TRANSCRIPT
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The Rabbi Daniel Lapin Podcast
Episode: Escalate Your Income While The Economy Plummets.
Date: 02/23/24 Length: 43:14
Daniel Lapin 0:00
Greetings, happy warriors. And welcome to the Rabbi Daniel Lapin show where I, your rabbi reveal how the world really works. Thanks for being part of the show. And thanks for all you do to help publicize the show. Let other like-minded people know about its existence. And many of you send URLs or links and little by little, our numbers grow our subscribers grow. And if you have not yet subscribed, go ahead and do us a favor and subscribe. That way, you will get a little indication every time a new show posts once a week. So about 75 years ago or thereabouts. The nation of Israel was formed it was May 1948. And for the first time in a very long period of history, Jews were back in the land of Israel. And one of the first things that happened later that year, late in 1948, was the awareness that about 50,000 Jews in Yemen, basically, the whole Jewish population of Yemen, were being oppressed and basically being forced to leave and become stateless. And they didn't have a unit United Nations welfare and relief agency. They didn't know what they were going to do. And at that point, the fledgling Land of Israel set up what they called On the Wings of Vultures and Operation Magic Carpet. And they had to charter airplanes, and they flew it, I think it may be one of the biggest airlifts of people in history. And over a quite a short period of time, a few months, they flew about 50,000 Yemenite Jews to Israel. Now, what was so interesting was that in a way that I didn't think it's possible to find today Yemenite Jews were completely in fact, all the Ammonites were completely insulated from modernity. And, you know, today, we, I have a feeling wherever you go, whether it's the jungles of South America, or the forests of New Guinea, or the mountains of Nepal, I got a feeling that pretty much wherever you go, people have phones and chargers and, and watches and radios and all kinds of things. But back in 1948, early 1949 You can hear accounts of how including, by the way from pilots, it was a pilot who subsequently through for Alaska Airlines who actually flew a plane backwards and forwards in Operation Magic Carpet. And, and they speak about how these Yemenite Jews would get on the plane. And all the seats were taken out in order to maximize capacity, they all crowded together on the floor. They didn't have very much in the way of possessions. But one of the things that happened in some cases soon after takeoff was the Yemenites are sitting on these metal floors. In the airplanes that were flying, I think they were probably DC. I don't know. DC3s maybe maybe DC7s so I'm not sure what they'll fly. It's before the jet age the the 707 hadn't come along yet. So there were definitely flying prop planes but they were cold, it was really cold. And they'd find that Yemenite Jews would like little fires on the floor of the airplane to warm themselves up having no concept of what this meant and and what what was really happening. They were really, really stuck in a time period way earlier than where they were. And almost everything they saw they arrived in Israel and they were immediately put into camps to help I mean this will happen very quickly. It's not as if they didn't have hotels or buildings ready for them. They were in camps but they did have toilets. And they found that for many of them and I choose had no idea what the toilet was. It never initially had never occurred to their new hosts to give them instruction in what it is and there are reports of as Yemeni Jews were moved into apartment. And, and you know, showing their kitchens, they used to wash their dishes in the toilet, if they didn't know, they didn't sleep on beds, they slept on the floor, even though beds were there because they were not accustomed to sleeping that high off the ground. It was it was scary. And so as you can imagine, this was very amazing, the the the whole story of the resettlement of the Yemenite Jews who arrived in Israel is an amazing story.
