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Claire, welcome to the Network 
City podcast. 

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You're the editor and founder of
Colette, which was for a while 

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combating, you know, the 
craziness on the left. 

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Now you actually also combat to 
a large extent, the craziness on

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the right, basically enlightened
centrism for a long time. 

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And, you know, we don't agree on
everything. 

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We agree on a lot of things. 
Do you want to give the quick 

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spiel on Colette and everything 
you've done over the years? 

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Sure. 
Well, thanks for having me on 

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Bellagio. 
It's a real honor to be talking 

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with you. 
So I founded Colette about a 

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decade ago. 
And at the time I was reacting 

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mostly to what I perceived to be
increasingly hyperbolic sort of 

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left wing narratives, 
particularly in media that were 

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untethered to any kind of 
evidence or statistical reality.

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So I was studying psychology at 
the time, and I had been trained

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to look at sociological 
questions through a quantitative

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viewpoint. 
And, you know, I was reading 

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stuff in media, particularly on 
the issue of gender that was 

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simplistic, I knew was false. 
And so I just had a reaction. 

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I was politicized by the early 
work narratives that I saw in 

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media and doing a little bit of 
digging and reading made me 

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realize that in academia, 
certain fields had been 

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distorted by political a 
political drift to the left. 

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So in my field of psychology, 
certain sociological social 

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psychology questions were sort 
of inflated in importance, you 

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know, such as like stereotype by
it or implicit bias that those 

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questions were inflated and 
there was not much evidence to 

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support them, whereas other 
findings were sort of 

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suppressed. 
So I became more aware of the 

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fact that left wing orthodoxy 
and dogma, particularly around 

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issues of race and gender were 
sort of disfiguring both 

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academia and the media. 
And so that motivated me to 

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launch Quillette. 
And it just so happened that it 

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coincided with the 2016 election
of Donald Trump. 

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And So what happened was, 
particularly in the United 

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States, a lot of left wing 
institutions and people on the 

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left sort of went insane. 
And so we had this huge wave of 

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cancel culture, people being 
sacked from their jobs in tech 

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industries, in the tech 
industry, people being sacked 

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from their jobs or cancelled in 
academia, in artistic 

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communities, sort of swept 
through the culture between 2016

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and sort of peaked in 2020, I 
would say with the George Floyd,

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Floyd riots. 
And so we sort of have ridden 

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this what cultural wave of 
increasing workness. 

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And we were, we were just early 
in criticizing workness, I guess

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you could say. 
But now that workness is sort of

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receding slowly. 
We're becoming more sensitive to

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the liberalism that is emerging 
on the right. 

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So that's been our our journey. 
And you know, our values, myself

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and my editors that I work with,
our values haven't changed 

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dramatically. 
We've always considered 

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ourselves small L liberals slash
small C conservatives, but we 

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are reacting and responding to 
waves of a liberalism, whether 

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they come from the left or the 
right. 

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Yeah. 
And I do think that they call 

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the right reactionary because it
reacts, it does move second. 

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And so I do put some blame me 
much of the blame on the left 

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for creating today's right 
because the reasonable, you 

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know, like like the Romney style
reasonable center right kind of 

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person or even the Bloomberg 
Democrat center left or what 

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have you. 
That person was just given a 

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hole in their head. 
And essentially it was like a 

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natural selection process of 
antibiotic resistance to select 

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for an unreasonable right. 
And and now of course, that 

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right is unreasonable. 
So there you go. 

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That's happened, unfortunately, 
many times in history. 

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And the result is just two 
things that just start punching 

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each other with the left magics 
into existence, the thing that 

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it constantly preaches against 
and the rights. 

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Like there's actually a meme 
that talks about this. 

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It's like all these young kids 
are told they're the bad guys 

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are like, I guess I'm the bad 
guys and they put on the mask 

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and they're all bad together. 
You know, that kind of thing, 

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right? 
So this happened in, you know, 

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in Europe in the mid 20th 
century, where communism led to 

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communism came first, and 
fascism arose in part reaction 

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to communism. 
And of course, they just punched

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it out in Go ahead. 
The communists not only describe

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liberals as being fascists, in 
the 1920s and 30s they described

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slightly watered down communists
as fascists. 

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You know, the, the, the extreme 
left has always demonized their 

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enemies as fascists. 
And then they create support for

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a genuine fascist movement. 
And then, you know, lots of 

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people are by that stage, 
they're exhausted. 

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They can't fight the extreme 
left anymore. 

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So I would agree with that 
analysis. 

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That's. 
Right now, the thing about that 

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is, of course it is an 
unreasonable right. 

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And so now you're caught 
between. 

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It's kind of like in physics, 
there's this concept of an 

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induced dipole moment. 
Do you know what that is? 

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So basically, when you've got 
like an external electrical 

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field, then you can have like 
you push the charge over to one 

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side, like the positive charge 
and then the negative charges on

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this side. 
And now suddenly The thing is 

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polarized, right? 
And so like in the presence of 

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an electoral field, this thing 
can the polarization that didn't

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exist before can now exist, 
right? 

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And you know, there's a, there's
all these graphs that can show 

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on, you know, how it's in the US
in particular, it's not one 

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country, it's two parties and 
how only 4% of Democrats marry 

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Republicans and how that's 
visible at the level of 

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congressional votes. 
And that's visible at the level 

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of social networks and how it's 
actually been coming further 

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apart because it used to be that
it was basically like 1 country,

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red, white and blue. 
And now it's red and blue and 

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red is in their own social 
networks like Truth Social and 

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Gab and X and blue is in Threads
and blue sky and Mastodon or 

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what have you, right? 
And the thing about that, 

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though, is that actually 
happened in most of the world in

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the 20th century. 
You know, we've talked about 

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that before, right? 
Or should you know? 

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Do you want to? 
You can refresh me. 

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Sure. 
So like in the 20th century, you

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had South Korea and North Korea,
you had East Germany and West 

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Germany, you had, you know, Hong
Kong and, and Taiwan on the one 

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hand, and you had the PRC on the
other hand. 

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And what people sort of kind of 
forget is that both capitalism 

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and actually communism and 
actually fascism all arguably 

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originated at least in part in 
America. 

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And this is something that 
Yarvin is written about, but 

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other people have written about 
it like the the right version of

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it is or, you know, left wingers
correctly say, oh, a lot of 

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Hitler's ideas came from the 
Confederates and from eugenics 

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and so on. 
The the right will say, well, 

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the progressives were 
eugenicists too. 

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And the right will also say, 
actually, Trotsky raised money 

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in New York. 
And, you know, the ideas of 

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communism came out of the West 
and they went East and they 

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basically were, you know, were 
exported there. 

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And so the left says that 
fascism was due to impart the 

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American right. 
And the right says communism was

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impart to the American left. 
They're actually both correct. 

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And of course, capitalism also 
an American thing. 

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So the ideologies that the rest 
of the world fought against were

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sort of cooked up in the wet lab
that was America, you know, so 

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to speak, speak those ideologies
in the Koreas, for example, tore

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that apart. 
The germ. 

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You know, there's this really 
interesting book called, I think

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4 Germany's. 
And I remember actually looking 

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for a book that had to be 
written by somebody who was like

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this. 
I was like, you know, if you 

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live in a particular spot in 
Germany and you're long lived 

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enough, you could have lived 
through Weimar, Hitler, East 

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Germany and then democracy after
1989, right? 

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Like if you're long lived 
enough, you could have made it 

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all the way through and you 
wouldn't have to be that long 

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lived because Weimar was like 
the 20s. 

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And you know, but if you're 70 
ish, 80 ish, you would have, you

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were done with normal human 
life, could have actually 

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experienced 4 Germany's. 
And there's this, this book on 

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that, right? 
So the rest of the world was 

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sort of just thrashed back and 
forth by these sort of 

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ideological currents that 
emanated in the West. 

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And now it's the West itself 
that is being thrashed by this 

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stuff. 
And so in in many ways, you 

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know, there's this concert I 
have which is history is running

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in reverse. 
And so all the countries in the 

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yeah, go ahead. 
No, I'm familiar with your, your

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that that thesis that history is
running in reverse. 

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I would just push back just a 
little bit on this, on the idea 

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that the, you know, fascism and 
communism. 

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I mean, there's of course 
there's some American 

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connections, you know, Ho Chi 
Minh was in New York and so on. 

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But we can't forget the 
influence of the French 

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Revolution as well, which is 
obviously, you know, obviously 

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LED straight, you know, straight
line to communism. 

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Yes, but, but the but the 
architects of the French 

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Revolution cited the American 
Revolution as inspiration 

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because France had helped 
America. 

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Yeah, right. 
Yeah. 

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So yeah. 
It go ahead. 

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No, no, no. 
It's, I think, I think it's good

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to acknowledge the American 
influence, but not, not be, not 

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be like Chomsky and place 
America at the center of the 

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universe, you know, You know 
what I mean? 

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It's it's not, it's, yeah, I 
know what you're saying. 

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It's not monofactorial, but I do
think it's interesting to cause 

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of course, you know, French 
people bear responsibility for 

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the French Revolution. 
You know, the Russian Revolution

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happened in Russia and all the 
people involved bear 

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responsibility, you know, but it
is, it is something which is 

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like, it is interesting the 
extent to which a lot of these 

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ideas that at least in part and 
to to, to a degree that's not 

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usually acknowledged, right? 
So that they, they originated 

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both far right and far left in 
America, that they got exporter 

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the rest of the world and they 
did, they laid waste to huge 

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swaths of the world. 
And now the rest of the world 

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has immunity to that herd 
immunity in in whole or in part,

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right? 
Not completely, but like Eastern

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Europe has gone through 
communism, right? 

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China has gone through 
communism, India has gone 

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through socialism. 
They're all tired of that stuff.

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There's kind of basically want 
to do business, go ahead. 

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Yeah, they've got. 
Yeah, they're tired because 

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they've had contact with 
reality. 

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Yes, but you know, it's funny, I
think it's possible that 

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Australia this century is again,
as you guys call it, the lucky 

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country. 
You know, you want to know my 

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case for Australia, so I'm going
to make the case for Australia 

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and you tell me how wrong I am 
or whether it's an interesting 

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angle. 
You'll have local color on this.

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OK, Do you see this post? 
Like, did you know Australia 

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almost paid off its national 
debt, something I didn't even 

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know was possible for a Western 
government by right before the 

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financial crisis, the Australian
government had gotten its debt 

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down to 4.7% of GDP. 
All the way from like this crazy

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number in, you know, World War 
right after World War 2, right? 

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So all the way down to 4.7%, 
which shows it's possible. 

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People don't even think it's 
possible. 

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And if you look at this again, 
this is 2021, right, right after

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the pandemic, like Australia and
New Zealand are sort of air 

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gapped relative to, you know, 
the the rest of the G7 that has 

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significantly higher, you know, 
gross debt and net debt. 

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And then this is a percentage 
GDP. 

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And then if you look at the 
millionaire migration map, do 

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you see this chart over here, 
Australia and New Zealand 

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consistently are up there with 
Singapore and the UAE for where 

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global millionaires want to 
relocate. 

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And, and that's kind of like a 
distributed diligence, right? 

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Because all these different 
millionaires are like, okay, 

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this is a pretty good place, all
things considered, one of the 

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best in the world to go to. 
And So what are they doing 

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differently? 
And my, and you tell me how 

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wrong I am, or maybe maybe I'm 
right, which is my very rough 

227
00:11:46,440 --> 00:11:47,880
impression. 
This is from like 2 years ago 

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00:11:48,240 --> 00:11:52,080
that it's a bizarro world where 
the right and left are actually 

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00:11:52,080 --> 00:11:54,240
somewhat effective. 
So the conservatives actually 

230
00:11:54,240 --> 00:11:56,960
cut deficits and the liberals 
actually oppose wars. 

231
00:11:57,080 --> 00:11:59,960
Lol what a concept right? 
Go ahead. 

232
00:12:00,160 --> 00:12:00,920
Yeah. 
No, got you. 

233
00:12:01,000 --> 00:12:04,080
You go on, you go on. 
OK, I'll make my case and you 

234
00:12:04,080 --> 00:12:04,960
tell me I'm wrong. 
All right. 

235
00:12:04,960 --> 00:12:06,680
So then I was like, how do they 
actually do this? 

236
00:12:06,680 --> 00:12:07,960
How'd they pay their national 
debt? 

237
00:12:07,960 --> 00:12:10,120
They remained A technologically 
modern Western country. 

238
00:12:10,320 --> 00:12:12,240
They didn't go to autocracy or 
Mad Max. 

239
00:12:12,560 --> 00:12:14,280
And I was like, how do they 
actually do this? 

240
00:12:14,560 --> 00:12:18,560
And it, it appears that it's 
partly asset sales like they did

241
00:12:18,720 --> 00:12:21,040
sales of the Sydney airport and 
so on and so forth. 

242
00:12:21,040 --> 00:12:24,040
Right. 
And one of my views is also that

243
00:12:24,600 --> 00:12:26,760
maybe Australia is a little more
on the right and New Zealand 

244
00:12:26,760 --> 00:12:29,080
more on the left. 
That's like a functional left 

245
00:12:29,080 --> 00:12:32,720
and right within the Anglo world
that continues down under 

246
00:12:32,720 --> 00:12:35,200
because it's far away from all 
the shooting and craziness of 

247
00:12:35,440 --> 00:12:39,240
North America. 
And you know, for example, New 

248
00:12:39,240 --> 00:12:43,120
Zealand also like they tried to 
constrain inflation with the 

249
00:12:43,120 --> 00:12:45,520
famous 2% target. 
Do you know about that? 

250
00:12:45,520 --> 00:12:47,680
Do you know what I'm talking? 
About. 

251
00:12:48,080 --> 00:12:50,000
No, I don't yeah, go on. 
So central banks around the 

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00:12:50,000 --> 00:12:53,400
world in theory at least try to 
keep inflation at 2%. 

253
00:12:53,400 --> 00:12:55,320
Why? 
Because newly New Zealand 

254
00:12:55,320 --> 00:12:57,960
actually set a number now 
actually inflation arguably 

255
00:12:57,960 --> 00:13:00,640
should be 0 percent or even 
negative because of you should 

256
00:13:00,800 --> 00:13:03,840
prices should decrease as 
technology improves and then 

257
00:13:03,840 --> 00:13:05,960
people say oh liquidity trap and
then my response to that is 

258
00:13:05,960 --> 00:13:08,200
something called subdivision. 
But we can we can go back to 

259
00:13:08,200 --> 00:13:11,360
that. 
The the point though, is that 

260
00:13:11,520 --> 00:13:14,960
New Zealand pioneered this 
concept of 2% caps on inflation,

261
00:13:14,960 --> 00:13:17,400
this small country underneath. 
And even though it's nominally 

262
00:13:17,400 --> 00:13:20,000
on the left, that was actually 
like a center right policy that 

263
00:13:20,000 --> 00:13:22,720
got adopted by the world, right?
And so it's like a functional 

264
00:13:22,720 --> 00:13:24,080
Anglo world is how I think about
it. 

265
00:13:24,080 --> 00:13:28,040
And I'll be brief. 
I'll basically what is my case? 

266
00:13:28,040 --> 00:13:30,320
Why? 
Why are these maybe the best run

267
00:13:30,320 --> 00:13:35,400
countries in the Anglo world? 
One argument for this is that 

268
00:13:35,920 --> 00:13:39,360
their small size and proximity 
has result to proximity to China

269
00:13:39,360 --> 00:13:41,680
has resulted in a totally 
different economy than America. 

270
00:13:41,960 --> 00:13:44,240
They don't have illusions of 
having the strongest military. 

271
00:13:44,880 --> 00:13:47,000
Australia doesn't have illusions
of the reserve currency. 

272
00:13:47,000 --> 00:13:50,000
They just dig stuff out of the 
ground and sell to China so they

273
00:13:50,000 --> 00:13:53,200
have a real economy. 
Yeah, that, that's basically, 

274
00:13:53,320 --> 00:13:54,840
that's basically it. 
We just dig. 

275
00:13:54,880 --> 00:13:56,720
We're the custodians of the 
dirt. 

276
00:13:56,840 --> 00:14:01,000
We have this big chunk of land 
which has lots of valuable 

277
00:14:01,000 --> 00:14:06,000
resources in them and we dig 
them up and there's, there's, 

278
00:14:06,120 --> 00:14:08,760
you know, it means that we have 
an unsophisticated economy. 

279
00:14:08,760 --> 00:14:13,120
We don't innovate and we don't 
have a lot of depths when it 

280
00:14:13,120 --> 00:14:16,120
comes to our tech industry. 
But it also means that we have 

281
00:14:16,120 --> 00:14:21,480
this huge tax revenue base. 
It also means that working 

282
00:14:21,480 --> 00:14:24,160
class, you know, there's all of 
this conversation happening in 

283
00:14:24,200 --> 00:14:27,280
in the United States about 
bringing back manufacturing jobs

284
00:14:27,280 --> 00:14:32,560
for working class men. 
Well, you know, Australia has 

285
00:14:32,960 --> 00:14:35,800
very high paid jobs for working 
class men. 

286
00:14:35,800 --> 00:14:38,200
They're in the mines. 
So we don't have this sort of 

287
00:14:38,200 --> 00:14:41,040
disaffection between, you know, 
the working. 

288
00:14:41,120 --> 00:14:43,760
There's not this sense that the,
the middle class has been 

289
00:14:43,760 --> 00:14:46,400
hollowed out. 
Like I can go up to Queensland 

290
00:14:46,400 --> 00:14:50,360
and my cousin who didn't, 2 
cousins who didn't finish high 

291
00:14:50,360 --> 00:14:54,600
school will be earning more than
my cousins who have gone all the

292
00:14:54,600 --> 00:14:57,600
way through university and who 
have become medical doctors. 

293
00:14:57,600 --> 00:15:01,560
So there isn't this sense of 
massive inequality between 

294
00:15:01,560 --> 00:15:04,600
people who are educated and who 
are knowledge workers and the 

295
00:15:04,600 --> 00:15:08,120
working class because we have, 
we have these huge industries, 

296
00:15:08,120 --> 00:15:11,040
you know, in regional places 
where people dig up stuff out of

297
00:15:11,040 --> 00:15:14,560
the ground. 
So that part maybe, maybe 

298
00:15:14,560 --> 00:15:18,360
that's, I mean, one way I've 
thought about it is in the 20th 

299
00:15:18,360 --> 00:15:21,600
century, there was an 
overcorrection towards, you 

300
00:15:21,600 --> 00:15:25,240
know, obviously to communism, 
socialism in much of the world, 

301
00:15:25,240 --> 00:15:28,360
including in China. 
But the parts that were saved 

302
00:15:28,880 --> 00:15:31,240
relatively were those that had 
Anglophone influence. 

303
00:15:31,360 --> 00:15:35,280
So Hong Kong, Singapore and 
Taiwan, insofar as Chiang Kai 

304
00:15:35,280 --> 00:15:37,920
shek was certainly funded by the
Americans, right. 

305
00:15:39,400 --> 00:15:41,400
And so the, and then of course 
the Chinese diaspora. 

306
00:15:41,680 --> 00:15:44,560
And that's how sort of the, the 
Chinese world continued. 

307
00:15:44,840 --> 00:15:47,600
And people knew that. 
In fact, the fact that it 

308
00:15:47,600 --> 00:15:51,120
continued in that way is what 
led to the reboot of China. 

309
00:15:51,120 --> 00:15:55,360
Because Deng Xiaoping, he saw 
how successful all three of them

310
00:15:55,360 --> 00:15:56,960
contributed. 
He, he was scared by how 

311
00:15:56,960 --> 00:15:59,400
successful or concerned by how 
successful Taiwan was getting. 

312
00:15:59,400 --> 00:16:01,000
They had a GDP comparable to 
China. 

313
00:16:01,560 --> 00:16:05,080
He emulated Singapore's strategy
of basically building a modern 

314
00:16:05,080 --> 00:16:06,640
country with Chinese 
characteristics. 

315
00:16:07,200 --> 00:16:10,120
And then he also had Hong Kong 
right across the border and then

316
00:16:10,120 --> 00:16:12,200
he built Shenzhen there. 
So all three of those Chinese 

317
00:16:12,520 --> 00:16:15,880
islands of sanity and of course 
the Chinese diaspora was 

318
00:16:15,880 --> 00:16:17,960
important in terms of building 
Chinese trade around the world. 

319
00:16:17,960 --> 00:16:20,280
All four arguably were important
to rebooting China. 

320
00:16:20,680 --> 00:16:23,280
And I wonder, and here's a 
thesis and I'll give some more 

321
00:16:23,280 --> 00:16:26,920
data on it if you want. 
I wonder if that's history 

322
00:16:26,920 --> 00:16:29,720
running in reverse this century,
where this century, China's 

323
00:16:29,720 --> 00:16:33,160
island of stability and America 
is Grand Theft Auto. 

324
00:16:33,160 --> 00:16:36,000
It's American anarchy, all the 
shooting and all the shouting, 

325
00:16:36,000 --> 00:16:38,080
all the 1st Amendment and the 
Second Amendment, the shouting 

326
00:16:38,080 --> 00:16:40,560
and the shooting. 
And of course, you know, The 

327
00:16:40,560 --> 00:16:42,680
thing is, of course, I'm 
supportive of the 1st Amendment,

328
00:16:42,680 --> 00:16:45,000
the Second Amendment, but 
they're meant for virtuous 

329
00:16:45,000 --> 00:16:47,200
people that have 
self-discipline, right? 

330
00:16:47,480 --> 00:16:50,240
And not people who are just 
screaming obscenities at each 

331
00:16:50,240 --> 00:16:53,200
other and, you know, blasting at
each other on the street. 

332
00:16:53,640 --> 00:16:56,000
And it's like, you have rights, 
but you have responsibilities 

333
00:16:56,400 --> 00:16:57,680
and maybe there's no 
responsibility. 

334
00:16:57,680 --> 00:17:00,000
And so therefore, you know, the 
right is just this abstract kind

335
00:17:00,000 --> 00:17:02,520
of thing. 
And so it doesn't necessarily 

336
00:17:02,520 --> 00:17:05,640
lead to a good society. 
You know, like, if people are 

337
00:17:05,640 --> 00:17:08,640
migrating to countries that they
don't have a First Amendment or 

338
00:17:08,640 --> 00:17:11,240
Second Amendment, they're voting
with their feet against at least

339
00:17:11,240 --> 00:17:12,760
how that's being implemented in 
practice. 

340
00:17:12,920 --> 00:17:15,240
And of course, because it's so 
sacrosanct, it'll never go away.

341
00:17:15,599 --> 00:17:17,960
And so which is fine. 
But then you're going to have 

342
00:17:18,000 --> 00:17:19,760
like a shooting gallery and a 
shouting gallery. 

343
00:17:20,119 --> 00:17:23,560
So maybe the Anglo world has 
just over indexed on individuals

344
00:17:23,640 --> 00:17:25,280
digital freedom to the level of 
anarchy. 

345
00:17:25,280 --> 00:17:26,839
And that's the thing that 
everybody's shouting about. 

346
00:17:27,079 --> 00:17:30,120
We actually want is when anarchy
is in access, you want order. 

