Author: jwithrow

For a man’s house is his castle, et domus sua cuique est tutissimum refugium [and each man’s home is his safest refuge].

This quote comes from 17th-century English jurist Sir Edward Coke. Coke used it to emphasize the importance of individual rights and the sanctity of one’s home in English common law.

This concept had a strong influence Thomas Jefferson at the American founding.

Jefferson looked at the vast, untamed land on this continent, and he saw a tremendous opportunity. Why couldn’t everybody own a small plot of land and be kings and queens of their own castle, he thought.

This may sound like a simple thing. But it ran in stark contrast to what Jefferson saw happening across Europe.

Rapid urbanization was pushing people into the major European cities at the time. Jefferson feared this would lead to corruption on the part of those cities… and a complete dependence on wage labor on the part of their citizens. And Jefferson felt that this dependence would diminish moral values and the sense of civic responsibility.

This formed what we call Jefferson’s “agrarian vision” for America. He envisioned a society comprised of small, independent communities that would spring up around small farms.

In Jefferson’s vision, Americans would be economically independent. And their communities would be self-sustaining. Jefferson believed this would foster strong values and a commitment to good stewardship.

I thought about this over the weekend as we were setting up for a little gathering at our home.

Spring is upon us up here in the Virginia highlands. Acres of green blanket the majestic mountains that surround us. The flowers are now in full bloom. And the new strawberry sprouts are beginning to break through the garden soil.

As such, we felt the urge to host a little Spring Fling. We wanted to take the opportunity to bring people together. Especially the kids.

At the height, we had thirteen kids running around. And they weren’t disappointed:

Here’s a look at our set-up.

We had two bounce houses, a couple hammocks and various other yard toys laid out for the kids. This kept them outside playing until nightfall – something that’s rare for kids today.

With the kids well-entertained, the parents were afforded time to relax and enjoy adult conversation. That’s a luxury for those of us with younger children.

And we catered our little event with sandwiches from the local meat market. They go out of their way to source meat from our local farmers whenever possible.

That’s what got me thinking about Jefferson’s agrarian vision.

It didn’t play out on the macro scale, of course. America morphed into the urbanized United States that we know today. But there are still plenty of small pockets in this country where Jefferson’s vision has become a reality.

When I think about this kind of thing, I can’t help but feel a direct link to the past.

Those of us in developed countries are blessed to live in a world of abundance. Most of us probably take this for granted. But we shouldn’t.

We owe those who came before us an immense debt of gratitude for the foundation they left us with. At the same time, I think we have a responsibility to leave our kids and grandkids with a strong foundation as well.

I think this requires us to have a firm grasp on the foundational ideas and principles that underpin our civilization. And in my experience, these things are notoriously missing from both high school and college textbooks.

Fortunately, there is a great solution. It’s called Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom.

This program features 33 video-based courses taught by some knowledgeable and passionate people. Several of them are professors at small private colleges.

Liberty Classroom features basic history courses on both western civilization and American history. There are also courses on the culture of the early American republic as well as the early days of the western frontier.

Then there are courses on “freedom’s progress”. This is the history of political thought in the western world. There are several fascinating courses on mythology and science fiction as well… as they pertain to the development of western civilization, that is.

And finally, Liberty Classroom features quite a few courses on free market economics. That is to say, real economics. Not the hypothetical economics taught in all but a handful of American universities today.

Put it all together and this is the education I wish I had received in high school and college.

And it’s about more than just personal development.

This material provides a solid foundation for understanding the modern world. That includes the ability to parse through biased information to identify incentives. If you can find the incentives, you can get much closer to the truth.

So I can’t say enough good things about this program.

If you would like to give Liberty Classroom a look and browse its course offerings, just go here:

Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom

One of the beautiful things about owning real estate is that it can provide a stream of tax-free income for years to come.

That’s David Osborn talking about using real estate as a means to generate tax-free passive income streams.

Osborn is a venture capitalist and author of Miracle Morning Millionaires… and he encapsulates perfectly why real estate is the ideal investment for passive income. It’s all about putting the tax code on our side.

