Transcript
Speaker: Hey everybody, welcome to the Exit Podcast.
Speaker: This is Dr. Bennett.
Speaker: Tonight we got Cody Elijah.
Speaker: Cody blew up on Twitter after he quit his job as a physician's assistant rather than submit to a VAX mandate.
Speaker: Now he's building a construction business.
Speaker: We wanted to hear from him about the mandates, the phenomenon of guys leaving bug jobs for trades and entrepreneurship, and just the struggle for space more generally.
Speaker: So Cody, you're not the first person that I've talked to who is trading away a high status credential job for more freedom to do what you want.
Speaker: And, you know, there's a sense in which you were forced out of the job by the vax mandate, but obviously there's tons of people who just chose to get the vax and...
Speaker: So I'm interested in what led you to decide like the credential track, the professional course that you were on was worth interrupting for that.
Speaker: Well, I think there's kind of a couple parts to answer there.
Speaker: One was the big picture of what is going on in the world, you know, in terms of what they're using the vaccine mandates for, the changes that they're trying to institute.
Speaker: So that alone, just having a hard, you know, having a hard no,
Speaker: was a big part of it.
Speaker: But like you're saying, I think there's, you know, some of these careers, you know, probably were once very prestigious and, you know, doctors, lawyers, things like that.
Speaker: But my experience in medicine and healthcare just was never really all that
Speaker: fun.
Speaker: The stress is, you know, through the roof, you've got student loan debt, all these things that just made it really, really easy to walk away from.
Speaker: So when you put those two together, it wasn't a very hard decision.
Speaker: Yeah, they, I have this theory that like, because student loans are a way of capturing rents, like we're going to get to the point where essentially like the
Speaker: the marginal value of getting versus not getting the degree is going to be like as narrow as they can possibly make it just enough to convince you to do it and then slave and then make like a little bit more money, whatever they can persuade you to make, you know, to sell you on.
Speaker: And I feel like that process has accelerated as...
Speaker: bachelor's degrees have become increasingly like the necessary condition to get a job.
Speaker: It's like, they're going to, they're going to suck up as much as possible of that surplus value and leave you with just barely enough to get you to do it.
Speaker: And then something like the VAX comes along, you know, and that, that tips the scale.
Speaker: And it's like, well, now, now this is not worth doing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, I think I was in probably one of the sort of the, I'm 43 this year.
Speaker: So I was in college from like 97 to the like,
Speaker: 0203 doing my all my undergrad stuff.
Speaker: But I think I was in that last era really where that transition happened where the student loan laws actually changed right around then where you couldn't get rid of them in bankruptcy.
Speaker: Then when I got out that you couldn't even consolidate them.
Speaker: So yeah, I mean, I think I would my undergrad was in the kind of the old era where some friends of mine got out and got really awesome jobs in finance or whatever with a bachelor's degree and then
Speaker: because I went into medicine and got a master's degree as a physician assistant, it crossed me into that era, like you're saying, where the margins are razor thin and I would never do it again, you know, and it's just, it's got to be hard for young people now to have to make a decision like that.
Speaker: Yeah, it's absolutely, it's really challenging.
Speaker: I really don't know what to tell them.
Speaker: You mentioned,
Speaker: what they're using the vax mandates for.
Speaker: And you alluded to some of this on the base Brotherhood podcast, which I just listened to.
Speaker: But tell me a little bit about how you think that the vax mandates are being used.
Speaker: Well, if you do your research and kind of look at the people who are involved in all this and their own words and what they want to do, the vaccine mandate is basically like a Trojan horse.
Speaker: You know, it's a proxy for basically a biometric control over people to grant you the access into normal everyday, you know, activities, buying and selling.
Speaker: You know, you could call it Mark of the Beast or whatever.
Speaker: But in more real terms, it's a way to get you to think that it makes sense when it doesn't make any sense to lock people out of society, you know, over something that
Speaker: as, you know, I, what intimate, I guess, you know, as a vaccine, as an injection, you know what I mean?
Speaker: It's just beyond absurd, but that's kind of what they're rolling out is, is a way for them to control digital currency mixed with, you know, real time taxation, surveillance, and then control.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So the vaccine was a way for them to open that door.
Speaker: in a way that seemed to make sense to people, you know, that aren't paying attention essentially.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: The, the, the real-time taxation pieces, and that never occurred to me, but like with this digital currency thing, they're trying to roll out, they could easily tax your income before you even receive it.
Speaker: And then just, well, that's why they're trying to pass the law right now for taxing unrealized gains, like on your home.
Speaker: So when you know their end goal and you watch what they're actually doing,
Speaker: you, you know, you can see why they're trying to make those moves that we're seeing now, but they're never going to call it what, what the real reason is.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Um, I had a, I had an uncle who had some wild ideas about, um, well, a lot of things he was, you know, I think everybody's, if you come from any kind of a big family, everybody's got a conspiracy uncle.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: What was wild about that is like, there's still pieces of it that I'm like, ah, you know, I think, I think you might be off base there, but, but what was remarkable to me is like, none of it was proven like dead to rights, but everything that has happened in the last like five, 10 years,
Speaker: is really hard to explain from the assumption that everybody is operating under their stated motivations, but it all fits just like a brick if they're operating according to these nefarious intentions that he sort of promulgated ahead of time, that's what they were doing.
Speaker: So like I have this crow eating conversation that I have to have with my uncle.
Speaker: Because he was right.
Speaker: Yeah, which I'm actually kind of excited about.
Speaker: Yeah, it's pretty crazy.
Speaker: But the guy in my life, that was my best friend's dad.
Speaker: And he's been telling us for 20 years, you know, that once digital currency happens, it's all over.
Speaker: And he was like living off the grid his whole life.
Speaker: He never had any debt, lived totally off the grid.
Speaker: So I learned a lot from him.
Speaker: But I think almost fortunately, he
Speaker: he died right before, like right before it all happened.
Speaker: I don't, I don't, I don't know what he would have been, if he would have been able to handle it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Kind of go mad from the revelation a little bit.
Speaker: Like, Oh yeah.
Speaker: I mean, he would have been, uh, tooting his own horn to every, anybody who would listen for having to do it.
Speaker: Um, that, that off grid living piece is so interesting to me because, um,
Speaker: I try to be less.
Speaker: So I don't, I don't know if you know much about what we do at exit.
Speaker: We have like a group where we're basically built around all kinds of anti-fragility, all kinds of resiliency to, to corporate coercion, to government coercion, basically making it so that you can tell them to pounce in if you have to.
Speaker: And that includes, you know, that's like entrepreneurship.
Speaker: It also includes like homesteading, homeschooling.
Speaker: I did a podcast with a guy who does direct primary care.
Speaker: So you don't have to have health insurance, that kind of thing.
Speaker: the tension is always, we know that nobody's going to be totally exited.
Speaker: Nobody's going to, nobody's going to be totally independent of the system or free of the system.
Speaker: And so it's this, this, this debate of like, how, how far out does it make sense to be?
Speaker: And I want to get your take on like, how are you threading that needle?
Speaker: Where do you think is like the level of involvement that you want?
Speaker: Yeah, that's a really good question.
Speaker: And it's something that it's funny because so knowing my friend and his family, I think they were kind of at the point where you could kind of go rationally or in a sane way.
Speaker: But just for example, like they lived in a one room concrete block, basically a shed or a small building, you know, it was probably like 200 square feet or something with
Speaker: you know, the mom and dad and the two boys when he was in junior high school and they had no water solar, they didn't even have solar, you know, electric at that point.
Speaker: So it was all candlelight hauling in water every day, but they still went to school.
Speaker: Um, the dad was a substitute teacher.
Speaker: The mom, you know, did work at community centers and stuff like that.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: That, I mean, that's pretty out there.
Speaker: If you, if you really think about that, you know, you're showering at like the swimming pool, like rec center in town and all that you're cooking on a wood stove that you also heat your house with.
Speaker: That's pretty out there.
Speaker: Um, and so when I met them, when I was around 20, I got to kind of experience that.
Speaker: And I just thought it was cool.
Speaker: You know, it was like cool that they were doing it.
Speaker: Um, they had a few different properties and one of them was a little bit more normal, but, um,
Speaker: I think you can get a little, probably get a little bit closer to society than that.
Speaker: Um, I think technology too has helped where, you know, the solar, the solar, like they have in their place now, um, you know, it's like a couple of panels and they can run most lights and watch a TV and stuff like that.
Speaker: It's not a big deal.
Speaker: They have a well, um, that they use a gas power generator to fill a cistern and then it, so they're, they're still totally off grid on, on one of their properties, but, um,
Speaker: I think that's about where you can probably take it because if you go any more than that, I mean, one, it's really, really hard to live like that practically.