347
00:17:30,600 --> 00:17:35,560
And so the parts of the 
Anglophone world like China or 

348
00:17:35,720 --> 00:17:41,840
like Australia and Singapore and
New Zealand, those are the ones 

349
00:17:41,840 --> 00:17:45,320
that have some signic influence 
where there's Chinese trade or 

350
00:17:45,320 --> 00:17:48,160
Chinese mining or Chinese 
exports, which keeps the sort of

351
00:17:48,160 --> 00:17:51,240
pragmatic level head on their 
shoulders relative to the 

352
00:17:51,680 --> 00:17:53,640
craziness of where North America
is going. 

353
00:17:53,640 --> 00:17:55,920
Let me know if you, if you agree
with that, distribute that. 

354
00:17:55,960 --> 00:17:58,240
That's a thesis. 
I'm not endorsing it, not 

355
00:17:58,240 --> 00:17:59,920
disagreeing with it. 
That's the thesis that I that 

356
00:17:59,920 --> 00:18:02,480
I've contemplated. 
I think it's an interesting 

357
00:18:02,480 --> 00:18:06,320
thesis. 
I would just add some anecdotal 

358
00:18:06,800 --> 00:18:11,160
experience that could be one 
data point to support it. 

359
00:18:11,200 --> 00:18:14,880
I mean, it's too big a thesis 
for me to really say yes or no 

360
00:18:15,080 --> 00:18:17,720
that I agree with it. 
But at least where I live in 

361
00:18:17,720 --> 00:18:23,280
Sydney, we have a very strong 
migrant influence and migrant 

362
00:18:23,280 --> 00:18:27,280
population in the education 
system, which makes the 

363
00:18:27,280 --> 00:18:30,960
education, our education system,
our selective schools and 

364
00:18:30,960 --> 00:18:36,240
universities more competitive, 
at least that the at the level 

365
00:18:36,240 --> 00:18:38,600
where your your children are 
going through school. 

366
00:18:38,600 --> 00:18:43,160
I mean, in the universities, 
there's issues with lots of 

367
00:18:43,160 --> 00:18:45,920
international students and 
there's some concerns that 

368
00:18:46,120 --> 00:18:49,360
standards have lowered. 
But at least in the selective 

369
00:18:49,360 --> 00:18:53,240
schools that I'm familiar with 
in Sydney, there's intense 

370
00:18:53,400 --> 00:18:56,160
pressure. 
So there's a lot of pressure to 

371
00:18:56,160 --> 00:18:58,200
succeed. 
You know, these kids who come 

372
00:18:58,200 --> 00:19:03,520
from migrant families, we have, 
you know, the, the, the product 

373
00:19:03,520 --> 00:19:05,840
of tiger parents. 
And so we have, you know, at 

374
00:19:05,840 --> 00:19:08,320
least where I live in Sydney 
that it's a tiger parent 

375
00:19:08,320 --> 00:19:12,720
culture, like heavy investment 
in your children's education and

376
00:19:12,720 --> 00:19:14,760
it flows onto the Anglo parents 
as well. 

377
00:19:15,200 --> 00:19:19,640
So I mean, that could be 1 
aspect of this influence that 

378
00:19:19,640 --> 00:19:22,800
you're describing that can be 
beneficial. 

379
00:19:22,800 --> 00:19:25,320
I mean, some people complain 
about it, but there's also this 

380
00:19:25,880 --> 00:19:29,160
benefit to it, which means that,
you know, there's no, you know, 

381
00:19:29,160 --> 00:19:33,000
when Vivek did that tweet, yes. 
Where he was that famous tweet, 

382
00:19:33,040 --> 00:19:36,040
yes, let's talk about Vivek's 
tweet yeah, go ahead, I. 

383
00:19:36,280 --> 00:19:39,080
Was just going to say, well, 
that's if you live in Sydney in 

384
00:19:39,280 --> 00:19:43,480
a fairly affluent area, like 
there's no escaping that reality

385
00:19:43,480 --> 00:19:46,120
and you just have to compete in 
that environment. 

386
00:19:46,120 --> 00:19:49,360
You have to, you know, your kids
are competing with the kids of 

387
00:19:49,360 --> 00:19:51,880
tiger parents. 
And if they're not studying hard

388
00:19:51,880 --> 00:19:55,880
and if they're not excelling, 
then they don't, you know, 

389
00:19:56,160 --> 00:19:58,760
they're not in not in the race. 
So. 

390
00:20:00,120 --> 00:20:03,080
I think there's a little bit 
more acceptance of the reality 

391
00:20:03,080 --> 00:20:05,840
here in Australia simply 
because, you know, we're a 

392
00:20:05,840 --> 00:20:08,760
smaller population and we 
realize that we do have to 

393
00:20:08,760 --> 00:20:11,640
compete. 
And, you know, there is, you 

394
00:20:11,640 --> 00:20:13,760
know, we can't just shut 
ourselves off from the world. 

395
00:20:13,840 --> 00:20:15,800
That's my perception anyway. 
It might be. 

396
00:20:15,800 --> 00:20:20,200
It might other Australians might
have a different, a different 

397
00:20:20,200 --> 00:20:21,360
perspective. 
Yeah. 

398
00:20:22,000 --> 00:20:25,680
So I want to I actually put the 
I haven't actually discussed the

399
00:20:25,680 --> 00:20:27,800
vague tweets. 
I want to actually so this one. 

400
00:20:27,800 --> 00:20:33,280
So you know the vague tweet from
December 27, 2024, right? 

401
00:20:33,720 --> 00:20:36,840
So the thing about this is, 
first of all, do you have any 

402
00:20:36,840 --> 00:20:39,800
views that Scott? 
I can see from from looking at 

403
00:20:39,800 --> 00:20:46,920
121. 100 a 120 million is a lot,
but it's enormous for X. 

404
00:20:47,200 --> 00:20:50,560
It basically means like 
essentially almost it's like 

405
00:20:50,560 --> 00:20:54,760
half the platform saw it. 
It's like it was absolutely 

406
00:20:55,280 --> 00:20:59,760
massive, right and it like to 
just to just to level set. 

407
00:20:59,960 --> 00:21:06,040
There are many, many calls to 
murder on X that get far less 

408
00:21:06,040 --> 00:21:07,600
outraged than this call to 
study. 

409
00:21:08,280 --> 00:21:11,680
OK, so like, this absolutely hit
a nerve. 

410
00:21:11,680 --> 00:21:14,320
People freaked out. 
And The funny thing is, you 

411
00:21:14,320 --> 00:21:17,320
know, when I read this, at 
first, I'm like, this is just 

412
00:21:17,320 --> 00:21:21,040
like what any Asian or Indian 
parent would tell their kids. 

413
00:21:21,040 --> 00:21:24,800
It's like it's, it's the most 
bog standard lecture I've ever 

414
00:21:24,800 --> 00:21:28,840
heard, you know, and, but, but I
think that people freaked out 

415
00:21:28,840 --> 00:21:31,080
about it for several overlapping
reasons. 

416
00:21:31,120 --> 00:21:35,440
The 1st is maybe the obvious, 
which is that during, so when 

417
00:21:35,480 --> 00:21:38,800
they came on the scene in early 
20, I mean, he had been around 

418
00:21:38,800 --> 00:21:40,240
before. 
And I, you know, I like Vivek, 

419
00:21:40,240 --> 00:21:43,120
just, you know, Full disclosure,
I like Vivek, but I don't agree 

420
00:21:43,120 --> 00:21:45,240
with him on everything. 
But, you know, I think we're 

421
00:21:45,240 --> 00:21:46,720
friendly. 
When Vivek came on the scene, he

422
00:21:46,720 --> 00:21:50,000
hit the window right as Elon was
opening up X, right? 

423
00:21:50,000 --> 00:21:52,680
Like late 2022, early 2023. 
And he was basically just saying

424
00:21:52,680 --> 00:21:55,920
obvious things like XX and XY 
chromosomes are real, that kind 

425
00:21:55,920 --> 00:21:57,720
of stuff, right? 
Meritocracy is good. 

426
00:21:58,320 --> 00:21:59,920
Meritocracy is good. 
Exactly. 

427
00:21:59,920 --> 00:22:05,080
And The thing is that because he
was, you know, frankly, it was 

428
00:22:05,160 --> 00:22:08,800
like personal color, dark skin, 
whatever he could say things 

429
00:22:08,800 --> 00:22:11,560
that a white guy on the right 
would get hit for. 

430
00:22:11,960 --> 00:22:16,120
And so that was an important 
kind of thing in 2023 and up to 

431
00:22:16,160 --> 00:22:20,040
the election of November 2024. 
But then by December 2024, what 

432
00:22:20,040 --> 00:22:21,720
happened was two things 
happened. 

433
00:22:21,720 --> 00:22:26,480
First, at the beginning of 
December, you had all the left 

434
00:22:26,800 --> 00:22:29,320
on on X just went on Moss to 
blue sky. 

435
00:22:29,640 --> 00:22:32,720
So like 20 million people or 
some crazy number like that, 

436
00:22:32,720 --> 00:22:34,280
right? 
Which meant that now the 

437
00:22:34,280 --> 00:22:38,120
spectrum on X had the deleted, 
the left part was deleted. 

438
00:22:38,320 --> 00:22:42,000
So now the center was the left 
and the right was like, you 

439
00:22:42,000 --> 00:22:44,400
know, the right. 
So the center of arguing for a 

440
00:22:44,400 --> 00:22:47,800
racial global meritocracy became
the left and the open borders 

441
00:22:47,800 --> 00:22:51,280
left at the moosed right. 
So suddenly, unbeknownst 

442
00:22:51,280 --> 00:22:53,480
anybody, that the entire 
political spectrum has shifted 

443
00:22:53,480 --> 00:22:57,960
3040 points over to the right. 
And the exact same words that 

444
00:22:57,960 --> 00:23:01,320
would have would have seemed 
center right or even right two 

445
00:23:01,320 --> 00:23:04,040
months earlier now seemed like 
they were on the left because 

446
00:23:04,040 --> 00:23:08,200
they were coming, you know, now 
to the left of a big chunk in in

447
00:23:08,200 --> 00:23:09,120
X. 
Does that make any sense? 

448
00:23:09,120 --> 00:23:10,480
Should I draw that? 
You know it's. 

449
00:23:10,480 --> 00:23:11,840
Like, no, it makes perfect 
sense. 

450
00:23:11,880 --> 00:23:14,520
It makes perfect sense. 
And you predicted that would 

451
00:23:14,520 --> 00:23:16,040
happen. 
I remember a conversation with 

452
00:23:16,040 --> 00:23:20,600
you saying and you said people 
like me, the sort of centre 

453
00:23:20,600 --> 00:23:26,600
right will be the left soon 
because the whole Overton window

454
00:23:26,600 --> 00:23:29,360
is going to shift. 
It's all going to shift and and 

455
00:23:29,360 --> 00:23:31,880
so yeah, exactly. 
I could serve myself centre, 

456
00:23:31,880 --> 00:23:33,480
maybe centre right in this 
context. 

457
00:23:33,480 --> 00:23:35,720
I'd certainly be centre left, 
perhaps in the Chinese context, 

458
00:23:36,000 --> 00:23:38,960
so, and probably dead center, I 
would say globally. 

459
00:23:39,240 --> 00:23:42,720
So A was just that backdrop 
meant that something that was 

460
00:23:42,720 --> 00:23:46,720
considered center right or even 
right was suddenly on the left. 

461
00:23:46,720 --> 00:23:50,600
Number one, that kind of same 
kind of statements B was now 

462
00:23:50,600 --> 00:23:53,960
that the election was over, a 
lot of white guys on the right 

463
00:23:53,960 --> 00:23:56,800
didn't feel the need for a proxy
to speak for them, saying the 

464
00:23:56,800 --> 00:23:58,400
things that they wanted to say. 
They would just say it 

465
00:23:58,400 --> 00:23:59,400
themselves. 
They'd yell it. 

466
00:23:59,400 --> 00:24:01,920
They scream it. 
OK, so they got on the wrong 

467
00:24:01,920 --> 00:24:05,080
side of that. 
See is up to that point, they 

468
00:24:05,120 --> 00:24:10,800
had basically spoken in a sense,
you know, for like, you know, 

469
00:24:10,800 --> 00:24:13,440
the right or for mag and so on. 
And in this context, I don't 

470
00:24:13,440 --> 00:24:15,720
think he was doing that. 
It seemed like, oh, he was 

471
00:24:16,200 --> 00:24:19,120
speaking for Indians or he's 
speaking for immigrants or he's 

472
00:24:19,120 --> 00:24:21,360
speaking for this. 
So it seemed like, Oh my God, he

473
00:24:21,360 --> 00:24:22,720
now he sounds like an ethnic 
activist. 

474
00:24:22,720 --> 00:24:24,320
People pattern match. 
I don't think that was the case.

475
00:24:24,320 --> 00:24:26,680
I think he was actually speaking
for merit, but that's that's 

476
00:24:26,680 --> 00:24:30,000
what it was D And this was 
another aspect of it. 

477
00:24:30,880 --> 00:24:33,960
The, you know, the the show 
references he brought up were 

478
00:24:33,960 --> 00:24:35,920
like saved by the bell and stuff
like that. 

479
00:24:36,240 --> 00:24:39,600
And the problem with that is, 
and I'm not trying to be over 

480
00:24:39,600 --> 00:24:42,120
clicked, but I'm just explaining
now while the dust is settled, 

481
00:24:42,120 --> 00:24:44,400
why people got mad. 
And what I think was correct 

482
00:24:44,400 --> 00:24:49,680
about it was what that was like 
the last functional era of 

483
00:24:49,680 --> 00:24:54,240
America, like the 90s, right? 
And so saying that that was a 

484
00:24:54,240 --> 00:24:55,600
bad era that you know, went 
wrong. 

485
00:24:55,800 --> 00:24:59,680
However, had he said only fans 
culture me too. 

486
00:24:59,800 --> 00:25:02,040
If he had said that, then he 
would had very little argument 

487
00:25:02,040 --> 00:25:04,640
in terms of the baseline, I 
think where he was arguing from,

488
00:25:04,640 --> 00:25:07,440
right. 
And then the next aspect is, and

489
00:25:07,440 --> 00:25:10,800
this was something that I had to
struggle to put into words at 

490
00:25:10,800 --> 00:25:14,240
1st, and then I realized what I 
was looking at until roughly, I 

491
00:25:14,240 --> 00:25:17,240
think, after the 2024 election, 
I had never before seen a 

492
00:25:17,240 --> 00:25:19,000
critical mass of white 
Americans. 

493
00:25:20,120 --> 00:25:24,560
I really feel emotionally that 
the world was their their 

494
00:25:24,560 --> 00:25:27,960
competition rather than their 
market because like, all of the 

495
00:25:27,960 --> 00:25:30,800
guys who I've ever worked with 
in tech have basically been 

496
00:25:30,800 --> 00:25:32,560
like, yeah, it's this one. 
There we go. 

497
00:25:32,880 --> 00:25:38,000
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 
So this is honestly like these 

498
00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:42,600
are these are all the tech Cos 
and tech guys, frankly that I 

499
00:25:42,600 --> 00:25:47,320
worked with, right? 
They were like until literally 

500
00:25:47,320 --> 00:25:51,760
2024, just about every guy who 
had ever worked with at Stanford

501
00:25:51,760 --> 00:25:57,720
at in venture and startups in 
tech like, you know, I grant, of

502
00:25:57,720 --> 00:26:00,680
course, that's a select sample 
of people, but I never, I mean, 

503
00:26:00,840 --> 00:26:04,480
the discussion was OK, after we 
win in the US, how do we expand 

504
00:26:04,480 --> 00:26:07,120
into Turkey? 
How do we open up Japan, right? 

505
00:26:07,120 --> 00:26:09,760
We're going to need to recruit a
Japanese person over there or 

506
00:26:09,760 --> 00:26:12,280
what have you, right? 
We literally had and many 

507
00:26:12,280 --> 00:26:14,640
companies I've had, we've had 
the global expansion 

508
00:26:14,640 --> 00:26:17,800
prioritization and we think 
about what markets to move into 

509
00:26:17,800 --> 00:26:20,480
and so on and so forth, right. 
This is a positive some 

510
00:26:20,800 --> 00:26:23,080
attitude. 
It's a positive, some attitude 

511
00:26:23,080 --> 00:26:25,240
of someone who feels they can 
win in the game of global 

512
00:26:25,240 --> 00:26:28,840
capitalism, right? 
And the completely new thing to 

513
00:26:28,840 --> 00:26:35,960
me was that like, and, and I 
heard this not simply from 

514
00:26:35,960 --> 00:26:39,920
people on X, but I heard this 
actually, to my surprise, from 

515
00:26:39,920 --> 00:26:42,640
people who I knew were globally 
competitive in tech. 

516
00:26:43,120 --> 00:26:46,280
And they started sounding like 
whiny and like beaten in their 

517
00:26:46,280 --> 00:26:49,400
heads. 
And, and like, for example, one 

518
00:26:49,400 --> 00:26:53,560
guy who's like a nice guy and 
you know, he was like, he's 

519
00:26:53,560 --> 00:26:57,080
like, oh, you, you Indians are 
very, you know, connected and 

520
00:26:57,080 --> 00:26:59,520
you have ethnic nepotism and so 
on and so forth. 

521
00:26:59,520 --> 00:27:03,320
I'm like, what you want, you 
want to do a diversity report on

522
00:27:03,320 --> 00:27:05,600
the company, like, because 
that's literally what I'm like, 

523
00:27:05,600 --> 00:27:07,440
how would you quantify that? 
He's like, Oh, you're hiring 

524
00:27:07,440 --> 00:27:09,440
more of your own people. 
I'm like, how is that not 

525
00:27:09,440 --> 00:27:13,320
exactly like saying white 
privilege and you're hiring only

526
00:27:13,320 --> 00:27:15,080
white people and and whatnot, 
right. 

527
00:27:15,240 --> 00:27:17,280
And he just, he hadn't thought 
of it that way, But I'm like, 

528
00:27:17,680 --> 00:27:21,680
you know, every, the, the flip 
side of that, by the way, is if 

529
00:27:21,680 --> 00:27:24,280
you have any affinity group of 
any kind to get somebody to take

530
00:27:24,280 --> 00:27:28,440
a risk on a company in an early 
stage or any company, it's going

531
00:27:28,440 --> 00:27:31,080
to be enriched for people from 
your own social group of 

532
00:27:31,080 --> 00:27:32,920
whatever that is. 
And especially a first Gen. 

533
00:27:32,920 --> 00:27:35,600
immigrant doesn't know that many
people within the country. 

534
00:27:35,600 --> 00:27:37,600
So are going to get other 
people, you know, who, who know 

535
00:27:37,600 --> 00:27:39,480
them, who will take a risk to 
work for the business. 

536
00:27:39,960 --> 00:27:42,000
And then by the time you get to 
second or third generation 

537
00:27:42,000 --> 00:27:43,600
people assimilate. 
And that's what happened to 

538
00:27:43,600 --> 00:27:45,120
Italians and Poles or what have 
you. 

539
00:27:45,120 --> 00:27:48,000
So there's a very reasonable 
explanation for for all that. 

540
00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:50,640
But the but the macro of it 
wasn't Even so much specifics of

541
00:27:50,640 --> 00:27:52,720
that. 
It was just that they actually 

542
00:27:52,720 --> 00:27:56,480
felt that these like relatively 
new arrival Indian people were 

543
00:27:56,480 --> 00:27:59,120
like more we're more connected 
than they were. 

544
00:27:59,440 --> 00:28:00,520
And I was just scratching my 
head. 

545
00:28:00,520 --> 00:28:04,520
I was like, you know, when I 
grew up, I didn't know anybody, 

546
00:28:05,720 --> 00:28:07,600
right? 
I was the least connected. 

547
00:28:07,600 --> 00:28:11,240
I was just like the most nerdy 
UN like like like it was a graph

548
00:28:11,360 --> 00:28:13,960
with 0 connections, literally 0,
right? 

549
00:28:15,040 --> 00:28:18,040
And, and I was like, you know, 
what I realized and, and maybe 

550
00:28:18,080 --> 00:28:21,880
like your thoughts on this is 
like what wokeness did to a 

551
00:28:21,880 --> 00:28:26,400
generation or a group of people 
is even if they like reacted 

552
00:28:26,400 --> 00:28:29,000
with sort of the opposite of 
woke at the at the surface 

553
00:28:29,000 --> 00:28:33,040
level, they sort of internalized
certain patterns which were like

554
00:28:33,480 --> 00:28:37,200
emotional and histrionic 
whining, basically feel it like 

555
00:28:37,200 --> 00:28:41,320
learned helplessness, right? 
The softer it got messed up. 

556
00:28:41,320 --> 00:28:43,360
Go ahead, let me let me know 
your thoughts because you may be

557
00:28:43,400 --> 00:28:44,440
you may be thinking some of the 
things. 

558
00:28:44,720 --> 00:28:48,200
I completely agree with the 
internalization of the 

559
00:28:48,200 --> 00:28:50,560
victimhood culture. 
That's definitely a thing. 

560
00:28:51,040 --> 00:28:53,000
On the right, too. 
Now that's crazy. 

561
00:28:53,080 --> 00:28:55,840
Yeah. 
Absolutely, I think. 

562
00:28:55,840 --> 00:28:59,160
I think what you're touching on 
though, with the observation 

563
00:28:59,640 --> 00:29:02,320
with two and the reaction to 
Vivek's tweet and the 

564
00:29:02,320 --> 00:29:07,120
observation of, you know, people
that you know, is there's 

565
00:29:07,120 --> 00:29:13,520
something really deep going on. 
And one of the more interesting 

566
00:29:13,520 --> 00:29:17,240
analysis I've read has actually 
been in Colette. 

567
00:29:18,080 --> 00:29:21,040
You might be familiar with 
Andrew Roberts, who's a British 

568
00:29:21,040 --> 00:29:24,680
historian who has chronicled 
Winston Churchill. 

569
00:29:24,680 --> 00:29:29,600
I think he's probably Winston 
Churchill's most celebrated 

570
00:29:29,600 --> 00:29:33,480
biographer anyway. 
He he has written a couple of 

571
00:29:33,480 --> 00:29:36,240
pieces for us. 
They're just short pieces, just 

572
00:29:36,240 --> 00:29:39,440
about the decline of the British
Empire. 

573
00:29:40,760 --> 00:29:45,440
And he says that the British 
Empire, the culture, went 

574
00:29:45,440 --> 00:29:49,040
through phases. 
He likens it to phases of grief.

575
00:29:49,320 --> 00:29:54,080
So a few years ago, I think it 
was 2021, he wrote a piece for 

576
00:29:54,080 --> 00:29:56,360
us. 
You know, this is before Putin 

577
00:29:56,360 --> 00:29:59,640
invaded Ukraine. 
This was just that, you know, 

578
00:29:59,640 --> 00:30:03,440
COVID was happening. 
But he said that Americans are 

579
00:30:03,440 --> 00:30:07,080
currently in the denial phase. 
I think it may have been after 

580
00:30:07,120 --> 00:30:10,240
Biden's withdrawal from 
Afghanistan. 

581
00:30:11,240 --> 00:30:15,560
He was saying America is in the 
denial phase of its declining 

582
00:30:15,560 --> 00:30:18,480
empire. 
And I thought it was a bit, you 

583
00:30:18,480 --> 00:30:24,200
know, it was a provocative 
argument at the time, but I see 

584
00:30:24,200 --> 00:30:26,600
it now like I, I see what he's 
saying now. 