We’ve been talking all week about the need to rethink financial planning 101. And when we left off yesterday, we were discussing the need to build passive income streams… but in a tax-efficient manner.

Well, real estate is the way to do it. That’s right – boring, old-fashioned rental real estate.

The fact is, real estate is an incredibly tax-advantaged asset. By default, we shouldn’t owe any taxes on our rental income.

That’s because for every property we buy, the IRS says we can “depreciate” a fixed percentage of its total value every year.

In other words, we can write off a portion of the property’s value against our income every year… even though we didn’t lose the money.

It’s a phantom loss. Just for tax purposes.

And that’s just one element to it.

When we talk about investing in real estate, we’re really talking about building a business.

So we run everything through LLCs. And then we take deductions.

Home office expenses… subscription fees… educational resources… anything that we buy for business we can write off for tax purposes.

This includes expenses that we may have incurred anyway.

A great example of this is meals. If we go out to dinner with someone to talk about our real estate business – that’s a business meeting. And now we can write it off to reduce our taxable income.

So the end result is we don’t owe taxes on rental income. And that’s 100% by the book. It’s following the tax code.

And it can get far more advanced than that.

There are ways to create massive paper losses to offset other sources of income. In other words, we can potentially use real estate to make taxes on our active income go away too.

That takes advanced tax planning and a good CPA… but it’s possible.

So the bottom line is that when we talk about creating extra income using rental real estate – it’s tax-free money that shows up in our bank account.

It’s not like the nest egg approach where we get hit with taxes every time we want to access our money. Yesterday we used an example to demonstrate why this is so important.

We noted that if we plan for retirement the traditional way, we’re going to be on the hook for substantial tax bills in the end.

For example, if we say we want to take $70,000 a year in income from our nest egg, we’ll have to sell at least $83,000 worth of our financial assets. The extra goes to pay the taxes.

That’s not the case with real estate.

If we acquire rental properties that produce $70,000 a year in income, that’s tax-free money. And we don’t have to sell any assets to get it. The passive income just shows up in our accounts every month like clockwork.

This is why real estate should be the cornerstone of any long-term wealth strategy.

And here’s the thing – it’s far easier to get started with real estate than most realize. Finding the ideal properties and putting the proper management structure in place just isn’t that difficult… if you know what you’re doing.

That’s where our Rental Real Estate Accelerator program comes into play. It’s designed to help anyone tap into a tried-and-true system for building $10,000 a month in passive income with real estate.

More information on the program right here: Rental Real Estate Accelerator

-Joe Withrow

In order to retire comfortably, you must have a nest egg that is big enough to generate income to replace your paycheck. That means having enough savings to cover 25 years of retirement expenses.

That’s personal finance guru Suze Orman talking about retirement. Orman hosted her own show on CNBC from 2002 to 2015 where she offered advice on money, investing, and retirement planning.

The problem is, this approach to retirement makes no sense if we stop to think about it.

The “nest egg” approach to retirement tells us that we need to pour our savings into financial assets – stocks and funds – every time our paycheck hits. The goal is to work up to this mythical retirement number.

What’s Your Number?? Iremember old commercials promoting this idea.

In the commercials, people would be going about their life with a text bubble following them around. That bubble depicted their personal retirement number. Then the pitch was to go talk to a financial advisor who could help us get there.

But here’s the thing – this approach forces us to choose between assets and income.

Because we’re investing exclusively for capital appreciation, we don’t build passive income with this method. So when our assets are going up, we don’t have the income. Then when we do need extra income, we have to sell our assets.

And it gets worse.

This approach pits us against the tax code. It doesn’t matter if our financial assets are in 401(k)s, IRAs, or regular brokerage accounts, they are going to get taxed in the end.

That means our true “number” would be materially lower than the figure depicted on our account statements. Because the moment we want to turn our nest egg into income we’re going to have to pay taxes on that money.

I’d like to use an example to demonstrate just how fragile this is.

Let’s assume we build a financial nest egg of $1 million dollars. Just for easy numbers.

Then we get to retirement and we decide we want to draw $70,000 a year from our nest egg to live on. And let’s assume a conservative tax rate of 15%.