Daniel Lapin 5:29
And there was a lot of pain as well. But the reason I tell you all of that is only to be able to explain that there. There are ways in which people can be very ignorant of things that other people take for granted. Let me give you an example. A Yemenite Jew soon after he landed in Israel, was taken to a bathroom, and he saw a faucet in the wall and he turned the faucet on and out came water. Now back in the deserts of Yemen, where he had lived his whole life in his ancestors that always loved finding water was a very problematic undertaking, it was it was very difficult. And so here for the first time in his life, he sees a piece of metal and he doesn't even know what that is, and it comes out of the wall. And when you turn the knob on top out comes a big rush of cool, fresh, clean water. You got to think for a moment to try and imagine what magic this was and how unbelievably seductive it was. And so when they found some Yemenites unscrewing the taps, the faucets from the wall and taking them away with them, you can really understand they thought that this incredible magic device would enable them to produce water wherever they were, it's the most natural thing in the world, I want one of those more than anything else, I want to be able to take this with me, I want to put it in my bag over my shoulder, says wherever I am in the desert, I can always turn this thing and get water out of it. And it's very easy to understand that to that Yemen I do. The idea that behind the wall, out of sight, were pipes running to a main pipe supply. And that main pipe supply runs back to a reservoir and to refinement and clarifying filters, and pumps, he doesn't see any of that. All he sees is the faucet and to him that is supplying the magic. That is what makes the water available. Of course he has no idea of a network of pipes and reservoirs and pumping stations and filtering plants. He doesn't know anything about that. Why should he in exactly the same way. It's important for us to understand as well, that there is such a thing as a vast network that is invisible that makes many of the miracles of modern life we take for granted. absolutely inevitable. One could really ask you know how much of the day to day life that we all enjoy. How much of that depends on unsimilar hidden networks of smoothly running vast, interconnected, intricate human systems of voluntary cooperation. Whether it is the miracle of finding food in the supermarket, day after day or in the middle of the night, food that we didn't have to grow ourselves. Whether it is simply assuming that light will suddenly come on no matter how dark it is outside whenever we flick a switch, or whether it is being able to count on on a bridge remaining strong under us as we cross a river. We all count for the comfortable running of our lives on 1000s of invisible parts of society that all work together that all miraculously dovetail and interconnect. This miracle of human cooperation. If you think about it is really made possible by the miracle of money, which itself depends upon the miracle of spiritual connection. Using money. Strangers, happily go about doing exactly what other strangers need. he'd
Daniel Lapin 10:01
incredibly money sends a message to one person to tell him exactly what other people need from him. In other words, and that's how it happens. If you discover that right now, a kindergarten teacher gets offered a job at at $1,000 a week, and a nurse in a hospital gets offered a job at 3000 a week, shall we say? That tells you that at this point, the people in your society, the people in your neighborhood, the people around you, your people do not need you to be a kindergarten teacher, because apparently, there's plenty people willing to do it. So that's why you only need to pay. In other words, the free market provides a system of information provided government doesn't interfere with it. And so my daughter might say to herself, should I become a kindergarten teacher or a nurse? And my answer is, we'll just take a look and see what you would be paid for each. And she might say is money, everything I say no, if you choose for your own reasons to be a kindergarten teacher, God bless you, you know, by all means, go ahead and do it. But since you will want to be able to provide for your children one day, then you might want to be able to save a bit, you might you might want to be able to earn more than you actually need, you'd like to have access that you can save and invest. And you want to know how to do that? Well, the market tells you don't become a preschool teacher, become a nurse at this particular point in time. All of this, through the miracle of human spiritual connection. Why do I say spiritual connection because human beings connected to one another by a spiritual system of shared values, a common understanding of mutual duties and obligations. That's all spiritual. Because it can't be seen, it's invisible can't be touched. It's understood. It's constructed through the aspects of a culture in which one lives. Not every culture shares a deep commitment to the sanctity of a contract or an agreement or a promise, they don't. You know, when you get a credit card, you sign an agreement to pay the costs and the credit card. But in Mexico, for instance, there are huge obstacles to credit card transactions because there is a huge amount of credit card fraud. It is a culture that does not automatically agree throughout the culture, on the understanding of the sanctity of an agreement or a contract. Not every culture sees punctuality as the important value. But the only way you can be a nurse in my hospital, is if I can count on you being ready to start your shift on the agreed upon time. Not every culture is committed to raising the next generation as a sacred duty. Not every culture believes that it is important to conduct a conversation with children with a younger generation and convey to them not just stock data, like two plus two equals four, but also character issues spiritual issues, what an agreement means how we behave towards one another, what honor is what male female relationships are about. And the arrival of Muslims in Sweden, for instance, created an absolute epidemic of sexual assault, different culture, completely different culture. And so not all cultures are equal, or all cultures produce the same result. And there are certain cultures that our most effective for wealth creation. As you can imagine, all societies that do not share these values along with a whole bunch of other equally important values and conventions and restraints and rules. Well, those societies and cultures have an incredible handicap in building effective and productive economies.