Speaker: And again, like you're saying, you're still going to have to go to town and go to Home Depot and get a nut or a bolt or go to the grocery store or whatever.
Speaker: So it doesn't make sense to go too far.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think about
Speaker: Not only because tribe is so important to me.
Speaker: And as I'm raising my kids, we're homeschooling our kids.
Speaker: And as I'm trying to make friends in a new area, I'm like, there's got to be connections to build.
Speaker: And I was talking to a guy on the last episode about this guy who basically became secular Amish and a very similar lifestyle, totally off the grid, hauling the water, et cetera.
Speaker: And at the end of his book, he's got this like, hey, if you want to live like this, like come live with me for two weeks and we'll try it out.
Speaker: And I want you to cut like it was very like hungry to have people join him because not a lot of people are willing to do that.
Speaker: And I think part of the puzzle that you have to solve when you're determining how off grid you want to be.
Speaker: is how, how isolated do you want to be, not just from the system, but from other people who might be potential allies and friends?
Speaker: Yeah, that, and that's something that, you know, my friend's family definitely dealt with, you know, very few people would even want to go out to their place.
Speaker: Cause it's, you know, to do that, you have to be pretty well outside of town.
Speaker: And it's just not for everybody that people aren't used to living in that rustic of an environment.
Speaker: And then when I built my own off-grid cabin, as soon as I became a PA and ran into the same thing, nobody would ever want to go there.
Speaker: Do his kids do anything like that?
Speaker: No, the two boys, yeah, the brothers, they definitely are still in that sort of mindset.
Speaker: mindset.
Speaker: They do lead a little bit more normal lives, you know, than their father or their parents did.
Speaker: You know, they have sort of normal careers and stuff and have properties that are, you know, homes that are a little bit more normal.
Speaker: But yeah, it's still a big part of them.
Speaker: And they, like you're saying, they have that, their family had roots for so long that they have that network of people that are, you know, into it.
Speaker: and are willing to help.
Speaker: It just takes a lot of time.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So speaking of not being too far out of society and having social connections, I mean, you've had a pretty storied history.
Speaker: I remember talking to you and you were saying you were a PA in California and then you were in Nevada at one point.
Speaker: I believe most recently you were in Washington and that's where you got fired, even though your wife was able to work.
Speaker: And then you moved all the way across the country to Florida.
Speaker: So how has that process been in terms of trying to figure out things as a family?
Speaker: And now that you're in a completely new place, trying to set up with a new career,
Speaker: Um, you know, how far out of society are you, um, are you still trying to get a job as a PA?
Speaker: Have you given up on the medical industry?
Speaker: I mean, you've been through a lot of transitions.
Speaker: Um, what has that exit process been like for you?
Speaker: Yeah, it's been, it's been kind of weird.
Speaker: Um, and it's, I, I've had to sort of, you know, kind of reconsider all of it, especially, you know, um, especially because right before, um,
Speaker: COVID kind of started, I sold my off-grid cabin in Nevada that I'd built specifically for the New World Order.
Speaker: So that's kind of ironic, but yeah, moving around,
Speaker: has been tough, but it was, it was a situation where, yeah, I mean, I was unemployed for almost two years.
Speaker: So it was, yeah, just our family surviving, um, and doing what we had to do, uh, each step of the way.
Speaker: Um, and now, you know, where I, where I live in Florida is just in a beach town.
Speaker: It's totally normal.
Speaker: Um, I actually did just get a job as a PA.
Speaker: I'm going to try it.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: it's just in a private, you know, urgent care.
Speaker: So I don't have to deal with any of the vaccine stuff and like I would in a hospital, but I also did start, you know, officially start my, um, kind of construction business too, that I'll maybe try to get going and basically just see kind of what, what pans out, um, whether I can even tolerate medicine anymore.
Speaker: Um, but I do, I do still, you know, we still think about, um, you know,
Speaker: like you're saying, exiting and kind of the right way to do it.
Speaker: And I think we're at the point now, having built an off-grid cabin and all that before, I learned a lot about, you know, location's huge, the laws of, you know, the local area where you're going to do it is huge.
Speaker: So I still want to do that, but I'm going to do a lot more research before I do it again so that I make the right move.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What did you, um, tell us a little about the construction business that you're building.
Speaker: Yeah, basically here in Florida, um,
Speaker: the handyman laws are pretty friendly.
Speaker: So you can do basically anything that doesn't require a permit or anything structural and you actually don't even need a license.
Speaker: So you get a business license, but you don't need some board thing.
Speaker: So that's what I'm going to do.
Speaker: A lot of my, I've flipped five houses in the last five years or so during all these moves.
Speaker: And so I've learned along the way to do things like
Speaker: really good drywall work, tiling, bathrooms, fences, all that kind of stuff, just flipping these houses.
Speaker: So that's probably the sort of the bulk of what I'll be doing for people is, you know, nothing crazy that you'd need a full general contractor for, but, you know, stuff that some people can't or have no inclination to do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I know a guy who
Speaker: basically bought an excavator and a skid steer.
Speaker: And that's his business is just any job that's not doesn't require permits or the property owner is willing to pull the permits.
Speaker: There's lots of ways you can get around that registration system and run a business that way.
Speaker: Yeah, I've actually taken a similar path to you in some ways.
Speaker: I had a, as you Cody, I had a pretty high flying white collar, comfortable office job.
Speaker: And I left it a lot of it for sort of bureaucratic ideological reasons.
Speaker: And since then I've just been doing a lot of trade work.
Speaker: I don't think I'm at your level yet.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And I recently just got hired as a construction coordinator in a small community I'm in to build some new houses for folks.
Speaker: And I've personally found it really rewarding.
Speaker: So I'd love to hear how you like it in terms of the freedom and the ability to actually physically create something in your construction business versus having to follow rules and regulations as a PA.
Speaker: Yeah, I think...
Speaker: That's one of the things that draws me to it is the fact that I'm a very goal-oriented person.
Speaker: That's the problem with healthcare is it's just a revolving door of people.
Speaker: There is no goal.
Speaker: As soon as you get one thing done, there's just another one waiting for you and there's no sense of satisfaction, accomplishing something and getting it done.
Speaker: Another aspect to it is being a writer.
Speaker: I'm also kind of an artist.
Speaker: So there's a little bit of that too, where it's, you know, these trades, you know, growing up, it was like, you get sold this idea that it's, that it's dumb or, you know, whatever, that the smart people go to school and do these, you know, higher end white collar jobs.
Speaker: But I mean, it's, that's sort of like one of the big lies that was, you know, sold to us, our generation.
Speaker: And I think a lot of us are realizing that like, whoa, like there's,
Speaker: you know, satisfaction to be had from some of these jobs, just like the Zen state that you can get in doing, you know, blue collar or whatever construction type work.
Speaker: But then also you can,
Speaker: you're helping actual people.
Speaker: And a lot of times you can own your own business and can control things.
Speaker: And that's going to be, I think, even more important because look at inflation.
Speaker: You can either be an employee.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So the job I just got here is like one of the lowest pay I've ever been offered because that's what Florida is like for PAs.
Speaker: But if you own your own company, you can just charge people more and they'll have to pay it.
Speaker: So I think a lot of people are going to be starting to make these moves.
Speaker: Yeah, there's huge freedom in it and also money.
Speaker: I mean, I think one of the things that we were told, well, I guess there were probably well-meaning people who steered us away from those trades.
Speaker: And to the extent that that was well-meaning, it was rooted in like they had this image of somebody wearing out their body until they're about 45 and then like getting injured or not being able to work anymore.
Speaker: And then
Speaker: you know, really struggling and not really anytime you're getting paid for your time.
Speaker: Like there's only so many hours in the day.
Speaker: And so there's like some caps on that.
Speaker: But when you combine it with some like business acumen, some entrepreneurial skills, some ability to manage people, I definitely know guys in the trades who have turned their ability to do the physical work into
Speaker: it's not passive income, but they're primarily supervisory.
Speaker: They're making sure it looks right.
Speaker: They're dealing with the customer, that kind of thing.
Speaker: Is that the direction that you'd be interested to go?
Speaker: Or do you want to be like hands on all the way?
Speaker: No, I definitely think that if it took off, I would you have to go that way.
Speaker: I mean, I just did a section of fence for my new place here in Florida.
Speaker: And yeah, you're going to break at some point.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And
Speaker: it's funny Rajiv, you brought up that you're kind of doing the managerial side.
Speaker: And I've actually thought that like, maybe I should just look into, I did like a indeed search just the other day.
Speaker: Like maybe I should look into doing like, because I can spot homes that have the value and I know what needs to be done.
Speaker: And then I can offload them for profits, at least for the last five years running.