That means we would have to sell about $83,000 worth of assets to generate $70,000 in income. We would lose $13,000 to taxes each year.

If we run those numbers, we’ll find that our $1 million nest egg would last for twelve years. That’s it.

And the more we drawdown our assets like this, the more fragile our situation would become. We would quickly get to the point where we couldn’t afford any emergencies or extracurricular activity.

To me, this makes no sense.

If all we are really trying to do anyway is make sure we have enough income to live on in retirement… why not just build the income streams right now?

And we do that by acquiring assets that produce income. Assets that throw off cash flow.

This way we put assets and income on the same team. When our assets go up, so does our income.

And when we want more income… we just buy more assets. It’s a far more robust approach.

And guess what?

We’re no longer talking about traditional retirement here. If we can work up to having monthly income that supports all our needs and wants… well, we can retire any time we want. It doesn’t matter if we are 65 or 45.

All we have to do is build up the income.

And the more we can do this in a tax-efficient manner, the better. We’ll talk more about that tomorrow.

The key point is that it’s time to rethink financial planning 101. The old way is too fragile.

That’s where our flagship course Finance for Freedom comes into play. It lays out a framework for building a robust asset portfolio that’s in tune with the current macroeconomic climate.

More information on the program right here: Finance for Freedom Course Page

“The stock market is filled with individuals who know the price of everything, but the value of nothing.”

That’s the late Philip Fisher commenting on what he saw happening in the stock market.

Fisher is best known for his great investment book Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits. It was published in 1958. I’m told that this book had a big influence on Warren Buffett.

What Fisher pointed out so clearly is that two things set successful investors apart from the crowd. Time preference is one. The other is a focus on economic value, not financial value.

Time preference refers to the ability to delay gratification.

People with a short time preference want everything to happen soon. In the investment world, they are constantly searching for the next hot stock. And when they find it, they want it to go up right away.

Those with a long time preference think years, decades, and even generations ahead. They focus on what’s important for the long-haul. And they care little for short-term price movements. It’s all about resiliency.

Then there’s this concept of economic value versus financial value…

Economic value is the value an individual places on a good or service based on the benefit it provides to them. This concept is fundamental to having a robust economy.

Meanwhile, financial value is simply the value of an investment based on its financial performance. In other words, financial value is what an investor could sell something for today.

We talked yesterday about how the time period from 1982 to 2022 will go down in history as The Age of Paper Wealth. That’s because the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve created over $8 trillion from thin air during this time.

That monetary debasement led directly to the “financialization” of everything. It shifted our focus from economic value to financial value. Suddenly the stock market became a giant casino.

As a result, we started shifting resources away from activity that creates economic value and towards activity that creates financial value.

The rise of the private equity industry illustrates this perfectly.

Private equity firms raise money from institutional investors to acquire entire companies. Then they perform various financial engineering tricks to make the company’s financial numbers look better. This is all about boosting the stock price in the short-term.

Private equity firms typically have a time preference of seven years or less. They want to get in and boost the financial numbers. Then they want to quickly sell the company at a profit.

The focus here is all on financial value. And often whatever economic value these companies were providing previously is hamstrung or shut down in the process.

And it’s not just private equity. Many corporate CEO’s also make decisions designed to boost their stock price in the short-term… regardless of how this impacts economic value.

That’s the financialization of everything.

This dynamic created a world in which rates only went down and stocks only went up. That’s been our world for the last forty years.

But those days are over. As we discussed yesterday, the Age of Paper Wealth ended last year.

And that means we’re going to have to deal with the fact that we’ve neglected economic value for the last several decades. There’s a lot of debt and malinvestment that will need to be liquidated… which means a recession is guaranteed.

That’s why it’s so critical that we structure our finances in a manner that will be resilient in the years to come. The Age of Paper Wealth may be behind us… but the Age of True Prosperity is ahead.

That is, for those who understand that the rules of the game have changed.

And this is where our flagship course Finance for Freedom comes in. This course walks through the process of building a robust asset allocation model, step-by-step.

