Defying Mainstream Economies with Christian Values

What if there was an economic system that prioritized our shared Christian values? Imagine a world where businesses, banks, and social networks all defy the 'woke mob' and choose to uphold principles that align with our faith. That's what the parallel economy is all about. This episode delves into this fascinating concept, shedding light on how it operates alongside mainstream economies, and why it's gaining popularity among conservative circles. We discuss the importance of connecting with organizations that aren’t afraid to stand up for their beliefs and how the parallel economy can become a powerful alternative that celebrates our shared values.

But it's not just about economics. It's also about the next generation. We trade stories about the role of discipling children in shaping this new economy. Coming from a place of love and protection, we stress the importance of being discerning of false gospel preaching and the responsibility we hold to safeguard the minds of the future generation. We encourage entrepreneurship rooted in our faith and share tips on how to find and support local Christian businesses that uphold the same principles. Join us for an enlightening conversation on how we can transform the economy with our faith.

Transcript

Andrew Torba: 0:21

What's up folks? Episode two here of the Parallel Economy Podcast. I'm your An drew Torba, . Thank you for joining me today. Got a great episode for you today. A lot of folks are really excited about the podcast, myself included. This is probably long overdue.

Andrew Torba: 0:40

The past few years have been pretty interesting for me. So, for those of you who don't know, I do have three children, three young children, all under the age of four well, four and a half, two and a half and almost six months old. So I've been in dad mode for the past few years and haven't been able to create as much content. I've actually been turning down pretty much all podcasts and interviews and events for about two years now, and that's been a tremendous blessing to me because really wanted to focus on my family and focus on my children, and I like to practice what I preach. Right, you know, these are things that I tell other people to do, and so if I'm not doing them, that would make me a hypocrite, would it not? And so I've been really focused on my local community, my local church and my family in my own home, and I encourage you guys to do the same thing. But I finally have sort of got the ropes under me. My wife and I have gotten used to having three children now, and so we've sort of got things optimized. You know, if you're a parent, you know how that goes when you have a new baby. There's definitely an adjustment period and you know, our son was potty trading and all that stuff. So we sort of got over some humps and now I'm able to spend some time creating content.

Andrew Torba: 1:59

So today I wanna talk about, you know, the parallel economy and defining what it is. So you know, in the first episode I had a good chat with Dan Eddy, who is the COO of Gapay, gabb's merchant processing arm, and we had a great conversation. So if you missed episode one, go back and check that out. Today I wanna do a little bit more of a deep dive into what exactly is this concept of a parallel economy, and hopefully you can walk away from this episode and have a better understanding of that. So without further ado, let's dive in. I do have some slides, so if you're watching this, if you're listening to this, obviously you can't see the slides, but I'm gonna walk you through it and we'll just sort of define our terms and go from there. So, defining the parallel economy right.

Andrew Torba: 2:49

A parallel economy refers to an economic system or ecosystem that operates alongside the mainstream or traditional economy. The parallel economy can take various forms and often serves specific purposes or communities. Establishing a censorship, resistant community and infrastructure is really the core of what we're trying to do here. So in the last episode, you know, dan and I had talked about how a lot of people have misconceptions about the parallel economy. They think that it's, you know, the black market, or you know that it's totally, you know, built on cryptocurrency or things of this nature, or it's not at all using the existing infrastructure that is built on cryptocurrency, built up around the existing economy, and that's not true. That's where we want to get to.

Andrew Torba: 3:38

But stuff like that doesn't happen overnight, right? So you know, if we're going to build our own you know, visa or Mastercard, credit card payment processing rails that's not something that can just be done overnight. That's going to take quite a lot of time and effort. So we have to sort of work with what we have right now, and the important part of this is building the infrastructure and building the partnerships with banks that support and share our values and with merchant processors like GAP Pay and others that support our values and social networks like GAP that support our values, right. And so it's really about building more so about building community, and it's about encouraging people to spend money and spend their time and spend their energy and spend their efforts, you know, supporting businesses, supporting people, supporting organizations that share their values and that have a backbone right. So I think that's another big part of it is.

Andrew Torba: 4:35

So, you know, there's a lot of churches that may share your values, but you know, I think we learned during COVID that a lot of churches sort of bent the need to the regime and didn't really have a backbone when it came to, you know, defending, you know, our rights and the ability for us to exercise and practice our faith freely. And so it's really about weeding out the weak as well and finding out who's going to sort of have the backbone at the infrastructure level, at the technology level, at the commerce level, at the business level, to stand up to, you know, the woke mob and not bend the knee and not cancel people just because they have a politically incorrect opinion or a taboo opinion. So you know, the other part of what we're building here is obviously corely focused on protecting and uniting around our core values. Number one Christ first period. That is the backbone of the parallel economy. There's other people, other businesses out there, which is it's a good thing, right. There's other organizations I've sort of talked about this before that are sort of picking up on the parallel economy concept and running with it, and that's good in a sense. That's good because it propels the concept out there more, you know it mainstreams the concept more, et cetera.