Speaker: Like maybe I should just look for people like you're saying that like the tribe or the team that's already doing it and may do more of that role where, yeah, you're, I'm,
Speaker: eyeing the property, I'm running the crew, um, just from a managerial standpoint, it would be easier on my body.
Speaker: And ultimately you'd probably make more money.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Though I do have to say, um, I'm not making too much, um, in this job I'm starting.
Speaker: Um, but the advantage for me at least is that, um,
Speaker: You're right, it's a combination of some of the more managerial administrative stuff, but also kind of doing a site supervisor role and being construction runner.
Speaker: So I get to learn more about the tools and materials.
Speaker: And if someone needs help, I can step in.
Speaker: Like if someone's doing some cabinet work and they need some waterproof wood, I get to go in and kind of learn how that works and learn how it's done.
Speaker: And in fact, part of my exit plan was to learn that sort of stuff.
Speaker: And the company I've joined, they've even said they've trained some of their guys for three or four years.
Speaker: And then those guys went to start their own company.
Speaker: So like you were saying, it's a pretty common thing that's going to happen.
Speaker: And anybody who, in my opinion, has a little bit of sense is starting to get into more of this DIY stuff, either on a personal level or like you and me on a more commercial level.
Speaker: Yeah, it's funny too, because, you know, I tell this to people a lot, like all the people I knew in high school that went on to do stuff like that.
Speaker: Like one of my friend's little brother, you know, just ever since he got out of high school, started a, was a framer, you know, for houses does this, you know, the framing.
Speaker: And he now owns like one of the biggest framing companies in the area.
Speaker: And he's like bawling, you know, and like you get people like us that are
Speaker: Yeah, like living paycheck to paycheck as the New World Order rolls out and then they're doing just fine.
Speaker: But yeah, so I mean, there's people that have kind of seen the writing on the wall the whole time.
Speaker: That's what's funny.
Speaker: And everybody laughed at him.
Speaker: And now we're, yeah, like you said, you've got to eat some crow over all that.
Speaker: Well, and it's like, you do not have to be a genius to do a lot of these jobs.
Speaker: And I think some of the snobbishness about it is like, well, you don't, you know, you have to be super smart to get through med school, which, you know, maybe, maybe not.
Speaker: But the fact is that you can, you don't have to be a genius to be in any of these fields.
Speaker: But if you are a bright guy, and if you do have some acumen, you can take
Speaker: any one of these fields and turn it into something.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean that, like you're saying, it's the people that have the mixture of both are going to do really well.
Speaker: And it's, it's almost like one of the, like the, the classic, you know, book smarts and street smarts, you know, that,
Speaker: The guys that have been doing, you know, kind of what I would call almost like real world jobs, you know, dirty jobs like the TV show.
Speaker: I mean, those guys, it's they've got a sense of reality that the other side doesn't have.
Speaker: You know, it's the classic like the architect makes this and the builders like it's impossible.
Speaker: You literally can't do it.
Speaker: You know, I also find that like they run their mouth way more.
Speaker: than white collar guys do.
Speaker: And it's because, you know, they might lose like a customer because of something they say, they're not going to lose their livelihood.
Speaker: And so like we've had to kind of people, people like me who've had these white collar jobs for so long have, have sort of come around to that approach because of anonymity.
Speaker: And in my case, getting docs and then having to, having to, you know, getting kicked out of the, of the corporate world.
Speaker: But these two, these dudes who are like, I have neighbors who have like a tinting company.
Speaker: I live out in the country and,
Speaker: Guys have a tinting company or they're farmers or they're mechanics.
Speaker: They're like they're trying to attract the attention to some federal agents with the kind of way they talk on Facebook.
Speaker: And it's because they're just not they're just not afraid.
Speaker: And it's it's super it's admirable.
Speaker: You know, I like I sort of wish that I wish had always been that outspoken.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: I mean, I, I, my whole career as a PA and hospitals and stuff, I've been calling out kind of the bullshit and corruption and stuff.
Speaker: And, you know, I basically got to the point where I moved around a lot, honestly, because, you know, you, you, if you are calling things out for what they are enough, you know,
Speaker: people don't want the truth out there.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Um, right.
Speaker: Because you know, like healthcare is a big money.
Speaker: There's a lot of illegal stuff going on.
Speaker: And if you're the guy that says anything, you're blacklisted.
Speaker: So yeah, but it's, you know, what kind of stuff did you see?
Speaker: Oh, uh, I prior to COVID or, or, Oh yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The whole, my whole career.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Price fixing between two groups of physicians.
Speaker: So they would meet and collude on prices, which is a federal crime.
Speaker: Basically, most health care right now, especially the corporate stuff is...
Speaker: you you could make a case that there's a massive amount of billing fraud going on i mean i think up you know up coding charts and stuff is probably the biggest one where yeah you know um gosh i mean um you got something do you think a lot of covid cases went that way where it's like if we turn if we call this covid we get like 15 000 extra bucks or whatever yeah i i
Speaker: So I was laid off in the beginning.
Speaker: So I can't, you know, testify to that, whether that was truly going on.
Speaker: But from the outside, it, yeah, a lot of that stuff didn't make a lot of sense.
Speaker: And that's how I knew something wasn't, you know, on the level about all of it, because you don't just test people driving through a parking lot and call that a disease, right?
Speaker: You have to examine the patient.
Speaker: I mean, and this is like, if you want to bill, you know, something and call it that on your chart and diagnose someone, you have to like
Speaker: take the history from the person, do a physical exam.
Speaker: And then, you know, COVID, just having a swab doesn't mean you're sick, you know?
Speaker: So that was definitely a huge tell.
Speaker: I was just like, come on, you gotta be kidding.
Speaker: Kind of going on this theme, you said you graduated kind of in the early 2000s and moving forward, it seems like things have just gotten worse in terms of
Speaker: hospitals, you know, being corporatized, bureaucratized, you know, physicians probably have to push certain treatments or, or build certain things a certain way.
Speaker: And, and you were talking about some evidence you saw about that on the ground, even if you didn't see during COVID, I guess, do you, do you have ideas of how, how medical system or even medical schools can stop, you
Speaker: going on this debt-funded model or this, you know, kind of this kind of scammy billing model?
Speaker: I mean, what does it look like from your perspective to have physician's assistants or doctors actually...
Speaker: provide health care, not health management or health billing.
Speaker: Do you have any ideas of what it would take to sort of start unwinding this whole Leviathan of medical malpractice, for lack of a better term?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, I think it's gotta be, you know, people just need to stop selling out.
Speaker: I mean, the physician sold out a long time ago.
Speaker: I mean, most older doctors would say, you know, even me, I'm like, you know, it probably started happening in the eighties.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So it's, it, that's the biggest thing though, is, um, so as an ER PA, um, I've worked almost exclusively for one company called, uh, actually, I don't, I don't want to say their name, just
Speaker: you know, for legal reasons, but it's, there's like basically two, literally like two that own almost every ER contract in the country.
Speaker: And so what, how that works is basically that corporate, those,
Speaker: corporate umbrellas buy out local physician groups that had contracts at local hospitals.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So the docs just have to stop selling out and they get, they get cut sort of sold on the idea because, you know, the billing is a nightmare.
Speaker: You know, you basically have to have a billing company if you're going to do it.
Speaker: And what's crazy is my first ER group I ever worked for was private and,
Speaker: you know, some of the things that happened there, I realized through my career that they, that was probably one of the best jobs I ever had.
Speaker: And I totally took it for granted just because I didn't understand what the industry was like.
Speaker: So if the physicians can do that on the big level, like hospital providers, that's a, that's a huge start.
Speaker: And then
Speaker: Like you had mentioned on an outpatient basis, I think you've got to cut ties and basically opt out of Medicare completely, go to like direct primary care or cash pay.
Speaker: That gets sticky on the patient side, though, because they're still going to basically want, people are going to want insurance for catastrophic surgeries, accidents, you know, illnesses, things like that.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: That's sort of the conundrum.
Speaker: And that's, I believe, why they made when Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, came out, they made basically catastrophic health insurance illegal because they probably knew that if you had that, it would be like car insurance where a 30-year-old dude could pay 50 bucks a month for catastrophic insurance.
Speaker: And they don't want that because then they can't.
Speaker: The Ponzi scheme for all the older people that are
Speaker: you know, spending all the money in the healthcare system, it would collapse.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Do you think that there's a solution to that problem of the sort of moral hazard or the, like, do you think that we just have to have a different attitude toward death or like, is there a way to take care of those people more effectively?
Speaker: Or what's your take on the elder care situation?
Speaker: Yeah, it's a really complex topic, but it's one I've thought a lot about over the years.
Speaker: And I definitely think that people have to be a little more comfortable with death and dying.
Speaker: Sort of an anecdote, I don't know if this is still accurate, but when I was going through training, they said half of all Medicare dollars are spent on the last six months of life.