585
00:30:26,640 --> 00:30:29,440
You know, the years have gone on
and I can see, I can see the 

586
00:30:29,440 --> 00:30:32,280
denial. 
And, you know, when people are 

587
00:30:32,280 --> 00:30:35,960
in denial, they will have 
cognitive dissonance. 

588
00:30:35,960 --> 00:30:40,520
So they'll react strongly to 
evidence of the, of whatever it 

589
00:30:40,520 --> 00:30:43,480
is that they're denying. 
So if if people are in denial 

590
00:30:43,480 --> 00:30:49,040
that China is becoming a 
superpower or the biggest 

591
00:30:49,040 --> 00:30:52,400
superpower in the world, and if 
they're in denial about 

592
00:30:52,480 --> 00:30:58,200
America's declining global 
hegemony, then any evidence that

593
00:30:58,200 --> 00:31:01,360
is in support of that thesis is 
going to cause cognitive 

594
00:31:01,360 --> 00:31:05,120
dissonance and people will react
against that to keep the denial 

595
00:31:05,120 --> 00:31:11,320
going. 
But now we, you know, Andrew 

596
00:31:11,320 --> 00:31:14,760
Roberts wrote a follow up piece 
and he's he's arguing that Trump

597
00:31:14,760 --> 00:31:17,680
is speeding up this phase. 
You know, it's pretty clear now 

598
00:31:17,680 --> 00:31:20,720
with the, you know, the trade 
war that we're entering into the

599
00:31:20,720 --> 00:31:22,880
negotiation phase. 
What's what's the title of that 

600
00:31:22,880 --> 00:31:26,080
one? 
That would probably be America's

601
00:31:26,080 --> 00:31:28,480
Grief Cycle that was published a
couple of weeks ago. 

602
00:31:29,080 --> 00:31:30,880
Oh, the negotiation phase. 
Good, good. 

603
00:31:31,080 --> 00:31:33,600
Follow up It's a it's a 
metaphor. 

604
00:31:33,600 --> 00:31:35,040
Maybe, maybe. 
Should I do a podcast with 

605
00:31:35,040 --> 00:31:37,200
Andrew? 
Yeah, probably agree a lot, 

606
00:31:37,320 --> 00:31:40,560
yeah. 
It's a it's a metaphor and it's 

607
00:31:40,560 --> 00:31:44,040
a provocative one. 
But you know, I think, I think 

608
00:31:44,040 --> 00:31:46,840
it's I think when you get when 
you're getting these sort of 

609
00:31:46,840 --> 00:31:50,400
irrational emotional responses 
from people, you can understand 

610
00:31:50,400 --> 00:31:52,480
it. 
It helps to understand it 

611
00:31:52,480 --> 00:31:57,240
through this context. 
Like there is a people agree, 

612
00:31:57,240 --> 00:32:00,560
you know, there's this you have 
to come to terms with the fact 

613
00:32:00,560 --> 00:32:04,240
that the American empire is 
dying at some point and it and 

614
00:32:04,240 --> 00:32:08,760
it will cause grief. 
And how you deal with that grief

615
00:32:08,760 --> 00:32:11,160
is going, you know, you will go 
through phases. 

616
00:32:11,160 --> 00:32:16,200
Like I've had to go through 
stages of grief myself about it 

617
00:32:16,400 --> 00:32:19,840
and I'm not even American. 
Well, it's funny you say that 

618
00:32:19,840 --> 00:32:23,640
because it's true. 
Like when I was writing the 

619
00:32:23,680 --> 00:32:26,960
Network State book, there's 
actually a paragraph that I 

620
00:32:27,320 --> 00:32:31,240
deleted because it brought a 
manly tear to my eye. 

621
00:32:32,400 --> 00:32:35,600
And it was essentially about 
like the metaphor of Uncle Sam 

622
00:32:35,600 --> 00:32:40,040
as a like a beloved, you know, 
elder who's passing away and, 

623
00:32:40,040 --> 00:32:41,960
you know, he's passing away and 
he's not going to always be 

624
00:32:41,960 --> 00:32:43,080
there. 
And you need to prepare for the 

625
00:32:43,080 --> 00:32:44,600
next step. 
And then a bunch of people are 

626
00:32:44,600 --> 00:32:46,120
like, why do you want Grandpa to
die? 

627
00:32:46,800 --> 00:32:50,800
Like I don't want grandpa to die
and you know, but he's not going

628
00:32:50,800 --> 00:32:52,840
to be around forever. 
And I can look at all these 

629
00:32:52,840 --> 00:32:54,240
signs of incipient this and 
that. 

630
00:32:54,240 --> 00:32:56,240
And then they don't want to plan
for it at all, right? 

631
00:32:56,440 --> 00:32:59,000
They want to be in denial about 
it and they want to say that you

632
00:32:59,000 --> 00:33:02,040
saying it is like a bad omen and
it's demoralizing. 

633
00:33:02,040 --> 00:33:04,560
It'll further and speed it up 
and so and so forth. 

634
00:33:05,040 --> 00:33:07,000
And and I get that. 
I actually do get that. 

635
00:33:07,000 --> 00:33:12,320
Sometimes I look at the look at 
history through the lens of art 

636
00:33:12,320 --> 00:33:16,160
and how much you can sort of see
how confident a culture is by 

637
00:33:16,160 --> 00:33:21,200
their output of and I've been 
thinking for a long time that 

638
00:33:21,200 --> 00:33:24,960
the exhaustion of Hollywood, you
know, with all of their remakes,

639
00:33:24,960 --> 00:33:26,840
they can't come up with anything
original. 

640
00:33:26,840 --> 00:33:32,120
There are there are no, there's 
very few new hero movies that 

641
00:33:32,360 --> 00:33:35,880
really truly depict a new sort 
of, you know, the hero journey 

642
00:33:35,880 --> 00:33:37,600
in it in an original and new 
way. 

643
00:33:37,600 --> 00:33:41,760
I mean, there's still good stuff
being made and there's, there's 

644
00:33:41,760 --> 00:33:45,080
some great stuff being made for 
TV, but it doesn't, it's not 

645
00:33:45,080 --> 00:33:50,240
like it was in the 90s where 
there was just dozens and dozens

646
00:33:50,240 --> 00:33:53,360
of classic films coming out from
Hollywood. 

647
00:33:53,480 --> 00:33:56,680
And so as an Australian, you 
grow up on American culture, 

648
00:33:56,680 --> 00:34:00,320
you're sort of marinated in 
American culture and you develop

649
00:34:00,320 --> 00:34:04,080
a very strong sympathy and 
alliance with a nation that 

650
00:34:04,080 --> 00:34:07,040
you've never even like. 
I didn't visit the United States

651
00:34:07,040 --> 00:34:10,280
until I was in my 30s, but I had
grown up on American culture. 

652
00:34:10,280 --> 00:34:15,360
And that's soft power. 
So that the American culture has

653
00:34:15,360 --> 00:34:20,280
had that impact globally for 
general, you know, for a couple 

654
00:34:20,280 --> 00:34:23,400
of generations at least. 
But it's now receding. 

655
00:34:23,719 --> 00:34:27,120
And the woke stuff has a lot to 
do with why it's receding, 

656
00:34:27,520 --> 00:34:31,960
because people look at the 
insane, you know, most people 

657
00:34:31,960 --> 00:34:35,760
aren't woke and and people are 
looking at the insane insanity 

658
00:34:35,760 --> 00:34:39,719
and, you know, the trans stuff, 
the hyper, you know, the focus 

659
00:34:39,719 --> 00:34:43,000
on racial politics, the erosion 
of meritocracy. 

660
00:34:43,159 --> 00:34:48,239
And so there's the, the feeling 
of alliance or sympathy with 

661
00:34:48,239 --> 00:34:53,000
American culture is sort of 
eroded and it erodes gradually 

662
00:34:53,000 --> 00:34:55,320
over time. 
And then when you've got this 

663
00:34:55,320 --> 00:34:58,200
lack of cultural confidence 
coming through with, you know, 

664
00:34:58,200 --> 00:35:03,200
fewer great films being made, 
fewer, like less music coming 

665
00:35:03,200 --> 00:35:07,280
out, that's, you know, getting 
kids excited like it or it's 

666
00:35:07,280 --> 00:35:10,600
like a a tide going it back out 
to sea. 

667
00:35:10,960 --> 00:35:14,240
Like you just you feel less 
connected to this culture that 

668
00:35:14,240 --> 00:35:17,560
you once grew up on. 
And, you know, and and I think 

669
00:35:17,560 --> 00:35:20,600
it does tie in with like the 
lack of confidence ties in with 

670
00:35:20,600 --> 00:35:24,760
the military defeat. 
So you know you've got the loss 

671
00:35:25,400 --> 00:35:27,760
in Vietnam, Afghanistan. 
I I see, I see. 

672
00:35:27,760 --> 00:35:30,640
That's taking it back too far 
because the win in the Cold War 

673
00:35:30,960 --> 00:35:32,760
felt felt like it. 
But go ahead. 

674
00:35:32,760 --> 00:35:35,520
Yeah, I agree. 
The true, true, true. 

675
00:35:35,920 --> 00:35:40,120
But, you know, the, the Vietnam 
War dragged on for very long 

676
00:35:40,120 --> 00:35:41,600
time. 
You know, you could, you could 

677
00:35:41,600 --> 00:35:45,640
argue it was the first salvo in,
in, in in a ongoing conflict 

678
00:35:45,640 --> 00:35:47,400
between China and the United 
States. 

679
00:35:47,480 --> 00:35:49,680
That's interesting. 
I would not, I, I because I 

680
00:35:49,680 --> 00:35:52,720
think there was such a 
discontinuity in 1978 in China 

681
00:35:52,960 --> 00:35:56,280
due to like Deng Xiaoping taking
over China. 

682
00:35:56,720 --> 00:35:59,800
But but I do agree that 
basically that was like the 

683
00:35:59,800 --> 00:36:02,480
Nadira for Vietnam and then 
they've rebooted and so on since

684
00:36:02,480 --> 00:36:06,040
then. 
I want to respond to something. 

685
00:36:06,440 --> 00:36:08,800
Actually, I want to there's a 
few loops from here, right? 

686
00:36:09,040 --> 00:36:13,320
So first is to to add to your 
point on stuck Hollywood, right?

687
00:36:13,520 --> 00:36:16,800
You know, clothes have become 
relatively constant. 

688
00:36:16,800 --> 00:36:19,800
Like you can't point. 
Maybe maybe, you know, somebody 

689
00:36:19,800 --> 00:36:21,880
who's a real fashionista could 
do it. 

690
00:36:22,160 --> 00:36:24,880
But to point to the styles of 
the zeros versus the 20 tens 

691
00:36:24,880 --> 00:36:27,040
versus the 20 tens. 
The one thing that's really very

692
00:36:27,040 --> 00:36:29,880
obvious maybe is like the rise 
in tattoos, right? 

693
00:36:30,280 --> 00:36:32,320
But but otherwise you wouldn't 
be able to, it wouldn't be like 

694
00:36:32,640 --> 00:36:36,800
grunge of the 90s or like, you 
know, big hair of the 80s. 

695
00:36:36,800 --> 00:36:38,080
That's some standout kind of 
thing. 

696
00:36:38,600 --> 00:36:41,840
And the reason I think is that 
fashion or things, all of the 

697
00:36:41,840 --> 00:36:44,880
innovation and cultures move to 
the Internet because you can 

698
00:36:44,880 --> 00:36:48,560
instantly tell a 90s website, 
2000 website, twenty 10s, twenty

699
00:36:48,560 --> 00:36:52,560
20s, you can tell AI art that's 
genuinely new AI, like whether 

700
00:36:52,560 --> 00:36:54,800
you like it or not, it's 
genuinely a new thing in the 

701
00:36:54,800 --> 00:36:57,440
twenty 20s. 
That is the visually distinct 

702
00:36:57,560 --> 00:37:00,600
characteristic of this, you 
know, and it's literally when 

703
00:37:00,600 --> 00:37:02,680
you think about what you're 
looking at, what's changing 

704
00:37:02,680 --> 00:37:06,040
rapidly is what's on the screen 
and America is becoming a 

705
00:37:06,040 --> 00:37:08,920
museum. 
Like for example, we don't go 

706
00:37:08,920 --> 00:37:11,120
ahead. 
No, no, that that's just a fun, 

707
00:37:11,120 --> 00:37:14,120
that's a funny play on the 
description of Europe that we 

708
00:37:14,120 --> 00:37:15,880
often. 
Yes, that's my point exactly. 

709
00:37:15,880 --> 00:37:18,520
You got it right. 
Because we don't think of like, 

710
00:37:18,760 --> 00:37:20,480
you know, obviously there's 
French entrepreneurs and I'm 

711
00:37:20,480 --> 00:37:22,280
not, there's actually a lot of 
great things happening in 

712
00:37:22,280 --> 00:37:23,520
Europe. 
I'm not beating up on Europe. 

713
00:37:23,520 --> 00:37:27,160
But you don't think of like 
French culture is constantly 

714
00:37:27,160 --> 00:37:28,920
dynamic and evolving and 
whatever. 

715
00:37:28,920 --> 00:37:32,960
There's like the baguette and 
there's like the Eiffel Tower 

716
00:37:32,960 --> 00:37:36,600
and the Louvre and and you know,
Arc de Triomphe and whatever, 

717
00:37:36,600 --> 00:37:37,200
right? 
Go ahead. 

718
00:37:37,200 --> 00:37:38,880
No, no, no, no. 
I get what you're saying. 

719
00:37:38,880 --> 00:37:40,920
Yeah. 
It's it's sort of stuck in a 

720
00:37:40,920 --> 00:37:42,640
moment of time. 
Exactly. 

721
00:37:42,640 --> 00:37:47,600
So like American culture got 
stuck because in my view the the

722
00:37:48,000 --> 00:37:50,840
the version 3 point O there's 
Britain, then America, then the 

723
00:37:50,840 --> 00:37:52,800
Internet. 
Like, the Internet is to America

724
00:37:52,800 --> 00:37:55,480
what America was to Britain. 
And that's a deep thing. 

725
00:37:55,480 --> 00:37:57,040
And there's a lot I can say 
about that. 

726
00:37:57,320 --> 00:38:00,640
But that means that all of all 
of the everything has gotten 

727
00:38:00,640 --> 00:38:03,840
uploaded, right? 
So for example, how much of your

728
00:38:03,840 --> 00:38:05,120
communication do you do on the 
Internet? 

729
00:38:05,120 --> 00:38:09,040
All of them, Yeah, Right. 
How about your transactions? 

730
00:38:09,240 --> 00:38:11,680
Basically all of it, Right. 
And how about your friends? 

731
00:38:11,680 --> 00:38:12,880
How about, you know, everything 
is? 

732
00:38:13,080 --> 00:38:15,360
And So what is America minus the
Internet? 

733
00:38:16,480 --> 00:38:19,600
Physical America by itself is 
like baseball and hot dogs and 

734
00:38:19,880 --> 00:38:22,480
and so on and so forth. 
When everybody defends and says,

735
00:38:22,480 --> 00:38:24,960
oh, the US is still doing great,
they're always pointing to the 

736
00:38:24,960 --> 00:38:26,800
tech companies. 
I think that's right. 

737
00:38:26,800 --> 00:38:29,200
I think that's really 
interesting and and you can kind

738
00:38:29,200 --> 00:38:34,320
of see it like the, you know, 
the public infrastructure is not

739
00:38:34,320 --> 00:38:35,680
up to date. 
Obviously. 

740
00:38:36,720 --> 00:38:39,560
You know, if you ride the subway
in New York, it's like 100 years

741
00:38:39,560 --> 00:38:43,800
old. 
You know, it's, it is, it is not

742
00:38:43,800 --> 00:38:45,960
just a museum. 
It's in decay. 

743
00:38:46,160 --> 00:38:50,480
The reason for that I think is 
so, so, so from some earlier 

744
00:38:50,480 --> 00:38:54,240
threads, you know, this is a 
graph that I think is very 

745
00:38:54,240 --> 00:38:57,240
important related to the grief 
thing that we were talking about

746
00:38:57,240 --> 00:39:00,080
earlier, right? 
This is a graph that is super 

747
00:39:00,080 --> 00:39:02,640
important for at least my mental
model of the world. 

748
00:39:03,000 --> 00:39:05,680
OK, right. 
So essentially what this is 

749
00:39:05,680 --> 00:39:11,200
saying is basically that for 
thousands of years, the economic

750
00:39:11,200 --> 00:39:14,760
geocentre of the world was 
basically in, you know, Eurasia.

751
00:39:14,760 --> 00:39:17,200
And to be clear, that doesn't 
mean like the you know, the 

752
00:39:17,200 --> 00:39:20,880
economic center was literally in
Afghanistan or whatever or, or, 

753
00:39:20,920 --> 00:39:24,280
you know, this, this this this 
is Iran, this is Pakistan, 

754
00:39:24,280 --> 00:39:25,960
Afghanistan. 
I think it's not saying it was 

755
00:39:25,960 --> 00:39:27,600
literally here. 
What it's saying is if you took 

756
00:39:27,600 --> 00:39:31,120
the average of Indian economic 
strength and and Chinese 

757
00:39:31,120 --> 00:39:33,960
economic strength of Middle 
Eastern European and you waited 

758
00:39:33,960 --> 00:39:36,560
them the the centers, you'd get 
something around here, right? 

759
00:39:36,560 --> 00:39:39,360
So it's basically EUR Asian and 
that makes sense because the 

760
00:39:39,360 --> 00:39:43,600
Mongols were able to invade 
Europe and you know, like Islam 

761
00:39:43,600 --> 00:39:44,920
was able to invade Europe and 
vice versa. 

762
00:39:44,920 --> 00:39:47,480
There's some degree of balance 
and Marco Polo, where did he 

763
00:39:47,480 --> 00:39:50,720
seek out he sought out China and
Columbus risked his life to come

764
00:39:50,720 --> 00:39:52,800
to India, right. 
So clearly there was stuff 

765
00:39:52,800 --> 00:39:57,960
happening, you know, east of the
the, the Caucasus, right. 

766
00:39:59,320 --> 00:40:02,440
But then with the industrial 
revolution, Europe just. 

767
00:40:03,040 --> 00:40:05,120
Got way ahead of everybody else,
right? 

768
00:40:05,440 --> 00:40:09,240
And the center of the global 
economy rocketed out to Europe, 

769
00:40:09,560 --> 00:40:11,600
and basically Europe was just 
the center of everything and 

770
00:40:11,600 --> 00:40:14,080
nobody else mattered. 
And then they started beating 

771
00:40:14,080 --> 00:40:16,480
the crap out of each other with 
World War One and World War 2. 

772
00:40:16,920 --> 00:40:21,080
And 1950 was basically peak 
westernization, peak 

773
00:40:21,080 --> 00:40:24,520
centralization. 
And this is basically the time 

774
00:40:24,520 --> 00:40:26,800
when everybody else was bombed 
to smithereens. 

775
00:40:26,800 --> 00:40:29,800
China was communist, India was 
socialist, Russia was communist,

776
00:40:29,920 --> 00:40:33,280
Japan was atomic bombed. 
And this is also the moment that

777
00:40:33,280 --> 00:40:34,920
all these post war institutions 
were set up. 

778
00:40:34,920 --> 00:40:36,640
We literally called them post 
war institutions. 

779
00:40:36,920 --> 00:40:41,160
They were set up at the time of 
peak America ever right. 

780
00:40:41,360 --> 00:40:44,240
The only other time you can 
argue might be 1991 right when 

781
00:40:44,240 --> 00:40:45,840
there wasn't even a Soviet Union
around. 

782
00:40:46,080 --> 00:40:48,320
But this period is like peak 
America. 

783
00:40:48,640 --> 00:40:53,200
And the problem is that people 
are calibrated on the all time, 

784
00:40:53,920 --> 00:40:57,000
all human history high as being 
the normal. 

785
00:40:57,600 --> 00:40:58,080
Yeah. 
Right. 

786
00:40:58,080 --> 00:41:00,320
Yeah. 
And that and that's the issue. 

787
00:41:00,320 --> 00:41:04,920
The issue is they think this is 
normal, that complete and total 

788
00:41:04,920 --> 00:41:07,680
global American dominance is 
normal, when it's incredibly 

789
00:41:07,920 --> 00:41:12,560
historically abnormal. 
Even on a socio sociological 

790
00:41:12,560 --> 00:41:17,520
level it was an abnormal decade.
Like people look at family 

791
00:41:17,520 --> 00:41:22,280
formation in the 1950s, but 
people got married very young in

792
00:41:22,280 --> 00:41:28,400
the 1950s compared to the the 
historical norm of Western 

793
00:41:28,400 --> 00:41:32,640
society. 
So like in the 18th and 19th 

794
00:41:32,640 --> 00:41:35,840
centuries in Western Europe, in 
England, women wouldn't get 

795
00:41:35,840 --> 00:41:38,720
married until their late 20s. 
They weren't getting married at 

796
00:41:38,720 --> 00:41:42,600
the age of 21. 
It was quite an unusual late age

797
00:41:42,600 --> 00:41:46,200
of marriage for women. 
And birth rates were actually 

798
00:41:46,480 --> 00:41:50,520
slowly but gradually coming down
in the West as well. 

799
00:41:51,480 --> 00:41:56,320
The baby boom generation was a 
massive outlier and there are 

800
00:41:56,320 --> 00:42:00,160
various different reasons for 
that, but you know, in, in 

801
00:42:00,160 --> 00:42:03,360
Australia at least, and I'm 
pretty sure in America as well, 

802
00:42:03,360 --> 00:42:07,800
the Gov because of World War 2, 
the government's thought, well, 

803
00:42:08,880 --> 00:42:11,320
these young men are coming back 
from war. 

804
00:42:11,320 --> 00:42:14,000
We've got to build a lot of 
housing, we've got to give them 

805
00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:17,320
a house. 
And so there was this massive 

806
00:42:17,320 --> 00:42:22,520
public investment into housing 
infrastructure and it enabled 

807
00:42:22,520 --> 00:42:24,880
couples to marry young and start
having babies. 

808
00:42:24,880 --> 00:42:26,520
Young women started having 
babies young. 

809
00:42:26,520 --> 00:42:30,040
So we get the baby boom 
generation, but that was a 

810
00:42:30,040 --> 00:42:35,480
historical anomaly. 
It wasn't We haven't like birth 

811
00:42:35,480 --> 00:42:40,960
rates were trending down. 
We haven't this idea that the 

812
00:42:41,000 --> 00:42:45,160
the 1950s was sort of like, it 
was a strange generation for 

813
00:42:45,160 --> 00:42:51,080
many, for many regions, for many
reasons, not just the fact that,

814
00:42:52,240 --> 00:42:55,240
you know, it was peak American 
empire and also for, like 

815
00:42:55,240 --> 00:42:59,240
technological reasons. 
You've got the proliferation of 

816
00:42:59,480 --> 00:43:02,600
household appliances. 
You've got washing machines, 

817
00:43:02,600 --> 00:43:05,320
dryers, toasters, vacuum 
cleaners. 

818
00:43:05,320 --> 00:43:11,360
Like we forget how much 
technology was invented in the 

819
00:43:11,360 --> 00:43:15,200
late 19th century and then the 
first half of the 20th century 

820
00:43:16,240 --> 00:43:18,280
and how it changed people's 
lives. 