Andrew Torba: 5:54

So there's folks in conservative circles that are starting now starting to talk about this, but you know, what they're not talking about is. They're not talking about, like, what are the sort of core values? What is this parallel economy actually standing for? What unites us in this parallel economy? And number one it has to be we're putting Christ first above all else. If we don't have that, if we don't have that cornerstone, nothing else matters. Right, you know you could build a whole parallel economy that is grounded on what Conservatism, like you know, is that what the cornerstone of the right wing parallel economy is, because conservatism is a failure, right, it has failed to conserve anything, and so it's as an ideology it is failed, and so why would you build this parallel economy on the back of a failed political ideology that failed to conserve anything. So that doesn't make any sense to me. Whereas Christ succeeded, right, and Christ is our cornerstone of the parallel economy.

Andrew Torba: 6:54

And that doesn't mean that you have to be a Christian necessarily to participate in the parallel economy, right. So you could still, you know, sort of support what we're doing, in that we're building up businesses that are owned by families that support traditional American and Christian values and biblical values. You could support all of that and not be a Christian, and, you know, you could start a business in the parallel economy. You don't have to be a Christian to do that, although that's sort of ideal, right, like we want to be able to support Christian families and small businesses that are not afraid to proclaim the word of God and to proclaim and put Christ first. So I think that's one of the very first thing that we should emphasize about what it is we're doing here is a parallel Christian economy.

Andrew Torba: 7:38

It's not just a parallel economy, it's a parallel Christian economy and, broader than that, it's a parallel Christian society. The parallel economy is one component of that, but more broadly, what we're doing here is we're building a parallel Christian society. So we're saying we're done with the mainstream society, we're done with the mainstream culture, we're done with the mainstream economy, as much as we possibly can be, until we start building up our own infrastructure, building up our own businesses, building up our own alternatives to a lot of these things, which is going to take time. You know, this is something I mentioned in the last episode. This is going to be a multi-generational effort here. This is not something that you just do in two or three years and you know, poof, we have a parallel economy or we have a parallel Christian society, right? This is something that we're going to have to lay the foundation now, and that the cornerstone of that foundation is Jesus Christ. And as we build up the infrastructure over the years, it grows stronger and it grows bigger, and I think we're starting to see that happen now.

Andrew Torba: 8:38

So, as this concept, you know, becomes mainstreamed, which is really just at its infancy it hasn't really even begun to start yet I think that we're going to start seeing some things happen. Some businesses pop up and more events like the Bud Light situation we could be doing that to every single one of these massive corporations Like that's the amount of collective purchasing power that we have. It's just astronomical and I don't think that people realize it, but you know where you're investing your money and your time really does matter and that's another sort of core thing that we're trying to get across here with building a parallel economy is, you know, your vote may not matter at the ballot box, but your vote with your wallet and your vote, with your time and your vote, with your energy and your effort, it really does matter and it really does make a big difference. And again, we saw that with Bud Light, we saw that with the latest Marvel movie that just came out, you know, tanking at the box office, not at all hitting the projections that they were trying to hit with that. And so, you know, we have to realize that we really do have a tremendous purchasing power, tremendous influence on the mainstream economy and on the mainstream culture. It's just we sort of have to collectively realize that.

Andrew Torba: 9:58

And it starts in your own home right, it starts with the individual, it starts with you personally making those decisions to not support, you know, netflix or Disney or any of these major, you know woke brands that are pushing BLM and all this stuff down our throats for the past several years. They'll get the message, ok. And so it's going to take time, but it is working, and if we continue pushing down that path in tandem with building our own infrastructure. So it's not just enough to stop supporting these places and these businesses and stop spending your time on places like Facebook etc. You got to sort of redirect that energy somewhere else, ok, and so instead of you know purchasing from Disney, instead of purchasing from you know name, the big Fortune 500 brand, seek out an alternative with the brand that provides, you know, a similar service or a similar product but that shares your values. Ok, and so that's what we're trying to facilitate here at GAB. So we have thousands of businesses that are on GAB as that are a part of the parallel infrastructure that we're building. We have the GAB marketplace, where businesses can list their business in our directory, where they can list their products and services on our marketplace, and then they can do payment processing, merchant processing with GAP pay, and so we're in the process that, like the way that we're sort of helping to enable this parallel economy, is by building the infrastructure and building the tools so that businesses can survive and thrive on sort of cancel proof infrastructure run by people that share their values, and then consumers can find this stuff too, because that's the other big problem is like where do I go to find alternatives to all of these low companies? Right, there's not really a place for that, and so that's a big part of the vision that we've been building out over the past several years is providing that place and providing that infrastructure. So it's both ends. It's providing the infrastructure for the businesses in the parallel economy to build and grow and market their business in the parallel economy, but then it's also the consumer side, where we're providing a place for them to discover and purchase from those businesses that share their values.