The name of the game is true financial security. And it’s perhaps easier to attain than we may realize.

More information right here: Finance for Freedom Course Page

-Joe Withrow

The world changed forever in 2022.

I think most of us know this to be true. We can feel it. But this next chart tells the story quite well:

Here we can see the S&P 500 and the 10-Year Treasury rate going back to 1980. The S&P 500 is the black line. And the 10-Year Treasury rate is the blue line.

We’re using the S&P 500 as a proxy for U.S. stock prices. And we’re using the 10-Year Treasury as a proxy for interest rates. And this chart makes it perfectly clear that the two are inversely correlated.

Interest rates started falling in 1982… and they fell consistently for the next forty years. Meanwhile, U.S. stocks consistently went up in value over that same time period.

But everything reversed in 2022. Rates started going up… and stock prices started to fall. We can see those moves clearly marked by the red arrows on the chart above.

When we zoom out like this, it’s no surprise that stocks fell hard when rates started to rise in 2022. But it sure caught a lot of people by surprise.

In fact, many financial analysts spent over twelve months trying to convince themselves and their clients that these moves were temporary. Just wait for the Fed to pivot, they said. Then we’ll get back to normal.

But here’s the thing – what happened from 1982 to 2022 was not normal. Nor was it organic.

Continue reading “The year the world changed forever…”

The sad truth is that in the new millennium, government-funded school systems are simply not teaching children about the real world of money.

That’s Steve Forbes, Editor-in-Chief of Forbes magazine. Forbes points out that the public school systems teach nothing about personal finance. Thus, we’re left to figure it all out for ourselves.

But here’s the thing – ever since the 1980s there’s been a concerted effort to push what I call a “piecemeal” approach to money and investing. It’s the idea that we should always be chasing that hot stock or exchange traded fund (ETF) that’s set to soar in value.

Therefore, we tend to think about growing our money in a piecemeal manner. You know what I mean here?

We tend to make investments in a vacuum. We hear about one idea… and we follow it. Then we hear about another idea… and we follow it too.

Of course, there are all kinds of television shows and movies that glorify this model. Jim Cramer’s Mad Money… Shark Tank… all the movies about Wall Street – they each feature the piecemeal mindset.

The problem is, no single investment is likely to move the needle for us. And if we’re not rooted in a foundational system, we’re likely to buy and sell things on a whim… always looking for the next big thing.

This isn’t a winning approach. I learned that the hard way.

Continue reading “Shedding the “piecemeal” mindset when it comes to money…”

We’ve been talking about consistency this week. About developing small habits that lead to big results.

For me, one of those habits is to add $100 worth of new notes to my crowdlending portfolio every Monday morning. This doesn’t have much impact on my finances at first… but over time it becomes quite meaningful.

Now, crowdlending is an alternative to traditional bank financing. It allows investors to become the bank and lend money to borrowers for a specific purpose. Debt consolidation, home improvement, and medical expenses are three of the most common purposes.

This is done through a crowdlending platform.

Borrowers apply for the loan and provide their financial information. Then the platform pulls their credit report and assigns the loan a specific risk rating. This is what determines the interest rate.

From there the loan is added to the platform’s investor portal. This allows investors to browse the listings and choose which loans they want to contribute to. And in return, they receive monthly principal and interest payments… just like a bank.

What I love about this approach is that, if we’re consistently growing our loan portfolio, our passive income snowballs in a big way. Let’s illustrate this with a few examples.

Suppose we start with $500 and begin building our crowdlending portfolio. And let’s say we follow the rules of success and kick in an extra $100 every week.

If we assume a 9.2% return on the portfolio, which is what I’ve experienced, we’ll have a nest egg of $25,923 in four years’ time. Not too shabby.

Now let’s say we start with the same $500, and then we kick in $200 more every week.

Assuming the same rate of return, our portfolio will balloon to $51,182 in four years. Who wouldn’t want to turn $500 into $50,000 in just four years?

And here’s the thing – there’s no market risk involved here. Unlike a stock portfolio, our loan portfolio will not fluctuate in value every day based on how the stock market moves.

