi, good morning. I'm doing really well, isaac, excited to be here and excited to talk about the observations over the last couple of trips to the United States across the pond.
Isaac:So you're in Holland, but you've traveled, I'm sure, around Europe and you've done a fair amount of traveling. But let's talk about Holland for a moment. We were together in the States weeks ago and you've been to the States many times. What are some of the big differences when American tourists like my brother, noah, go to Europe? Actually, he said he's a terrible example of this because he lives in rural America, which is, and rarely goes to the cities, but then when he goes to Europe he goes to the city. So it's not an apples to apples comparison and, as you know, in America there's a pretty massive difference between rural and urban cultures, politics, economics. Is that the case in a country like Holland?
Ricardo:So the Netherlands is pretty small. I think if you compare the Netherlands just based on sheer size, just the size of the country there's a square miles of square kilometers, whichever metric you want to use it's comparable to a smaller sized state in the United States of America. So, first and foremost, to set the stage, I think it's if people ask me what are the key differences between the Netherlands, or Europe for that matter, and the United States of America, you know there is no such thing as there is no such thing as the America or the United States. There's so many differences there, so many differences between, like you say, rural or urban areas. There is states across the coast that look very different, feel very different, different than the ones you would find in, say, the Heartlands, midwest. I equate it to its own continent. If you travel from, say, sweden to Spain, you know that will be vertically about the same as I think about going from somewhere mid United States to South. But the cultural differences are, you know, you have a different language, you have a different culture, different foods, everything is very different. So I think that that's first and foremost to sort of set the stage.
Ricardo:Now, the Netherlands is very small. In that country. We have about two or three hours east to west by car. Just to give you a little bit of a feel of what that looks like in size, top to bottom it would be about three and a half hours. So it's really small. And there are differences. Yes, absolutely there are differences between, say, the bigger cities like the Hague, rotterdam, amsterdam, very urbanized, very mixed, part of all different sorts of cultures thrown in there together. It's very much urban brick and mortar what can you say? And then in the east, to the German border, it's more rural.
Ricardo:Yeah and a lot of farming a lot of good agriculture. Yes, so the Netherlands is the second largest exporter of agricultural products in the world, just behind you guys, and that is something that, for what, we can speculate about the reasons, but that they're on their attack the farmers, the farmers and fishermen. From regulatory standpoint, from government regulation I'm sure you've heard that across the pond what's the?
Isaac:So I have now. I am interested in this area. I used to live in New Zealand and New Zealand is also an agricultural. I would say I wish I had thought to look the numbers up ahead of time, but the New Zealand is an agricultural powerhouse. It is also a very small country and it has a pretty small population but it disproportionately exports a huge amount of agricultural products, mostly dairy, but all kinds of stuff. And that developed. That agricultural export capability developed when restrictions and regulations were removed in the 80s.
Isaac:There were a whole bunch of restrictions that were removed from the farmers in the 80s because they had to cut the subsidies. The government was out of money and for some reason they didn't realize that they could just print unlimited money and bankrupt everybody. So they cut the subsidies to the farmers. The farmers said this is great, you cut the subsidies but also cut these restrictions, and everything just exploded. It went from being a country that had a bunch of sheep to a country that did it. All kinds of dairy, all kinds of fruit, all kinds of just. It's amazing what comes out of New Zealand and how fruitful it is. And I think that Holland is similar. You don't have quite as much variety of climate, but the output per acre is amazing.
Ricardo:Well, there's that. Absolutely. I don't disagree with anything you just said, isaac. There is an asterisk. The asterisk in being the second largest exporter of agricultural products comes with the disclaimer that a lot of these products are being exported from the Netherlands but are not grown there. They're imported through the harbors of predominantly Rotterdam. So Rotterdam is this humongous. It's close to where I grew up, it's a humongous center for trade and that is really where the Netherlands has always had a reputation of strong mercantilism of trade. That's really our claim to fame.
Ricardo:That's what God is. The world reserve currency. In the 17th century the Dutch Gilder was the number one currency in the world East Indian Company, et cetera, et cetera. But that mercantilism is still represented, I think, in the harbors of, say, rotterdam, where a lot of these products are coming in from intercontinental places and are exported throughout the continent. So major throughput, that's the, the asterisk I want to add to that.