Daniel Lapin 14:45
And I would like to share with you before I go into how you can use these principles in order to maximize your IQ Economic effectiveness, I would like to walk you through a little bit of where ancient Jewish wisdom gets us if you've ever wondered why the Hebrew people are disproportionately good with money? Well, that would be because they have an innate understanding of all of these principles. And so, even though they might find themselves living in a society, as they lived in Yemen, are is they lived in Baghdad, or they lived in a number of cultures and societies that did not practice these things. But they flourished because there was enough of them to constitute their own little sub-society. And every time one person does a service for another person, money is created. But you only want to do such a service for people whom you know, like, and trust, otherwise, you'll end up being exploited. And after you've been exploited once or twice, you won't do business with those people anymore. And so anything that lubricates the possibility and ease of transactions, mutually agreeable transactions, produces wealth for everybody. Everything that throws sand into the gearbox of interaction and interconnectedness, while that makes it impossible for people to thrive, and to do well, with, with communication, and by sharing interactions. Now, you might have thought that the biblical book of Ruth, you might have thought, it's just a biblical story, a piece of mythology from long ago, it's a story about a group of women who do this in some manner do that. And it's really not very significant and very important in your life. However, you'd be wrong, because it is the book of Ruth, that has been absolutely central, in why it is that a country like Israel, which has 1/20 of the population of its contiguous Arab countries, like Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. In aggregate, they are about 100 million people. And Israel is about 5 million Hebrews. And those 5 million Hebrews produce a gross domestic product, they produce as much wealth because of transactions, then all 100 million people in the surrounding four countries. That is a huge difference. And the key to it is the book of Ruth, because the book of Ruth is a divine message to us, telling us how frighteningly fragile the crucial systems of society are, and how easily things can go wrong. Not just water systems and electricity networks and supply chains, but also how dependent we all are on judges and court systems working and how judicial timidity can cause crime. By judicial timidity. I mean, an unwillingness on the part of the judicial system to punish outlaws to punish wrongdoers, because if you don't do that, you obviously are gonna get a whole lot more. And then you find out sadly, how quickly, courteous and manly behavior between strangers, which is the key to transactions and wealth creation, how quickly all that can deteriorate into snarling menace on the sidewalks. And I'm sure this is something wherever you live, you've probably noticed and that is that over the last number of years, not even just 10 years, there is there has been a tremendous increase in vile behavior. I mean, when did you used to hear about people having physical fights on airplanes, and yet nearly a week doesn't go by without you reading about another contretemps on an airplane trip somewhere.
Daniel Lapin 20:00
You used to be able to walk the sidewalks of major cities without without worry. And yet people are now attacked without provocation. You used to be able to go into a store and pick out the things you need today. Many stores put high-value items behind lock and key. What's going on? What cause? I mean, is this not a deterioration in society? And of course, it is. Now, people say, well, the number of murders is going down. No, it actually isn't. For that you have to give credit to one particular group of people, namely, emergency medical personnel, murder rates would be up to five times higher than they are. But for the developments of medically of the past few years, doctors now save the lives of 1000s of victims of assault, who only a little while ago would have died and become murder statistics. This, is absolutely incredibly reliable; without these developments in medical technology, there'd be no less than 50,000, and maybe as many as 115,000 homicides annually in the United States of America, instead of what they usually is, which is about 20,000 thereabouts. So in other words, if you really want to know what's happening with crime in the United States of America, don't look at murder statistics, because those have gone down because of how many victims of attack get saved. Look at the assault figures. And there you will see the frightening truth, the terrifying truth of how quickly those numbers are rising.