That makes it possible to earn a high rate of return consistently.

Sure, some loans won’t work out for us. But we account for that with equal position-sizing. Which is to say, we put the same amount of money into every loan we fund. If we’re kicking in $100 or $200 a week, $25 per loan will do the trick.

So this is a simple yet powerful way to build a small nest egg. The key is to take consistent action.

And that’s why we recently put together a new course on the matter. We call it The Income Snowball Strategy.

The course lays out all the steps to building a crowdlending portfolio. We also teach an expert approach to risk assessment. If we’re going to become the bank, we better think like the bank.

And here’s the best part – right now we’ve got this course bundled together with our flagship program on strategic asset allocation. The bundle enables investors to get both courses for the price of one.

This offering will be live until Saturday at midnight Eastern. More details right here:

The Financial Consistency Bundle

Yesterday we talked about two simple habits to break out financially. The first is routinely buying Bitcoin – regardless of what the price happens to be. The second is adding new notes to a crowdlending portfolio each week.

We’re piggybacking on an old world success principle here. That is to do small things consistently that will eventually add up to big things.

This is something business guru Jim Rohn talked about frequently. And this is what Darren Hardy’s book The Compound Effect is all about.

The fact is, good habits accumulate over time – so long as we have a clear and definite purpose behind them.

So today let’s talk about our driving purpose for consistently buying Bitcoin and building a crowdlending portfolio.

Now, I don’t mean to suggest that these two asset classes should make up our entire financial picture. Not at all.

But they are the two assets that we can be mechanical about. Largely because the dollar amount we commit to our routine purchases doesn’t matter much. It can be as little as $25.

When it comes to Bitcoin, our goal isn’t to put dollars in, watch the price go up, and then get more dollars out later. That’s not the right approach.

Instead, we want to routinely buy Bitcoin to accumulate a material position… so that we have plenty of bitcoins. That is to say, we want a portion of our assets to be denominated in bitcoins, not dollars.

The reason for this is simple.

Bitcoin isn’t just another speculative asset. It’s sound money that’s governed by its own monetary system.

There are very specific rules around how and when new bitcoins enter the market. Nobody can alter or game these rules. It’s quite a transparent but resilient system.

And think about this: there are only 21 million bitcoins that will ever exist. And 19.4 million of them are already here. That’s 92% of the maximum supply.

Yet, the last bitcoin won’t be mined until the year 2140. That’s hard-coded into the system and cannot change.

So the last 8% of Bitcoin’s supply will trickle into the market over the next 117 years. Talk about scarcity.

This scarcity is why we want a portion of our assets denominated in bitcoins. Bitcoin protects us from inflation – which is critically important these days.

Of course, scarcity only matters if an item has utility. And that’s where Bitcoin shines.

If we hold our bitcoins in a non-custodial wallet, we can send any amount of money to anyone, anywhere in the world, at any time on any day of the week. There are absolutely no restrictions.

This is what makes Bitcoin so valuable.

Note that I make a clear distinction between Bitcoin, which is the network, and bitcoins, which are the currency units within the network.

It’s not bitcoin the currency unit that’s terribly important. It’s Bitcoin the network. That’s what we are buying into as we accumulate bitcoins.

So to my way of thinking, Bitcoin is about financial security. It’s incredibly scarce. It’s immune from tampering. And it gives us the ability to transact value at any time for any reason.

What we’re talking about here is the opposite of a speculative asset… which is how most of the world still views Bitcoin.

On the crowdlending siding, our goal is to build a nest egg that compounds itself at a high rate of return. And there are multiple strategies for accelerating this process.

Our crowdlending portfolio throws off more and more passive income for us as it grows. But here’s the thing – we can get started with just $25. There’s no barrier to entry.

That means we can build up this portfolio at our own pace. Then, once it reaches a certain point, we can use these funds to acquire rental real estate. That will grow our passive income even more. And it will provide us with some incredible tax benefits.

So Bitcoin is all about financial security. And crowdlending is about quick and easy passive income that grows. That’s why our two little habits are so important.