Speaker: So that shows that too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And again, I don't know if that's still true.
Speaker: I'm sure it is.
Speaker: But regardless of hard numbers, yeah, it's I've had to basically tell my mother and one of my old best friends to just let themselves die because of the nature of their illnesses.
Speaker: I, you know, it was just
Speaker: Being in my role, it was just I had to be the one person that wasn't going to lie to him and tell him, you know, you're not going to survive this big transplant or, you know, dude, it's it's time.
Speaker: It's over.
Speaker: Like this is this is the end, you know.
Speaker: So that's a big part of it.
Speaker: But yeah, I mean.
Speaker: Which is it's fundamentally it's a spiritual.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Problem.
Speaker: Yeah, and I don't – I'm the wrong guy.
Speaker: I don't even think I'm qualified to answer the big picture economics and insurance stuff.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: That's complex.
Speaker: But I do think on the individual level, people need to also live healthier.
Speaker: But yeah, realize that none of us are getting out alive.
Speaker: That's a huge piece of the COVID freakout that was so –
Speaker: that was so disturbing to me is that they were unwilling to talk about health and taking better care of yourself.
Speaker: Cause I mean that, that makes so much more difference than, than wearing a mask and, and, but there's these, I don't know if you can call them interest groups or what, but like it's, it's very difficult for anybody to say like, weight is a problem.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: and having, you know, being constantly sedentary and having a weak heart is a problem.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that's part of the political sort of color revolution, I think, that's going on, you know, is that basically politically correct speech, right?
Speaker: And so I think there was some intentional sort of part of that, like you're alluding to with COVID, where
Speaker: You're not allowed to call people fat anymore.
Speaker: So you can't say, hey, don't be fat because you'll die of COVID.
Speaker: And that gets really into the periphery of what we're talking about.
Speaker: But I think some of it is intentional in the big picture regarding COVID, where, hey, you can't talk about that stuff anymore.
Speaker: You're dangerous misinformation.
Speaker: And it's just so obviously not directed toward like the, it's sort of like climate change and nuclear.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: How it's like, if you guys were really concerned about what you're claiming to be concerned about, you wouldn't be blocking nuclear power.
Speaker: And, and this is, it's exactly the same thing.
Speaker: Like if you, if you were really concerned about this disease and you, and it was so threatening to, to you, you would be doing what actually works to make it better.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: And, and you know, that's,
Speaker: That's what's so concerning to me about what's going on in the world is exactly what you're saying is I think we're well into sort of a, you know, people argue about whatever ism it is, fascism, communism, whatever.
Speaker: I think we're well, you know, into that sort of transition of controlling information and what you can and can't say.
Speaker: But yeah, it's, it,
Speaker: I come from a nuclear town, oddly enough, my dad's a nuclear engineer.
Speaker: So yeah, it's, you get into any of those topics.
Speaker: And one thing I've always said is, if you really wanted to solve all these problems, or even the healthcare money problem, you could use AI to find out what the most efficient way to do it would be, is, right?
Speaker: Now, you're always going to have people arguing over like, what should be prioritized and all that.
Speaker: But you know that there's an agenda because
Speaker: common sense tells you that, yeah, they're not even addressing the actual problem.
Speaker: They're using the issue as a sort of, you know, again, like a proxy element for some other thing they're trying to accomplish.
Speaker: Well, yes.
Speaker: Speaking of kind of both, you know, emphasizing personal physical fitness and then also, you know, to some degree, we're talking about personal faith and spirituality to deal with health and what that means for death and
Speaker: I know you've been doing jujitsu for a long time.
Speaker: And so I grew up doing various martial arts.
Speaker: And the way I was always taught was it was definitely for health, but there was also sort of a very grounding aspect where it helps keep you involved in kind of the real world and have real physical feedback as opposed to
Speaker: what you were saying, a lot of people who just speak politically correctly and want to avoid the fact that, hey, you know, there's people die and they get sick.
Speaker: So I'm wondering, you know, can you tell us about, you know, how long you've been doing jujitsu, how that's helped you keep fit and healthy?
Speaker: Maybe it's had a similar grounding or spiritual impact on you.
Speaker: I kind of see a lot of guys getting into that, you know,
Speaker: And I personally haven't done it, but I'd be very interested in doing it.
Speaker: And I'd love to hear how that's impacted your life and how that's helped keep you sane.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, as a kid, like a little kid, 10 and under and stuff, I was always pretty active.
Speaker: But I grew up in the military, so we moved around a lot.
Speaker: And I never really played a lot of traditional sports because of that.
Speaker: You know, you just couldn't get into the community and be on teams and stuff because you'd literally move like a year later.
Speaker: So I was in that era, you know, sort of like the
Speaker: the Van Damme Ninja Turtle era, right.
Speaker: As a little kid.
Speaker: So that, uh, I started, yeah, I started getting into just, you know, like Taekwondo and ninjutsu and all that, you just stuff like that, you know, as a little kid.
Speaker: And then, uh, you know, I started doing Taekwondo like in junior high in my, in my early teens.
Speaker: And then, uh, the first UFC happened and I saw it on, um, MTV news, I think that Hoist Gracie had won.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: there's a lot of history to the UFC that is really interesting.
Speaker: You know, if you read about it and the Gracie's basically, you know, invented it just to show off.
Speaker: So anyway, I, I started watching those early, those first UFCs and saw the Gracie's, you know, demolishing everybody with, with their jujitsu.
Speaker: And so back in those days in the early mid early to mid nineties,
Speaker: there really, it really wasn't any, it wasn't anything right there.
Speaker: You could, you basically had to go to like New York or LA to even know, you know, meet anybody that was any good at it.
Speaker: Uh, but that's what I did.
Speaker: I, um, immediately because of my passion for like martial arts, um, I knew, I knew immediately that that was going to be the way to go.
Speaker: Um, because it was just so effective.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And so I did everything I could, you know, I, I actually flew, I went to a Hicks and Gracie seminar, who's Hoist Gracie's older brother.
Speaker: And for a while he was like, you know, the best in the world.
Speaker: Um, so I, I went to a seminar, talked to him, got, um, the, basically permission from him to go to his house and do private lessons in his garage.
Speaker: So I spent literally like cashed in my life savings and flew to LA and did it.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: But this was so, you know, so long ago that and it was so primitive that, you know, we were training and like I bought some old wrestling mats from our high school, like a chunk of it and put it in my garage.
Speaker: And we do that.
Speaker: And, you know, over the years, you really had to be really into it, you know, to even survive those first few years because there was nobody to train with and stuff like that.
Speaker: But ultimately, you know, in those in those teenage years and maybe early 20s.
Speaker: Yeah, I realized right away that aside from like fighting and stuff like that, it really was more of a like a.
Speaker: like a drug, you know, like an addiction, you know, where you, you have to do it, you know, or you don't, you start to lose it a little bit, you know?
Speaker: And I think now, now I'm even a little bit past all that.
Speaker: Cause I've, I've been doing it so long, you know, I've gotten injuries that build up and stuff, but now, you know, like you Rajiv said, it's almost like,
Speaker: It's almost like it's a social thing now.
Speaker: I do it just almost solely like for the health and then to talk to people and you that your jujitsu friends are your best friends.
Speaker: You know, it's just when you do jujitsu, that's just the way it is.
Speaker: So it really is sort of this all encompassing thing.
Speaker: And I think people can get that from a lot of sports and activities.
Speaker: But there is something different about, you know,
Speaker: grinding your sweaty face and forehead against another person while you're physically trying to hurt each other that probably builds a little bit different bond than playing tennis or something.
Speaker: You're testing yourselves against each other in this really fundamental way.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And kind of even relating to what we're talking about overall, the interesting thing I think about jujitsu above most others is
Speaker: sports or martial arts or whatever is everybody in the room knows who's the best.
Speaker: There's no debate and there's no hiding.
Speaker: There's no faking it.
Speaker: If you, if you put on a black belt and you're not a black belt, if you walk out there, everybody's going to know.
Speaker: And I think there's an element to that where a lot of people, you know, mixed martial artists, jujitsu, or even just real hardcore fighters.
Speaker: It's, it's hard to, you know,
Speaker: bullshit people like that because you know they they live in that world where you just you can't get away with it you're going to be exposed immediately right and so like this this palace intrigue and this like jockeying for status just can't just can't happen i i thought that i you know i'm not uh like
Speaker: even like a super fan or anything.
Speaker: So I feel like I'm a little bit out of my depth, but I've, I've seen enough of MMA to, to follow like, cause early days there was like different styles being tested against each other.
Speaker: And, and there was this process of like, I feel like jujitsu sort of emerged as like whatever winning fighting style you're going to,
Speaker: you're going to implement, it's going to involve pieces of this.
Speaker: Like this is unambiguously, this works.