Daniel Lapin 21:53
So what is going on? And the book of Ruth shows exactly how this deterioration takes place. And it shows us the road back to restoring a functioning society. Now the book of Ruth comes as a segue between the book of Judges, and the book of Samuel. And Ruth starts off by showing the collapse of shared values, which is then followed in evitable II by social and economic decline, and how eventually, it can all very laborious ly not easy at all, how it can all be eventually rebuilt. And so really, in order to look at the first verse of the book of Ruth, we have to look at the last verse of the book of Judges, because the sequence of the Hebrew Bible is Judges, Ruth, and then the book of Samuel. And so the last verse of the book of Judges is, "In those days, there was no king in Israel. Each man did that which was right in his own eyes." And I want you to note that, immediately following that, we find the next verses speak of a famine. The word famine is the word used in the Bible for economic collapse. And so, what we see is, I have to tell you a little bit about biblical nomenclature, the word "King" always means government. Right? And the word "famine" means economic decline, possibly even economic collapse.
Daniel Lapin 23:58
Now, if you are interested in delving much more deeply into the book of Ruth, we produced something called scrolling through Scripture. And there is a unit called the Book of Ruth chorus of connection. So if you go to our website Rabbi Daniel lapin.com. And you take a look there for the book of Ruth chorus of connection, and you decide you'd you know, take a take a free look at it, listen to it, have a look at it, but if you decide you want it, I would like you to use a special discount code for happy warriors. And here is the discount code. Make a note of it. It's the word Ruth, uppercase R U T H capital letters, and then the number 15. Ruth 15 and that gives you a Nice drop in price for the entire study program of the book of Ruth, chorus of connection. So go to RabbiDanielLapin.com. And go to the store, look for the Book of Ruth Chorus of Connection, use the discount code of Ruth15, Ruth15. And away you go, it's going to be yours, you can go through it as many times as you like and use it to become more capable of building up your team, building up your sub community, of people who think the same way, who have the same set of values, and are therefore able to go ahead and do the things that we do in order to create value, money, wealth and assets.
Daniel Lapin 25:56
So how is money made? Well, the way it's made is when one human being serves another, right the way the the whole idea works, is that God wants us to do things for one another, to serve one another. And that is something for which he is willing to incentivize us with the huge blessing of financial abundance. And this is why it is that uniquely in the Lord's language uniquely in Hebrew, the word for serving God, and the word for taking care of business is the same word. So Hebrew word Avada. And so for instance, we find that when Moses says to Pharaoh, let my people go so that they may worship Me in the desert, it uses that word for worship. And when the fourth commandment speaks about the Sabbath day in chapter 20, of Exodus, and it says, Six Days shalt you do all your work taking care of your business, it uses the same word. In other words, one way of serving God is to worship him. Another equally valid way of serving God is to take care of your business to serve other people.