821
00:43:18,680 --> 00:43:25,000
So here is my thesis on this in 
a nutshell is if you look at the

822
00:43:25,000 --> 00:43:28,000
20th century, technology favored
centralization. 

823
00:43:28,400 --> 00:43:32,240
And so every country, all, 
basically all kinds of giga 

824
00:43:32,240 --> 00:43:35,880
states arose, right? 
China, modern India, the Soviet 

825
00:43:35,880 --> 00:43:39,960
Union, the USA giga states that 
just had the scale to beat the 

826
00:43:39,960 --> 00:43:43,360
heck out of their rivals, right?
This is something that Orwell 

827
00:43:43,360 --> 00:43:45,040
also talked about Eurasia and 
East Asia. 

828
00:43:45,040 --> 00:43:47,120
He was observing the trend 
towards bigness, right? 

829
00:43:47,120 --> 00:43:50,160
Because you had mass media and 
mass production and just extreme

830
00:43:50,160 --> 00:43:53,280
centralization. 
Technology drove that and, and 

831
00:43:53,280 --> 00:43:56,240
never argue with the man who buy
zinc by the barrel and you can't

832
00:43:56,240 --> 00:43:58,840
fight City Hall and and so on 
and so forth, right? 

833
00:43:59,360 --> 00:44:02,920
And the peak of that was 
basically like in many senses, 

834
00:44:02,920 --> 00:44:06,840
you know, yeah, the Soviet Union
had 100% marginal taxation, but 

835
00:44:06,840 --> 00:44:10,240
America had 90%, right? 
So you could not get rich mid 

836
00:44:10,240 --> 00:44:13,320
century in America. 
You could serve your country and

837
00:44:13,320 --> 00:44:16,760
it was the most free in the 
world, but it was still 90% 

838
00:44:16,760 --> 00:44:21,520
marginal taxation, right? 
And so at the same time, by the 

839
00:44:21,520 --> 00:44:23,840
way, you know, in the Soviet 
Union, do you know they had a 

840
00:44:23,840 --> 00:44:26,440
childlessness tax I. 
Didn't know that I didn't. 

841
00:44:27,120 --> 00:44:31,040
Yeah, so the Soviet Union was 
way more conservative than we 

842
00:44:31,040 --> 00:44:35,760
think socially right here, the 
bachelor tax, because after 

843
00:44:35,760 --> 00:44:39,360
World War 2, they're like, you 
need to have kids, right? 

844
00:44:39,400 --> 00:44:42,040
I was just familiar with Lenin 
Introducing. 

845
00:44:43,000 --> 00:44:44,400
Abortion. 
Yeah. 

846
00:44:44,920 --> 00:44:47,440
Yes, so this is when it started 
going reverse, right. 

847
00:44:47,720 --> 00:44:50,560
Stalin encouraged adult people 
to reproduce increasing because 

848
00:44:50,760 --> 00:44:52,440
they had lost so many. 
They lost 10s of millions of 

849
00:44:52,440 --> 00:44:55,280
people in World War 2. 
They're like you have to. 

850
00:44:55,480 --> 00:44:58,440
It was symbolic, but it was like
a status thing and most 

851
00:44:58,440 --> 00:45:02,600
childless married women. 
And you know, essentially the 

852
00:45:02,600 --> 00:45:06,360
point was, I mean, in many ways 
in the Soviet Union, your money 

853
00:45:06,360 --> 00:45:08,400
was more like your allowance, 
but it was like a social 

854
00:45:08,400 --> 00:45:10,000
penalty, right, for not doing 
that. 

855
00:45:10,240 --> 00:45:13,160
What was my point? 
My point is that mid century 

856
00:45:13,160 --> 00:45:17,120
America was being more communist
than we think of it, and mid 

857
00:45:17,120 --> 00:45:19,680
century Soviet Union was way 
more socially conservative than 

858
00:45:19,680 --> 00:45:21,920
we think about it. 
Like those were actually not 

859
00:45:21,920 --> 00:45:25,920
just right. 
OK, so so now we've moved 

860
00:45:26,720 --> 00:45:28,240
totally in a different 
direction. 

861
00:45:28,320 --> 00:45:31,640
And the problem is everybody is 
in the in America is anchored on

862
00:45:31,640 --> 00:45:33,880
1950. 
And in fact, the world, in a 

863
00:45:33,880 --> 00:45:36,120
weird way, is anchored on 
America in 1950. 

864
00:45:36,600 --> 00:45:38,800
And they've, because they 
haven't, I mean, unless they're 

865
00:45:38,800 --> 00:45:41,440
in China or in some other 
country, they haven't been told 

866
00:45:41,440 --> 00:45:44,120
really that many stories of what
their life was like at that 

867
00:45:44,120 --> 00:45:45,920
time. 
India now has some stories about

868
00:45:45,920 --> 00:45:48,920
partition, right? 
China has some stories about, 

869
00:45:48,920 --> 00:45:51,800
like, you know, the Chinese 
Civil War, or at least the 

870
00:45:51,800 --> 00:45:54,360
Korean War, where the Chinese 
soldiers were, you know, like, I

871
00:45:54,440 --> 00:45:56,280
mean, they're fighting on the 
North Korean side, but, you 

872
00:45:56,280 --> 00:45:58,000
know, they're portrayed as 
heroes in China. 

873
00:45:59,080 --> 00:46:01,000
But most of the world doesn't 
really have that many good 

874
00:46:01,000 --> 00:46:04,280
movies about how horrible their 
20th century was. 

875
00:46:04,520 --> 00:46:05,560
Let me pause there. 
Go ahead. 

876
00:46:05,800 --> 00:46:06,960
Yeah, that's an interesting 
point. 

877
00:46:06,960 --> 00:46:09,080
I hadn't thought of that. 
You know, it speaks to the 

878
00:46:09,080 --> 00:46:13,400
power, the power of America's 
export culture. 

879
00:46:13,440 --> 00:46:16,440
How just how influential it has 
been. 

880
00:46:16,640 --> 00:46:19,520
Yes, and actually, you know, 
what's funny is I'm going to 

881
00:46:19,520 --> 00:46:23,240
share a graph here which is kind
of like that Most countries in 

882
00:46:23,240 --> 00:46:27,360
the world actually had like 
-100% returns. 

883
00:46:27,600 --> 00:46:30,640
Not most, like many countries 
had -100% returns in the 20th 

884
00:46:30,640 --> 00:46:32,840
century. 
And Australia, Canada and 

885
00:46:32,840 --> 00:46:35,560
America are the only three that 
like, escaped that. 

886
00:46:35,800 --> 00:46:37,720
Australia is actually the real 
lucky country. 

887
00:46:37,720 --> 00:46:43,600
US, Canada, Australia escaped, 
but Russia -100% China over this

888
00:46:43,600 --> 00:46:47,440
window. 
Negative 100% Germany -100%. 

889
00:46:47,600 --> 00:46:49,960
It's not, it's not over the 
whole, it's not over the whole 

890
00:46:49,960 --> 00:46:51,280
century. 
I was like, what? 

891
00:46:51,680 --> 00:46:54,400
But I get over a 20 year window.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

892
00:46:54,600 --> 00:46:57,080
Yes. 
So the point is basically what 

893
00:46:57,080 --> 00:47:00,680
people don't understand is like 
this was a rebuttal to. 

894
00:47:00,720 --> 00:47:02,400
So this guy had a reasonable 
post. 

895
00:47:02,400 --> 00:47:04,840
I wasn't attacking him. 
But it was this post by like 

896
00:47:04,840 --> 00:47:08,000
Vanguard, which basically said 
the stock market always goes up 

897
00:47:08,000 --> 00:47:10,480
like persistent dollars, right? 
Yeah. 

898
00:47:10,520 --> 00:47:14,000
And so this post by Vanguard 
basically says the stock market 

899
00:47:14,000 --> 00:47:16,840
always goes up and you know, if 
you sell, you lose money. 

900
00:47:17,120 --> 00:47:18,840
But the two problems with that 
are right. 

901
00:47:18,840 --> 00:47:21,640
So A, the reason it goes up is 
the Fed prints and that can't 

902
00:47:21,680 --> 00:47:26,240
can't do that forever. 
And B it is like essentially 

903
00:47:26,240 --> 00:47:28,120
betting on a trend to continue 
indefinitely, which is the 

904
00:47:28,120 --> 00:47:31,880
shortest way to lose your shirt.
Yeah, doesn't account for tail 

905
00:47:32,400 --> 00:47:34,560
long tail events. 
Correct, right. 

906
00:47:34,760 --> 00:47:39,360
So the reason I say this is the 
US is anchored on a story of the

907
00:47:39,360 --> 00:47:44,200
past, which is an illusion. 
And that story is something 

908
00:47:44,200 --> 00:47:47,920
like, oh, what's the normal way 
of the world is supposed to be 

909
00:47:47,920 --> 00:47:51,360
that a guy with a high school 
degree can have a house and two 

910
00:47:51,360 --> 00:47:53,800
kids? 
And, you know, and that is 

911
00:47:53,800 --> 00:47:57,840
neglecting the fact that 
somebody who's much smarter and 

912
00:47:57,840 --> 00:48:02,080
harder working in Poland or 
Vietnam or something like that 

913
00:48:02,080 --> 00:48:03,760
was like, starving to death, 
right? 

914
00:48:03,880 --> 00:48:06,040
Or getting shot in war or under 
communism. 

915
00:48:06,400 --> 00:48:08,720
And now that person is actually 
competing in the global economy.

916
00:48:08,840 --> 00:48:12,840
You know, it's, it's kind of 
ironic because we could, we can 

917
00:48:12,840 --> 00:48:16,360
use the, the sort of the work 
language here and describe that 

918
00:48:17,000 --> 00:48:19,840
perspective as being privileged,
you know? 

919
00:48:20,280 --> 00:48:22,120
Yes, that's right. 
It's funny, ha ha. 

920
00:48:22,280 --> 00:48:25,080
I want to ask about what are the
plans for Colette? 

921
00:48:25,080 --> 00:48:27,080
What are you doing? 
You turned into like a 

922
00:48:27,080 --> 00:48:29,160
subscription only thing or 
something like that, Is that 

923
00:48:29,160 --> 00:48:32,760
right? 
Well, our business model is, is 

924
00:48:33,440 --> 00:48:35,360
based on subscription. 
So we're putting more stuff 

925
00:48:35,360 --> 00:48:37,600
behind pay walls, but not 
everything's behind a pay wall. 

926
00:48:37,600 --> 00:48:40,640
So if you go to our front page 
now, everything should be open. 

927
00:48:40,640 --> 00:48:44,800
We'll we'll put stuff behind pay
walls only after That's great, a

928
00:48:45,000 --> 00:48:48,480
few days. 
OK, so so cool it is open again.

929
00:48:48,800 --> 00:48:50,760
Yeah, yeah, we've, we've been 
open. 

930
00:48:50,800 --> 00:48:54,040
We're always open. 
It's we will put up paywalls 

931
00:48:54,040 --> 00:48:58,560
after a couple of days and 
sometimes people will land on 

932
00:48:58,560 --> 00:49:02,160
our page and discover a paywall,
but it's not actually a paywall.

933
00:49:02,160 --> 00:49:05,320
It's just asking people to put 
in their e-mail address so we 

934
00:49:05,320 --> 00:49:09,880
can send them a newsletter. 
But it's free, so, and our 

935
00:49:09,880 --> 00:49:12,760
YouTube channel is completely 
free and we're putting a lot of 

936
00:49:12,760 --> 00:49:16,720
stuff up on YouTube, some stuff 
that doesn't go on the website. 

937
00:49:16,840 --> 00:49:20,160
So I encourage any of your 
listeners to check out our 

938
00:49:20,200 --> 00:49:22,480
YouTube. 
I'm finding that a lot of people

939
00:49:22,680 --> 00:49:26,080
actually like listening to 
narrated versions of our 

940
00:49:26,120 --> 00:49:29,480
articles, so. 
Do you have a thesis on that? 

941
00:49:29,960 --> 00:49:33,160
Well, I mean, I have a negative 
thesis, which is that we're 

942
00:49:33,160 --> 00:49:38,360
moving into a post literate 
society, which is not great, but

943
00:49:38,360 --> 00:49:42,120
there's just a big, there's just
a bigger market for audio and, 

944
00:49:42,440 --> 00:49:45,760
and video. 
People don't like to read And, 

945
00:49:45,760 --> 00:49:49,120
and the, the truth is, I listen 
to a lot of audio myself when 

946
00:49:49,120 --> 00:49:52,240
I'm doing housework, you know, 
when I'm doing stuff. 

947
00:49:52,240 --> 00:49:57,560
So if I'm commuting or I'm doing
chores, I like to listen to 

948
00:49:57,560 --> 00:50:00,000
interesting podcasts. 
And I think that's a, you know, 

949
00:50:00,000 --> 00:50:04,400
a reasonable substitute because 
you can't be reading all of the 

950
00:50:04,400 --> 00:50:06,040
time. 
But I do think it's sad that 

951
00:50:06,320 --> 00:50:10,760
people are reading less. 
And reading is sort of becoming 

952
00:50:10,760 --> 00:50:14,040
a marker of elite status in a 
way. 

953
00:50:14,760 --> 00:50:17,440
I mean, I guess it always was. 
I guess it always was right. 

954
00:50:17,800 --> 00:50:20,640
You know, there's there's a 
theory that the mass literacy of

955
00:50:20,640 --> 00:50:24,200
the 20th century, like why are 
the Soviets so into that? 

956
00:50:24,640 --> 00:50:26,880
Because otherwise people 
couldn't read their propaganda. 

957
00:50:27,840 --> 00:50:29,120
Yeah, Yeah, right. 
Interesting. 

958
00:50:29,440 --> 00:50:33,360
Right, Like, so it was almost 
like a port in their head that 

959
00:50:33,360 --> 00:50:36,560
they could install Bolshevik 
propaganda or whatever into, you

960
00:50:36,560 --> 00:50:38,560
know, So otherwise why were they
doing it? 

961
00:50:38,560 --> 00:50:40,040
You know, they were really into 
mass literacy. 

962
00:50:40,040 --> 00:50:42,280
So you could read Pravda, right?
Know what the party line was, 

963
00:50:42,320 --> 00:50:42,720
right? 
Yeah. 

964
00:50:43,000 --> 00:50:46,800
Yeah. 
But my theory is A, there's 

965
00:50:46,800 --> 00:50:50,680
technological Dr. obviously, 
which is Airpods plus 5G plus 

966
00:50:50,680 --> 00:50:52,880
good phones, plus also the 
pandemic shock. 

967
00:50:53,520 --> 00:50:56,760
You know, many people did this B
is what I don't know. 

968
00:50:56,880 --> 00:51:00,080
And I, I made some data on this.
Is it a compliment or is it a, 

969
00:51:00,200 --> 00:51:03,360
is it a replacement right. 
That say, are you are people 

970
00:51:03,360 --> 00:51:06,000
reading and then they're also 
listening while they're walking 

971
00:51:06,000 --> 00:51:10,160
or on the treadmill or doing 
chores or driving or sleeping 

972
00:51:10,160 --> 00:51:11,880
like, you know, they, they get, 
you know, someone to read them 

973
00:51:11,880 --> 00:51:14,840
to sleep effectively. 
Or is it literally something 

974
00:51:14,840 --> 00:51:18,800
where rather. 
Because I mean, just sitting and

975
00:51:18,800 --> 00:51:21,200
reading something is so much 
faster than listening to. 

976
00:51:21,200 --> 00:51:22,720
I know, at least for you and me,
right. 

977
00:51:22,880 --> 00:51:24,120
Yeah. 
That's why it took me a while to

978
00:51:24,120 --> 00:51:25,760
appreciate that people actually 
wanted this. 

979
00:51:25,760 --> 00:51:26,960
Read to them, you know? 
Go ahead. 

980
00:51:27,000 --> 00:51:31,480
Exactly. 
Every podcast we do gets about 

981
00:51:31,480 --> 00:51:34,480
30,000 downloads. 
If we have a video that does 

982
00:51:34,480 --> 00:51:38,520
well on YouTube, it will have 
get over 100,000 views. 

983
00:51:39,200 --> 00:51:42,760
Our top performing essays. 
We do get essays that get over 

984
00:51:42,760 --> 00:51:45,080
100,000 views, but that they're 
rare. 

985
00:51:45,160 --> 00:51:47,360
We'd only have a handful of 
those. 

986
00:51:47,560 --> 00:51:51,080
We'd have many more videos that 
get that many views than we do 

987
00:51:51,080 --> 00:51:53,200
essays. 
It's much easier for a video to 

988
00:51:53,200 --> 00:51:56,720
get 100,000 views than it is to 
get an essay that many views. 

989
00:51:57,800 --> 00:52:02,840
And so there's just a bigger 
audience for audio and video. 

990
00:52:03,160 --> 00:52:06,800
And it took me years to figure 
this out because I have a very 

991
00:52:06,800 --> 00:52:12,440
strong preference for text and 
reading because I can, I am a 

992
00:52:12,440 --> 00:52:15,720
fast reader, but I find with 
listening to podcasts, like, you

993
00:52:15,720 --> 00:52:18,720
know, people aren't precise with
their language because 

994
00:52:18,840 --> 00:52:22,160
everything is just spoken. 
When you're writing an essay, 

995
00:52:22,160 --> 00:52:25,040
you have to be very careful with
the words that you use and be 

996
00:52:25,040 --> 00:52:27,840
careful about the facts that 
you're introducing into your 

997
00:52:27,840 --> 00:52:29,280
essay. 
So you go and check and it's a 

998
00:52:29,280 --> 00:52:31,520
much more. 
So when you're reading an essay,

999
00:52:31,520 --> 00:52:37,280
it's a much more refined piece 
of work and you can, you know, 

1000
00:52:37,280 --> 00:52:41,360
the your ability to absorb 
information that is correct or 

1001
00:52:41,560 --> 00:52:45,320
which has been edited and vetted
is, you know, for me, the return

1002
00:52:45,320 --> 00:52:48,720
on investment is so much higher 
when it comes to reading that it

1003
00:52:48,720 --> 00:52:52,280
took me a really long time to 
understand that audio and video 

1004
00:52:52,280 --> 00:52:56,200
is the way of the future and 
that we need to be leaning into 

1005
00:52:56,200 --> 00:52:58,360
those mediums. 
But now that we have, I'm really

1006
00:52:58,360 --> 00:53:01,840
happy because we're reaching a 
bigger audience. 

1007
00:53:02,240 --> 00:53:04,280
YouTube is our fastest growing 
vertical. 

1008
00:53:04,480 --> 00:53:07,360
Well, OK, so now on Colette 
itself, actually a couple things

1009
00:53:07,360 --> 00:53:09,480
I wanted to ask you since you're
actually the very first, you 

1010
00:53:09,480 --> 00:53:12,000
know, really online media 
creators really doing an 

1011
00:53:12,000 --> 00:53:13,480
independent thing. 
There's a lot more folks who are

1012
00:53:13,480 --> 00:53:15,960
doing sub stack like things and 
so on now, but you were one the 

1013
00:53:15,960 --> 00:53:18,960
first. 
Do you do like, you know, how 

1014
00:53:18,960 --> 00:53:21,760
are you thinking about your mix 
of energy on Colette meetups 

1015
00:53:21,760 --> 00:53:25,880
versus subscribers versus like 
digital versus physical? 

1016
00:53:25,880 --> 00:53:27,960
Because that's something I think
a lot about obviously is like 

1017
00:53:28,240 --> 00:53:29,960
bring digital communities into 
the physical world. 

1018
00:53:30,360 --> 00:53:34,920
Like is there, would there be a 
Coletteville or something in, in

1019
00:53:34,920 --> 00:53:37,640
in Claire's future like the 
Colette community, you know, 

1020
00:53:37,640 --> 00:53:40,200
with AQ in in Queensland maybe, 
I don't know. 

1021
00:53:41,200 --> 00:53:43,960
Yeah, we've been hosting events 
in cities around the world over 

1022
00:53:43,960 --> 00:53:47,400
the years and they're they are a
lot of fun and we get a lot out 

1023
00:53:47,400 --> 00:53:52,520
of them. 
I over, you know, if I'm doing 

1024
00:53:52,520 --> 00:53:55,240
too many events, though, I 
personally, I get quite 

1025
00:53:55,520 --> 00:53:58,480
exhausted because I get so many 
people coming up to me and 

1026
00:53:58,480 --> 00:54:02,680
trying to talk to me and it can 
be a bit overwhelming. 

1027
00:54:02,680 --> 00:54:08,480
But I think if we focus more on 
hosting events where people can 

1028
00:54:08,480 --> 00:54:11,760
just meet each other and I, you 
know, I or my colleagues don't 

1029
00:54:11,760 --> 00:54:14,120
have to be active participants 
as much. 

1030
00:54:14,280 --> 00:54:16,400
You know, I have. 
One of the things I was a little

1031
00:54:16,400 --> 00:54:21,840
surprised by was the relatively 
less overlap than I had thought 

1032
00:54:21,840 --> 00:54:26,000
between Colette and tech, given 
that a fair number of tech 

1033
00:54:26,000 --> 00:54:29,400
people did, especially in the 
early days, read Colette a lot. 

1034
00:54:30,520 --> 00:54:35,120
And And yet your community has 
more letters than numbers. 

1035
00:54:35,120 --> 00:54:36,160
Is that right? 
Yeah. 

1036
00:54:36,480 --> 00:54:37,920
Yeah, that's right. 
Yeah. 

1037
00:54:38,240 --> 00:54:41,480
And is it, is it you know how 
Australia is it or is it just 

1038
00:54:41,480 --> 00:54:43,600
global Anglophone or how you 
know? 

1039
00:54:43,920 --> 00:54:47,960
It's definitely global 
Anglosphere, so it's we're only 

1040
00:54:47,960 --> 00:54:50,480
4% Australian. 
Only 4%. 

1041
00:54:50,800 --> 00:54:52,240
Yeah, the events. 
That's probably above. 

1042
00:54:53,120 --> 00:54:56,360
Yeah. 
The events that we have here are

1043
00:54:56,360 --> 00:54:58,560
pretty big and are always sold 
out. 

1044
00:54:59,040 --> 00:55:01,800
You know, we'll, we can easily 
just fill out a, you know, a big

1045
00:55:02,840 --> 00:55:05,320
event space, you know, within a 
week or so. 

1046
00:55:05,680 --> 00:55:09,560
So our biggest, so 50% of our 
audience is in the United 

1047
00:55:09,560 --> 00:55:15,080
States, that 12% is in Canada, 
14% in the UK. 

1048
00:55:15,080 --> 00:55:18,000
So we're spread out over the 
Anglo sphere. 

1049
00:55:18,080 --> 00:55:20,320
That's, I'm actually a little 
surprised by that, that you 

1050
00:55:20,320 --> 00:55:23,960
have, because Canada's about the
same size as Australia. 

1051
00:55:24,200 --> 00:55:26,160
Maybe what it is, is the 
political radicalism. 

