And if you go the website of the central guy of the "Producer Revolution" (which has similar philosophies as the Free Capitalist movement and they reference each other), you can see a family photo album of Garrett Gunderson (you have to go to his homepage, then to "The man" and then the photo album, or just click here: http://garrettbgunderson.com/theman/album.html )
There are many more photos like this. Apparently the sedan is an extremely (I mean more than your house) expensive car.
You may ask, so what? Is there something wrong with nice cars? My answer is no, but if you preach that it's not about the money, yet that's what you reinforce, then that's not quite consistent with your preaching. How many pictures do you have of your family and your car? Maybe one, and it's probably of you waving goodbye on vacation or going off to college, not a glamor shot...or a dozen of them.
It's all about identity and image (see the earlier "What's Being Sold?" post). The message in the Free Capitalist community event photos is "Welcome to the Community of people who have extremely nice cars. Don't you want to join us?" It's like a late-night infomercial where the speaker says, "I've got it all, and you can too, if you follow my 10 step program" except that this is more subtle. They are not showing luxury cars to brag (at least, I don't think so), but rather to get the individual to think, "it sure would be nice to be able to have a car like that." Well you can! Just change your mindset, come to my seminar, buy my product, etc., etc.
To many people in the Free Capitalist, an expensive luxury car is a tool, a tool that you can use to "equity mill" by getting a large loan against it and taking the borrowed funds and investing it in other places (more about this concept later).
8 comments:
It's been my opinon that when someone (anyone!) says "Its not about the ______." (fill in the blank). It usually is.
Great post. Keep up the good work!
It's been my opinion that people who don't use their real names have something to hide.
On the Free Capitalist Discussion Forum you posted:
"Ok, I don't know if Rick or someone is writing up a big response to each point or what. I'm in no hurry, but I guess I expected something by now. I'm going to be gone a lot in the next few days, so if I don't respond for awhile, it's probably that (if anyone even cares to further the discussion)."
This post was May 8, 2008 at 3:33 pm. Your original post was May 8, 2008 at 7:56 am. You honestly expected that Rick would respond to a criticism within the same day? Wow, maybe you don't have anything more productive to do with your time than spend it criticising an organization and individual who challenges some of your emotional attachments, and that's the basis of your expectation.
You choose not to include your real name on your profile there. You give no identifying information on your blogger.com profile. You are, for all intents and purposes, completely anonymous. There is nothing necessarily wrong with this. It can be useful if you want your ideas to be considered on their own merit, without being tainted by reputation. Since you claim that you have never associated with the movement, I don't see how anonymity would accomplish what you claim is your purpose - having an open discussion and debate of ideas. If that is truly what you want, shed your anonymity and engage the discussion honestly, without intrigue or secrecy.
Who are you, what is your purpose and what value do you propose to create? Answer these questions and you may engage the type of discussion you claim you want.
spiffy, does who I am change my arguments? No. So then why do you care.
I think my blog is more like Alma and Amulek responding to Zeezrom and the Amalikiahites than it being like an "anti-Mormon" blog. But nice try with the attempt to associate me with them.
"You must allow the teachings to enter your heart. As Alma teaches, you must desire to believe to allow the seed to be planted, and not cast it out because of your unbelief."
Yeah, I think we are all seeing the fruit that is being born.
Wow! Delete my comments! Isn't that the reason you didn't want to post on the Free Capitalist Forum? It seems to me that the reason is because you want to be in control of deleting comments you don't agree with. Cool! At least now I know your motives.
Honest conversation indeed!
Sorry about that, I was reading the wrong post. You can delete this one and the last one. My mistake.
Hi, I have a friend who is part of the producer revolution. Is that the same as this free capitalist movement? -- I think it is. Anyway it seems really similar. I like your blog. I am glad to find it because my friend cannot stop bugging me about joining his producer power hour. I am totally not into it. He cannot get past that and I think I offended him by saying no to an invite this last time. His response when I politely said, 'this is not for me," was that NO the producer power hour is for everyone.
One interesting point I want to make to you about my friend that I think you will find interesting, but that I would rather have let you know off line and why I am remaining anonymous so that if anyone reads this and knows my friend, I will not be spreading information about him that he would feel upset at me for, but he and his wife have been part of the producer revolution for a few years now. They are very into money. I think it is all they think about. He had some vision board that he said if he thought about it enough he would get the things on it (part of "the secret" he firmly believes in). One day he came home to his wife and three children with a very expensive car that was on his vision board that he now had money for due to his meditation power. I felt sick at this because the wife would talk to me often about how they were barely getting by and always going negative in their checking account.
Then last year I was told about some of their recent investments to make money. The idea was that they would use their credit for someone else to buy a property. Then that person would pay them each month for using their credit. Turns out six months later that they have borrowed so much money in this investment and it flopped. Now they owe several hundred thousand dollars and they don't make much in the first place. so they had to declare bankruptcy to get out of this predicament. It is interesting to me that they are insistant that I join their revolution that is not helping them in the least. In the time that they have joined this revolution me and my husband have gone to school and both obtained degrees and as soon as my husband is done in a medical residency we will make good money, but it is not due to having a power hour, but to hard work and determination.
Anyway this is a long comment, I wanted to share with you this experience I am having because I felt you would not only find it interesting, but I am so upset about the predicament of my friend and it is nice to get it out in the open for me.
I enjoyed reading your blog and looking at your ideas. Thanks
anonymous, that's really too bad about your friend. The Producer Revolution is a different organization, but shares a lot of the same ideas as the Free Capitalist movement it seems. ProducerRevolution.com has been down for a few weeks now. I don't know what that means, but it probably is not good.
The aspect of why people buy into all this is a touchy subject. But it is sad that many people have not only been financially ruined, but their perspective on money has become really warped. I don't know if they already had a warped view of money, or gained it somewhere along the way. And that whole "envisioning wealth" thing (or whatever it's called) gets pretty weird in my opinion. Nothing wrong with having a goal and envisioning yourself obtaining that goal, but sometimes people take it to a whole different level where it becomes mysticism. I haven't really seen that in the Free Capitalist movement. But whatever information is publicly available I try to review and point out problems I see. There are actually a lot of good points to these movements, but they seem to act more as justification to do things that are harmful. But that's just an evaluation on my part that I guess I can't really prove (or at least haven't yet).
I wish your friend luck, but financial reckoning always seems to come up eventually, for good or ill. Time to pay the piper. Law of Restitution and all that.
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