Speaker: And, uh, and so I think that the, the realness of, of that competition, the realness of like, you know, we're going to, we're going to throw everything at the wall and test everything against everything else.
Speaker: And it's a pure competence hierarchy, um, is, is, is incredibly powerful.
Speaker: I'm, I'm actually, um,
Speaker: We've got a little gym here in town about 20 minutes away, and this spring, I'm going to take my boys down there and get them started.
Speaker: Yeah, it's really good.
Speaker: Kids can get so good.
Speaker: I mean, it's amazing.
Speaker: And nowadays, it's just such a high-level sport that my daughter's about to be two, and...
Speaker: The superstars today and like a pure jujitsu, like wearing a, you know, a gi and the belt and competing.
Speaker: I mean, those guys, they're, they're all doing it since they were little kids because.
Speaker: you just can't compete with people that have been doing it that long.
Speaker: It's, it's really been really wild to watch it grow and being there from the start.
Speaker: And at least in America, it's, it's been really fascinating.
Speaker: And what's funny is I told my family back in like 95 or whatever, I was like, yeah, jujitsu and UFC, it's a sport of the future.
Speaker: And they're like, yeah, okay, man, whatever.
Speaker: And if I would have just,
Speaker: I still might open a school someday or whatever, but if I would have followed that, not like that gut instinct and that passion, I would have, I'd be probably, you know, having a six figure gym right now, just teaching two classes a day.
Speaker: I mean, that's the ultimate lifestyle right there.
Speaker: Yeah, if you're training at the ground floor that early on, I mean, no kidding.
Speaker: Yeah, there's huge demand for it everywhere.
Speaker: So going back a little bit to the COVID thing, you've mentioned that COVID is real.
Speaker: It's not a fake disease.
Speaker: But your attitude toward the solution depends a lot on how bad you think other things are going, if that makes sense.
Speaker: If the government was hunky-dory,
Speaker: And the economy was going to be fine.
Speaker: And it was just about vaccinating people against this horrible pandemic.
Speaker: You know, I can maybe get inside the headspace of somebody who thinks that these measures make sense and you're kind of selfish for not participating.
Speaker: But I almost liken it to like the Flight 93 election, that article about Trump, how
Speaker: a lot of people who, who like maybe had problems with Trump personally, we're still supporting him on the basis of like, he's up against this really, really sinister situation.
Speaker: And so like his flaws just are not that relevant.
Speaker: And I, I wonder what your take is on how COVID is going to remain salient in the future or to what extent it's being
Speaker: A lot of people have been talking about like Ukraine sort of absorbing a lot of the, a lot of the COVID energy and it's now it's Russians instead of the unvaccinated who are the big enemy.
Speaker: But I wonder how much you think that stuff's going to stick around or, or not.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: there's a couple of parts to that.
Speaker: I think they're moving into a different phase.
Speaker: So again, if you agree that this is sort of what they want, they want this totalitarian, basically biometric surveillance state with digital currency and real-time taxation monitoring and all that.
Speaker: You can see the weird thing about what they did with COVID is
Speaker: I feel like it sounds really kind of cheesy to say this, but I feel like some of the red states in America might have saved the world almost because the red states proved that what they were doing wasn't necessary.
Speaker: Because, I mean, the lockstep way that everybody was doing it was insane.
Speaker: And so to have any fissure in that was...
Speaker: You know, it spread pretty quickly.
Speaker: But like you're saying, now they transition to this Ukraine thing, which is so obviously not on the level.
Speaker: It's just like COVID, right?
Speaker: Like in the beginning of COVID, I didn't really even know exactly what was going on.
Speaker: We didn't know who the World Economic Forum was.
Speaker: We didn't know who Klaus Schwab was.
Speaker: None of that.
Speaker: And so I think, you know, it's pretty obvious Ukraine isn't on the level.
Speaker: We know that, you know, what Biden, you know, was doing over there and maybe the CIA did the Maidan, you know, coup or whatever in 14, you know, there's just enough going on where, you know, something's not right.
Speaker: So, you know, now the question is, is Putin in on it?
Speaker: Are they doing this to create a multipolar world, you know, where you have China,
Speaker: maybe in collusion with Russia, but either way, if you had the three, China, kind of Russia, and then the Western, you know, Europe and US, it, I think what they're doing is basically going in phases.
Speaker: So they roll out COVID to get everybody used to the idea of a world like that.
Speaker: And, and now they go to the Russia thing where they can dismantle
Speaker: the petrodollar and get everybody used to a multipolar kind of existence where there's no U.S. hegemony anymore.
Speaker: So I think, you know, this isn't even close to over and you kind of just have to watch and not buy into anything right away anymore.
Speaker: You don't believe anything at all, nothing until you, you know, make sense of it with your own eyes and ears.
Speaker: I had an experience in the Middle East during college
Speaker: where I got to talk to a lot of regular like Arabs on the street.
Speaker: And I was amazed at how distrustful they were of media.
Speaker: And I was, you know, pretty naive kid.
Speaker: And I was like, gosh, wouldn't it be terrible to live in a oppressive autocracy where you couldn't, where you couldn't trust what you read in the newspaper.
Speaker: And, and that's another situation where I've like, I've watched it happen here as, as people's trust in the media has collapsed.
Speaker: everybody has gone to conspiracy theories and it's like, basically they've had to abandon their epistemic helplessness.
Speaker: They've had to abandon their outsourcing everything to these gatekeepers, which is there's pros and cons to that, right?
Speaker: Like not every theory that you might come up with is created equal, but it's probably a really good thing for people to recognize.
Speaker: that they can't trust what's going on in the media.
Speaker: And I wanted to ask you about, I think from my perspective, I'm sort of inclined to believe that a lot of this stuff is less about centralized conspiracy and some of it's more about
Speaker: coordination through incentive structures and things trending in the same way due to technology.
Speaker: And it's like, it's definitely nefarious, but I'm not sure that there's like a cabal pulling all the strings.
Speaker: And I, I, my guess is that you have a different take on that.
Speaker: And so I wanted to just ask you about that.
Speaker: Like what makes you, what gives you the sense that these are deliberate sort of nefarious plans?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, yeah, I think I'm pretty open minded.
Speaker: I think I just tend to, I tend to lean towards it being that way, mainly because there's some evidence, you know, that, that, you know, Putin has been involved in the World Economic Forum and like did, you know, was, were these people involved in him?
Speaker: kind of taking over when Russia collapsed and stuff like that.
Speaker: And it's just sort of like the same people keep the same players all the time.
Speaker: I mean, there's videos of Putin talking about like, you know, the fourth industrial revolution and being on board with it.
Speaker: I mean, they're doing the same vaccine stuff there as they are everywhere else.
Speaker: So there's sort of like this thing I feel like with some conspiracy or like right wing, you know, quote unquote people,
Speaker: that are like, oh, Putin's a good guy.
Speaker: He's taken down the cabal.
Speaker: I'm like, I don't, I definitely don't think that.
Speaker: But, you know, I, I, I guess I just wonder whether I assume, you know, that, that everything is planned out, I guess, because that's sort of worst case scenario.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Worst case scenario is this is all a put on all of it and that we're doomed, right?
Speaker: I mean, I don't necessarily believe that, but right.
Speaker: Yeah, I can definitely see, you know, elements, you know, to what you're saying.
Speaker: And the biggest example of this, not to go off on a different tangent, really, but the best example of this is Trump himself.
Speaker: Because you can talk yourself and think yourself in circles, whether he was in on all this nonsense or not.
Speaker: Was he blackmailed by Epstein stuff to go along with all this?
Speaker: Was his full presidency, you know, a distraction?
Speaker: I mean, if you go down those kind of like thought experiments and game theory stuff like that, I mean, I think that's the biggest thing that I do is I just game theory stuff and kind of see what makes sense.
Speaker: And like you're saying, I'm not totally sure about Russia, Ukraine.
Speaker: I was just kind of throwing that out there.
Speaker: Yeah, no, but that's an interesting point, which is, you know, I think if you...
Speaker: if you judge people's participation in the new world order as sort of did they or did they not impose the vax measures on their country
Speaker: it's like virtually every country on earth.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so it's really hard to, it's really hard to find good guys.
Speaker: Well, the thing about that, that I don't hear a lot of people talk about is you have to realize that if one, if they really wanted to do this, like one world government, new world order thing, you have to have everybody do it because the minute you
Speaker: one even deep remotely large country decides not to do it again.
Speaker: It's just like the COVID thing.
Speaker: If you show that it's totally heinous and bullshit and nonsense and unnecessary, it gets really hard for everybody else to continue to do it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I mean, that's where, if there is some plan like that to do this worldwide,
Speaker: That would be the one thing.
Speaker: That's one thing that sort of convinces me it could be happening that way is because that's the only way you could actually successfully do it.
