Customer Reviews

Starving the Monkeys: Fight Back Smarter

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This book is not an easy read. You won't polish this off in a relaxed evening. And I found a few bits infuriating.

So what makes it compelling?

Baugh delivers an unflinching look at the ills of today's society. He develops his narrative from the ground up, drawing on many colorful stories from his days as a Naval Academy midshipman, as a Marine Corps officer, and as a successful business entrepreneur to illustrate his points.

Baugh makes you think hard about how the world works. He delivers a roadmap and comprehensive building blocks for a solid education in math and the physical sciences -- as well as what used to be known as the practical trades -- to anyone willing to put in the work.

Baugh devotes considerable attention to contrasting the economic advantages of individual liberty against the ills of collective tyranny.

No magic bullets here. Baugh offers concrete solutions you can start working on today to make yourself more productive. History abundantly demonstrates that societies only prosper through productive individual action. Might as well divest yourself now of any notions of victimhood or arbitrary ideas of achieving 'fairness' through government coercion.

Agree or disagree with his philosophies, you should at least consider doing the homework. It's worth the effort. You can improve your life considerably with a bit of self-discipline. "Starving the Monkeys" is a great starting point.

I have read the reviews, eleven of them, and they are all positive at the time of this writing. I'm sorry. I simply don't see it. I found the book unoriginal and sophomoric.

Please understand, this book is not so much about preparedness/independence as it is about economics. The author begins with a defense of classical economics (so far so good...) that quickly descends into a 400 page anarcho-capitalist rant. Yes, our government system has been strangling growth and innovation from the very beginning. Yes, we have lost our way. Yes, the Dems and Reps are two sides of the same coin. We know. There is nothing new here. In fact, I think that supporting his position using nothing more than supposition and cute stories about cavemen hurts those of use who believe he is correct by making us appear silly. Honestly, Adam Smith doesn't need Mr. Baugh's help.

To be fair, the author employs turn-of-phrase that can be very amusing but in the end his own arrogance destroys any possibility of enjoying what he has to say. I was reminded of that archetypal high-school science geek that manages to put off everyone he knows because he's not nearly as clever as he thinks is. Add to that more than a smattering of anti-Christian digs (a shame since they do nothing to support his point) and you have a book that is simply too obnoxious to read.

At various points Mr. Baugh suggests different titles for the reader to explore:

Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations"
Atlas Shrugged
The Innovator's Dilemma

I agree. I'll add to that, the "The Death of Common Sense" by Phillip Howard and suggest that anyone interested save themselves some time by forgoing "Starving the Monkeys" and going straight to the sources.

This is the best book I have read in a long time. Lots of excellent advice, and insightful analysis of history, politics, and why the coming crisis is inevitable. Beware, if you are of the monkey mind set, you will be offended. If you think individualism is a good thing you will love it, maybe even be reassured that you are not alone. Can't recommend it highly enough.

Written with honest people in mind(*), Starving The Monkeys (STM) is a fascinating exegesis of human history. It details societal evolution with specific focus on mechanisms set up that enable vast numbers of people to make their way by leeching off of the truly productive class--all while most don't appear to care or even notice.

At times Baugh seems to channel P.J. O'Rourke, weaving humor into the longer passages while increasing the readers' fund of knowledge. Whereas O'Rourke may help your Scrabble game, STM will sharpen your mind with clear explanations of how society creates wealth, and how cheaters organize to siphon off "their share" of the stuff created by honest producers.

I recommend this book to everyone.

I *highly* recommend it to anyone who believes he has always worked hard and played fair, but upon seeing how some thrive when they don't seem to be adding any value anywhere, in his gut knows that something is just plain wrong with how our society has organized itself.

(*)By the way, one may be surprised who Baugh explains are the "honest people" (my phrase, not from the book). I bet there are a lot of folks who assume they fit in that category because they don't mug victims on the street or because they don't go on welfare, but are nonetheless members of Baugh's "Monkey" class. Without exaggeration I say you really have to read the book to understand who the Monkeys are, and what can be done about them.

Tom Baugh's book Starving the Monkeys is not easy to categorize. It cuts across genres, in that it is part economic treatise, part military autobiography, part small business instruction manual, and part modern military history and strategy guide.

The first third of the book lays the foundation for the study of the creation of wealth -- voluntary trade. Baugh starts fictional cave man account of capital formation, the division of labor, and ultimately -- the evolution of a parasitic class called politicians, that cause the decline, and ultimate collapse, of a prosperous society.

If you have already read Ludwig von Mises, or F.A. Hayek, much of this will be familiar to you. If you believe that "free trade" is a myth, and that in market there are only those who cheat, and those who are cheated, nothing in this section will be persuasive to you.

