#1145 - Peter Schiff

**Joe Rogan** (0:03)
The Countdown, three, two, one.
Hello, Peter Schiff. Hello, Joe. So you just what, were you going to ask?

**Peter Schiff** (0:12)
I don't know if you just did a whole other show before this one.

**Joe Rogan** (0:14)
Yeah, I did.

**Peter Schiff** (0:15)
Three hours?

**Joe Rogan** (0:16)
No, two hours.

**Peter Schiff** (0:17)
Oh, all right.

**Joe Rogan** (0:18)
It wasn't that hard. This is the comedian, those are the easy ones.

**Peter Schiff** (0:20)
Oh, all right.

**Joe Rogan** (0:21)
It's just basically talking to a friend.

**Peter Schiff** (0:23)
Okay, well, I'm a friend.

**Joe Rogan** (0:24)
You are a friend.

**Peter Schiff** (0:25)
That's right. Yeah.

**Joe Rogan** (0:27)
I remember when I first saw you when you were doing that Occupy Wall Street a thing anymore? Did they give up? They stopped occupying?

**Peter Schiff** (0:33)
Yeah, they did. But you know, we just, maybe you saw that on my YouTube channel. I know we just reposted the Occupy Wall Street video. I never actually had it on my channel.

**Joe Rogan** (0:42)
Oh, really?

**Peter Schiff** (0:43)
But because it was originally done by Reason. This is about five years ago or so, five, six years ago. And so Reason TV did it. And so I let them promote it on their site. I didn't copy it. And they got millions and millions of views. And there are some other sites that went with it.

**Joe Rogan** (0:58)
It was Ask a 1%, right? Wasn't that what you called it?

**Peter Schiff** (1:01)
Well, I went down there with a sign that said, I am the 1% let's talk. And I went into Zuccotti Park. And the only reason I stopped, the long one, the long version is just under two hours, which is on my YouTube channel now.
But the only reason we stopped is because we ran out of batteries.

**Joe Rogan** (1:20)
Candidates.

**Peter Schiff** (1:21)
Batteries in the camera. The camera died.
But I could have kept talking. We were losing the light. You can see by the end, it's getting darker.

**Joe Rogan** (1:29)
Watching them get frustrated with you, but not having the words nor the knowledge to compete with what you were saying was very entertaining. Like, agree with you or disagree with you. It was just hilarious watching someone so completely outmatched or a group of people so completely outmatched trying to debate economics with you and trying to understand the way business works.

**Peter Schiff** (1:47)
Except they didn't even realize they were outmatched. They thought they were smarter than me.
But the main reason I went there was not so much to try to convince the people there that they were wrong and that capitalism was the solution, not the source of their problems, and that they should be protesting Washington, the Federal Reserve, or Congress. It was for the people that I knew that would watch it on the internet. And I still get emails, even now, at least I don't think a week goes by where somebody from somewhere in the world doesn't send me an email about that. And I know another website, I forget the name of it, reposted it about a year ago, and they got a couple of million views on it, just posting it again.
So a lot of people have watched it, and I get comments from people saying, this is what changed me. I was a socialist, very left-wing, I watched this, and that was the epiphany. That was the moment. And then I did more research and I learned more. And now thanks to you, I'm a total libertarian or a free market capitalist, and so it served its purpose.

**Joe Rogan** (2:49)
Yeah. Well, it was enlightening. It's good to see people that are so involved in something that they'll go and they'll protest, they'll hang out in the park, but they really can't articulate their feelings or their thoughts in a well-reasoned debate. They really don't have the facts, but yet they're dedicating their entire life to protesting something. It's really interesting that people will spend so much energy and effort on something that they're really not even educated in.

**Peter Schiff** (3:13)
Yeah, and it's a lot easier just to talk about something just emotionally, instead of actually taking the time to learn about economics and to understand the source of the problems. Because anybody could just blame it on some rich person who's hoarding money and discriminating against them.

**Joe Rogan** (3:33)
They love doing that.

**Peter Schiff** (3:34)
And then just say, oh, the solution. See, if you blame the problems on some rich person, well, the solution is easy. Just take his money.