Speaker: Otherwise, you're just going to have China.
Speaker: You know, and everybody can villainize and kind of crap on them and make fun of them.
Speaker: The ostensible purpose of federalism, right, was to create laboratories of democracy where we try different things in different states and see what works.
Speaker: And so I think it's a really interesting example of that process playing out with COVID where we could we could watch what worked.
Speaker: And what didn't and what made sense and what didn't.
Speaker: That was really, I mean, I'm not a historian or political science guy or whatever, but that's sort of like, you know, the beauty of how they created this Republic.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And, you know, the encroaching federal powers has obviously been, you know, pretty wild over the last say a hundred years or whatever, but it's still kind of alive and kicking and it's pretty wild.
Speaker: And so it's,
Speaker: It's going to be interesting going forward, like that, this novel I'm finishing up kind of editing and stuff.
Speaker: I wrote it five years ago before any of this happened, but that was exactly what I was trying to work through in my head.
Speaker: And it basically just depicts a world where the U S is balkanized.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And you've got these pockets of, of awful, you know, and then how does that play out, you know, in sort of a near future scenario.
Speaker: But, um,
Speaker: I think it's really fun to kind of think about all that stuff and think about what could be and prepare yourself.
Speaker: Yeah, there's sort of a romance to...
Speaker: those those ideas because it introduces the idea that you might have freedom to work in you might have you might have the negative freedom of just the the power structures that are currently way stronger than all of us and you know can can squash us if they decide they want to
Speaker: if those centralized powers were to become so weak and then removed out of the way, there's this idea of suddenly there's space, you know, to act in.
Speaker: Suddenly there's freedom.
Speaker: And it's interesting to think about, like, sort of to play with that fantasy and think through, like, the consequences of it.
Speaker: Like, you know, obviously it probably wouldn't be sunshine and rainbows, but I think both ends of that are legitimate.
Speaker: Like, yeah, it would be terrible, and yeah, it would also be...
Speaker: a great adventure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And even from a pragmatic perspective, I would ask, I'm kind of on the side of, you know, some people are like, oh, the Republic is over, you know, and what's going to come next.
Speaker: I'm kind of more on your side, Cody, like it's still kicking where I'm here in a red state.
Speaker: COVID is not a thing.
Speaker: Basically, Ukraine is not a thing.
Speaker: And it's not like anybody's actively resisting.
Speaker: It's like we're in a small enough town that
Speaker: there's a strong community and, you know, people pray for peace in Ukraine.
Speaker: And, you know, if someone gets COVID, they'll, they'll check on them.
Speaker: You know, I hope you get better.
Speaker: But from my perspective, the Republic is still alive and kicking and,
Speaker: And I mean, I would probably be the first one to go into Mad Max or, you know, The Road, the book, The Road by Cormac.
Speaker: I would not survive that.
Speaker: But I'm still on the side, like, let's continue to teach people about what liberty means in the U.S. sense, in the Republican sense, not the political Republican, but like being a republic.
Speaker: And so I'm curious to know, like, in terms of your, I mean, both of you have kids.
Speaker: I don't yet.
Speaker: You know, what, Cody, what are you,
Speaker: How do you want to make sure your daughter can be a daughter of liberty to make sure to fight for the Republic?
Speaker: Are you planning to homeschool like Bennett is?
Speaker: I mean, do you have any...
Speaker: scenarios of, oh, what do I actually do to prepare my wife and my daughter for whatever's coming next and to resist the new world order?
Speaker: Yeah, I think we're sort of figuring that out as we go along.
Speaker: But she is at that age, about to be two, where you have to start thinking about that.
Speaker: And I think...
Speaker: I don't know that we'll homeschool necessarily.
Speaker: It'll depend on just sort of, you know, practical logistics.
Speaker: But I definitely I highly doubt she'll go to public school unless I can be reasonably certain that, you know, wherever we live at that point, you know, where everybody's sort of rational.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like I certainly wouldn't send her to public school in like Seattle or San Francisco or someplace like that.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: But, you know, you can kind of figure out other ways.
Speaker: You could hire a tutor, you know, whatever.
Speaker: But yeah, definitely the education is a part of it.
Speaker: I think the biggest thing I feel like I was missing as a kid, well, my dad was in the Navy, so he wasn't around a whole lot.
Speaker: But I think a big part of being a parent and keeping this thing alive, moving forward, freedom, you know, liberty, like that ideal, you know,
Speaker: that has been around for, you know, basically since the enlightenment.
Speaker: But I think a lot of it is just, uh, grounding them in reality of like the day to day thing, which goes back to everything we're talking about.
Speaker: You know, like if you want to teach your kid math, you can build a dog house, you know what I mean?
Speaker: And teach them geometry and all those things like that, you know, doing jujitsu with her, whatever, whatever she likes, you know, if she likes soccer or whatever, um,
Speaker: you know, keep keeping activities like that going.
Speaker: And then reading obviously will be a big one.
Speaker: Travel if we can still kind of do it.
Speaker: But just keeping, I think keeping the younger generation, we're in that phase right now where we got to keep our away from like the iPad.
Speaker: You know, it's like, that's the hardest part, man, is it's just,
Speaker: It's so easy to access, you know, the digital kind of metaverse, you know, they're doing it, calling it now.
Speaker: But I think grounding reality and keeping a balance in your kid's life from keeping them where the BS on the internet, like we're saying, like, that's great.
Speaker: But a lot of people don't care.
Speaker: Like you go out in the world and nobody's like you're saying, talking about Ukraine in real life.
Speaker: Like it's almost like the people that are addicted to social media are the only ones that give a crap.
Speaker: So I think the big thing is just balancing that, having a, you know, well-rounded education, you know, so that that doesn't die, you know, where control of information is obviously so important to these, these nefarious people that if you can,
Speaker: you know, kind of wrangle in some of that now and get ready.
Speaker: It'll be huge for the next generation.
Speaker: We talked about the front or you talked about the frontier spaces where you can be free and, and operate the way you want to.
Speaker: Where do you think the frontiers are right now?
Speaker: Where do you think are the, are the spaces where people can, can find freedom?
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: That's a, that's a pretty interesting question.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: to sort of preface the answer, I'd say one thing I've been thinking about a lot is that a lot of what we're experiencing right now is, you know, the end of the front, the actual frontier, right?
Speaker: I mean, the move West, you know, was not that long ago, you know, it was like 150 years ago, 200 years ago, let's say, you know, but that's, that's nothing in the blink, you know, in the, in the,
Speaker: kind of in the history of, you know, humanity.
Speaker: So I think what we're sort of dealing with is sort of those growing pains of, you know, there's nowhere left to explore or develop.
Speaker: The whole globe has been scoured, you know, a million times over.
Speaker: So now the people running the thing want to dominate the entire space because they, you know, they got what they wanted.
Speaker: You know, they're all ultra rich.
Speaker: There's nowhere else to explore.
Speaker: We did all the work for them and now they just want to get rid of us and control it.
Speaker: but that it creates what you're saying is like, it's like different types of frontiers.
Speaker: And maybe it's a frontier of human potential, where just surviving is no longer necessarily a thing.
Speaker: And in an ideal world, a one world government or whatever, everybody cooperating is a great idea, right?
Speaker: Okay, sure, idealistically, it's great.
Speaker: Could you create a utopia without all this other bad sides of it?
Speaker: I mean, there's kind of multiple ways people can sort of start exploring like how to one, live better.
Speaker: live, you know, be more happy.
Speaker: We could, a new frontier could be, probably the biggest frontier is how do we get rid of these people, you know, and get rid of this system.
Speaker: So there's, I think it's really, obviously my answer is very vague, but I think the new frontier is,
Speaker: it's just all so unknown.
Speaker: And that's why we're experiencing what we're experiencing is that there's a, this massive, like power vacuum in the world and there's, we've reached some boundary and now that's the moment they want to come in and control because, you know, they want to have their walls up and, and, and have a control of how, whatever people do.
Speaker: But
Speaker: I think the potential for individuals is huge in any number of ways.
Speaker: Yeah, I think the same thing about this power vacuum.
Speaker: I think it's an immense opportunity.
Speaker: And, you know, guys, I don't know, guys, guys who talk about these times, like they're so depressed to have been born now.
Speaker: I'm like, man, would you want to have been born in a time when you didn't have to fight for anything?
Speaker: Like when all the problems were solved and you were just supposed to get a job and play video games, is that what you really wanted?
Speaker: Because that's not what I want from life.
Speaker: And the opportunity to be up against something big and scary is kind of cool.
Speaker: Well, it's funny because you...
Speaker: A lot of, you know, a lot of the rhetoric going around all these social topics is about the boomers.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And they they had like, you know, in terms of America, it was like there was Vietnam and stuff.