The second third describes how the parasitic political classes use regulation to suppress competition, and drastically reduce the option of self-employment of potential employees, in order to maintain excessive, oligopoly profit, and political power. The end result of incessant government regulation and protection of what Baugh would call the "monkey interest groups" is economic decline, decay, and death. Given these causes, and the inevitable result, Baugh describes the incentives this gives to employers, politicians, and the other monkey interests.

When he described the fictional scenario of an engineer pressured to design an item with inferior materials, his options, and his behavior after recognizing how management is trying to take credit if things go well, but
push blame onto him if things go bad -- I could have sworn he had been reading my mind. The exact same scenarios occur in virtually every industry in America. Those who take pride in producting value for customers are chronically frustrated. Given the constraints, he provides hints for those value generators to set out on their own, and survive until the time comes when providing useful goods and services is more appreciated.

The third section of the book describes the history and political choices our country has made over the last 100 years, that have brought us to the brink of collapse. He describes how the "Tyrany of the Nice" have used subtle manipulation techniques, backed up by government force, to profit from the labor of productive, while generating nothing of their own. He describes how these tyrants infest all levels of government, including the military, and how they profit from the creation of conflict, not its prevention. His treatment as a Marine fighting in Desert Storm, and his later treatment by Virginia tech--are shocking, but ultimately not surprising.

His conclusions: 1. hard work and investment make no sense in the current environment. Any risk you bear is your own, any reward will be taxed away, or stolen from you by financial con artists, or regulated away by bigger competitors. 2. Our government is corrupt to the core, and expecting political "solutions" are delusional.
3. When the Federal government ultimately collapses, there will be a dire need for people who know how to create truly valuable things -- energy, food, and fuel, along with "life quality" factors. Knowledge of math and science -- subjects where Americans are woefully unprepared, will be crucial tools that can neither be taxed nor stolen.

As a self-described "professional irritant", Tom does his best to get you to throw his book across the room. I'm sure he enrages feminists and God fearing, bible thumping Christians alike. But if you make it to the end of the book, you will have been educated in a way that is virtually impossible to do in schools, or through the mass media.

If you have any doubts about his book, check out his recent speech at the New Hampshire Liberty forum, found on the Starving the Monkeys website, or on Youtube.

"Starving the Monkeys: Fight Back Smarter" is about the struggle of the creative, productive members of society against the parasitic masses that author Tom Baugh refers to as the monkey collective. Monkeys are the looters and moochers who essentially dine from the plates of the producers through the tax and legal structures they have put in place. Baugh contends that the vast army of collectivist monkeys would literally starve if left to their own devices.

"Starving the Monkeys" refers to Baugh's recommendation that the producers strictly limit the monkey diet, by withholding their productive efforts on behalf of the collective. Not by refusing to pay taxes, but by temporarily throttling back on their productive output, and thereby hastening the fall of the monkey collective, which is even now teetering on the brink. He advises retreating into a personal "Galt's Gulch" until after the impending financial and social collapse, and then emerging with one's intellectual and productive tools intact. In the former Soviet Union, beleaguered individualists referred to this as "internal emigration." Whether this strategy will be taken up by enough producers to have an effect on the collective remains to be seen, but it reflects the "Atlas Shrugged" meme that is echoing loudly today, as employers hold off on new hiring for just one example.

Although this is a book designed to help you survive what may be our imminent financial Armageddon, you won't find recommendations on long-term food storage or home defense firearms. Other recent titles cover that ground, such as Fernando Aguirre's "The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse," and John Rawles's "How to Survive the End of the World As We Know It." According to Baugh, by far the most critical survival weapon is the one between your ears. This book is all about honing your mental edge to razor sharpness for the purpose of surviving the collapse intact.

Starving the Monkeys is not an easy read. It's extremely challenging, not only to political correctness but to many popular dogmas, including some religious ones. No sacred cow or ox is left ungored. I guarantee that thin-skinned feminists will be highly offended. If you have a low tolerance for seeing your pet beliefs or heroes under attack, this is not the book for you. For example, if you think that Lincoln was our greatest president, you will certainly not enjoy this book, to say the least. I picked the ingrained American devotion to "Honest Abe" as one example among countless others. Be warned. Baugh comes after numerous cultural and social beliefs and traditions with a steel crowbar, to pry them apart and analyze their weaknesses as he sees them. In fairness, he turns the same critical analysis on himself.