Isaac:Yeah, so when you come to America and you hang out in a place that is very big and you talk to Americans, what are some key differences? What feels the most difference when you come here and you get off the plane? What feels the most different when you get home and you make it back to your house?
Ricardo:Right, that's a really good question. So, first and foremost, my travels in the United States, just to put a little bit of context there, I've mostly been from, I would say, the East, mostly around Philadelphia, so Pennsylvania, and then South through Virginia to places like Tennessee and then, this time, georgia. I've been to California once, but the predominant amount of trips have been in sort of the central Eastern part. Now the major difference is, yes, vastness, outdoors, and a major love for outdoors and a sense of pride in doing activities like hunting, fishing. That's very much still and grained in the culture of the United States, of the people, which I love to see.
Ricardo:The Netherlands is pretty boring from that standpoint. We've got good infrastructure, but it's like a golden cage. It's as flat as a pancake. We don't have remote forests, we don't have massive hunting. You're like all of that's pretty much a golden cage. So that's one thing. Love for the outdoors, I would say, is very much prevalent still over there you can fill up a pretty standard SUV gas tank for about 50 to 60 bucks, I would say well, in the Netherlands you're paying, I would say, 110 euros. Well, euro to US dollar about now is close to parity, so it's close to double, which we in big part think the EU for that and its green ambitions. So that's some of the differences Driving around. You see the vastness of the country there is also I'm hesitant to touch upon this subject because it might be a little bit cliche but when we, as Europeans, grow up and see these American movies, we think about the American dream and what that is.
Ricardo:But when I go to the United States and I talk to people, especially small, medium-sized enterprises and doctor entrepreneurs like yourself, I see that I see that that's still reflected in in the culture. It's still very much present. I feel it. In the Netherlands there's a big push to Keep people in the middle class, both from from sort of upper middle class down as well as Sort of the lower middle class upwards, through subsidies and no government welfare Programs and those kind of things, whereas it feels and correct me if I'm wrong in the United States you have a real opportunity that if you really work hard and smart you can't break through that Chasm. Would you say? That's fair?
Isaac:Yes, I would say that that's fair. Now I feel like now that now that t-rex has has grown to the point where we're dealing with a lot of a Lot of regulations and restrictions, it feels like there are an awful lot of controls and yet the mentality I do think that Americans, generally speaking, assume that the American dream is possible. Now, certainly there's there's groups. There's groups who have been told that no, white supremacy has destroyed this and capitalism has destroyed that and the pay patriarchy has destroyed everything. But generally speaking, most Americans actually have a pretty optimistic view of Climbing some sort of ladder and so it is interesting that that that is the case now.
Isaac:This is an interesting historical point because Americans Some of the first colonists that came over to Plymouth and started the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the. The main story that we tell in America is these guys left Britain for for Religious liberty and they came to America for religious liberty. That's not exactly true. They actually went to the Netherlands. They were actually in the Netherlands, in Leiden, for about 10 years and they did have religious freedom in Leiden, but they actually came to America for more economic freedom. They said if we go to America, to this new world, we can build right. We can own land, we can create cities and value for our children, create opportunities for our children, and it's interesting that that's for everything that has changed over the last 400 years. I Do think that America still has that flavor, that that sense, culture, right.
Ricardo:It's a very much I'm going to do well for my family and work very hard, and so it's a family centric but very driven by a healthy form of capitalism kind of attitude. And and what I? What I find really interesting about that as well is there is such a thing in in the United States that I find, where people have something that they, that they stand for, whether it's the US identity, whether it's the strong family centric Del you system, they have something that they are willing to fight for, willing to stand for, willing to defend, and I think they have a strong sense of self-reliance, so taking responsibility over their own circumstances. So, going across the pond in the 16 1700s and Carving out a lifestyle, pioneering a way west to grab a plot of land, do a homestead and Carve out a lifestyle for your family, it seems like that's still present, whereas in a country like the Netherlands you know I enjoy living here, but it is like a golden cage. It's everything is sort of taken care of, it's outsourced, there's no need to take responsibility, we'll do that for you. Here you have this subsidy, here you have this piece of infrastructure. As long as you just pay your 52 percent taxes, you're good to go that kind of attitude, whereas you know, I do feel that in the United States, maybe because of its know that identity thing I was just talking to, or Just the sheer fact that you, at an affordable price, are able to carve out a little plot of land, yes, grow your own vegetables, have some cattle, you know, do some of that homesteading mentality, would you say that that could contribute to what we're seeing?