1052
00:55:26,160 --> 00:55:27,880
Maybe this is a diagnosis of 
what we were talking about 

1053
00:55:27,880 --> 00:55:29,880
earlier. 
The political radicalism that we

1054
00:55:29,880 --> 00:55:32,560
were talking about is actually 
more of a problem outside 

1055
00:55:32,560 --> 00:55:35,040
Australia than within it. 
Australia's not a very 

1056
00:55:35,040 --> 00:55:38,600
polarized, we don't have a a 
very polarized political 

1057
00:55:38,800 --> 00:55:41,000
environment. 
It's if anything. 

1058
00:55:41,040 --> 00:55:42,520
My thesis is getting proven, go 
ahead. 

1059
00:55:43,160 --> 00:55:46,840
If anything, our problem is the 
opposite of polarization that we

1060
00:55:46,840 --> 00:55:51,640
have. 
We have broad scale apathy, 

1061
00:55:51,640 --> 00:55:54,120
political apathy. 
People do not care about 

1062
00:55:54,120 --> 00:55:55,440
politics. 
They don't want to know about 

1063
00:55:55,440 --> 00:55:57,960
politics. 
It's good, but it's also bad 

1064
00:55:57,960 --> 00:56:00,920
because then people just start, 
you know, they're not familiar 

1065
00:56:00,920 --> 00:56:03,680
with policies they're voting for
because we have compulsory 

1066
00:56:03,680 --> 00:56:05,760
voting. 
I, I sort of a feeling, you 

1067
00:56:05,760 --> 00:56:07,880
know, sometimes there's like 
countries that are in an 

1068
00:56:07,880 --> 00:56:10,600
ideological superposition, then 
a rubber band snaps and they 

1069
00:56:10,600 --> 00:56:11,960
just go all the way in this 
direction. 

1070
00:56:12,520 --> 00:56:14,920
And I think what happened with 
the, before the tariffs, 

1071
00:56:14,920 --> 00:56:17,240
Australia was sort of caught 
between China and America. 

1072
00:56:17,440 --> 00:56:20,240
And there was like AUCUS, which 
is basically, in my view, fake. 

1073
00:56:20,520 --> 00:56:23,920
You know what I'm talking about,
AUCUS, as soon as all this was 

1074
00:56:23,920 --> 00:56:25,680
announced and it was fake. 
Yeah, yeah, give. 

1075
00:56:26,680 --> 00:56:28,400
Me your thoughts on Arcus, I'll 
tell you why I think it's fake. 

1076
00:56:28,720 --> 00:56:31,840
I can understand why someone 
would think it is fake because 

1077
00:56:31,840 --> 00:56:36,320
we don't we're, we're meant to 
be giving over $300 billion to 

1078
00:56:36,320 --> 00:56:40,080
the United States to build us 
some nuclear powered submarines.

1079
00:56:40,080 --> 00:56:42,600
And I mean, it'd be great. 
It'd be absolutely great to have

1080
00:56:42,600 --> 00:56:45,640
some nuclear powered submarines.
I wish we already had them. 

1081
00:56:46,680 --> 00:56:51,640
But the, you know, the time 
frame is very stretched out. 

1082
00:56:52,360 --> 00:56:56,640
We can't necessarily rely. 
We, I don't think Australians 

1083
00:56:56,640 --> 00:57:01,280
feel confident anymore that the 
United States is going to be a 

1084
00:57:02,640 --> 00:57:07,480
reliable defence partner. 
I mean, we are historically 

1085
00:57:07,480 --> 00:57:10,400
incredibly intertwined with the 
United States when it comes to 

1086
00:57:10,400 --> 00:57:15,080
defence and we have a very 
important military base in the 

1087
00:57:15,080 --> 00:57:21,040
Outback called Pine Gap, which 
has is is a very important 

1088
00:57:21,040 --> 00:57:24,760
signals directory connected to 
satellites and so on. 

1089
00:57:24,920 --> 00:57:29,480
So we have this long history, 
but given the extreme just 

1090
00:57:29,720 --> 00:57:34,600
political dysfunction in the 
United States and how seemingly 

1091
00:57:34,600 --> 00:57:39,040
how domestic politics is now 
shaping foreign policy, which 

1092
00:57:39,040 --> 00:57:43,000
wasn't the case for generations,
you know, foreign policy was 

1093
00:57:43,000 --> 00:57:47,280
sort of separate from domestic 
internal squabbles in the United

1094
00:57:47,280 --> 00:57:49,160
States. 
But now that that foreign policy

1095
00:57:49,160 --> 00:57:54,200
is being dictated by domestic 
issues, we can't, you know, we 

1096
00:57:54,200 --> 00:57:56,840
can't, we don't know what the 
United States is going to be 

1097
00:57:56,840 --> 00:57:59,920
doing in 20 years from now. 
We can't tie our long term 

1098
00:57:59,920 --> 00:58:03,880
strategic defense, you know. 
Yeah, exactly. 

1099
00:58:03,920 --> 00:58:05,400
Like exactly. 
So when I, when I saw the 

1100
00:58:06,400 --> 00:58:09,640
here's, here's just my outsider 
perspective. 

1101
00:58:09,640 --> 00:58:12,400
As soon as I saw this thing 
announced, this is like during 

1102
00:58:12,400 --> 00:58:15,680
the Biden administration, I was 
like, OK, well, first of all, 

1103
00:58:15,680 --> 00:58:19,720
August is not the Quad because 
you can argue maybe the Quad. 

1104
00:58:19,960 --> 00:58:23,880
The Quad at least has Australia,
India, Japan and the US, which 

1105
00:58:23,880 --> 00:58:27,120
are India and Japan have a 
legitimate real security 

1106
00:58:27,120 --> 00:58:30,360
interest because China borders 
them and they've had issues with

1107
00:58:30,360 --> 00:58:33,720
China in the past. 
Australia's OK, maybe bringing 

1108
00:58:33,720 --> 00:58:35,960
the UK into it, which is all the
other side of the world and 

1109
00:58:35,960 --> 00:58:39,560
hasn't been an Asian power since
the handor of Hong Kong is just 

1110
00:58:39,560 --> 00:58:41,200
silly. 
Number one, it's not a world. 

1111
00:58:41,240 --> 00:58:43,920
It's not even a domestic power. 
It's not even like arguably #1 

1112
00:58:44,400 --> 00:58:48,440
#2 is like the whole point of 
like any military anything is 

1113
00:58:48,440 --> 00:58:50,520
you need like replenishment 
rate. 

1114
00:58:50,880 --> 00:58:54,080
If it takes you 20 years and 
four 300 and something billion 

1115
00:58:54,080 --> 00:58:56,880
dollars to build like 3 to 5 
Subs and they could get sunk in 

1116
00:58:56,880 --> 00:59:00,840
10 minutes, that is like that is
like the dumbest thing I've ever

1117
00:59:00,840 --> 00:59:03,360
heard, right? 
That's like so obviously dumb. 

1118
00:59:03,640 --> 00:59:07,480
And moreover, it's like 
obviously China has now the 

1119
00:59:07,480 --> 00:59:09,440
largest Navy in the world, the 
fastest shipbuilding. 

1120
00:59:09,680 --> 00:59:12,320
So all Australia did was they 
spent hundreds of billions of 

1121
00:59:12,320 --> 00:59:14,880
dollars to piss off China. 
They didn't even buy the 

1122
00:59:14,880 --> 00:59:18,480
submarines. 
They basically like, you know, 

1123
00:59:18,480 --> 00:59:21,440
paid a political and economic 
cost kind of being in the middle

1124
00:59:21,440 --> 00:59:25,840
here or what have you. 
And I was just like, this makes 

1125
00:59:25,840 --> 00:59:28,360
absolutely, I mean, you know, 
there's going to be a war with 

1126
00:59:28,360 --> 00:59:30,640
China in 2027. 
OK, Australia gets your first 

1127
00:59:30,640 --> 00:59:32,720
sub in 2039. 
What? 

1128
00:59:32,720 --> 00:59:34,280
It doesn't make any sense at 
all. 

1129
00:59:34,320 --> 00:59:36,240
Right. 
So so the whole thing just 

1130
00:59:36,240 --> 00:59:38,840
struck me as very dumb. 
It was, it was, it was like 

1131
00:59:39,040 --> 00:59:44,760
paying huge amounts of money for
like cavalry in 1912 and it's 

1132
00:59:44,760 --> 00:59:47,880
going to arrive in 1932, 
something like that, right. 

1133
00:59:48,200 --> 00:59:50,360
And of course, World War 2 is 
just World War One is just 

1134
00:59:50,360 --> 00:59:51,480
right. 
If if there was a World War, I 

1135
00:59:51,480 --> 00:59:54,720
actually think you know, can I 
tell you a feature of the 

1136
00:59:54,720 --> 00:59:56,520
tariffs rather than a bug? 
Sure. 

1137
00:59:57,160 --> 00:59:58,800
This, you know, look, nothing's 
100%. 

1138
00:59:58,800 --> 01:00:00,720
It's a volatile world. 
All kinds of crazy things may 

1139
01:00:00,720 --> 01:00:05,560
happen, but I think there's a 
possibility that this was 

1140
01:00:06,720 --> 01:00:10,520
virtualized World War Three and 
the US just lost and it's it's 

1141
01:00:10,520 --> 01:00:13,280
just like, go ahead. 
Well, that yeah, that would be, 

1142
01:00:14,240 --> 01:00:16,920
that would be a positive 
interpretation rather than it 

1143
01:00:16,920 --> 01:00:19,760
being the the the start of World
War 3. 

1144
01:00:20,360 --> 01:00:22,320
Yeah. 
And so, so here is the argument 

1145
01:00:22,320 --> 01:00:25,280
on that, right. 
Basically first is you know the 

1146
01:00:25,280 --> 01:00:27,840
whole Thucydides trap argument. 
Yeah. 

1147
01:00:27,840 --> 01:00:31,160
But it's it's interpreted in so 
many different contexts that 

1148
01:00:31,160 --> 01:00:36,200
sometimes I'm not, I'm not sure 
how it how it sort of applies, 

1149
01:00:36,200 --> 01:00:37,920
but yeah, go go fine. 
Sure. 

1150
01:00:38,040 --> 01:00:40,440
So like the, the, the there's 
this Graham Allison article. 

1151
01:00:40,440 --> 01:00:43,640
We can put that on screen from 
like from I think mid decade, 

1152
01:00:43,840 --> 01:00:46,080
which said China and the US are 
both rising. 

1153
01:00:46,080 --> 01:00:48,000
Are they destined for war and so
and so forth. 

1154
01:00:48,040 --> 01:00:51,280
Right. 
And I actually think the the 

1155
01:00:51,280 --> 01:00:52,840
cities trap has actually already
happened. 

1156
01:00:52,840 --> 01:00:57,720
It was called Ukraine where 
Ukraine was AUS proxy and Russia

1157
01:00:57,720 --> 01:01:00,160
was a China proxy effectively, 
even though most people don't 

1158
01:01:00,160 --> 01:01:02,400
think of it that way. 
But Russia's only on its feet 

1159
01:01:02,400 --> 01:01:05,920
because China like at least 
supplied it with stuff, right? 

1160
01:01:05,920 --> 01:01:07,120
It wasn't sanctioned by the 
world. 

1161
01:01:07,120 --> 01:01:09,520
In fact, 80% of the world did 
not sanction Russia by 

1162
01:01:09,520 --> 01:01:12,000
population. 
And Ukraine is only on its feet 

1163
01:01:12,000 --> 01:01:13,560
because the US supplied it with 
weapons. 

1164
01:01:13,800 --> 01:01:15,960
So those guys are duking it out,
right? 

1165
01:01:16,400 --> 01:01:20,800
And the US lost whether like 
exactly what terms TBD, right? 

1166
01:01:21,040 --> 01:01:23,320
I'm not saying there's a like 
certainly it was a disastrous 

1167
01:01:23,320 --> 01:01:24,600
war. 
Putin shouldn't have done it. 

1168
01:01:24,760 --> 01:01:27,680
Millions of people were 
displaced, all kinds of people 

1169
01:01:27,680 --> 01:01:30,000
dead for a few miles in Ukraine 
disaster. 

1170
01:01:30,200 --> 01:01:33,440
But the US probably it's like 
it's just negotiating the terms 

1171
01:01:33,440 --> 01:01:34,880
of how it's going to surrender, 
right? 

1172
01:01:36,800 --> 01:01:38,280
And and that's a defeat for 
NATO. 

1173
01:01:38,280 --> 01:01:41,720
And that's like Putin will 
probably plant his flag and say 

1174
01:01:41,720 --> 01:01:44,560
Cold War avenged, you know, I 
win or whatever. 

1175
01:01:44,960 --> 01:01:48,440
And what it also shows is that 
all of NATO combined couldn't 

1176
01:01:48,440 --> 01:01:51,200
beat Russia with China supplying
Russia just a little bit. 

1177
01:01:51,360 --> 01:01:53,120
So obviously they can't beat 
China, right? 

1178
01:01:53,400 --> 01:01:53,800
So that's. 
It. 

1179
01:01:54,680 --> 01:01:57,160
Right. 
Then B is like the Houthis and 

1180
01:01:57,160 --> 01:02:01,000
Iran is funding the Houthis and 
China is allied with Iran. 

1181
01:02:01,000 --> 01:02:03,880
So China's proxies, proxies just
blockaded the Red Sea for 18 

1182
01:02:03,880 --> 01:02:05,640
months, whose military has 
gotten defeated there. 

1183
01:02:05,960 --> 01:02:09,520
C you have Heg Seth talking 
about how China's hypersonics 

1184
01:02:09,520 --> 01:02:10,920
that can sync every aircraft 
carrier. 

1185
01:02:11,040 --> 01:02:13,840
Our whole power projection 
platform is aircraft carriers 

1186
01:02:13,840 --> 01:02:16,720
and the ability to project power
that way strategically around 

1187
01:02:16,720 --> 01:02:17,760
the globe. 
And yeah, we have a nuclear 

1188
01:02:17,760 --> 01:02:19,480
triad and all of that, but a big
part of it. 

1189
01:02:20,120 --> 01:02:23,040
And if you know 15 hypersonic 
missiles can take out our 10 

1190
01:02:23,040 --> 01:02:27,160
aircraft carriers in the 1st 20 
minutes of a conflict, what does

1191
01:02:27,160 --> 01:02:30,680
that look like? 
You have the Raytheon CEO saying

1192
01:02:30,680 --> 01:02:33,520
you can't decouple from China. 
So while we talk about pulling 

1193
01:02:33,520 --> 01:02:37,840
supply chain out of China, 
resourcing out of China, I would

1194
01:02:37,840 --> 01:02:41,000
tell you it's very impractical. 
We've been de risking for a 

1195
01:02:41,000 --> 01:02:44,040
couple of years making sure that
we have second sources for 

1196
01:02:44,040 --> 01:02:47,400
critical componentry. 
But unlike Russia, where we 

1197
01:02:47,400 --> 01:02:50,040
pulled out two weeks after the 
invasion last year, we shut down

1198
01:02:50,040 --> 01:02:53,200
our factories, we pulled our 
people out, and we completely 

1199
01:02:53,520 --> 01:02:56,160
cut off any contact with our 
Russian customers. 

1200
01:02:56,480 --> 01:02:59,480
You can't do that with China. 
Too big, too important and too 

1201
01:02:59,480 --> 01:03:01,400
necessary. 
You have the Secretary of Navy 

1202
01:03:01,400 --> 01:03:05,160
saying that one Chinese shipyard
is more, you know, ships and all

1203
01:03:05,160 --> 01:03:07,920
of our shipyards combined, they 
have 13 shipyards. 

1204
01:03:07,920 --> 01:03:10,320
In some cases, their shipyard 
has more capacity. 

1205
01:03:10,360 --> 01:03:12,760
One shipyard has more capacity 
than all of our shipyards 

1206
01:03:12,760 --> 01:03:14,600
combined. 
You have all this kind of stuff,

1207
01:03:14,600 --> 01:03:16,400
which, you know, I, I, I, I 
mention it. 

1208
01:03:16,560 --> 01:03:18,520
You also have this graph which 
shows the US military is made in

1209
01:03:18,520 --> 01:03:20,680
China, right? 
So all this stuff, I repeat it, 

1210
01:03:20,680 --> 01:03:21,960
but do you know what I'm talking
about? 

1211
01:03:21,960 --> 01:03:24,480
Have you seen that graph? 
No, no, it doesn't surprise me 

1212
01:03:24,480 --> 01:03:25,600
at all. 
But yeah, yeah. 

1213
01:03:25,760 --> 01:03:28,000
Yeah, like the Tomahawk missile,
if you go to the vendor's 

1214
01:03:28,000 --> 01:03:30,440
vendor, it's made in China, like
hundreds of Chinese vendors or 

1215
01:03:30,440 --> 01:03:32,520
anything, right? 
So, so you Add all that up and 

1216
01:03:32,520 --> 01:03:35,520
the US military just doesn't 
exist in the same way, right? 

1217
01:03:35,880 --> 01:03:38,000
And so like, what is Australia 
buying? 

1218
01:03:38,000 --> 01:03:41,000
I don't even get it. 
And you know, it's, it's 

1219
01:03:41,000 --> 01:03:44,280
something where I think people 
in Australia sort of now it 

1220
01:03:44,280 --> 01:03:46,360
might be like a rubber band 
snap, right? 

1221
01:03:46,360 --> 01:03:49,040
Like Vietnam, Malaysia and so on
are all go ahead. 

1222
01:03:49,360 --> 01:03:50,840
I think that's going to be bad 
in it's own way. 

1223
01:03:50,840 --> 01:03:51,880
And I'll come back to that. 
Go ahead. 

1224
01:03:51,880 --> 01:03:56,920
Yeah, I mean the, I think up 
until quite recently, up until 

1225
01:03:56,920 --> 01:04:02,920
quite recently, people were 
feeling good about our alliance 

1226
01:04:02,920 --> 01:04:07,200
with the United States. 
But just since the escalation, I

1227
01:04:07,200 --> 01:04:11,560
think since the the meeting in 
the Oval Office with Zelensky 

1228
01:04:11,760 --> 01:04:16,200
and then followed by the 
tariffs, like if you turn on the

1229
01:04:16,240 --> 01:04:19,360
the local news, you'll have 
independent politicians, 

1230
01:04:19,360 --> 01:04:23,040
politicians on both sides of the
aisle saying we need to, we need

1231
01:04:23,040 --> 01:04:27,280
to sit down and think about our 
long term defence strategy. 

1232
01:04:27,280 --> 01:04:31,520
We need to reassess, we need to.
I think there's just greater 

1233
01:04:31,520 --> 01:04:35,880
awareness that I think Orcas is 
going definitely going to be 

1234
01:04:35,880 --> 01:04:38,120
back on the table after the next
election. 

1235
01:04:38,280 --> 01:04:42,760
I think what's called social 
license won't be there. 

1236
01:04:42,760 --> 01:04:45,880
The population of Australia is 
going to be sceptical. 

1237
01:04:45,920 --> 01:04:50,400
You know, our economy is based 
on selling stuff to China. 

1238
01:04:50,560 --> 01:04:53,360
I think Australians just don't 
want to be bullied. 

1239
01:04:53,360 --> 01:04:56,280
Like we don't, we don't want to 
become a vassal state of China. 

1240
01:04:56,280 --> 01:05:01,280
We don't want, we, we want to 
keep, keep our way of life and 

1241
01:05:01,280 --> 01:05:07,160
our freedoms at the same time. 
We've seen how Trump has tried 

1242
01:05:07,160 --> 01:05:10,080
to shake down Ukraine for their 
minerals. 

1243
01:05:10,080 --> 01:05:13,800
And we're thinking, well, how is
that not going to happen to us? 

1244
01:05:13,800 --> 01:05:18,200
Like, you know, our, our country
is full of all of this, all of 

1245
01:05:18,200 --> 01:05:20,600
this, all of this valuable 
natural resources. 

1246
01:05:21,080 --> 01:05:23,840
Are we got just going to end up 
being a protectorate or do we 

1247
01:05:24,680 --> 01:05:27,240
want to? 
I mean, China had, China has 

1248
01:05:27,240 --> 01:05:31,080
bullied us a little bit, but 
they haven't, you know, they're 

1249
01:05:31,080 --> 01:05:35,520
not completely shaking us down. 
So yeah, so here's my view on 

1250
01:05:35,520 --> 01:05:37,880
what's going to happen. 
So first is I very much disagree

1251
01:05:37,880 --> 01:05:40,680
with the policy of like 
basically I think people got 

1252
01:05:40,680 --> 01:05:43,680
more woke than they expected and
now they're getting more MAGA 

1253
01:05:43,680 --> 01:05:46,000
than they expected, and then 
they're going to get more China 

1254
01:05:46,000 --> 01:05:48,040
than they expected. 
Right, OK. 

1255
01:05:48,720 --> 01:05:50,480
You mean inside the United 
States? 

1256
01:05:51,280 --> 01:05:55,320
No, I mean like every when the 
US, Yeah, exactly. 

1257
01:05:55,320 --> 01:05:59,760
Like China will probably play 
nice for a few years to scoop up

1258
01:05:59,760 --> 01:06:03,080
the whole world into the Greater
East Asia Co Prosperity Sphere 

1259
01:06:03,200 --> 01:06:06,240
version 2.0, because they're 
doing all these trade deals with

1260
01:06:06,240 --> 01:06:08,440
all these countries and it's all
they're recentralizing as a 

1261
01:06:08,440 --> 01:06:11,360
global logistics hub. 
They're saying lots of nice 

1262
01:06:11,360 --> 01:06:12,880
things. 
And The thing is, what the US 

1263
01:06:12,880 --> 01:06:16,320
did is they attacked every 
country at once and they said, 

1264
01:06:16,320 --> 01:06:19,200
oh, it's about China. 
And that's like a gang member 

1265
01:06:19,200 --> 01:06:21,840
shooting into a crowd, wounding 
everybody and saying I'm just 

1266
01:06:21,840 --> 01:06:23,760
trying to get that guy on their 
side, help me get him or. 

1267
01:06:24,080 --> 01:06:25,000
Right. 
Do you think they did? 

1268
01:06:25,160 --> 01:06:28,800
Do you think they did that to to
pretend that it wasn't about 

1269
01:06:28,800 --> 01:06:35,520
China or just out? 
Of it's and I I know where it 

1270
01:06:35,520 --> 01:06:37,360
comes from, though it actually 
relates. 

1271
01:06:37,560 --> 01:06:39,200
OK, so here's here's what it 
boils down to. 

1272
01:06:39,880 --> 01:06:43,160
For all their talk about the 
friend enemy distinction, like 

1273
01:06:43,160 --> 01:06:46,280
the Carl Schmidt thing, or as 
Lennon puts it, who whom right? 

1274
01:06:46,600 --> 01:06:48,800
Or as Bush would put it, with us
or against us, right? 

1275
01:06:49,040 --> 01:06:52,200
For all their talk about that, 
mag actually implements a friend

1276
01:06:52,200 --> 01:06:54,040
enemy distinction wrong. 
You know why I say that? 

1277
01:06:54,800 --> 01:06:57,720
Because they think it's like, 
they think it's like American, 

1278
01:06:57,720 --> 01:07:00,880
non American. 
And the problem is that there's 

1279
01:07:00,880 --> 01:07:03,960
many Americans who are not their
friend, like Elizabeth Warren. 