So why should you read such a problematic and often uncomfortable book, by a consistently prickly and acerbic (but always hilarious) writer? Simple. For the equally consistent brilliance of thought displayed. You may disagree vehemently with many of Baugh's suppositions (as I certainly did), but you cannot deny the breadth and power of his thinking. The single chapter titled "The Idea Factory" is worth the entire price of the book, and so are several others.

I ordered Starving the Monkeys on a whim after being thoroughly irritated at the number of regulations, taxes, and other junk thrown at me when I first started my business. The book was not an easy read - there are plenty of things in here that will make you uncomfortable, especially if you are the product of a public school system or a liberal arts school. Even if you grew up in a rural environment and especially if you currently inhabit a beige-walled cubicle hell in a position that does not provide real economic value. The words ring even more true if you have been gradually worn down by collectivism in the workplace and in your government, having felt that there was a problem but being unable to put words to it. That said, true learning is often uncomfortable and difficult.

First off, the author starts off with a discussion of basic economics, presented in the context of a small, (presumably Stone Age) tribe. He shows how free markets and money develop and how they are eventually corrupted by collectivists to become far less efficient than they could have been. Then he goes on to the real reason I bought the book, which is to explain how to effectively fight back against the forces of niceness (as he puts it). He describes a strategy that I hadn't considered and that I believe is probably the only thing that can work.

I will also add that I believe the author did make a mistake in his choice of the price point on this book. There's a lot of stuff in here that is worth more than he's charging for it. I believe that this manual should replace Atlas Shrugged as required reading for those who wish to throw off the chains of the collectivists, as it is more compact and logical. Ayn Rand's long rants irritate me when reading - the quality of Tom Baugh's ideas is at least as good as Rand's, without all the preachiness. It's also much more recent, practical and relevant to a modern audience.

Tom Baugh can be at once incredibly perceptive, and annoyingly ascerbic, but I found I could easily excuse the latter in order to gain the insight from the former. Once you "get" what he's trying to do for you, you start to appreciate that he's not pulling punches, nor worried about offending your sensibilities, and all of it helps to prove a couple of points along the way. If it gets in the way for you, think of him as the Dr. House of philosophy.

With his man/monkey analogy, he is able to illustrate many of the problems in our country as we hurtle down the ever steeper slope away from our founding principles. Some of these problems are obvious and well-discussed in the conservative/libertarian/Constitutionalist blogosphere. Others are problems that you knew existed, gnawing at the back of your mind, but couldn't quite identify. Tom makes these clear as well. Even though I agreed with much of Tom's philosophy and analysis going in, I found many of my preconceptions challenged, and I have changed my mind on several positions I formerly held, and I don't do that easily. You may come to think that his man/monkey construct is less an analogy, and more a semantic slight of hand to get you to think outside your cage. Or not.

I'll not give away the ending, such as it is, which in true Baugh fashion, is presented with "some assembly required", or better, "some of your own thought required". That said, even if you don't agree with most of what he says, and yet still ignore his warnings and make it through, you can't find much fault with the bulk of his recommendations for self-improvement. Those alone are worth the read.

The print is a bit tiny for older eyes, making the book look shorter than it is until you start into it. There are many referenced works which the author expects you to read or have read - some of which are necessary to fully understand the following sections of the book. These are all on the website if you want to pre-read any of them.

I found this book to be life changing. Having spent most of my life shovelling bananas at monkeys, I had been coming to some of the same conclusions, and made some progress in the direction Tom suggests. He took me the rest of the way in comprehension and illuminated a good part of the path ahead for me. Knowing in advance, I'd have paid many times more for his book than he charged, and how often can you say that?

I just finished reading Tom's book and the best thing is, it will make most anyone that labels themselves as Democrat or Republican just as uncomfortable, but for different reasons.

The real message of this book is not to pick sides and blame Gov't for the problems we face today or to promote Gov't as the answer. Instead it is an attempt to show how we the people, by forgetting the ideals on which this country was founded are allowing the Gov't to destroy us.

His insights and observations, as well as his personal experiences will open your eyes to the truth of where we are, how we got here and where we're headed.

A must read if you want to survive the meltdown and be part of the rebuilding.

I think it is impossible to read this book and remain neutral in your opinion of it. Either a reader will find joy and inspiration in Baugh's verbalization of what he/she's known to be the case all along, or the reader will throw the book down in disgust.

I recommend two readings. One, to get through the book. On the second reading, stop and review the recommended resources that are suggested. This will help in the fleshing out of one's ideas and opinions.

In an age where our nation is overrun with monkeys (those who would live off the work of others is one possible "monkey" definition), it is good to finally find a resource and author that nails the truth on the head. Tom picks up, as it has been said, where Ayn Rand left off with a much more realistic approach.

I would put this down on my "must read" list for all liberty-minded individuals.