Isaac:I Think it does, and I think that there's.
Isaac:I think that it is largely I don't know, it's kind of a psychological thing Because Europe there there are disadvantage to America.
Isaac:Being so incredibly young, it's neat to go to Europe and visit cathedrals and colleges that are a thousand years old, to see the productive, civilizing work of centuries in a single city, buildings that that have history built into their walls, and yet there is also some value in Having our founding be so near, so recent. I think that that helps too. But I do think the land ownership is huge because the feudal system and every European nation did the feudal System a little bit differently, but land ownership was such a hard Thing to wrap your mind around, like if you didn't already own land you weren't going to. That was how a lot of previous centuries were in most of Europe. And coming to Americans Just like, oh yeah, if you just go west far enough, you will own land, all you have to do is, all you have to do is just travel a little bit further and you own land run. It's such a different psychological concept For folks who had grown up in Europe.
Ricardo:So, isaac, I just want to switch topics real quick, if that's all right with you, because you asked me about. You asked me about the major differences between the United States and Europe, but I would say there are some similarities and just because we were talking about yes, yeah, taking responsibility Absolutely.
Ricardo:I Would point out that there's a and then, and I want to have a productive discussion about it, not just complain. But I want to ask you Between Europe and the United States there seems to be a deterioration one in education, and I know you and your family were all homeschooled, but even you're in your brother yeah, you were homeschooled. So I want I want to ask you a little bit about that, but it's a duration education now there's also. So there's also faith and where that comes in and how that is woven into the culture and the families. And if you look at the differences between Europe and the United States me growing up I would say agnostic, but only recently having discovered Christianity and reading the Bible because of traveling to the United States and seeing what Christianity can also be like being put off by what I've seen in the Netherlands, which is more sort of a dogmatic. You know, blackscurves, you can't do this, you can't do that.
Isaac:Yeah, it is old enough. Yeah, it's old enough that there's maybe not quite as much vibrancy. There's been enough time that it can settle out. I think this is huge.
Isaac:Now the interesting thing is I was going to comment you have seen you are a. What exactly is that you do? You're like a business consultant, wealth consultant. So you are. When you come to the States, you are working pretty directly with successful some level of successful businessmen, people who have already put in some hard yards, people who are already really desiring to grow that ladder right. Right, you're already seeing I don't know the nice way to put this, but you're all you're seeing a more productive sliver, right.
Isaac:But when you're over here, you do see the deterioration.
Isaac:You do see cities falling apart and education standards slipping, and I think that the same ideas, the same ideas of secular statism, the same ideas of socialism, a lot of those came from Europe to America, and now America has a lot of really terrible ideas that we export to the world.
Isaac:So, so, unfortunately, those are some pretty, pretty distinct similarities as well. There's a lot of destructive ideologies that are pretty global, and I do think that homeschooling is one of the best yes, one of the best safeguards against this, and it is fascinating to me how many people I talked to about schooling and their kids are in school and they assume that the schools are exactly the same as they were when they were there, 40 years before Exactly, but there's a totally new generation of teachers and the assumption that the things will have not changed in the schools I think is foolish. But when you homeschool, you have a much better idea of what's going on, and I this this will be unpopular, but I guarantee you that if you homeschool your children, you will care about the outcomes more than any teacher. Yeah, you just will.
Ricardo:Yeah, that's where in the Netherlands. There isn't, there's no, there isn't a lot of private schools, it's a lot. That the public school system is is humongous. So this is again one of those golden cage symptoms. It's been, yeah, you know it's. It's very affordable. There are schools everywhere around closed distances, so you have a couple of options. There are still a couple schools that have, for example, a Christian base. Obviously, we have a lot of Islamic based schools in the bigger cities in Europe.