Speaker: But that between World War Two and now, whatever this is now, I mean, that was it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I think everybody wanted what our parents had, which was, you know, except for.
Speaker: from kind of these, you know, this global running skirmishes all over the world that America was involved in.
Speaker: But just safety to make money.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, for the most part, everybody was doing awesome.
Speaker: And, and, you know, this thing was chugging along.
Speaker: Like you're saying, I mean, just look at kind of my, you know, you guys have heard some of my interests and stuff, you know, I, I never, I've never, I've always aspired to do something bigger.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: you know, whether, whether it's being a jujitsu black belt and like fighting other people there, you know, there's nothing more kind of challenging than that on a, in a, in a real sense, but other goals, like, yeah, I want to, I want to write a book that every, you know, everybody's heard of, you know?
Speaker: So I think there are people that are like that.
Speaker: And there are people that aren't, and obviously COVID is, is completely shown who people are and what, you know, what they're, who they're going to be and what they're going to do.
Speaker: I mean,
Speaker: The weirdest part for me and sort of the most frustrating of the past two years is that is because of what I do for a living.
Speaker: I understand why people go along with kind of what's been going on, because I.
Speaker: they've always trusted the TV and these people and these institutions.
Speaker: And I just happened to be in a weird, you know, that weird situation where I sort of knew about what their, maybe the, you know, the new world order plans were, and then I could see the holes in COVID immediately.
Speaker: So I learned, I got to, I've had to kind of see what all my friends and family had to kind of witness what they do.
Speaker: also kind of take the slings and arrows from them and go through also just the, the, the, the chaos of that.
Speaker: My life has had, you know, had to endure, but it, the personal side of it is, has been one of the hardest, you know, in terms of losing friends, having family judge you and call you crazy, you know, it's, it's been, it's been wild.
Speaker: With the, with the effort to resist these things,
Speaker: Did the Canadian trucker protest and the way that that unfolded and the way that it, I guess, failed, did that change your mentality about what kind of resistance was possible?
Speaker: No, I didn't.
Speaker: That didn't change my opinion on much.
Speaker: I thought that.
Speaker: I mean, I I kind of feel like.
Speaker: Those types of efforts are sort of futile, right?
Speaker: I think it's sort of.
Speaker: I applaud them for doing it, but I sort of thought that it's just not the right way to go.
Speaker: Like, it's not the way you take this thing on.
Speaker: And I don't know.
Speaker: Well, I think...
Speaker: protesting like in a way like that, I guess I didn't really understand like why when you're having supply chain issues and stuff, why the people that are so needed would not do their job kind of a thing.
Speaker: But at the same time, I get it.
Speaker: It's like if all the healthcare workers had stood up and said, we're not doing anything, maybe COVID would have changed.
Speaker: But then what happens to the patients that needed them that day kind of thing.
Speaker: So that's, so I think,
Speaker: I didn't really think a lot of pain of it.
Speaker: The pain of it doesn't necessarily hit the people that it needs to hit.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It hits people that you need to convince.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it basically where the last two years have been a series of what, you know, you can call a double bind where you, you, it's a stick up, right?
Speaker: Your money or your life.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And,
Speaker: Jiu Jitsu is all about that right you put people in binary sort of decision trees where you're if you have the advantage are ahead of them and that's exactly what has been happening to us for the past two years you're constantly being put into situations where we're in a like a no win situation right and.
Speaker: What's this is sort of a side thing, but Trump was always really good at doing that to other people.
Speaker: And then they they did it to him constantly.
Speaker: And that was really fascinating.
Speaker: But now, you know, people in general are sort of, you know, you get the vaccine or you get fired.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's what that's a double bind.
Speaker: And I don't know what the answer is.
Speaker: I just kind of thought, I didn't really think a whole lot about the trucker thing, to be honest.
Speaker: It's sort of like Ukraine.
Speaker: It's fascinating on one level, but on some level, I'm like, I don't know enough about it to really even put too much thought into it.
Speaker: Yeah, well, I really like the way you put it.
Speaker: It's like what we've been through is a series of double binds.
Speaker: I've never thought about it that way.
Speaker: And then putting it back to Bennett's point, there's kind of a constricting element, but there's also kind of a lot of, there's a really big creative element to it too, which I'm sure you also feel when you're on the jujitsu floor in the sense that, you know, like,
Speaker: Bennett was doxxed and he was fired.
Speaker: But then from that, he had to think about the constraints for his family and other sorts of things.
Speaker: And he started this business.
Speaker: I was facing increasing bureaucracy for my job.
Speaker: And then I completely moved across the country, similar to you, and kind of doing trade work.
Speaker: And like you, you're now kind of starting your own business.
Speaker: And then you're thinking about maybe later starting a gym.
Speaker: I really like this framing of how when we're facing a series of double blinds, it's almost like an opportunity to increase our living type of jujitsu that impacts our lifestyle to figure out where are the creative opportunities and how we can move around those constraints, which kind of makes it an exciting game if you think about it that way.
Speaker: Well, yeah, and it goes back to what we've been talking about the last couple of minutes, all of it together.
Speaker: It's like,
Speaker: What are the new frontiers?
Speaker: Do you really want to live in a world where there isn't some form of conflict?
Speaker: You know, who wants to read a book that doesn't have any conflict?
Speaker: You know, like how boring is that?
Speaker: But yeah, it's funny because, you know, anybody who's highly skilled in anything, you know, is going to frame, you know, their you you can know.
Speaker: you can know a lot about the world doing anything.
Speaker: And that's kind of almost like encapsulates everything we're sort of talking about where it's like, you know, the guy I first trained with Hicks and Gracie, he understood the world through jujitsu, you know?
Speaker: And like you're saying, it's like you learn how to solve any problem by whatever you're good at.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: And, and it's, it's, it's kind of like,
Speaker: the new frontier really is for a lot of people going to be finding exactly what that is, you know, where maybe this world, this illusion that we were sold is obviously being exposed very, very rapidly as at best, you know, controlled, if not manipulated, if not a complete lie.
Speaker: So the biggest frontier is, is people, I think,
Speaker: building something new where you can't be put into a double bind and then sharing kind of these knowledge bases to, to, to solve the problem.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's like, if you could get,
Speaker: if you could get Bill Belichick and, and Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and God who, you know, the best fighter in the world in a room, they would give you a bunch of different ways to solve it in terms of, you know, what they've learned in their specific fields.
Speaker: And because the world basically is where we're at this phase of globalism, the,
Speaker: That's going to be pretty fascinating is to see how we can learn from each other now that everybody's sort of doing their own specialization stuff.
Speaker: Well, I had to laugh when you said all that because basically you've described my project, which is to get experts from all these different fields into a room and say, how do we...
Speaker: How do we break loose of these rails?
Speaker: How do we make it so that we can't be put into a double bind?
Speaker: How can we make it so that we have the initiative?
Speaker: I feel like that's sort of in the air.
Speaker: That's what we're all kind of smelling is what needs to happen.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think so just to, and it's not to go on and on about jujitsu, but it's like, I probably know that, you know, better than I know anything.
Speaker: I've done it longer than anything in my life.
Speaker: But so an example of that for people listening would be like, okay, well,
Speaker: In a fight, you know, you want to get essentially you're at two people at a distance.
Speaker: You come until you can touch each other.
Speaker: You get grips.
Speaker: Ultimately, what I'm trying to do is get to the person's head and neck and strangle them.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So what you're trying to do is get the pro I call it proximal control.
Speaker: You know, you start from your fingertip to your to your shoulder, to your neck.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You're inching up this person's anatomical chain to where you have control of their vital structures.
Speaker: And so an example of, you know, how do we solve this problem using that framework is you go, okay, well, some things I've learned, okay,
Speaker: The goal is to get proximal control.
Speaker: Well, in the world, what are we trying to get control of?
Speaker: Well, what you really want to get control of, right, is like your – basically your means of existence, right?
Speaker: Your necessities.
Speaker: That's exactly right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Food, water.
Speaker: So then you start to ask yourself – Your money system.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The education of your children, the credentials.
Speaker: It's all one thing.
Speaker: So as far as how do we solve it, one thing I've thought is what –
Speaker: The ultimate threat that they have is a gun.
Speaker: Ultimately, it's the barrel of a gun, right?
Speaker: So one of the solutions would be you have to take back like the police and military.
Speaker: Like that's it's a weird example, but that's how like people in the big scale, like you, it's almost like what, you know, like DeSantis has kind of done in Florida.
Speaker: It's like get a stranglehold on the education system.
Speaker: Because if you can do that, then you're not going to get a bunch of people in the next generation that are going to be indoctrinated into, you know, communism or whatever you want to call it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then again, like jujitsu, putting people into a double bind where they have two choices, both of which are bad for them.