Daniel Lapin 27:20
It's really important. And I want you to imagine five families in each living on their own small holding. They all need bread, right. And so they all grow wheat, they thresh it to get the seeds, then they winnow it to get rid of the chaff. And then they grind what's left the wheat seeds into flour. And then they bake the flour into bread. And each of these families, by the time they've grown the wheat and threshed it, and winnowed it and ground it into flour and baked down to bread. That's a lot of work. And each family produces, shall we say, two loaves of bread a week, which comes to be a total of 10 loaves a week between them all together, these five families each produce two loaves a week, which sustains them, they can just barely keep body and soul together and stay alive with all the hard work. And they produce. Each family produces two loaves of bread a week. One day, they get together, and they compare preferences. And, you know, one person says, Yeah, I just hate the grinding part of it. The dust gets in my nose and offsets my hay fever. It's terrible. And somebody says, Oh, I don't mind the grinding. It's the winnowing, I hate doing. And then they say you're right, let's do an experiment. Let's separate the tasks and cooperate and then exchange. In other words, would you like to do nothing but growing the wheat, you don't have to ever win over two and a half to thresh it you don't have to grind you just grow the wheat and, and then the next family, your job is going to be to thresh it and your job is going to be to winnow it, and your job is gonna be to grind it and finally the fifth family your job is going to be to bake it. Well, you know, each family gets better and better at their specialized task. Instead of everybody, each grinding enough wheat into flour, for two loaves of bread on the kitchen table with a mortar and pestle. The guy who's doing lots and lots of it decides to make himself a pair of millstones. And he discovers how much more quickly with how much less effort he can grind the wheat into flour and the fellow whose job it is to to winnow. It figures out where he can find a windy area, and He sets up His winnowing there the wind can blow away the chaff leaving him with the seeds, and they all get better and better at it. against what happens after a little while, a strange thing happens. Their little five-family Co-Op produces not 10 loaves a week as they used to, with each family producing two for a total of 10. But now, they produce 100 loaves each week. Each, this little co-op all working together, the loaves of bread come pouring out. Now each family needed 2 a week, but that was just basically to stay alive. In the new rush of exuberance and abundance. They each take 4 loaves a week what luxury. So each family takes four loaves, which is a total of 20. And they produced 100 loaves every week. So that leaves them at 80 loaves each week, which is excess to their needs, which they can trade with other farmers. All of a sudden, they're no longer subsistence farmers. But they are living better, and with less effort than ever before.
Daniel Lapin 31:04
When each man served only himself, he eked out a meager existence of two loaves of bread a week. But now by serving one another, they gain greatly and they prosper. Obviously, they have to know and like and trust one another, obviously otherwise, no man would yield the security of his family and allow himself to become dependent on someone else who will do the growing and someone else will do the grinding. But if they do know each other, and like one another and trust one another, in other words, they have a shared system of values, well, then it works very well indeed. And so now, they each take home 4 loaves for a total of 20 for the five families, luxury. And now they got 80 loves to trade with with other people. And they are now living better and with less effort than ever before. So now each loaf they have available to trade is worth well, they are at a them divided by the five families at 16 loaves per family per week. So one loaf is worth 1/16 of his excess output over his needs. But to another guy who grows wheat and makes his own bread, each loaf is worth much more, because to him, he only makes two loaves a week. So our guys originally made two loaves a week. But now they formed this co-op so they're making so much more. And so this guy can now obtain this, this outsider can now obtain two loaves of bread a week from our co-op by trade with our little Co-Op who will accept milk and cheese in exchange, since their time is largely taken up with bread production, they've neglected their milk and cheese production. But by serving one another, everybody is suddenly better off. Later, we can introduce our little society to money. But we have to have a trusted person to administer the money system. Since it is so tempting to produce more money than is warranted. We call that of course. Inflation. Right.
Daniel Lapin 33:41
And so what we see as the book of Ruth begins, is how it is that bad government leads to bad judicial system. And bad judicial system leads to crime and to collapse of economic productivity. Because for economic productivity to work, there has to be goodwill, there has to be trust among one another. And people have to know that in worst-case scenario, if you don't adhere to our agreement and contract, the court will enforce it. So our system will still work. And all of that is laid out in the beginning of the book of Ruth. And it starts off saying you know, there was no king there was no government, it wasn't functional. And what happens next and there's so much every word in the opening of the book of Ruth, each word is a mate you should really take a look at it by the way. And you will see little by little as you get used to the idea of nomenclature of each word meaning something brand means money in the same way as in, in slang terms to the present day. In a number of languages, you might say, Do you have any bread? Have you got any money on you? Can you lend me some dough? Again having to do with making a bread. And so when the story starts in Bethlehem, and you will find out from our resource called the Book of Ruth chorus of connection, you will discover that the Hebrew name for Bethlehem is Beit Leffen, which means the house of bread. And sure enough, Bethlehem is a place of economic prosperity. But then without proper government, and without a proper judicial system, it deteriorates and the economic system declines. There's a famine. And so people leave and they become migrants they traveled elsewhere. And you'll see where do they where do they travel? Well, they go to the field of Moab. But why not the country of Moab? Why is the field what's happening collapse of national sovereignty? What's happening?