Ricardo:Now Maybe I should go back and first tell you exactly what I do. So I split my time between between two companies, so Slayer Investment Screens, and both of them have been founded by Catherine Austin Fitz. Slayer Investment Screens. What we do over there is we screen publicly listed stocks for fundamental productiveness. So we look at these companies and we say are they, is their business model dependent upon corporate voyeurism? Are they engaged in systemic fraud? You know is their business model does? Does it? Does it do harm to the, to the bigger picture of all the? You know the stakeholders quote, unquote that they engage with or are they doing something fundamentally productive, both for both for shareholders as well as for the people, to interact with the communities, their clients, etc. Nature, if you want to factor that in.
Ricardo:And then the other portion of my time I spent at the Slayer Report, which is the media business that Catherine owns and founded, and that is where I lead a program called Building Wealth, and when we look at wealth. So this is for predominantly 18 to 35 year olds, where we really focus on helping them find the information that that age class that can teach them about how to build wealth. And wealth is not just financial wealth to us, it's the financial equity, but it's also the living equity. So you know, just to take your situation, family and business wise, as a textbook example, you got seven siblings who are the majority of them contributing in the family business. Right, you're feeding a lot of mouse in your local community.
Ricardo:So you are doing a very productive business. You're feeding mouse there locally. You're building something, growing something that is educating people. It's bringing a lot of safety to the local community, it's bringing jobs to the local community and everybody's involved. So I would say that's living equity and financial equity that are going back and forth and supporting each other, right. So those kind of textbook examples is what we're trying to look at and say what are the components that we can teach this 18 to 35 year old, not exclusively, but that age class. How can we teach them about that? Because in the educational system you're not being taught about that. Right, it's your being, yeah, you're being educated to fit into this, this model which was designed in the 20th century, to, you know, early 20th century, to produce factory workers, factory workers and soldiers.
Isaac:Yeah, right, john Taylor, ghetto, I mean, he dissected it and I have a friend who actually I don't know that he will ever do this, but he talks about he wants to go to a school board meeting here in Tennessee and instead of it, like I was promised, mindless factory workers. What are they? I was promised drones for the, for the army. Where are they? What are you guys? You're not keeping up your part of the bargain.
Isaac:Yeah, yes, yeah no, exactly that was the the idea for government school Right, you know, everything can be centralized and then the education will will produce Uniform workers. Yeah.
Ricardo:Right. So so one, one way of countering that obviously can be homeschooling, um, and the the thing as well. If you look at a system like the Netherlands with a lot of public schools, you have to understand that these are mostly government funded to a big extent and and he pays, you know, gets to decide In, in, in, you know, in a big respect, what's being taught at those schools. So I would be as a, as a, as a father myself, you know I'm very skeptical about what I'm going to Expose my kids to when they go to school. You know, do I want to homeschool them? Do I want to set up my homeschool? Um, how do you want to approach this? So how do you do that with, with your situation, for example?
Isaac:So I am. I am very blessed, uh, in that I was homeschooled. So it sort of comes back to that psychological thing, like I grew up in a place where people can own land and build businesses. So I grew up just assuming that it's possible and having a rough idea of what it looks like. And my parents homeschooled us.
Isaac:I grew up seeing how homeschooling worked. It seems very doable, and so it's a pretty easy step for me to just say we'll just keep, we'll just keep, uh, we'll just keep homeschooling. We'll get, we'll see if there's new curriculum. But I know what it looks like, um, and that is, uh, a super incredible head start. Whereas a lot of people, homeschooling is is a big step. It does not look like what they've seen before, and a lot of times I uh, as the older I get, the more Stock I place in being able to physically see and touch something you can tell people all day you know, come to the new world, you'll be able to own land, but until you actually see People owning their own land, it's hard for it to kind of sink in. And homeschooling, I think, is exactly the same way.