1280
01:07:04,240 --> 01:07:06,640
There's many non Americans who 
are not their enemy, like 

1281
01:07:06,880 --> 01:07:11,040
Buchelli or Pierre, Paula Bray 
or Nigel Farage, really not 

1282
01:07:11,040 --> 01:07:12,520
their enemy, right? 
Maybe they don't agree with them

1283
01:07:12,520 --> 01:07:14,120
on everything, but they're 
basically conservatives or 

1284
01:07:14,120 --> 01:07:16,760
libertarians or whatever abroad.
And then of course there's 

1285
01:07:16,760 --> 01:07:19,040
billions of people who are 
basically neutrals, right? 

1286
01:07:19,040 --> 01:07:21,080
Who are essentially neither 
friend or enemy, but just 

1287
01:07:21,520 --> 01:07:23,520
neutral trade partners. 
Citizens of other countries like

1288
01:07:23,520 --> 01:07:26,200
most Vietnamese basically don't 
really care that much or what 

1289
01:07:26,200 --> 01:07:27,880
have you, but they do care about
the trade. 

1290
01:07:27,880 --> 01:07:31,200
They're making hats and suddenly
that that could send to 0. 

1291
01:07:31,680 --> 01:07:36,360
So what happened was the Trumpet
men and basically Americans in 

1292
01:07:36,360 --> 01:07:38,120
general think only America 
exists. 

1293
01:07:38,480 --> 01:07:40,720
So because they had been 
fighting, fighting, fighting, 

1294
01:07:40,720 --> 01:07:44,480
the Democrats see they couldn't 
align around race, right, 

1295
01:07:44,680 --> 01:07:46,960
because that's very taboo. 
So they couldn't say Trump is 

1296
01:07:46,960 --> 01:07:49,640
for white people or whatever, 
you and he's not because 

1297
01:07:49,640 --> 01:07:52,360
actually he's for Americans. 
But the problem is America, 

1298
01:07:52,360 --> 01:07:54,240
there's at least two Americas. 
There's red American, blue 

1299
01:07:54,240 --> 01:07:56,160
America. 
And so in the same way the 

1300
01:07:56,160 --> 01:07:58,800
Democrats didn't want to say 
we're for Democrat rule, they 

1301
01:07:58,800 --> 01:08:02,000
said we're for democracy. 
The Republicans didn't say we're

1302
01:08:02,000 --> 01:08:04,520
for red American rule, They said
we're for America. 

1303
01:08:05,040 --> 01:08:08,080
So the Democrats would conflate 
democracy itself with Democrat 

1304
01:08:08,080 --> 01:08:11,160
rule, and the Republicans would 
conflate American with red 

1305
01:08:11,160 --> 01:08:14,720
American, and both would forget.
Democrats were shocked that they

1306
01:08:14,720 --> 01:08:18,359
would lose 50% of a Democratic 
vote, and the Republicans are 

1307
01:08:18,359 --> 01:08:21,640
stunned that 50% of Americans 
aren't real Americans. 

1308
01:08:22,160 --> 01:08:23,319
Yeah, yeah. 
Yeah, right. 

1309
01:08:24,160 --> 01:08:26,640
So that's one fundamental thing 
where they're, they're in an 

1310
01:08:26,640 --> 01:08:30,160
identity crisis where the thing 
they think is 1 is actually 2. 

1311
01:08:30,760 --> 01:08:32,560
And it's like their enemy is 
included in the set. 

1312
01:08:32,720 --> 01:08:35,120
The red Americans, Republicans 
are included in democracy and 

1313
01:08:35,120 --> 01:08:37,040
the blue Americans are including
the definition American. 

1314
01:08:37,279 --> 01:08:40,120
So they're, they're like messed 
up #1 and that's actually very 

1315
01:08:40,120 --> 01:08:43,200
deep because since they can't 
draw the boundary and say who 

1316
01:08:43,200 --> 01:08:46,439
they are and who they are not, 
they, for example, they can't 

1317
01:08:46,439 --> 01:08:49,720
secure territory, right? 
Why is the Luigi left shooting 

1318
01:08:49,720 --> 01:08:50,920
CE OS? 
Why? 

1319
01:08:51,040 --> 01:08:52,760
Why are Tesla things getting 
fire bombed? 

1320
01:08:53,040 --> 01:08:56,160
Because those people actually 
consider Republicans enemies, 

1321
01:08:56,240 --> 01:08:57,800
right? 
Or CE OS enemies or whatever. 

1322
01:08:58,200 --> 01:09:00,800
And normally you'd have like a 
North Korea, South Korea, like 

1323
01:09:00,800 --> 01:09:04,240
boundary and friends would be on
one side and, and, and aren't 

1324
01:09:04,240 --> 01:09:06,319
just like random murders on that
side or murder would be 

1325
01:09:06,319 --> 01:09:07,680
considered a big deal blowing up
something. 

1326
01:09:07,880 --> 01:09:10,520
So the problem is red and blue 
are mixed up like this, but they

1327
01:09:10,520 --> 01:09:13,960
consider themselves enemies like
the Balkans right now. 

1328
01:09:14,720 --> 01:09:18,279
OK, now you go one step further.
Now what somebody, and again, 

1329
01:09:18,279 --> 01:09:21,160
I'm saying sympathetically, from
the red perspective, they're in 

1330
01:09:21,160 --> 01:09:23,080
like Maui or they're in North 
Carolina. 

1331
01:09:23,080 --> 01:09:24,520
There's some giant national 
disaster. 

1332
01:09:24,520 --> 01:09:27,520
It tears through the town. 
They get like a $700.00 check 

1333
01:09:27,640 --> 01:09:29,520
and they're seeing 100 billion 
for Ukraine. 

1334
01:09:29,760 --> 01:09:32,399
So now they think all the 
foreigners are ripping us off. 

1335
01:09:32,760 --> 01:09:34,479
And I understand why they think 
that, right? 

1336
01:09:34,840 --> 01:09:37,560
But what actually happened was 
the people in charge of empire 

1337
01:09:37,760 --> 01:09:40,920
were arguably either ripping off
or taxing the rest of the world 

1338
01:09:41,319 --> 01:09:44,359
and they weren't giving it to 
red Americans in the cut that 

1339
01:09:44,359 --> 01:09:46,120
red Americans were used to. 
Right? 

1340
01:09:46,359 --> 01:09:50,479
So the red Americans see their 
cut falling correctly and then 

1341
01:09:50,479 --> 01:09:52,120
they think the foreigners are 
ripping them off. 

1342
01:09:52,120 --> 01:09:54,160
But really the blue Americans 
were arguably ripping off the 

1343
01:09:54,160 --> 01:09:56,320
foreigners too. 
So now we have is this very 

1344
01:09:56,320 --> 01:09:59,640
short sighted thing where oh you
get like 10% less on tariffs 

1345
01:09:59,640 --> 01:10:02,080
with some country. 
Great they exported what 50 

1346
01:10:02,080 --> 01:10:04,520
million a year? 
You save $5,000,000 but they 

1347
01:10:04,520 --> 01:10:08,520
destroyed 3330 trillion dollars 
in market cap and all the trade 

1348
01:10:08,520 --> 01:10:11,000
relationships of the US and the 
financial relationships of the 

1349
01:10:11,040 --> 01:10:14,040
US dollar. 
So they gave up like 1000 XA 

1350
01:10:14,040 --> 01:10:16,600
million X to make 1X. 
It's like the most crazy 

1351
01:10:16,600 --> 01:10:18,360
numerical deal ever. 
Let me pause there. 

1352
01:10:18,360 --> 01:10:21,160
Go ahead. 
Well, I, I don't, I don't see a,

1353
01:10:21,160 --> 01:10:26,640
a way out of this, this economic
situation in the US unless, you 

1354
01:10:26,640 --> 01:10:29,920
know, I, I see someone like 
Bernie Sanders or AOC coming 

1355
01:10:29,920 --> 01:10:33,880
along and saying that we've got 
to tax everyone more. 

1356
01:10:33,880 --> 01:10:38,880
We've got to tax the upper 
quintile, you know, 50% more or 

1357
01:10:38,880 --> 01:10:40,760
whatever it is. 
Like I just don't see any way 

1358
01:10:40,760 --> 01:10:45,440
out of the, you know, when you 
look at the, the debt to GDP 

1359
01:10:45,440 --> 01:10:48,520
ratio, how is that? 
How is that going to be dealt 

1360
01:10:48,520 --> 01:10:52,760
with in any other way? 
Well, it's, so here's the issue 

1361
01:10:52,760 --> 01:10:55,440
is I do well, first of all, I 
don't think it will be dealt 

1362
01:10:55,440 --> 01:10:56,560
with. 
I think there's going to be 

1363
01:10:57,080 --> 01:11:01,360
enormous inflation that just the
US fundamentally hyperinflation 

1364
01:11:01,360 --> 01:11:04,080
is when like a government just 
finally defaults on everything, 

1365
01:11:04,120 --> 01:11:06,680
every, you know, just like it's 
defaulted on its security 

1366
01:11:06,680 --> 01:11:08,680
contracts. 
And, you know, it's security 

1367
01:11:08,680 --> 01:11:10,320
treaties and it's trade 
treaties. 

1368
01:11:10,560 --> 01:11:12,440
The last step is the dollar 
itself, right? 

1369
01:11:12,520 --> 01:11:14,800
And the dollar really is a 
metonym for the global financial

1370
01:11:14,800 --> 01:11:18,040
system that the US used to run 
or still arguably runs, but not 

1371
01:11:18,040 --> 01:11:18,760
for long. 
Go ahead. 

1372
01:11:18,920 --> 01:11:21,120
Yeah. 
Well, what I mean, what Trump is

1373
01:11:21,120 --> 01:11:24,120
seems to be doing is 
accelerating to that point, 

1374
01:11:24,160 --> 01:11:26,400
right? 
Yes, and and part of the issue 

1375
01:11:26,400 --> 01:11:29,040
is also you ever done any 
physics you know, you know force

1376
01:11:29,040 --> 01:11:31,320
diagrams in physics. 
Not smart enough to have done 

1377
01:11:31,400 --> 01:11:33,080
physics. 
OK, you're very smart. 

1378
01:11:33,080 --> 01:11:37,600
You're very smart basically. 
So OK, so in physics, like let 

1379
01:11:37,600 --> 01:11:41,400
me try and give a good example. 
Like take let's say a helicopter

1380
01:11:41,400 --> 01:11:43,760
or something like that. 
There's a force pointing down, 

1381
01:11:43,760 --> 01:11:46,760
which is the force of gravity. 
There's also clearly some force 

1382
01:11:46,760 --> 01:11:49,000
pointing up because otherwise it
wouldn't be remaining in mid 

1383
01:11:49,000 --> 01:11:51,200
air, right? 
That's like balance of forces, 

1384
01:11:51,720 --> 01:11:54,880
and you can calculate from any. 
And it's more than just those 

1385
01:11:54,880 --> 01:11:56,080
two. 
There's other kinds of forces 

1386
01:11:56,080 --> 01:11:57,480
like tail rotors and other 
stuff, OK. 

1387
01:11:57,800 --> 01:12:01,920
But for any kind of big object, 
you take the balance of forces 

1388
01:12:01,920 --> 01:12:03,320
on it and you figure out where 
it's going to go. 

1389
01:12:04,000 --> 01:12:07,800
And sometimes when you actually 
write out every force, it moves 

1390
01:12:07,800 --> 01:12:10,640
in a more complicated and 
surprising thing than you would 

1391
01:12:10,640 --> 01:12:13,800
have guessed, but by default. 
So let's say we apply that to 

1392
01:12:13,800 --> 01:12:16,240
the world, right? 
So what are the four forces? 

1393
01:12:16,240 --> 01:12:19,200
And there's a very, this is what
I realized in November and it's 

1394
01:12:19,200 --> 01:12:23,200
playing out kind of how I 
expected after November 2024. 

1395
01:12:23,760 --> 01:12:27,360
So red America wanted to take 
down the the deep state, but 

1396
01:12:27,360 --> 01:12:30,760
blue America wants to oppose the
Trump administration and Tech 

1397
01:12:30,760 --> 01:12:34,360
America opposes the regulatory 
state and China opposes the 

1398
01:12:34,360 --> 01:12:38,720
American state. 
So all four forces are pointed 

1399
01:12:38,720 --> 01:12:45,040
down on American empire, right? 
That is, that is very unusual 

1400
01:12:45,040 --> 01:12:49,120
where basically the red, the 
blue, the Gray and the Chinese 

1401
01:12:49,280 --> 01:12:52,600
are all pointed down. 
Now when all the forces are 

1402
01:12:52,600 --> 01:12:54,040
pointed down, there's nothing 
pointed up. 

1403
01:12:54,320 --> 01:12:56,640
The only thing that kind of 
maintains the system in its 

1404
01:12:56,640 --> 01:12:58,680
current position is it's like 
initial position. 

1405
01:12:59,000 --> 01:13:02,840
And it can move much faster than
you might think because at best 

1406
01:13:03,160 --> 01:13:06,440
red Americans are conflicted 
about empire and sometimes they 

1407
01:13:06,440 --> 01:13:08,280
like the power of it. 
Basically, they want to be, 

1408
01:13:08,280 --> 01:13:09,560
somebody said this, and I think 
this is good. 

1409
01:13:09,560 --> 01:13:11,000
They want to be the man of the 
house without the 

1410
01:13:11,000 --> 01:13:13,280
responsibility, right? 
They want. 

1411
01:13:13,400 --> 01:13:16,960
To watch Top Top Gun but not not
pay for it. 

1412
01:13:17,720 --> 01:13:18,960
Yeah. 
Or it's like it's, they also 

1413
01:13:18,960 --> 01:13:21,200
have a kind of a 
misunderstanding of where power 

1414
01:13:21,200 --> 01:13:23,800
is. 
Like if it was adamantium under 

1415
01:13:23,800 --> 01:13:26,480
the Appalachians, you know, if 
there's some like, mineral that 

1416
01:13:26,480 --> 01:13:28,840
was actually in physical America
and that's what made them, you 

1417
01:13:28,840 --> 01:13:31,800
know, super MAGA fine. 
But that's not what it is. 

1418
01:13:31,800 --> 01:13:35,280
It's that what, there's only 77 
million Trump voters and there's

1419
01:13:35,280 --> 01:13:38,320
more than a billion people. 
If you add up America, Canada, 

1420
01:13:38,320 --> 01:13:42,000
Australia, New Zealand, UK, 
Europe, Japan, South Korea, 

1421
01:13:42,200 --> 01:13:44,840
that's what Putin calls like 
roughly the golden billion, 

1422
01:13:45,000 --> 01:13:46,360
right? 
Here's a problem. 

1423
01:13:46,360 --> 01:13:49,080
The problem is we're then going 
to get way more China than 

1424
01:13:49,080 --> 01:13:52,440
anybody wanted. 
Because think about how the USSR

1425
01:13:52,440 --> 01:13:55,720
was bad and it fell and the USA 
was basically the good guy up 

1426
01:13:55,720 --> 01:13:58,840
until 1991. 
And then when it was unopposed 

1427
01:13:58,840 --> 01:14:01,520
and it was a hyper power, it 
actually by quickly became the 

1428
01:14:01,520 --> 01:14:02,440
bad guy. 
Right. 

1429
01:14:02,440 --> 01:14:02,720
Yeah. 
Yeah. 

1430
01:14:03,920 --> 01:14:05,720
So I have a few predictions as 
to what will happen. 

1431
01:14:06,160 --> 01:14:11,320
The 1st is China will act good 
for a while and then it it's 

1432
01:14:11,520 --> 01:14:14,920
China. 
So you know like nothing can 

1433
01:14:14,920 --> 01:14:18,680
push back on it now, right? 
Like a truly unopposed China 

1434
01:14:18,680 --> 01:14:21,640
with its drone Armada with like 
the head of steam it's got will 

1435
01:14:21,640 --> 01:14:23,480
be very, very, very, very 
powerful. 

1436
01:14:23,920 --> 01:14:26,280
And I think there's actually 
only one thing that and people 

1437
01:14:26,280 --> 01:14:27,680
it's both obvious and non 
obvious. 

1438
01:14:27,680 --> 01:14:30,160
There's only one thing with the 
economic scale to oppose or 

1439
01:14:30,160 --> 01:14:31,960
balance. 
Let's say it doesn't have to be 

1440
01:14:32,080 --> 01:14:34,480
necessarily adversarial, but it 
should be balanced. 

1441
01:14:34,520 --> 01:14:36,480
There's only one thing with the 
economic scale to balance China.

1442
01:14:36,480 --> 01:14:37,520
And you know what? 
I think that is the. 

1443
01:14:38,480 --> 01:14:40,080
Internet. 
The Internet. 

1444
01:14:40,080 --> 01:14:42,640
Exactly. 
And everybody will say, oh, come

1445
01:14:42,640 --> 01:14:44,280
on, biology, it doesn't have 
hard power. 

1446
01:14:44,280 --> 01:14:46,360
You don't understand hard power.
The Internet doesn't exist. 

1447
01:14:46,360 --> 01:14:47,960
It's just metaphysical or 
whatever. 

1448
01:14:47,960 --> 01:14:49,480
I'm like, OK, it's. 
Good cash flow. 

1449
01:14:50,280 --> 01:14:52,240
It's got cash flow, but actually
here's one way I put it. 

1450
01:14:52,240 --> 01:14:56,320
It's like Christianity, it's not
a place, but there are Christian

1451
01:14:56,320 --> 01:15:00,120
places, right? 
There's lots of countries with 

1452
01:15:00,120 --> 01:15:02,000
the cross on the flag. 
There's like Brazil and it's 

1453
01:15:02,000 --> 01:15:03,320
got, you know, Christ the 
Redeemer. 

1454
01:15:03,320 --> 01:15:04,440
There's lots of Christian 
countries. 

1455
01:15:04,680 --> 01:15:08,280
So it's an idea, but it can also
clean territory, right? 

1456
01:15:08,280 --> 01:15:12,120
And certainly the Internet. 
Just think about the the the 

1457
01:15:12,120 --> 01:15:15,800
monasteries in Ireland after the
collapse of the Roman Empire, 

1458
01:15:15,800 --> 01:15:18,480
right? 
That's where literacy survived 

1459
01:15:18,560 --> 01:15:22,120
for I don't know how many 
generations, but you know, the 

1460
01:15:22,120 --> 01:15:27,440
monks in Ireland kept producing 
their Tran, you know, that kept 

1461
01:15:28,000 --> 01:15:32,480
producing their manuscripts of, 
of the, of Christian texts for, 

1462
01:15:32,520 --> 01:15:34,080
you know, throughout the dark 
ages. 

1463
01:15:34,200 --> 01:15:36,080
That's right. 
And so like the monasteries, the

1464
01:15:36,080 --> 01:15:38,280
cathedrals, the countries, 
right. 

1465
01:15:38,480 --> 01:15:41,840
Like a good, like an important 
enough idea does actually script

1466
01:15:41,840 --> 01:15:43,520
things in the physical world, 
right. 

1467
01:15:43,560 --> 01:15:49,040
Yeah, exactly as you're saying. 
And so the Internet will if when

1468
01:15:49,040 --> 01:15:52,600
American empire ends as sending 
its two heirs are China and the 

1469
01:15:52,600 --> 01:15:56,200
Internet and China inherits the 
military and the manufacturing 

1470
01:15:56,480 --> 01:15:59,960
and all the basically a lot of 
the treaties, the markets, 

1471
01:16:00,040 --> 01:16:01,720
right. 
And the Internet inherits the 

1472
01:16:01,720 --> 01:16:05,080
people, the language of English 
and the values. 

1473
01:16:05,680 --> 01:16:09,120
I think because, you know, the 
Constitution doesn't scale 

1474
01:16:09,120 --> 01:16:10,560
beyond America, but Bitcoin 
does. 

1475
01:16:11,240 --> 01:16:14,000
It's like, you know, common law.
Common law was was only among 

1476
01:16:14,000 --> 01:16:15,720
the British. 
The Constitution was among the 

1477
01:16:15,720 --> 01:16:18,520
Americans, but the smart 
contract, Bitcoin, 

1478
01:16:18,520 --> 01:16:20,800
cryptocurrency and what the 
Internet represents like a 

1479
01:16:20,800 --> 01:16:23,160
peer-to-peer network. 
You and I are equals on the 

1480
01:16:23,160 --> 01:16:24,360
Internet. 
On the global Internet, 

1481
01:16:24,360 --> 01:16:26,520
everybody's an equal. 
We have the same monetary 

1482
01:16:26,520 --> 01:16:30,200
policy, property rights, smart 
contract law, you know, 

1483
01:16:30,320 --> 01:16:32,840
basically it's like the same 
rules based order becomes a code

1484
01:16:32,840 --> 01:16:35,160
based order. 
So that's like the successor to 

1485
01:16:35,160 --> 01:16:37,040
what America was staring us in 
our face. 

1486
01:16:37,040 --> 01:16:40,480
And we're going to need that 
because an unopposed unbalanced 

1487
01:16:40,480 --> 01:16:42,680
China, it's actually bad even 
for the Chinese people, just 

1488
01:16:42,680 --> 01:16:47,040
like like the hyper power 
America after 1991 actually 

1489
01:16:47,040 --> 01:16:50,120
ended up, as many Americans will
say, bad for Americans, right? 

1490
01:16:50,520 --> 01:16:53,560
Like they're now regretting that
a completely unbalanced China 

1491
01:16:53,560 --> 01:16:55,360
would be bad for even Chinese 
people. 

1492
01:16:55,840 --> 01:16:58,440
And actually, you know, it's 
funny, Chinese people, I don't 

1493
01:16:58,440 --> 01:17:00,760
think they respect American 
strength, but they do respect 

1494
01:17:00,760 --> 01:17:03,120
the Internet because Chinese 
people hold Bitcoin, Chinese 

1495
01:17:03,120 --> 01:17:05,200
people want VPNs to access the 
global Internet. 

1496
01:17:05,440 --> 01:17:09,120
Chinese people respect AI. 
Chinese people use Anglophone 

1497
01:17:09,120 --> 01:17:10,840
software, right? 
They wouldn't be able to manage 

1498
01:17:10,840 --> 01:17:12,320
without all of that. 
That would actually be 

1499
01:17:12,320 --> 01:17:14,280
something. 
They're not a target on the 

1500
01:17:14,280 --> 01:17:16,400
digital world. 
They are a target on the, I 

1501
01:17:16,440 --> 01:17:17,920
mean, they're partially a target
in the digital world. 

1502
01:17:17,920 --> 01:17:19,840
You can argue the Chinese 
Internet exists, but at least 

1503
01:17:20,160 --> 01:17:23,840
they have significant gains from
trade with the outside Internet 

1504
01:17:23,840 --> 01:17:25,560
world. 
They don't really have it with 

1505
01:17:25,560 --> 01:17:26,960
the physical world to the same 
extent. 

1506
01:17:26,960 --> 01:17:28,320
They're much more a target in 
the physical world. 

1507
01:17:28,320 --> 01:17:29,440
Let me pause there and get your 
thoughts. 

1508
01:17:29,800 --> 01:17:31,480
No, I think it's a compelling 
thesis. 

1509
01:17:31,480 --> 01:17:35,400
I'm just wondering what happens 
during this process? 

1510
01:17:35,400 --> 01:17:38,400
Like what and what happens to us
in the physical world in in real

1511
01:17:38,400 --> 01:17:40,720
life? 
Do we keep our standard of 

1512
01:17:40,720 --> 01:17:46,080
living or or or do we have to 
start stashing stuff away? 