Speaker: How do we do that to them, to, you know, the establishment, you know, get inside their loop instead of the other way around.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you get, get first mover advantage and stuff like that.
Speaker: And,
Speaker: Yeah, I'd be fascinated, you know, like I'll have to go and listen to a bunch of these and get some far out, you know, people that are really different from me, but I'd love to hear sort of that specific, like, how do you fix the problem?
Speaker: You know, I think for me, it's, it's, if I'm answering it, it's like, yeah, you got to get education.
Speaker: police and military control where they're faithful to the people.
Speaker: And this problem is going to go away real fast.
Speaker: Well, it's so funny because it's such a petty pedestrian means of control.
Speaker: I mean, I don't think they've convinced a single police officer in this country.
Speaker: I don't think that there's a whole lot of like
Speaker: honestly convinced like globo yeah marxist corporate cops out there it is purely a matter of these guys don't feel like they have a lot of alternatives they're not making enough money to like squirrel a ton away so they've got runway and they feel like they've got to they've got to comply and so it's it's
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean like temperamentally and in terms of their, their personal politics.
Speaker: If you could just, if you could just ease up the, the, the brute economic pressure on those guys, they'd be on side in a second.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's where I moved from in Washington.
Speaker: So when COVID started, I was on the West side near Tacoma and Gig Harbor.
Speaker: And then I,
Speaker: moved to the east side of Washington where my family lives, which is, you know, dry and more conservative, at least on paper.
Speaker: But there on the east side, the sheriffs and stuff were not on board.
Speaker: You know, the cops were basically like, yeah, no, we're not, we're not closing down businesses.
Speaker: We're not finding people for masks.
Speaker: And so that's kind of what I said earlier.
Speaker: It's like,
Speaker: It's good that, you know, all the scenes you saw in Australia and England and New York City, even, you know, it's really, really grotesque.
Speaker: But that's one thing that I think sort of has helped overall is that we have had those pockets here.
Speaker: where they're just like, absolutely not.
Speaker: We know exactly what you're doing.
Speaker: Like you're saying, most cops are like, this is BS.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I mean, the military, at least as much, if not more so.
Speaker: It's not an ideological problem.
Speaker: It's a very practical problem.
Speaker: So I want to leave on a high note.
Speaker: You mentioned in a tweet recently that the dawn is coming.
Speaker: And, you know, a lot of these spaces that we, these, these theoretical spaces and the game theory that we're trying to do, these are pretty dark, dark spots to be in and think about.
Speaker: So tell me, tell me what gives you hope, why, why you're optimistic.
Speaker: Oh man, I vaguely remember that.
Speaker: I'm not sure what I was thinking in that specific instance, but I think the,
Speaker: I think what gives me the most hope and probably what prompted that specific tweet was just the fact that, you know, everybody knows, not everybody, but a lot of people know what's going on.
Speaker: You know, this, I don't feel like this is something like, you know, we don't need to get into nine 11, but back then, I mean, there was an overwhelming sort of acceptance of what, you know, that, what, whatever the story was, you know, regardless of what you believe it,
Speaker: There wasn't a huge, you know, like now where there's, it's almost 50-50, right?
Speaker: So I think that gives me the most hope is that there are so many people that are not going along with it and that know sort of what, you know, is going on.
Speaker: And it's going to be really hard to roll out something like a digital currency that controls you and you lose all your money because everybody's going to be like, come on, you know, so...
Speaker: It's kind of, you know, you got faith in mankind and the power of knowledge and those two things put together.
Speaker: You know, I think there's going to be a lot more nonsense that we have to deal with.
Speaker: But ultimately, I think, you know, these things are going to fail.
Speaker: They always do.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: And I think people, what I always tell people is that they're expecting there to be an uprising like in a movie where the bad guy's plan is revealed and everybody, you know,
Speaker: gets real mad and they arrest him.
Speaker: Scooby-Doo ending.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And that's, first of all, it takes time for ordinary people to become aware of the problem.
Speaker: It takes more time for them to start quietly maneuvering their lives such that they can respond.
Speaker: And then it takes them time to respond.
Speaker: And so,
Speaker: I don't know hardly anybody who's even remotely paying attention who isn't making moves right now, whether that's to get out of a jurisdiction, to get their kids out of public school, to raise food, to increase their, their marketability, get, get their resume up to date.
Speaker: Everybody's in motion right now.
Speaker: And,
Speaker: And most of it is in response to this kind of thing.
Speaker: It's they're tired and they don't want to do it anymore.
Speaker: Yeah, I think one of the coolest things that's kind of happened over this time period was when basically my first viral tweet happened the night I got my last night in the ER.
Speaker: So that went nuts and you start getting all these Twitter followers and stuff.
Speaker: But it's just meeting people.
Speaker: Twitter is basically a...
Speaker: sort of a way for people's minds to come together, right?
Speaker: It's not like Instagram where you're showing pictures of your food and stuff usually.
Speaker: But I think that's what's worth it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's been most fascinating is to meet, you know, some kind of famous people and do stuff like this and share these ideas.
Speaker: Cause you really do realize like you're not alone, man.
Speaker: They might not be your neighbor, but there's a lot of people that are making moves, moving, shaking.
Speaker: And I think it's important to when you can to meet the people like from something like Twitter or whatever, whatever social media you use, actually meet them.
Speaker: You know, like that's why with the Bass Brotherhood podcast, I drove the three hours to Miami because it's a sacrifice that was worth making.
Speaker: That way you've seen the person, like you've actually interacted with them and that stuff is important.
Speaker: when things of this magnitude are going down.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I, I, I do a, uh, I do a monthly meetup with the guys at exit for that reason, because this thing can't stay online.
Speaker: We have to actually see each other and look each other in the eye and shake hands and, and get involved.
Speaker: Um, so yeah, any, anytime there's a group of like six to 10 guys that I can get into a room, I, uh,
Speaker: I put it on the calendar and we make it happen because it's, yeah, it's really important.
Speaker: It's worth making the sacrifice.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, speaking of Twitter, I mean, drawing it back to what makes people hopeful.
Speaker: One of your tweets that I really resonated recently is you basically said, you know, after realizing, you know, how much control demolition has occurred in the past few years, it's time to grow up and
Speaker: you know, stop having utopian or lofty aspirations.
Speaker: Those anyway fall short.
Speaker: And now those are definitely not going to happen.
Speaker: And something I've appreciated both from Exit and from meeting people like you said on Twitter is it's very pragmatic.
Speaker: sort of approach to understanding the constraints and meeting people from online networks in person.
Speaker: I'm close to two like farmers markets here.
Speaker: So I have like a source of food, you know, in case certain things start breaking down and I'm learning how to repair all sorts of things.
Speaker: And I think, you know, something that's characterized my age is a bunch of sort of fake email office jobs that have a lack of responsibility.
Speaker: And I think
Speaker: there's a lot of people, a lot of men in particular, who've been starving for real responsibility.
Speaker: And because there's so many moves happening, there's people who are starting to take that up again, like you said, for the basic necessities and kind of rediscovering how to do that, you know, in the 21st century.
Speaker: And so I agree with you, agree with you on that, you know, it's time to grow up and figure out how to do things that are, that are practical, that are concrete and,
Speaker: And that's fun.
Speaker: It's rewarding.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that, that tweet specifically was kind of just one where with everything going on, you know, in the react, the reality.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's, I didn't want to even imply that, you know, you can't have big goals.
Speaker: Like I can't, I'm never going to be able to have a famous book that I write or whatever.
Speaker: It was more like, like, like you're saying it's,
Speaker: it's time to take this stuff, like the life sort of back to some real level.
Speaker: And that's a grownup thing to do.
Speaker: You know, when, if you're, you know, a hundred years ago, running a farm, you know, that's a hard life, you know, and that, that was sort of the energy of that tweet was, you know, you can sit around at night and
Speaker: you know, daydream and, you know, because there's no consequences to that.
Speaker: But in the right now, when you wake up every day, you like you're like we're saying, like you better be plotting, scheming, moving, working and yeah, and getting somewhere, you know, where you and your family and friends have, you know, some sort of safety and at least whatever you can.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Well, Cody, this has been an awesome conversation.
Speaker: And if you guys want to follow Cody, you can find him on Twitter or his substack, codyelijah.substack.com.
Speaker: If you're ready to take your exit seriously and go step-by-step and take action and be held accountable by other guys who are trying to do the same thing, come check us out at exitgroup.us.
Speaker: Cody,
Speaker: Fantastic conversation.
Speaker: Awesome to talk to you and keep us in the loop.
Speaker: I'm excited to see where the writing goes for you and this journey into this new career path.
Speaker: So thanks a lot for coming.
Speaker: Oh yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker: This was really cool.
Speaker: I appreciate it.