Isaac:Um, firearm ownership Regular, regular just like everyday average joe is being able to own rifles and and just have them and go out and Train on their own is such a simple, easy thing for americans to think about. But, uh, I find that it's a giant gulf between us and european sometimes. Right, but it's also a giant gulf between us and and people who live in these very tight urban environments where they, where they never see people Um privately using firearms Exactly outside of maybe you know carjackings and crime right now very interesting in sort of last week.
Ricardo:The uh, the neighborhood that I live in, you have to understand, in the nettles the gun regulations are extremely strict. There's about I was told by police officer there's about 30 000 people in the nettles that are eligible to own guns because they're either a hunter or they are a sports Uh shooter, right, so they go to the range and they do target practice. So there's, there's there's really those two classifications. And then there's, of course, people that are in the higher Uh echelons of, say, the police force or defense, that are able to have guns at home. But that's a very tiny portion. So civilian owned portion is about 30 000 people. And what's the nettles right now, 17 and a half million People that live there. So it's, it's a very small portion. Um, right to be able to get there, I can tell you it's.
Ricardo:I've been through that process. So I hunt it's. It's a full year of theoretical exams, practical exams, full background checks, and once you're sort of through that, all of that, through that process, now you live in a glass box where the police can knock on your door every single day of the week, 20-24, 7, and they can ask to see your safe and if they find one cartridge on the floor your toast they take everything away. If your, if your neighbor decides to To ruin your day, he can call the police and say, oh, he's being very aggressive. I think I heard some shots or I think you know he was beating his wife. They can come up with a story and then the police will knock on your door and take everything away. Um friend of mine was recently caught with half a bear too much and, uh, you know, driving in, in in, uh, in his car, he lost everything. So it's, it's, it's very strict and uh, the european lens is biased by the media to a major extent. Every school shooting we see in the united states is being Enlarged. It's, it's. They capitalize on the opportunity to shape the bias even further.
Ricardo:Yes, we don't hear about the positive interactions with gun ownership.
Ricardo:I only saw that when I traveled to the united states and spoke to folks like yourself and heard about all the the positive ways which this can benefit a society and, like I said, in a country like the nettles with only 30 000 people in my neighborhood, two weeks ago, or one, one or two weeks ago, there was a shooting, but this was not a legal owned gun.
Ricardo:This was an illegally owned gun, right of course, every I would say every month for sure. In the city that I live, which is not a huge city, I think it has about 100 000 people, maybe it's not. It's not one of these like rutter dam or the hake, it's. It's smaller, but every month or so we have stabbings Like we're talking teenagers walking around right in the shed. Yeah, that's the situation that we're talking about, and when I traveled to the united states and talked to folks like yourself, I see a clear opportunity for self-defense in those kinds of situations where owning a handgun would definitely be able to offer an opportunity for that individual to protect themselves, which is a clear case.
Isaac:Now.
Ricardo:I'm very curious to hear your point of view when you sort of, or Noah's point of view when he traveled around Europe, because there are countries like Switzerland that have a higher capita gun ownership.
Isaac:It's very interesting. Yeah, so I did. I have asked him about that and again, when he's visiting tourist locations he's avoiding certain parts of town. I remember when I was in London last, I did go down to Little Cairo and I was amazed. This was years ago, this was years ago, and it was pretty amazing just how incredibly unlike London parts of London had already began to feel, and I think that it is really fascinating that there has been this assumption and you can do this if you have enough time you build into people this idea that your private protective equipment, your knives, and then later on your crossbows, and then later on your swords, and then later on your firearms these things are unnecessary because we've reached a golden age of safety and we've reached a golden age of people are no longer in danger.
Isaac:Governments may go to war with one another, people are no longer in danger, and then that narrative can stick, even when it's really obvious that people are in danger, the narrative that we have reached some kind of enlightenment era where the state will protect you and you don't have to protect yourself. That persists in American cities, where it's obvious that the state cannot protect you, and that exists in European cities, where it's obvious that the state cannot protect you and that there is literal, actual danger. And even I don't know if you what the perception was, but I thought I was fascinating. Here in the states earlier this year when Russia invaded Ukraine, People who were hardcore gun control advocates for America were saying like look at Zelensky arming his people. Look at those people, common people, picking up rifles. Yeah, go. And so was there a similar sort of appreciation of the common man picking up a rifle to go fight the invader in Ukraine, throughout your part of Northern Europe?