Andrew Torba: 12:10

So let me continue on with my presentation here. You know what are some practical steps that you can take. So pull your positions out of these useless stock market and buy things like Bitcoin, gold, silver, food stores, ammo. Right, you know the stock market is sort of rigged and propped up, just like everything else is, and so you know we need to not participate. That is also a part of the mainstream economy, right, that is the mainstream economy that we're trying to get away from, and eventually we're gonna have our own stock market. Okay, you know, maybe you guys don't know this, but there's I think it's the NASDAQ that requires you to have a certain amount of diversity on your board of directors, all this DEI stuff, like. If you're buying stocks in these public companies you're directly supporting. You know the stuff that these stock markets impose on these corporations, and so you know that's one way is and if enough of us did that, it would certainly cause a ruble effect in the market, which would be interesting.

Andrew Torba: 13:14

National elections are a big distraction, so, members of Congress, they're bought and sold like cattle by these oligarchs, by foreign nations, by whoever has the money really. So, instead of centering your focus on you know, getting you know, the next presidential candidate elected in a rigged election, centering your focus on getting Christian men in your own backyard elected to school board, city council mayor, et cetera, focus more so on local elections, because you actually do have an impact locally and most of the people in your community including probably yourself, if you admit it don't know too much about local politics, and that's an opportunity for us. So, you know, focus on small, local elections where you can have a real impact. Run, if you feel called to run, and get involved. Exit the big tech mind prison, obviously. I'm going to say this join GAB, you know. Get off of Facebook. If you're on Facebook, you know talk about voting with your time, voting with where you spend your energy. If you're on Facebook, every minute that you're spending on Facebook, you're making Mark Zuckerberg more money so that he could rig the next election, just like he did in 2020. And so you know, if you're spending your time there, you're feeding the beast, you're feeding the enemy. You're making the enemy money, and so it's not just about what you're buying and who you're buying from. It's about where we spend our time as well.

Andrew Torba: 14:36

You know this goes to the church level too. If your church has gone woke, you need to leave. You need to try to change it from within or leave. Those are your two options. Okay, if your church is preaching a gospel that is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. If they're preaching a gospel of social justice or progressivism or liberal talking points, you need to leave. And you know what? It's something that is really pervasive.

Andrew Torba: 15:02

In the American church in particular, we see this pervasiveness of Zionism, and that's largely due to people like Darby and Schofield, who were funded by Zionists to push this radical new theology of dispensationalism that didn't exist for the first 1900 years of church history. And so you know, people need to understand the sort of the theology behind the church that they're in and if that theology is preaching another gospel, if it's preaching the gospel of Zionism, if it's preaching the gospel of social justice or of progressivism, then you need to get into a new church. In most cases, you're probably not going to be able to change it from within. They have a lot of probably safeguards against that. So you can either start a new church or find a new church, but you probably have to get out and you got to stop supporting churches like this.

Andrew Torba: 15:55

Okay, because this is a part of the pervasive problem that we're seeing in the American church is they're not preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. They're preaching another gospel, whether it's the gospel of Zionism, which is a big, big problem in the American church, the gospel of social justice, progressivism, left-wing causes that's another big, big problem in the American church. But there are churches out there that are actually preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. You just got to take the time and the effort to go and find them and stop subjecting yourself to a false gospel and stop tithing to these churches that are promoting a false gospel and get yourself in a good church. So that's another big part of it.

Andrew Torba: 16:35

Leave big banks for local community banks. You may not think that your supporting causes like BLM and LGBT and all that woke stuff, but if you're banking with a bank a major bank chances are you're supporting it indirectly. And it's the same thing with when you're supporting these massive Fortune 500 companies that are doing DEI and all that crap. You're indirectly supporting all these causes and they're indoctrinating the next generation and they're forcing all this stuff down the throats of Americans every single day and people around the world. Really Start supporting the local businesses in your area as well. Go out of your way to support small, local businesses.