Daniel Lapin 36:19
And we discover that, not only that, but in a very strange way, the protagonists in the book of Ruth, right at the very beginning, there's a big delay in telling us their names was very unusual in Scripture, we usually find out a person's name, and then we find out what he did. But here we find out the people's names long before we find out what it is they do. So why is there a holding back of names? Well, some of what you're going to see, and I can't tell you all now, because it's hours of instruction and biblical teaching, in the book of Ruth chorus of connection, but part of it is that individuality collapses, individuality is needed for economic exchange. It is precisely the uniqueness of human beings in God making people like himself, meaning each one unique, each one with his own fingerprints, what we're realizing is that something that you value, I won't value, if we were all clones of one another, we could never trade, we'd be like dogs fighting over bones. But human beings will very often do the equivalent of saying, Hey, tell you what, I'll give you the bone this week, if you give him back to bones, six-months time from now, in other words, an interest payment for the loan. We do things like that. But that's only because we have uniqueness. And what is dear and important to me, is probably much less important to you and vice versa. And so, we find that individuality declines. And sure enough, in a socialistic system, there is a move towards numbers rather than names. And there is great concern about substituting people's names with ID numbers, because there is a tendency to diminish the individuality of people in a socialistic environment. So one of the reasons that socialistic cultures hate private transport like cars, and want to get everybody into public transport, because they don't like any expression of uniqueness. And your name is one of the most fundamental definitions of who you are the uniqueness that is you. And so the opening of Ruth tells us of a dysfunctional government and the dysfunctional judiciary, judges were unreliable, people saw them as corrupted. And so one of the functions of government is to provide legitimacy and muscle to the courts and the judiciary, when government declines in quality. As we saw in the final verse of the book of Judges, it's only a matter of time before the court system declines. And nobody any longer respects the law, the judges. And when that happens, well, the next thing that happens is that things since they are no longer capable of enforcing the law, rather than confronting that embarrassment. They simply change the law that less things are, are illegal. And so whereas shoplifting always used to be illegal, they change the law that you can shoplift up to $900 worth of something. And it's not a felony, it's not a problem. And so, not surprisingly stores closed and go out of business. All of these things flow as the group morality and the shared system values, erodes, declines and eventually vanishes. And that is that great, intricate, hidden system that makes everything possible. When that goes, everything goes. And so the question you have to ask yourself is, where you are living wherever it is in the world, because people listen to this podcast everywhere. You have to ask yourself, to what extent is that happening in my society right now? And to whatever extent it is happening, how am I able to become part of a subgroup of people who do have a common set of values. Sometimes that's through joining a church, sometimes it's through becoming part of a social group and a social society. But whatever it is, in order to function, you can't rely anymore. On the larger systems that depend upon spiritual integrity, you've got to do it yourself. And that makes it a lot more difficult. But forewarned is forearmed. Once you know what is going on, then you're able to take the necessary steps. And to make sure that you have a customer base, you got to learn how to build a customer base for yourself. Sometimes you do that through your job. You know, you might find that you are working for a large company that provides you with an environment of shared mutual trust. Sometimes you might decide to be a sole practitioner, you might be an entrepreneur, and you build up carefully, a customer base of people that are trustworthy, and who value how trustworthy you are. And little by little, you get rid of customers that are not worthy of you, and replace them by customers who are and that way you build up your own sub-society in which you can function in which you can serve God's other children, and which you can create the wealth. That is a legitimate part of your spiritual legacy. All of that, and a whole lot more in the scrolling through Scripture program. The book of Ruth, chorus of connection, don't remember Danforth and remember, pardon me, don't forget the discount code. Ruth, one, five, you will be asked to enter that. And that is of course at Rabbi Daniel lapin.com. Go ahead and always remember to become a happy warrior. Join our community of happy warriors and progress onwards and upwards with your family and your finances, your faith, your fitness and your friendships. I'm Rabbi Daniel Lapin until next week, God bless.