Ricardo:Frankly, there's not really a discussion around that. I mean, people are so far away from?
Ricardo:how would they even access guns in that situation? It's like again outsourcing all of that responsibility to the defense arm. It's just saying the military will pick that up and if I want to participate and utilize guns to defend my country or my family, if the things get really close to your city, I will just join the military. So it's completely expediting all of that to the military. So civilians and guns for protective measures? That idea has completely faded. There is no discussion around that, isaac, I would frankly admit in Europe.
Isaac:And it's kind of fascinating because it was World War II was a great time to have some Sten guns in your basement because the Allied militaries were doing organized fighting but sometimes they were unable to protect a town or a village, and having some Sten guns in the basement turned out to be a really, really useful thing for a lot of applications and that wasn't that long ago.
Isaac:So it is interesting how these ideas take. They take a lot of power and I have talked to people in really dangerous parts of America about how they don't need to be able to protect themselves and, yeah, the ideas are really sticky sometimes.
Ricardo:It's again back to that taking responsibility or just outsourcing that and having a false assumption. If you ask me, it's false that somebody else will defend you in that situation always. I mean it's especially in rural parts of the United States where it might take an hour before the sheriff is at your doorstep. You know that first hour is yours Right and you can defend your family. I take that very seriously as a father and I think about this a lot, and I don't think that guns are the issue. I don't think knives are the issue. I don't think machetes are the issue.
Ricardo:They can all be very useful in a specific contact. For example, I grew up doing martial arts, Kewkshin, Karate, fighting in championships, all of that. I could be a potential weapon, but I'm not, because there is a value system. You are using this tool for productive purposes. I think we should focus on that a lot. It's a cultural thing. It's about the value system, it's not about the tool. A knife can be used to cut sushi or to cut somebody. It's all dependent upon the guy holding the knife. We have to spend a lot of time on that. I think that goes back to how can we teach the young people, especially in that age bracket of, I want to say, 12 to 18?
Isaac:This goes back to another very sticky idea, which is a different martial arts. Teach this, but self-control is the ultimate mastery. Mastering yourself is the ultimate mastery. There is this idea that we have here in the States floating around, which is you need to be emotionally letting everything out, the idea that you would stifle emotions and stifle who you are naturally. That is insanity. Just letting it all out is healthy.
Isaac:As someone who has young children, you know this. The time to teach people that they can control themselves and they can control their emotions and not be just utterly driven by their own immediate thoughts that's something that you do really early. You continue to build mastery over your emotions. People will probably twist what I'm saying and turn it into this very unhealthy stilessness this ability to be in command and control of yourself and not kill somebody with a hammer because you're angry at them and you had a hammer in your hand at that moment. That's a pretty important life lesson. In America no one's talked about hammer control yet, but hammers kill more people than rifles according to the FBI statistic.
Isaac:It's fascinating to see in London cooking knives that are so useful are being replaced by cooking knives that are almost useless that make. Even the self-reliance that you have in the kitchen is being eroded because the self-control of the person holding the knife is being ignored. Self-government goes away if the state government gets big enough.
Ricardo:So what do we do? Do we just stake all the knives in London? Do we pass legislation and just go and confiscate all the knives? Of course we don't, right.
Isaac:Well, this is one of those ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure things. It would have been so much easier to teach these issues 50 years ago, 100 years ago, than today. It would have been so much easier to prepare these young men for the difficulties that they would have in life as small children, not as adults now. So this is something where I think that rebuilding is. One of the other fascinating things about Europe is Europe has had, because of the centuries of time that some of these countries have existed. You can see rising and falling economies, rising and falling cultures. You can see the back and forth as the pendulum swings from prosperity allowing people to slip into laziness, and then that laziness creating the hard times and the hard times creating the strong men who actually try to rebuild the stuff that was lost. There is a lot of historical precedent for this, and so there will be a hard road back, but I think there's absolutely a road back.