1513
01:17:46,200 --> 01:17:48,960
Here's my view and I may be 
wrong but this is my view. 

1514
01:17:49,000 --> 01:17:53,280
My view is the more if the 
successors to American empire 

1515
01:17:53,280 --> 01:17:56,040
are China and the Internet, then
the more leverage you are on 

1516
01:17:56,040 --> 01:17:58,880
either China or the Internet or 
both, the better off you are. 

1517
01:17:58,880 --> 01:18:01,840
And if you're both extremely 
anti China and extremely anti 

1518
01:18:01,840 --> 01:18:05,360
Internet, then you're screwed. 
So if you are like, for example,

1519
01:18:05,360 --> 01:18:08,240
a fair number of Americans are 
are working themselves into like

1520
01:18:08,240 --> 01:18:10,640
an anti tech Luddite posture. 
And of course they're going to 

1521
01:18:10,640 --> 01:18:13,280
be very mad at China. 
Those people are in very big 

1522
01:18:13,280 --> 01:18:16,200
trouble because they're going to
lose physical prosperity if 

1523
01:18:16,200 --> 01:18:18,640
China sanctions or trade wars 
them, right? 

1524
01:18:19,080 --> 01:18:21,480
And they're not going to have 
digital prosperity either. 

1525
01:18:21,480 --> 01:18:22,960
They're not going to have 
crypto, they're not going to 

1526
01:18:22,960 --> 01:18:24,040
have this, they're not going to 
have that. 

1527
01:18:24,040 --> 01:18:26,320
So they're going to be super 
angry, extremely, extremely 

1528
01:18:26,320 --> 01:18:28,160
angry. 
That's like, those are people 

1529
01:18:28,160 --> 01:18:29,560
who I think are going to have 
the worst outcome. 

1530
01:18:30,080 --> 01:18:32,120
And one way of thinking about it
is that history of running in 

1531
01:18:32,120 --> 01:18:34,720
reverse, like the people who 
sort of had the worst fall from 

1532
01:18:34,720 --> 01:18:36,360
grace outcome in the 20th 
century. 

1533
01:18:36,400 --> 01:18:39,360
Arguably the Chinese, which went
from the Qing dynasty to the 

1534
01:18:39,360 --> 01:18:40,720
what they call the century of 
humiliation. 

1535
01:18:40,720 --> 01:18:43,160
And people don't understand what
a degree of regression that was.

1536
01:18:43,360 --> 01:18:47,360
To go from like essentially a 
fairly civilized country to like

1537
01:18:47,640 --> 01:18:50,760
backyard blast furnaces and like
eating grass to survive under 

1538
01:18:50,760 --> 01:18:53,840
Mao and then dying in like that 
was a terrible outcome obviously

1539
01:18:53,840 --> 01:18:55,080
for them, but it was a 
regression. 

1540
01:18:55,080 --> 01:18:56,800
They weren't always primitive. 
That's what people don't get. 

1541
01:18:57,000 --> 01:18:58,560
The Russians weren't always 
primitive, right? 

1542
01:18:59,120 --> 01:19:02,120
So. 
So I think America Poss, 

1543
01:19:02,120 --> 01:19:05,320
probably Canada may you know are
going to have the worst of it, 

1544
01:19:05,520 --> 01:19:07,960
right. 
I think, I think Western Europe 

1545
01:19:07,960 --> 01:19:11,080
will be the second worst off. 
They're going to take a massive 

1546
01:19:11,080 --> 01:19:15,320
hit because of how many assets 
they have that are American, how

1547
01:19:15,320 --> 01:19:17,680
much dependence they have on the
US for security. 

1548
01:19:17,920 --> 01:19:22,360
They basically be in American 
colonies and you know what their

1549
01:19:22,360 --> 01:19:23,480
outcome is? 
I don't know. 

1550
01:19:23,480 --> 01:19:25,560
With the with the absence of 
America, some of those countries

1551
01:19:25,560 --> 01:19:27,960
will go nationalist, but the 
absence of America, some of them

1552
01:19:27,960 --> 01:19:29,680
will go towards China, will go 
communist. 

1553
01:19:29,920 --> 01:19:31,800
And I can't tell what the 
outcome will be. 

1554
01:19:31,800 --> 01:19:35,720
It might be varied on the 
continent, but they at least do 

1555
01:19:35,720 --> 01:19:38,440
have better public 
infrastructure, arguably better 

1556
01:19:38,440 --> 01:19:41,680
demographics in some ways than 
than the US. 

1557
01:19:41,720 --> 01:19:44,320
And so I think they'll be less 
badly off. 

1558
01:19:44,880 --> 01:19:47,240
I think Eastern Europe will be 
better off still than Western 

1559
01:19:47,240 --> 01:19:49,520
Europe. 
I think Russia will actually be 

1560
01:19:49,520 --> 01:19:52,640
better off, you know, because 
the winner of a war gets like a 

1561
01:19:52,640 --> 01:19:54,680
boost of energy and so on and so
forth. 

1562
01:19:55,240 --> 01:19:58,480
And and so a lot of people in 
Eastern Europe, if and when 

1563
01:19:58,480 --> 01:20:01,040
Russia wins, leadership will 
change and people will be 

1564
01:20:01,040 --> 01:20:04,080
basically accept Russia as one. 
And it'll be a shift in 

1565
01:20:04,080 --> 01:20:05,720
attitude, I think. 
Not to say that's good. 

1566
01:20:05,720 --> 01:20:08,000
I'm just saying like just just 
how the way the cookie crumbles.

1567
01:20:08,320 --> 01:20:11,000
I'm actually very sympathetic to
where the Estonians and the 

1568
01:20:11,000 --> 01:20:13,320
Balts are on this, you know, 
because they just got conquered 

1569
01:20:13,320 --> 01:20:14,680
by Russia and they just got 
free. 

1570
01:20:14,680 --> 01:20:17,040
But you know, now the old boss 
is back, Maybe. 

1571
01:20:17,040 --> 01:20:22,080
Who knows, I actually think. 
Dubai, Saudi Arabia have a 

1572
01:20:22,080 --> 01:20:24,160
potentially very good century 
ahead of them. 

1573
01:20:24,440 --> 01:20:26,760
I think. 
Iran, let's see what happens. 

1574
01:20:26,760 --> 01:20:28,000
Maybe there's going to be a 
giant war. 

1575
01:20:28,160 --> 01:20:30,040
The world is volatile. 
Lots of the stuff is just, you 

1576
01:20:30,040 --> 01:20:32,280
know, as an outcast. 
It might look stupid in a few 

1577
01:20:32,280 --> 01:20:33,240
years, maybe not. 
I don't know. 

1578
01:20:33,760 --> 01:20:37,480
Iran is like if they're just 
allowed to trade with the world,

1579
01:20:38,160 --> 01:20:41,040
that could be like the next 
Vietnam because in the sense of 

1580
01:20:41,320 --> 01:20:43,920
they have a lot of really smart 
people, a lot of Persians in, 

1581
01:20:44,120 --> 01:20:45,440
you know, the US that did really
well. 

1582
01:20:45,720 --> 01:20:47,880
Again, they're not like a 
primitive, you know, people or 

1583
01:20:47,880 --> 01:20:49,520
anything like that. 
They have a long history, the 

1584
01:20:49,520 --> 01:20:51,120
Zoroastrians, all the stuff 
going back. 

1585
01:20:51,360 --> 01:20:54,400
So I think like in a Chinese 
world, Iran might actually do 

1586
01:20:54,400 --> 01:20:56,080
way better, much better than we 
might think. 

1587
01:20:56,320 --> 01:20:58,840
I think China's going to have 
the best century, probably 

1588
01:20:59,040 --> 01:21:02,480
because they're just, they're 
like Apple, right? 

1589
01:21:02,520 --> 01:21:06,720
Vertically integrated, you know,
the Han Chinese nation, the CCP 

1590
01:21:06,720 --> 01:21:08,280
party state and the Chinese 
network. 

1591
01:21:08,280 --> 01:21:11,280
The Great Firewall, the apps in 
many ways a Great Firewall, I 

1592
01:21:11,280 --> 01:21:15,640
think will be seen for all its 
faults, as actually people frame

1593
01:21:15,640 --> 01:21:17,360
it in terms of free speech. 
But generally, I think they're 

1594
01:21:17,360 --> 01:21:19,720
going to frame it in terms of. 
Well, they're protecting, 

1595
01:21:19,800 --> 01:21:22,400
protecting themselves from mind 
viruses and so on. 

1596
01:21:23,200 --> 01:21:25,720
Digital borders. 
Yeah, yeah. 

1597
01:21:26,120 --> 01:21:28,280
Right. 
So if it's if it's digital 

1598
01:21:28,280 --> 01:21:30,960
borders, yeah, well, it's 
quarantine, but it's also like 

1599
01:21:31,080 --> 01:21:33,920
stop a drone from being 
controlled within China, right? 

1600
01:21:34,120 --> 01:21:36,880
Stop a robot. 
Once you have robots, it's no 

1601
01:21:36,880 --> 01:21:39,360
longer speech. 
That speech can 

1602
01:21:39,360 --> 01:21:43,320
probabilistically script a human
to action, but code can 

1603
01:21:43,320 --> 01:21:45,000
deterministically script it to 
action. 

1604
01:21:45,000 --> 01:21:48,280
So it's less deniable, right. 
If malware crosses your digital 

1605
01:21:48,280 --> 01:21:51,120
border and it can open up a 
drone or a robot, it can do 

1606
01:21:51,120 --> 01:21:54,480
terrorism, right? 
So that alone will justify 

1607
01:21:54,720 --> 01:21:58,000
something like the great 
firewall around every large 

1608
01:21:58,000 --> 01:22:00,960
enough civilizational sphere. 
Like, have you heard the saying 

1609
01:22:00,960 --> 01:22:02,560
the Internet is an untrusted 
network? 

1610
01:22:04,680 --> 01:22:06,040
Well, basically that's what it 
sounds like. 

1611
01:22:06,040 --> 01:22:07,560
It's like any packet anybody 
could write. 

1612
01:22:07,760 --> 01:22:09,720
So I think what you get is 
almost the equivalent of 

1613
01:22:09,720 --> 01:22:11,600
civilizational intranets 
potentially. 

1614
01:22:11,600 --> 01:22:14,880
Well, it's walls and that's it's
like an very old school 

1615
01:22:14,880 --> 01:22:18,520
definition of civilization. 
You put up walls around your 

1616
01:22:18,520 --> 01:22:22,600
city. 
And you define what it is That's

1617
01:22:22,600 --> 01:22:25,400
right. 
Exactly. 

1618
01:22:25,400 --> 01:22:28,080
And it might turn out that 
physical goods move across 

1619
01:22:28,080 --> 01:22:30,560
borders more than ideas do. 
And like, there's more of a 

1620
01:22:30,560 --> 01:22:32,520
digital, you know, digital 
borders than we might think. 

1621
01:22:32,520 --> 01:22:34,520
Digital borders correspond to 
civilizational borders. 

1622
01:22:34,520 --> 01:22:36,160
I think that's going to be more,
more of a thing. 

1623
01:22:36,640 --> 01:22:39,840
I think India is actually going 
to do probably fairly well. 

1624
01:22:39,840 --> 01:22:43,080
And and the reason I say that is
it's just my sense of where a 

1625
01:22:43,080 --> 01:22:46,400
civilization is. 
Like for example, it's a distant

1626
01:22:46,400 --> 01:22:49,600
#2 But India's number 2 on steel
after China just. 

1627
01:22:49,680 --> 01:22:52,920
So much human capital. 
Yes. 

1628
01:22:53,240 --> 01:22:56,240
So The thing is, I, I don't want
to feel like the way I usually 

1629
01:22:56,240 --> 01:22:58,600
say it is I'm moderately bullish
in India, extremely bullish in 

1630
01:22:58,600 --> 01:23:00,560
Indians. 
Yeah, yeah. 

1631
01:23:00,920 --> 01:23:02,760
Because China is a state, India 
is a network. 

1632
01:23:03,080 --> 01:23:07,320
Yeah, but but India has managed 
to do a lot well over the last 

1633
01:23:07,320 --> 01:23:08,680
20 years. 
And whenever I go there, I'm, 

1634
01:23:08,680 --> 01:23:11,760
like, stunned by how good it is 
and how much it's improved. 

1635
01:23:12,160 --> 01:23:15,080
So I think India is like, you 
know, they're saying India 

1636
01:23:15,080 --> 01:23:17,120
disappoints both the optimists 
and the pessimists. 

1637
01:23:18,560 --> 01:23:21,000
OK. 
So I think on balance, just 

1638
01:23:21,000 --> 01:23:24,680
being a big stable quote, 
democracy, I think it's it just 

1639
01:23:24,680 --> 01:23:27,440
like sort of it's a funny way to
put it, but you know what, China

1640
01:23:27,440 --> 01:23:30,240
was like the second rate 
communism to Russia or to the 

1641
01:23:30,240 --> 01:23:31,840
Soviet Union for a long time, 
and then it became right. 

1642
01:23:32,120 --> 01:23:35,440
I think India is like the second
version of democracy. 

1643
01:23:35,440 --> 01:23:38,840
And then after all the Western 
European countries and the US 

1644
01:23:38,840 --> 01:23:41,240
face plant in terms of this, 
it'll be like the world's 

1645
01:23:41,240 --> 01:23:43,920
leading democracy because lots 
of things will kind of say, oh, 

1646
01:23:43,920 --> 01:23:45,920
communism was right, or they'll 
go all the way to Bitcoin 

1647
01:23:45,920 --> 01:23:48,920
maximalism. 
So my, my, my basic view is the 

1648
01:23:48,920 --> 01:23:54,320
more physically, socially, 
financially, militarily, 

1649
01:23:55,560 --> 01:23:59,560
culturally dependent you are on 
the USA, the worse off you'll 

1650
01:23:59,560 --> 01:24:02,880
be. 
And the more you're into China, 

1651
01:24:02,880 --> 01:24:05,200
the more your economy and your 
people and so on have some 

1652
01:24:05,200 --> 01:24:06,520
connection to China or the 
Internet. 

1653
01:24:06,720 --> 01:24:09,560
It's kind of like the US and the
USSR were the big two survivors 

1654
01:24:09,560 --> 01:24:12,800
of like, you know, right. 
So China and Internet, I think 

1655
01:24:12,800 --> 01:24:16,760
are the big two. 
Now I want to ask, OK, so I in 

1656
01:24:16,760 --> 01:24:19,800
our last few minutes, I want to 
discuss network school and what 

1657
01:24:19,800 --> 01:24:21,240
we're doing here, right? 
OK. 

1658
01:24:21,280 --> 01:24:26,280
So your school is not Is it in 
Singapore or close to Singapore?

1659
01:24:27,080 --> 01:24:29,560
Good question. 
It is right next door to 

1660
01:24:29,560 --> 01:24:32,360
Singapore. 
It's in, it's in the Singapore 

1661
01:24:32,360 --> 01:24:34,920
Johor Special Economic Zone, 
which is in Malaysia. 

1662
01:24:36,040 --> 01:24:39,840
But, you know, the vast majority
of people like basically will 

1663
01:24:39,840 --> 01:24:42,320
fly in through Singapore and 
they'll travel across a bridge 

1664
01:24:42,320 --> 01:24:44,520
there because they know 
Singapore on a global map. 

1665
01:24:45,120 --> 01:24:49,160
Yeah. 
And you're offering, I, I say 

1666
01:24:49,160 --> 01:24:53,120
kids, but you're offering people
a grant to come and study with 

1667
01:24:53,120 --> 01:24:55,040
you, a scholarship. 
That's correct. 

1668
01:24:55,040 --> 01:24:58,480
Yes, that's right. 
So we have $100,000 fellowship 

1669
01:24:58,720 --> 01:25:05,800
for for creators, for founders. 
So anybody from Colette who's 

1670
01:25:05,800 --> 01:25:10,320
watching this who thinks they 
could be an AI first filmmaker 

1671
01:25:10,520 --> 01:25:14,880
or comic book creator or 
something like that, some kind 

1672
01:25:14,880 --> 01:25:17,320
of creative who's AI 1st. 
And when I say AI first, by the 

1673
01:25:17,320 --> 01:25:19,320
way, I don't mean AI slop, 
right? 

1674
01:25:19,360 --> 01:25:21,920
I mean, like, yeah, it's very 
important. 

1675
01:25:21,920 --> 01:25:24,840
It's like it's go ahead. 
We have some fantastic people 

1676
01:25:24,840 --> 01:25:29,880
who work from us, who work for 
us, for from countries around 

1677
01:25:29,880 --> 01:25:32,320
the world. 
So we've got this fantastic 

1678
01:25:32,520 --> 01:25:36,680
video editor based in Vietnam. 
We've got an amazing audio 

1679
01:25:37,520 --> 01:25:41,120
editor in Argentina. 
So, you know, the people who I 

1680
01:25:41,120 --> 01:25:45,240
hire for Colette who aren't my 
core editors who have to edit 

1681
01:25:45,240 --> 01:25:48,360
the text are, it's dispersed all
over the globe. 

1682
01:25:48,360 --> 01:25:52,920
And what I find as an employer 
is that the talent is so you, 

1683
01:25:53,040 --> 01:25:55,040
you get such a depth of talent 
in. 

1684
01:25:56,600 --> 01:25:59,160
How did you hire for them? 
Upwork. 

1685
01:26:00,120 --> 01:26:02,640
Upwork really interesting. 
So you did, you basically have 

1686
01:26:02,640 --> 01:26:05,120
bounties and they did them and 
then you hired them full time 

1687
01:26:05,120 --> 01:26:07,360
from that? 
Yeah, yeah. 

1688
01:26:07,680 --> 01:26:09,280
Interesting. 
I do that too. 

1689
01:26:09,880 --> 01:26:11,400
I call it the market is the 
greater. 

1690
01:26:11,680 --> 01:26:13,920
Go ahead, go ahead. 
Yeah, no, it's just you. 

1691
01:26:13,920 --> 01:26:16,360
You can find so much talent 
outside. 

1692
01:26:16,440 --> 01:26:19,480
You know, I find, I find so much
talent outside of Australia, 

1693
01:26:19,880 --> 01:26:24,960
outside of the US, outside of 
the Uki mean you need people 

1694
01:26:24,960 --> 01:26:29,400
locally to do some things. 
But when it comes to creation, 

1695
01:26:29,480 --> 01:26:33,080
whether it's video or audio, 
there's an there's an amazing 

1696
01:26:33,080 --> 01:26:36,160
pool of talented people out 
there who are very willing to 

1697
01:26:36,160 --> 01:26:40,600
work and who are very reliable. 
So, so you're recruiting people 

1698
01:26:40,600 --> 01:26:45,720
who aren't just like STEM 
people, but who are sort of, you

1699
01:26:45,720 --> 01:26:48,400
know, creative as well. 
Absolutely. 

1700
01:26:48,400 --> 01:26:52,600
And in fact, actually that's 
right and I'll tell you why. 

1701
01:26:52,600 --> 01:26:55,560
It's because prompting is 
programming. 

1702
01:26:56,240 --> 01:27:00,960
And if if you have a vocabulary 
which, like art history, is now 

1703
01:27:00,960 --> 01:27:03,000
an applied science. 
Yeah, right. 

1704
01:27:03,000 --> 01:27:03,960
Yeah, yeah. 
Right. 

1705
01:27:03,960 --> 01:27:07,480
Because if you know your Cezanne
and your Picasso and your, you 

1706
01:27:07,480 --> 01:27:10,080
know, your Monet and Rembrandt 
and so on, you can actually 

1707
01:27:10,080 --> 01:27:11,920
summon that style on demand, 
right? 

1708
01:27:12,200 --> 01:27:15,880
If you know architecture and you
can distinguish, I don't know, 

1709
01:27:15,880 --> 01:27:19,480
modernism from, you know, Jane 
Jacobs and all this stuff, you 

1710
01:27:19,480 --> 01:27:21,760
know, I'm certainly no architect
or art historian. 

1711
01:27:21,760 --> 01:27:24,760
I know like just like the slice.
So somebody who has that 

1712
01:27:24,760 --> 01:27:27,040
vocabulary, like, you know, for 
example, there's a whole film 

1713
01:27:27,040 --> 01:27:29,120
makers vocabulary. 
There's a whole that kind of 

1714
01:27:29,120 --> 01:27:31,680
person can direct the AI to do 
the right thing. 

1715
01:27:31,880 --> 01:27:34,840
And so we're definitely, I mean,
one of the things I really want 

1716
01:27:34,840 --> 01:27:38,720
to do is I think you and I share
this interest, but there's many 

1717
01:27:38,720 --> 01:27:42,560
stories of the 20th century that
have not been told, like the 

1718
01:27:42,560 --> 01:27:45,440
story of communism or, you know,
the story like what happened in 

1719
01:27:45,440 --> 01:27:48,200
Poland, like even the story of 
Australia or something, right? 

1720
01:27:48,680 --> 01:27:52,520
I'd love it for people from 
various cultures to be creators,

1721
01:27:52,520 --> 01:27:56,520
screenwriters for their culture 
and then to sort of market that 

1722
01:27:56,520 --> 01:27:59,320
in their native tongue. 
And it's, it's like completely 

1723
01:27:59,320 --> 01:28:01,840
fresh, like, you know, 
Hollywood's in a rut because 

1724
01:28:01,840 --> 01:28:04,480
it's told 5000 stories where 
America's at the center of the 

1725
01:28:04,480 --> 01:28:06,480
universe. 
What about one where Vietnamese 

1726
01:28:06,480 --> 01:28:07,600
people are at the center of the 
universe? 

1727
01:28:07,600 --> 01:28:10,040
What about one where Australian 
people are or something like 

1728
01:28:10,040 --> 01:28:11,880
that, Right. 
So I'd love to see creators 

1729
01:28:11,880 --> 01:28:13,600
apply to Network School 
Fellowship for that. 

1730
01:28:14,320 --> 01:28:17,720
That's awesome. 
And and do people go and live at

1731
01:28:17,720 --> 01:28:19,440
the network school? 
Yes. 

1732
01:28:19,440 --> 01:28:23,960
So here's my my One of my goals 
for this was we wanted to 

1733
01:28:24,440 --> 01:28:28,720
radically reduce the cost of 
living for at least how I lived 

1734
01:28:28,720 --> 01:28:32,440
in San Francisco. 
I was there because of tech and 

1735
01:28:32,440 --> 01:28:34,760
I'd wake up and I'd work out and
I'd work and that was it. 

1736
01:28:34,760 --> 01:28:37,840
And it costs like some 
ridiculous sum of money per 

1737
01:28:37,840 --> 01:28:39,280
month. 
And I was like, what am I? 

1738
01:28:39,440 --> 01:28:42,000
It's like insanely expensive and
it's like unsafe and there's 

1739
01:28:42,000 --> 01:28:46,000
syringes and like the gym was 
really far and you know, like 

1740
01:28:46,080 --> 01:28:48,400
coffee was super expensive. 
And I was like, why is this so 

1741
01:28:48,400 --> 01:28:49,840
expensive for what I'm doing, 
right? 