As I mentioned yesterday, we aren’t going to see the needle move much when we’re first getting started with these habits. But if we stick with them consistently for years, we’ll be amazed at what we end up with.

I think Darren Hardy put it quite well in his book The Compound Effect. Here’s Hardy:

Small, smart choices + consistency + time = radical difference.

Well said.

-Joe Withrow

P.S. Would you like more information on the topics we’re discussing today?

Yesterday we released The Financial Consistency Bundle to provide just that… and a lot more. This product packages two of our core financial courses together for the price of one. This is the first time we’ve done that.

Within the bundle you’ll find Finance for Freedom and The Income Snowball Strategy.

Finance for Freedom is all about building a robust asset portfolio. This includes the ins and outs of Bitcoin. The goal here is financial security.

And The Income Snowball Strategy lays out several strategies for building a crowdlending portfolio capable of generating returns between 9% and 15% consistently. That’s how we generate quick and easy passive income.

To learn more about our new bundle, just follow the link below. We’ll keep the offering open through Saturday at midnight.

The Financial Consistency Bundle

Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying the basic fundamentals… Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.

That’s Jim Rohn writing about success.

Rohn left this world back in 2009. But in his time he was considered a leading authority on personal development and business success. His books and programs reached millions of people around the world.

As Rohn so eloquently points out, success doesn’t come from luck. It comes from consistency.

To be successful in any endeavor, one needs to first develop the good habits that will bring success about… And then stick with those habits day after day after day.

And here’s the thing – those habits don’t need to be major undertakings. In fact, they shouldn’t be. Instead, success habits should be small and hardly noticeable.

That’s because it’s very easy to stick with habits that are simple. And there’s a cumulative effect that goes unseen when we apply good habits consistently.

This is the secret of success. It comes from doing little things over and over again.

To that end, I do two little things every Monday morning to improve my financial situation.

First, I buy $100 worth of Bitcoin. That’s regardless of whatever the price happens to be.

Then I go into my crowdlending portfolio and I purchase $100 worth of new notes. This boosts my passive income ever so slightly.

I do both of these things every Monday before I start my work day. I’ve done so for a long time now.

I add to my Bitcoin stash every week because I see it as sound money that’s more scarce than gold. And as the world awakens to the importance of sound money, Bitcoin’s dollar price will rise significantly.

In fact, I fully expect to see Bitcoin trading north of $100,000 within the next 24 to 36 months.

On the crowdlending side, I add to my portfolio every week because it’s a quick and easy way to build a nest egg that compounds over time. I’ve been able to generate returns over 9% consistently with this strategy.

We’ll talk more about both Bitcoin and crowdlending later this week.

But what I want to emphasize today is this – no single $100 purchase has much of an impact on my overall financial situation.

In other words, I do these two things every week even though that particular action alone doesn’t move the needle in any tangible way.

That’s why I thought very seriously about ending these habits on multiple occasions in the early days. After all, if we’re doing something that doesn’t produce a noticeable impact, why continue?

It’s all about the cumulative effect.

If we purchase $100 worth of Bitcoin every week for years, we’re going to end up with a material stash. There’s no way to quantify this accurately simply because the price is constantly fluctuating.

But if we stick with this habit, we’ll end up adding tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to our net worth over time. And the best part is, this worth will be denominated in bitcoins, not dollars.

On the crowdlending side, it’s much easier to quantify the compounding effect.

My approach to risk assessment has been able to generate a 9.2% return on my crowdlending portfolio thus far. Assuming that rate of return, $100 a week will turn into $5,576 after the first year.

From there, the portfolio will grow to $11,578 in two years. And if we keep at it for five years, we’ll have a nest egg of $33,266. And then the portfolio will throw off about $600 a month in passive income.

There’s nothing eye-popping about these numbers. But they come simply from making small $100 investments every single week. They take no more than fifteen minutes to do.

So this is my Monday morning routine. It’s like clockwork to me.

Pair these two simple habits with a more extensive wealth strategy and we’ll be on the fast track to financial independence.

And in the spirit of financial independence, I’d like to try something completely new today.