Ricardo:A clear example of what you were just alluding to is my grandparents were born in 1940 and 1945. So they grew up, started the war, and the war that's when they were born. So they grew up in that period where the Rotterdam area was completely bummed flat. There was nothing. Almost everything was destroyed over there. So going into that post-war period in Europe, they had to work two jobs, work around the clock. Back in that day, my grandmother, my mother, was born when she was about 20 years old, so she was having two kids and also working. My grandfather was working two jobs because they wanted to rebuild the country and it was a very hard time which created strong men that, in turn, built good times again. There's a sense of pride in that.
Ricardo:If you look at the generation right now who are just being handed a cell phone at the age of eight saying, hey, here you have access to the whole world. You just go lay on your couch and you can access everything through your phone. We'll teach you about all sorts of woke stuff in school. They're a whole idea of the world and what hard work is is completely skewed, and online there are no repercussions. So back to growing up in a dojo, in a martial arts very much a Japanese martial art karate is. Of course, it's very hierarchical. If you grow up in that system and you run your mouth or you have a tantrum, you'll be put in your place. So you have very strong role models who, if you run your mouth you will be put in your place.
Ricardo:So there are repercussions to the wrong behavior. There are very strong role models that you can look up to and follow and if you put in a lot of hard work, systematically over the years, you earn that black belt. So that's what I want to encourage my kids and a lot of other kids as well is you know, pick up a martial art, make it mandatory, Just say you have to get a black belt, and after that you know we can talk about doing soccer or football or whatever.
Isaac:You learn how to swim.
Ricardo:You learn how to defend yourself and you know you get your discipline in order.
Isaac:The system of discipline really needs to be to be sturdy and strong. This is one of the things that I people think that because T-Rex Arms is a growing business that God has blessed, that, everybody who works there is incredibly disciplined. I will tell you right off the bat that I am extremely lazy person and I would not do any of this work that is required just entirely on my own. These are things that my parents built into me. These are things that I continually run up against my own desire to not wake up early and record a podcast with somebody in a European time.
Isaac:George, I thank you To not do certain things, but the thing is, if you do have a system of foundation discipline that you can build on, then you can build almost anything onto it. And once you actually see the needs that exist in a community and you see the way that you can help, if you have that foundation of discipline, I think that you can just build almost anything onto it. So I am so grateful for my parents and your parents for plugging you into that. I don't know how popular is Karate and martial arts competitions in the Netherlands.
Ricardo:Martial arts is quite popular in the Netherlands because the kickboxing culture in the late 90s, early 2000s was huge. The Netherlands was the top dog in terms of kickboxing.
Isaac:You had to beat the Belgians. You had to beat some fucking damn.
Ricardo:You had guys like Ernesto Holtz, remy Ponjalski. They were in the K1, the number one kickboxing tournament in Japan in the world. All the big guys flew in there. They were all Dutch. The Dutch were the top dog over there. Out of that grew a lot of ambition for other people to join the stage. But that has washed down a little bit and I'm not sure whether that's a symptom of our time where, because of the good times, people are becoming softer. But there are pockets where there is a lot of healthy kids with good motor skills that are doing martial arts, that are doing judo, karate, kickboxing and learning a lot about real. They're being grounded through real world interactions, with healthy role models, with a healthy hierarchy where they're put into their place in the hierarchy in a healthy manner, and I think that's very good.
Isaac:I think that's pretty good. I think it is good. I think it's also fascinating that I'm sure that it took a huge amount of work. That period in time when the greatest karate practitioners were Dutch. Probably decades of people studying karate in the Netherlands came out of that. So even though that seems like on the grand scheme of culture this is a pretty small thing, that's a huge impact. I had no idea that. That was what spurred that on. A pretty small number of people made that a cultural touchstone that produced people with some discipline and they had a little bit of a broader horizon and had seen value in this.
Ricardo:How do we extend that, that model of having a very strong Example that impacted the culture in a very positive way? How do we extend that to, if I may use that term, wealth building? How do we teach young people about how to build wealth, how to build companies, how to build Enterprises that support their families, that support their communities? This is what I'm talking about when I say wealth building. How do we teach that? Yeah, how do we do that? I?