1742
01:28:49,840 --> 01:28:53,440
I'm just all I needed was like a
small community and like a daily

1743
01:28:53,440 --> 01:28:56,080
loop that was optimized. 
And so now I've built that 

1744
01:28:56,080 --> 01:29:00,480
product and so essentially lots 
of startups basically for like 

1745
01:29:00,480 --> 01:29:04,280
18,000 per person per year, you 
can live in network school and 

1746
01:29:04,280 --> 01:29:06,880
you get everything. 
You have room, you have 

1747
01:29:06,880 --> 01:29:09,720
breakfast, lunch, dinner, you 
have gym 24/7 gym, you have 

1748
01:29:09,720 --> 01:29:14,120
fitness classes, coworking, 
office pods, blah, blah, blah, 

1749
01:29:14,120 --> 01:29:17,000
everything right? 
And so basically that takes your

1750
01:29:17,280 --> 01:29:19,360
like now your burn is 18 KA 
year. 

1751
01:29:19,360 --> 01:29:22,400
That's the roommate. 
It's 36K solo, but that's still 

1752
01:29:22,400 --> 01:29:25,520
way cheaper than West Coast 
tech. 

1753
01:29:25,680 --> 01:29:27,560
We want to bring it down further
over time, but I think that's 

1754
01:29:27,560 --> 01:29:30,360
already pretty, pretty good. 
And if you have a decent remote 

1755
01:29:30,360 --> 01:29:33,520
work job, you're just now 
banking money because you know, 

1756
01:29:33,520 --> 01:29:37,080
you're just leveling up, right? 
And I think most people don't 

1757
01:29:37,080 --> 01:29:39,120
even really understand what 
their expenses are. 

1758
01:29:39,120 --> 01:29:41,520
They only know their rent. 
But the way to do it is take 

1759
01:29:41,520 --> 01:29:44,920
your bank account statement over
the last year or two years and 

1760
01:29:44,920 --> 01:29:48,200
ask if it is more than 1500 a 
month out. 

1761
01:29:48,360 --> 01:29:50,520
And it probably is. 
And if so, you'll probably save 

1762
01:29:50,520 --> 01:29:51,960
money at network school. 
I mean, that's not the only 

1763
01:29:51,960 --> 01:29:53,640
reason to do it. 
You should come for the kind of 

1764
01:29:53,640 --> 01:29:55,600
pro tech community. 
But I think that's that's that's

1765
01:29:55,600 --> 01:29:58,160
one of the principles. 
You just mentioned that you 

1766
01:29:58,600 --> 01:30:01,240
worked in tech in San Francisco,
but you're not from San 

1767
01:30:01,240 --> 01:30:04,480
Francisco originally, yes. 
That's right. 

1768
01:30:04,480 --> 01:30:09,080
I'm from, you know, parents are 
from India, grew up on on Long 

1769
01:30:09,080 --> 01:30:10,520
Island. 
That's what we say back there 

1770
01:30:10,800 --> 01:30:13,160
and moved out to Stanford for my
undergrad. 

1771
01:30:13,160 --> 01:30:16,120
And that's why basically tech 
for a while sort of forced you 

1772
01:30:16,120 --> 01:30:20,000
to work in SF And now I almost 
want I actually think the alpha 

1773
01:30:20,360 --> 01:30:22,840
is being outside SF, outside 
Silicon Valley. 

1774
01:30:22,840 --> 01:30:26,360
It's like so expensive there. 
It's like so consensus there. 

1775
01:30:26,560 --> 01:30:28,880
I'm not saying there aren't good
things that happened there, but 

1776
01:30:28,880 --> 01:30:30,440
that's why part of why I'm doing
every school. 

1777
01:30:31,240 --> 01:30:35,280
And you're a very prolific Angel
investor. 

1778
01:30:35,440 --> 01:30:39,120
You've invested in lots of 
fledgling companies, including 

1779
01:30:39,520 --> 01:30:42,840
Orchid, and so you've been a 
huge supporter of founders for a

1780
01:30:42,840 --> 01:30:45,600
long time. 
Yes, that's right. 

1781
01:30:45,800 --> 01:30:49,880
I have and, and, and you know, 
what's funny is I do that 

1782
01:30:49,880 --> 01:30:54,160
basically as a hobby, like it 
because it's just nice to 

1783
01:30:54,960 --> 01:30:59,280
frankly, I like talking to those
folks to, to the founders and, 

1784
01:30:59,280 --> 01:31:01,400
you know, entrepreneurs and what
have you, because you always get

1785
01:31:01,400 --> 01:31:02,840
a bounce. 
You always learn something. 

1786
01:31:03,240 --> 01:31:05,560
And then, you know, I have, I 
have a little money riding on 

1787
01:31:05,560 --> 01:31:07,000
them. 
So if they win, then I feel 

1788
01:31:07,000 --> 01:31:09,200
like, you know, it, it, it, it, 
it makes a little more 

1789
01:31:09,200 --> 01:31:11,960
interesting, right? 
And it's almost like a form of 

1790
01:31:11,960 --> 01:31:16,880
socialization in a sense, right.
And so I've got north of 500 

1791
01:31:16,880 --> 01:31:18,760
probably closing, you know, 
1000, you know, Angel 

1792
01:31:18,760 --> 01:31:21,360
investments around the world. 
And it's like. 

1793
01:31:22,160 --> 01:31:24,920
You're like Y Combinator, but as
a person. 

1794
01:31:25,760 --> 01:31:29,440
I guess, yeah, that's right. 
I mean, I I just try to fund 

1795
01:31:29,760 --> 01:31:34,600
people who are classically 
liberal or pro freedom in a, in 

1796
01:31:34,600 --> 01:31:37,160
a, in a balanced way. 
I don't know my own vision of 

1797
01:31:37,160 --> 01:31:38,600
the good. 
Just one last question. 

1798
01:31:39,000 --> 01:31:43,200
You said that you think it's 
beneficial to be outside of 

1799
01:31:43,720 --> 01:31:45,920
Silicon Valley or outside of San
Francisco. 

1800
01:31:46,320 --> 01:31:50,120
Do you think that being outside 
of the US has given you a more 

1801
01:31:50,760 --> 01:31:54,560
detached met a perspective on 
the political situation? 

1802
01:31:54,560 --> 01:31:57,520
And do you think that, you know,
because there's this whole thing

1803
01:31:57,520 --> 01:32:00,280
of the tech rights sort of 
aligning with Mega, do you think

1804
01:32:00,280 --> 01:32:06,560
that being geographically away, 
like not in the United States, 

1805
01:32:06,560 --> 01:32:10,520
has sort of allowed you to be a 
bit more circumspect? 

1806
01:32:10,960 --> 01:32:12,520
Yes, I think there's some to 
that. 

1807
01:32:12,560 --> 01:32:16,320
You know, I would even dispute 
the term tech right, because I 

1808
01:32:16,320 --> 01:32:19,360
think it's the tech center. 
It's to the right of the left 

1809
01:32:19,360 --> 01:32:22,880
and it's to the left to the 
right, because tech is tech is 

1810
01:32:22,880 --> 01:32:25,000
fundamentally internationalist 
and capitalist. 

1811
01:32:25,320 --> 01:32:28,440
It wasn't as woke as it had 
memed itself into in the 20 

1812
01:32:28,440 --> 01:32:30,760
tens, and it's certainly not as 
mag as it meme itself into 

1813
01:32:30,760 --> 01:32:34,640
because right. 
And so the problem is that I 

1814
01:32:34,640 --> 01:32:37,640
think we're going to see the 
third configuration, like the 20

1815
01:32:37,640 --> 01:32:41,880
tens was blue plus tech against 
red, and the twenty 20s was tech

1816
01:32:41,880 --> 01:32:44,360
plus red against blue. 
I think the twenty 30s is going 

1817
01:32:44,360 --> 01:32:48,360
to be blue plus red against tech
and it's going to be just like 

1818
01:32:48,360 --> 01:32:49,520
that. 
It will be the premise of it 

1819
01:32:49,520 --> 01:32:52,440
will be an anti tech movement 
and it'll be potentially 

1820
01:32:52,440 --> 01:32:54,920
violent. 
Especially because do you know 

1821
01:32:54,920 --> 01:32:57,000
what Amy Chu's thing about the 
market dominant minority 

1822
01:32:57,200 --> 01:33:01,720
concept? 
No, but I'm, I, I'm watching, 

1823
01:33:01,720 --> 01:33:05,880
I'm watching Steve Bannon and 
sort of agitating against Elon 

1824
01:33:05,880 --> 01:33:07,600
Musk. 
And I see him sort of like 

1825
01:33:07,760 --> 01:33:12,520
parroting some of the same same 
ideas and talking points as AOC.

1826
01:33:12,520 --> 01:33:16,840
And I just see this socialist. 
Nationalist Socialist yes, 

1827
01:33:16,840 --> 01:33:18,360
exactly. 
That's right. 

1828
01:33:18,360 --> 01:33:21,720
And I think I think that's very 
predictable and in fact, I 

1829
01:33:21,720 --> 01:33:24,400
actually saw this coming 10 
years ago, more than 10 years, 

1830
01:33:24,400 --> 01:33:27,000
12 years ago. 
So this is really this key 

1831
01:33:27,920 --> 01:33:31,480
paragraph. 
OK do you see this bit with Chua

1832
01:33:31,480 --> 01:33:34,280
outlines right. 
So first what is a market 

1833
01:33:34,280 --> 01:33:35,360
dominant minority? 
OK. 

1834
01:33:35,360 --> 01:33:38,440
Market dominant minority, like 
she talks about it in terms of 

1835
01:33:38,440 --> 01:33:43,280
ethnic groups like the Jews of 
Europe, the Indians of, you 

1836
01:33:43,280 --> 01:33:46,480
know, Uganda, right, Whites in 
South Africa and so on and so 

1837
01:33:46,480 --> 01:33:50,880
forth, right, Overseas Chinese. 
So basically if you have 

1838
01:33:50,880 --> 01:33:53,800
democracy and capitalism and one
group is winning at capitalism 

1839
01:33:53,800 --> 01:33:56,320
and another group is much larger
in democracy, there's a conflict

1840
01:33:56,640 --> 01:33:59,520
and the market dominant minority
is somebody who or group that is

1841
01:33:59,520 --> 01:34:01,640
winning in the market but losing
the vote. 

1842
01:34:01,960 --> 01:34:04,960
So the backlash if they become 
too public and too wealthy. 

1843
01:34:05,240 --> 01:34:07,640
The first is a backlash against 
markets targeting them, right? 

1844
01:34:07,880 --> 01:34:10,000
The the second is a backlash 
against democracy by force 

1845
01:34:10,000 --> 01:34:12,400
February to market dominatory. 
The third is violence, sometimes

1846
01:34:12,400 --> 01:34:14,600
genocidal, directly against 
market dominant minority itself.

1847
01:34:14,840 --> 01:34:18,640
So now her whole book is about 
race, racial groups that are 

1848
01:34:18,640 --> 01:34:20,920
market dominant minorities. 
But most of violence in the 20th

1849
01:34:20,920 --> 01:34:22,040
century was not on the base of 
race. 

1850
01:34:22,040 --> 01:34:24,720
It was on the basis of class. 
Yeah. 

1851
01:34:24,840 --> 01:34:26,640
Yeah. 
So tech is a class. 

1852
01:34:27,200 --> 01:34:29,040
Yeah. 
And as any sociologist will tell

1853
01:34:29,040 --> 01:34:31,520
you, this is one of the few 
things they're right about race 

1854
01:34:31,520 --> 01:34:35,720
and class covari, right? 
And so tech has a lot of Jewish 

1855
01:34:35,720 --> 01:34:39,640
people, Chinese people, Indian 
people, white people and 

1856
01:34:39,920 --> 01:34:42,440
migrants, immigrants. 
And there's various groups that 

1857
01:34:42,440 --> 01:34:44,360
say there's too many white 
people, there's too many Jewish 

1858
01:34:44,360 --> 01:34:46,160
people, too many Indian people, 
too many Chinese people, too 

1859
01:34:46,160 --> 01:34:48,040
many immigrants. 
And they're different groups, 

1860
01:34:48,080 --> 01:34:51,160
but they're overlapping into 
like, a resentful brew, right? 

1861
01:34:51,280 --> 01:34:54,320
Yeah, yeah, yeah. 
And and so the first backlash is

1862
01:34:54,320 --> 01:34:56,480
the one we already saw. 
This was the tech lash starting 

1863
01:34:56,480 --> 01:35:00,120
around 2013 where the the 
journalists, the media were mad 

1864
01:35:00,120 --> 01:35:02,960
at tech, right. 
And that then the second, I 

1865
01:35:02,960 --> 01:35:05,720
would not actually call it an 
anti democratic backlash because

1866
01:35:05,720 --> 01:35:10,080
it was winning an election, but 
it is how some people would, 

1867
01:35:10,160 --> 01:35:14,840
would, would call it like the 
Elon Trump tech alliance is this

1868
01:35:14,920 --> 01:35:17,120
second kind of thing, right, 
which is basically wealth, 

1869
01:35:17,240 --> 01:35:20,280
right, pushing back. 
And we're about to see, in my 

1870
01:35:20,280 --> 01:35:22,440
view, the third. 
Yeah, yeah. 

1871
01:35:22,720 --> 01:35:26,320
That's this is red and blue 
against tech that is, that is, 

1872
01:35:26,400 --> 01:35:29,480
that is basically presaged by 
people setting self driving cars

1873
01:35:29,480 --> 01:35:34,440
on fire in San Francisco, hammer
attacks, Tesla fire bombings, 

1874
01:35:34,440 --> 01:35:36,840
shooting CEOs. 
They're just getting mad. 

1875
01:35:37,040 --> 01:35:39,280
Like there's crazy memes that 
are like calling for like an 

1876
01:35:39,280 --> 01:35:41,120
army of Luigi's and so on and so
forth. 

1877
01:35:41,480 --> 01:35:44,480
That is just. 
Yeah, I just can't understand 

1878
01:35:44,480 --> 01:35:50,360
the the sense of having Bezos, 
Zuckerberg, Sundar, Pichol 

1879
01:35:50,360 --> 01:35:54,360
standing at Trump's 
inauguration. 

1880
01:35:54,360 --> 01:35:55,480
They. 
Don't have? 

1881
01:35:55,480 --> 01:35:59,880
A choice like in a in a line, 
OK, but that image, that picture

1882
01:35:59,880 --> 01:36:05,600
will be used by the socialists 
for years and years and years to

1883
01:36:05,600 --> 01:36:07,400
come. 
Well, here's the problem. 

1884
01:36:08,400 --> 01:36:11,080
The flip side was used 
basically, remember all of these

1885
01:36:11,080 --> 01:36:14,080
guys were with Obama and they 
were donating to Biden, right? 

1886
01:36:14,560 --> 01:36:17,920
So so the problem is that 
literally these these are people

1887
01:36:17,920 --> 01:36:19,960
who just want I know many of 
these guys, right? 

1888
01:36:20,120 --> 01:36:22,560
They're really not ideological 
radicals at the core. 

1889
01:36:23,480 --> 01:36:27,760
Fundamentally what they slash we
want to do is have a lab where 

1890
01:36:27,760 --> 01:36:31,520
we can advance robotics and DNA 
sequencing and aviation and so 

1891
01:36:31,520 --> 01:36:34,440
on and so forth. 
And you know, they're too white 

1892
01:36:34,440 --> 01:36:36,840
for some people and they're too 
non white for other people and 

1893
01:36:36,840 --> 01:36:38,480
what have you. 
But it's actually like a 

1894
01:36:38,480 --> 01:36:41,280
generally pretty good group of 
people that is kind of building 

1895
01:36:41,280 --> 01:36:45,000
a lot of wealth, right? 
And and now they're just going 

1896
01:36:45,000 --> 01:36:49,120
to be hated because nobody wants
people like what the narrative 

1897
01:36:49,120 --> 01:36:51,640
will be. 
AI takes all the jobs, crypto 

1898
01:36:51,640 --> 01:36:53,360
takes all the money and tech 
takes all the blame. 

1899
01:36:53,800 --> 01:36:57,320
So. 
And and scapegoated for the for 

1900
01:36:57,320 --> 01:37:00,160
the mess caused by printing too 
much. 

1901
01:37:00,560 --> 01:37:01,760
Correct. 
That's right. 

1902
01:37:02,320 --> 01:37:05,160
And so the fact that we'll have 
Bitcoin, Bitcoin will moon and 

1903
01:37:05,160 --> 01:37:07,560
it'll be like those tech guys, 
they got all the money get them.

1904
01:37:07,840 --> 01:37:13,440
And I wouldn't be surprised to 
see some BLM, Hamas, J 6th 

1905
01:37:14,040 --> 01:37:19,200
Graper, Antifa, Luigi kind of 
fusion blocking roads 

1906
01:37:19,200 --> 01:37:24,080
ideologically hard to classify, 
just kind of anarchic, right? 

1907
01:37:24,120 --> 01:37:25,760
American anarchy is how I think 
about it. 

1908
01:37:26,240 --> 01:37:30,480
And just like anti tech guys. 
So that's I know that sounds 

1909
01:37:30,520 --> 01:37:34,360
bad, but actually that's why I 
think it's important for people 

1910
01:37:34,360 --> 01:37:37,960
to if like in a sense, what's 
happening now is a good warning.

1911
01:37:37,960 --> 01:37:42,000
It's like, don't go to the US, 
like leave if you're there, you 

1912
01:37:42,000 --> 01:37:43,880
know, get go back home where you
came from. 

1913
01:37:43,960 --> 01:37:46,320
The signals are being sent. 
Don't trade with the US. 

1914
01:37:46,320 --> 01:37:47,720
Don't set up a business in the 
US. 

1915
01:37:47,960 --> 01:37:51,000
Don't invest in the US. 
Like, it's almost as if they're 

1916
01:37:51,000 --> 01:37:55,360
doing everybody a favor by 
saying back away, we're out of 

1917
01:37:55,360 --> 01:37:58,760
money, stop trading with us, 
we're out of guns, Don't rely on

1918
01:37:58,760 --> 01:38:00,120
our military. 
Back away. 

1919
01:38:00,120 --> 01:38:03,120
And it's almost like jumping on 
the grenade before it blows up. 

1920
01:38:03,680 --> 01:38:05,120
Yeah. 
And the full force of it. 

1921
01:38:05,120 --> 01:38:07,400
Go ahead. 
No, I think, I think that's, 

1922
01:38:07,760 --> 01:38:11,000
that's a interesting way of 
describing what's going on. 

1923
01:38:11,000 --> 01:38:14,360
And it's one of the less 
pessimistic. 

1924
01:38:15,280 --> 01:38:18,200
You know, it's, it's an you're 
at the acceptance stage. 

1925
01:38:18,760 --> 01:38:21,720
I'm at the acceptance stage and,
and, and you know, one thing I 

1926
01:38:21,720 --> 01:38:23,720
will say is I think that at 
least for a few years, it's 

1927
01:38:23,720 --> 01:38:26,680
possible that the rest of the 
world actually doesn't do that 

1928
01:38:26,680 --> 01:38:28,680
badly. 
And the reason is there's all 

1929
01:38:28,680 --> 01:38:31,680
kinds of crazy quantities of 
goods that are going to be 

1930
01:38:31,680 --> 01:38:34,160
exported from China. 
They're going to drop prices all

1931
01:38:34,160 --> 01:38:35,840
around the world. 
So consumers will actually have 

1932
01:38:35,840 --> 01:38:38,320
now they'll have other problems,
producers will go bust or 

1933
01:38:38,320 --> 01:38:40,120
whatever. 
Maybe there might be, you know, 

1934
01:38:40,120 --> 01:38:42,760
quote anti dumping laws, China's
to limit how much market share 

1935
01:38:42,760 --> 01:38:44,480
they get in a given country or 
something like that. 

1936
01:38:44,960 --> 01:38:46,880
But I think actually a lot of 
prices around the world may go 

1937
01:38:46,880 --> 01:38:49,920
down even as. 
You might have cheap E VS. 

1938
01:38:50,800 --> 01:38:53,600
You might have cheap EVs. 
There's there's there's 

1939
01:38:53,600 --> 01:38:57,280
potentially like it's really a 
question of how much in the way 

1940
01:38:57,280 --> 01:39:00,000
of US assets you have. 
And if you have, I think 

1941
01:39:00,040 --> 01:39:05,520
Bitcoin, if you have like maybe 
physical gold, if you have your 

1942
01:39:05,640 --> 01:39:08,280
currency and local bank accounts
rather than U.S. bank accounts, 

1943
01:39:08,280 --> 01:39:10,080
if you don't have U.S. stocks, 
right. 

1944
01:39:12,400 --> 01:39:14,240
I think. 
And if you're not located in the

1945
01:39:14,240 --> 01:39:17,200
USI think you'll probably be OK 
that the large, the large to the

1946
01:39:17,200 --> 01:39:20,840
percentage of that is non-us. 
Which is totally, again, the 

1947
01:39:20,920 --> 01:39:23,280
opposite of the 20th century. 
But that's, that's my view. 

1948
01:39:23,440 --> 01:39:24,720
Now, of course, I hope I'm 
wrong. 

1949
01:39:24,960 --> 01:39:29,040
I hope there's a miracle that 
happens, but I think I'm right. 

1950
01:39:31,480 --> 01:39:35,880
And we and we can hedge. 
We can sort of, you know, hedge 

1951
01:39:35,880 --> 01:39:37,920
a little bit. 
Yes, you could read domicile 

1952
01:39:37,920 --> 01:39:39,080
also. 
We'd have to figure out how to 

1953
01:39:39,080 --> 01:39:40,480
do that. 
I think what happens is 

1954
01:39:40,480 --> 01:39:43,640
eventually it's all on China, in
China or on chain. 

1955
01:39:43,920 --> 01:39:46,240
So it's either Hong Kong soccer 
chains or it's on the Internet 

1956
01:39:46,240 --> 01:39:48,560
and so on and so forth. 
OK, I have to. 

1957
01:39:48,560 --> 01:39:51,440
Jump, I'm going to let you get 
to your yeah, other interview. 

1958
01:39:51,920 --> 01:39:53,840
Yes. 
And if there's anything, any 

1959
01:39:53,840 --> 01:39:57,760
closing words? 
Well, thanks for having me on 

1960
01:39:58,280 --> 01:40:01,720
the pod and. 
It's lovely to chat with you, 

1961
01:40:01,720 --> 01:40:06,240
very stimulating as always, and 
I'm really in admiration of the 

1962
01:40:06,240 --> 01:40:07,240
work you're doing with the 
school. 

1963
01:40:07,240 --> 01:40:10,880
I think it's a really positive 
thing for humanity, so well 

1964
01:40:10,880 --> 01:40:13,000
done. 
I I love Colette. 

1965
01:40:13,000 --> 01:40:16,240
It's great and thank you for 
doing that and and I'm. 

1966
01:40:16,480 --> 01:40:18,240
You've got to come to Sydney and
hang out. 

1967
01:40:18,840 --> 01:40:21,240
I I you know what we should do 
that we should do a we should do

1968
01:40:21,240 --> 01:40:23,640
a meet up and we we'll see, see 
see who comes by. 

1969
01:40:23,760 --> 01:40:25,440
All right, the Colette community
with the queue. 

1970
01:40:25,520 --> 01:40:26,600
OK, see you. 
Awesome. 

1971
01:40:26,800 --> 01:40:27,760
Thank you. 
Bye bye.