Andrew Torba: 17:18

I think that's an important thing that you can focus on. And, outside of that, pull your kids out of the public schools. I know that's easier said than done, but protecting the minds of the next generation is crucial. Again, this is a long-term play. This isn't something that we just just build a parallel economy or a parallel society overnight. Ensuring that the next generation that are children, that your grandchildren, are not being subjugated to these indoctrination of the enemy is just absolutely crucial. So do whatever you can to get your kids either in private school a private Christian school ideally and I know not everybody can do that or home school, and again, I know not everybody can do that. If you can't do that, that's the ideal scenario, but if you can't, for whatever reason, can't do it, can't make it work then you need to ensure that you're spending time with your kids and reviewing what they're learning in school and correcting the errors of the things that they're being taught in school. At a minimum, at an absolute minimum.

Andrew Torba: 18:24

As parents, it's our job, it's our responsibility to disciple our children, and so if we're not doing that, that's on us and I think we need to get back to that. It's not your church's responsibility to disciple your children. It's not the school's responsibility to disciple your children. It's your responsibility as a parent, and I think a lot of parents too, far too many parents over the past couple of generations have sort of outsourced their parental responsibility to disciple their children to the TV, to the iPad, to the church, to the school take your pick to the culture, and we see the fruits of that. Now, right, we see the fruits of what happens when parents aren't discipling their children. They're going to get discipled by someone else and chances are, it's not going to be discipled in biblical values, it's not going to be discipled in cherishing our country, loving our country, loving Christ. We see the fruits of that with these younger generations now, and so we have to learn from this and we have to disciple our children. It's just that simple.

Andrew Torba: 19:28

So let's get back to this here. Go and build gab how to build a parallel economy. So you need to research and discover, seek out Christian businesses that align with your values. Online directories like we're going to about to launch on gab, our business directory for the parallel economy, local church networks, christian communities these can all serve as a valuable resource to identify businesses that prioritize their faith in their operations, prioritize collaboration, foster connections and collaborations within the Christian business community. Networking events, trade shows, online platforms like gab, dedicated to entrepreneurship can facilitate partnerships and collaborations, enabling businesses to support one another and jointly serve their target market. So we're seeing this a lot on gab now, where different business owners that are in the parallel economy are doing different partnerships and stuff and working together, which is really great to see.

Andrew Torba: 20:20

And then we want to encourage entrepreneurship. We need pretty much to replace everything, and that's going to take time and that's going to take an entrepreneurial spirit. As Christians, we're builders, right, we're in dwell with the Holy Spirit, and so we have the ability to create and to build things. That's a gift that God has blessed us with. It's a fruit of the spirit, and so we need to use that to build businesses and build businesses up and help businesses grow of people that share our values and aren't going to bend the knee on any of the woke stuff or the mob or any of that nonsense. So by nurturing and empowering Christian entrepreneurs, the parallel economy can flourish, offering diverse options for consumers while promoting shared beliefs, and then amplify your support. So if you discover a business that has a great product that's in the parallel economy like, tell other people about it. Right, use your voice. A word of mouth is one of the most powerful forms of marketing, especially in the parallel economy, especially at these early stages, and so if you find a business that is great, has a great service, a great alternative, be sure to tell other people about it. That's really important.

Andrew Torba: 21:31

So what are we doing here at GAB in terms of building infrastructure for the parallel economy? Obviously, we have GAB, which is a replacement for Facebook and Twitter. We have a GAB TV, which is a replacement for Vimeo and YouTube, gab ads, which is a replacement for Google AdSense and Facebook ads, and then GAB Pay, which is a replacement for the payment processors. So this is just some of the infrastructure that we're working on, and we also have GAB Marketplace, which is an alternative for things like eBay, etsy, facebook Marketplace, etc. So that's just a broad overview of the infrastructure, of how we're building, and so I want to encourage other people to build, because we can't build at all. We've built a heck of a lot, especially for what we have to work with. We've built a lot, but we certainly cannot build at all, and I want to see other entrepreneurs stepping up to the plate to build things, and they certainly are, and I see it on GAB every day.

Andrew Torba: 22:24

So just a high-level overview here for the second episode what the parallel economy is, why it's important and what we're doing here at GAB to enable and support entrepreneurs in the parallel economy and businesses in the parallel economy on both ends. So giving business owners the tools to distribute, to advertise, to connect with customers, to get their products out there, and then giving consumers the ability to discover these things and purchase from these businesses and things of that nature. So I think that's good for episode two. I appreciate you guys tuning in. This one was a little bit of a quick one, but I'm going to keep doing these. If you enjoy them, please subscribe to the podcast. It's now available wherever you get your podcasts you know Apple podcasts and all that stuff so go check it out at paralleleconomypodcastcom, share these with a friend and, of course, get on GABcom. Thank you, guys, and remember to speak freely. Jesus Christ is king.