Isaac:Think that we find men and then we have to be careful because and my men and women, we will find examples for our children and they will not. They will not be perfect, right, I can tell you right now, we will never find a perfect role model for our kids. But if we, if we can teach our kids to appreciate the strength of Mastering karate to the point of becoming a champion and and say this is honorable, and we're gonna honor that aspect of that man's life, even though there may be something else, I think that there are some, some fascinating lightning rod people like Jordan Peterson is a great example. Right, I don't see, I was Jordan Peterson on everything. I don't want my kids to, to see him as an idol, but I do want my kids to see like, hey, if you have courage, like this guy and the world says oh no, no, if you, if the media talks bad about you, you're done. And Jordan Peterson stood up and said no, I'm gonna continue to speak the truth, because the alternative is far worse and it didn't actually, it was actually beneficial to people.
Isaac:If we can find people like that, elon Musk is another one. Elon Musk is a guy who's Weird, and I don't. I'm not entirely sure that he's an ally, but he's doing things that are worthy of pointing out and saying this was courage, this was perseverance, this was honorable, and and to just show our children like you can, you can honor these things that this gentleman has done, that this woman has done, these are things that are an encouragement to them and you've been teaching them discernment. At the same time, it'll be saying like hey, so you know this other thing that Elon Musk did the other day, like wanting to put microchips in people's heads that could have right, right, right.
Isaac:That may not be the right move here, living on Mars, possibly not pass priority, but but demonstrating persistence and courage, these are laudable things and we will point these out to our kids. We'll be able to discern the difference. I think that that is super helpful and I think that I Think that there's this all or nothing Mentality that exists in the world today, on both the right and the left, where Donald Trump has to be Absolute perfection, the literal God King You're not allowed to question him. And then, vice versa, donald Trump has to be absolutely, literally Hitler, even though he was a major Democratic donor, right, not that many years ago. So this all or nothing thing I think is is largely destructive right.
Ricardo:I very much, usually destructive, very much agreed. It's a polarization, it's the you're either blue or red, your left or right, your perfect or a complete disaster. There's so much nuance, all these situations, and I would I would just emphasize what you just said because I wholeheartedly Back that. Teaching our kids discernment, giving them the right map of the world and teaching them what's right, what's wrong and make that judgment themselves, that's an incredible gift. If we can teach him that, that's an incredible gap.
Isaac:It goes back as well to the, the abdication that you mentioned. Like if, if Donald Trump is the only solution to what's going on, then we'll just sit back and see. If he wins, you know right, but then if he doesn't win, there's no hope. So there's nothing that we need to do. So it's so easy that's, with that all or nothing thing, to abdicate, to just delegate to completely.
Ricardo:That's where check out you like to call that hope, or we call that hope, or, and it's just, there's this messiah who will come and he will Save the day. If you know, we all just vote on this one person. He will save the day and there's nothing we have to do. We can just lay on the couch and just be lazy and you know he will save the day anyway. And I think that's taking responsibility, teaching our kids to take responsibility. Go out and build something, get your hands dirty, get some callus on your hands. Yeah, I think that is. That's an incredible gift.
Isaac:We're coming up on on Christmas, and this is another example. We're currently reading through through some of the Gospels with the kids. When Jesus showed up on the scene, the, the, the folks around him, wanted a political messiah who would fix everything, and he was gonna come in, he was gonna take care of the Romans, and that was obviously not not what happened. That was not the plan of the messiah, and so it's. It is really interesting to think about this, this idea, and there's two ways to look at it.
Isaac:One is the, the message of the Gospel, and the, the story of God's Salvific work and his people and of Christendom and of all these things that have happened for 2,000 years, are either Well, this is no good, because it's not a perfect solution and it didn't happen instantaneously and I still had to put in some hard work or I Get to be part of this thing. I actually am seeing stuff play out In my communities, in my own life and the life of my family. I am a part of this, this story of this mission. So I'm just encouraged by what you guys are doing and I love it. Thank you so much for being on the show.
Ricardo:Thank you very much, isaac, for the opportunity. This is a real pleasure and you guys are a real inspiration. You.