We are packaging our Finance for Freedom program and our course on The Income Snowball Strategy into a single bundle. We’re calling it The Financial Consistency Bundle. This will enable people to try out both courses for the price of one.

So if my two Monday morning habits strike you as worthwhile, these two courses will lay out exactly how I go about doing both.

Finance for Freedom discusses the best practices around buying and storing Bitcoin… and a whole lot more. It also spells out the hidden secrets of money and asset allocation in full.

And The Income Snowball Strategy will convey my approach to risk assessment when it comes to crowdlending. Proper risk assessment is critical to generating high returns.

But here’s the thing – we’ve never bundled these two programs together before. So we’re going to make the bundle available for this week only.

If you’re interested, you can get more information right here:

The Financial Consistency Bundle

But please don’t delay. We’ll shut down the offer on Saturday, April 29^th at midnight Eastern.

-Joe Withrow

Asha is the path of righteousness, the straight path, the path that is true. Druj is the pAsha is the path of righteousness, the straight path, the path that is true. Druj is the path of falsehood, the crooked path, the path that is false.

Choose the path of asha, for it leads to happiness and joy. Avoid the path of druj, for it leads to suffering and pain.

This is a quote attributed to Zoroaster. He was the founder of the ancient religion Zoroastrianism.

Zoroaster taught that life was a battle between truth and falsehood. He called truth “asha”. And his term for falsehood was “druj”.

To Zoroaster, the purpose of life was to seek asha and defend it against druj. I’d say that’s a good philosophy.

I only know this because I was researching the origins of the Russian oil trade this week. That’s something I’m writing about in our April newsletter for The Phoenician League.

In 1876 a wealthy Russian industrialist discovered acres upon acres of untapped oil fields in and around the ancient city of Baku. It’s located right on the Caspian Sea in the modern country of Azerbaijan – just south of the Russian border.

It turns out that Baku was once a major outpost of Zoroastrianism. Marco Polo wrote about it in his famous 13^th century book The Travels of Marco Polo.

And it’s likely this Russian industrialist traveled to Baku specifically because of what he read in the book. Marco Polo reported seeing oil gushing out of the ground in the ancient city. The Zoroastrian temples harnessed it to fuel pillars of fire.

We’ve been talking about community and American mutualism all this week… and I felt like this old idea from Zoroaster fit right in with our discussion.

From my perspective, the belief that there is objective truth in this world is fundamental to the progress of western civilization. If we think about the modern comforts we enjoy today, they are all thanks to the work our ancestors did.

For most of human history, the world was a cold, dark, and often hostile place. But our ancestors constantly strove to discover the secrets of the Universe. And as they did so, they used this knowledge to make human life easier.

Fire… steam power… electricity… modern methods of energy production… advanced power tools – each of these developments came as a result of people seeking truth. Often under very difficult conditions.

So I wanted to leave you with a thought this week…

In many ways, our lives are a continuation of those who came before us. Many of us were instilled with the mindset that it’s up to each successive generation to take what they receive and build upon it.

But we don’t do this by electing the right politicians and passing the right legislation – no matter how many interest groups want to convince us of such.

Instead, we advance human civilization by building up ourselves first… and then by building up our community. Those are the things that we can control.

To that end, I wanted to introduce you to a non-profit that we recently formed. We call it the Foundation for Human Civilization.

Our mission is to help enable vibrant, self-sustaining local communities.

And our first project is to drill a centralized well in rural Uganda. It will service the remote villages of Mwera and Bugolo-Kireku.

These two villages are home to about 2,000 people across 220 households. Children make up more than half of the population.

Yet, the villages have no running water.

Residents must collect rainwater and/or travel to a natural spring to fill up their jugs. The closest spring is up to three miles away from residents in these two villages.

By drilling a centralized well, we’ll reduce the need for residents to travel to the spring each day. This will free up their time to engage in more productive activities… which in turn will help the villages become more prosperous.

If you would like to learn more about our little project and how you can support it, I invite you to visit the Foundation’s site right here:

Foundation for Human Civilization: Uganda Water Project

-Joe Withrow