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Cynthia Chung on the Limits To Growth | Jerm Warfare · UK Column Radio

0:32
Speaker 1: My name is Jim. This is germ Warfare, the Battle
0:34
Speaker 1: of Ideas, Cynthia Chang. Thank you for joining me in
0:39
Speaker 1: the trenches.
0:41
Speaker 2: Glad to be here.
0:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I say trenches obviously metaphorically. But we are
0:48
Speaker 1: in an information war, aren't we?
0:52
Speaker 2: Yes, most definitely, especially with the advent of AI in
0:58
Speaker 2: its new phase shift in twenty twenty five, I'm feeling
1:02
Speaker 2: the effects of it, even though I'm not really a
1:05
Speaker 2: user of it, what effects I feel that already within
1:12
Speaker 2: a short time span, people's attention spans have decreased even
1:18
Speaker 2: more just in terms of putting out content. You know,
1:22
Speaker 2: we've been putting Matthew Errett, who's my husband, for those
1:25
Speaker 2: who don't now, we've been putting out content since about
1:29
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen. And the peak of attention span I found
1:34
Speaker 2: was during COVID, obviously because people were stuck at home
1:37
Speaker 2: and they didn't have much to do, and there were
1:40
Speaker 2: actually some benefits to that where people were actually I
1:43
Speaker 2: think the most interested what I saw for our statistics anyway,
1:47
Speaker 2: because we have a nonprofit called Rising Tide Foundation, which
1:52
Speaker 2: people can check out the websites Risingtypefoundation, dot net, but
1:56
Speaker 2: I found that they had the highest attention span for
1:59
Speaker 2: like more substantial things philosophical questions, especially during COVID, and
2:06
Speaker 2: it has been slowly dropping. And then last year with AI,
2:09
Speaker 2: I find that it's getting a lot harder for people
2:13
Speaker 2: to read something that's that's not that long. And I
2:19
Speaker 2: think that Twitter is also playing or x is playing
2:23
Speaker 2: a role as well in this and TikTok. And you know,
2:29
Speaker 2: we had someone who was helping us for a short while,
2:34
Speaker 2: who's in her twenties, who was you know, telling us
2:37
Speaker 2: that for TikTok, even a three minute clip now is
2:42
Speaker 2: too long. It's considered too long. We want it down
2:45
Speaker 2: to forty seconds, and you know, it's best. The most
2:49
Speaker 2: popular videos are where you're walking and you're just pointing
2:51
Speaker 2: at something and you're like, WHOA, what's that? And it's
2:54
Speaker 2: like is it Illuminati or whatever? And like there's just
2:58
Speaker 2: there's increasingly less and less of an actual thought being conveyed.
3:05
Speaker 2: And uh, this last year, I've really felt the effects
3:08
Speaker 2: with the AI.
3:10
Speaker 1: You say AI, but I mean the algorithms behind those
3:12
Speaker 1: things are designed to do that.
3:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And I mean the also what I
3:21
Speaker 2: find really concerning is the uh there there there's a
3:25
Speaker 2: lot of like fake things that you're you're being seen.
3:30
Speaker 2: It's not just deep fake, right, Like there's just what
3:32
Speaker 2: are what are you seeing? Is it really real or not?
3:35
Speaker 2: And they're doing like some innocent things, like there was
3:38
Speaker 2: a parrot that was like talking in a montage and
3:42
Speaker 2: there was like different scenarios and it's not clear if
3:44
Speaker 2: it's the same parrot, and it's it's almost like a
3:47
Speaker 2: stand up gig. And I realized halfway through because normally
3:51
Speaker 2: I pride myself at being like I can I can
3:54
Speaker 2: recognize an AI person. But with the parrot as totally
3:58
Speaker 2: because you know, everybody watch which is these cute animal
4:01
Speaker 2: videos once in a while, I was totally taken off
4:05
Speaker 2: balance and I was like, wait a minute, this isn't
4:07
Speaker 2: in a real parrot And they're doing like innocent things
4:11
Speaker 2: like this. Some are like more extreme, but it's to start,
4:15
Speaker 2: I think, detaching us from a concept of reality to
4:19
Speaker 2: have a foundation on even just like basic physics. How
4:23
Speaker 2: does basic physics work? And I feel that it's very
4:27
Speaker 2: concerning in terms of just the longer short term effects
4:32
Speaker 2: because we're really just one year into them, like really
4:35
Speaker 2: overloading platforms like TikTok with these these fake scenarios.
4:44
Speaker 1: Also the friend who recently said to me that he
4:49
Speaker 1: doesn't think that we are designed to absorb this much information.
4:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really good point. I mean, that's actually
5:01
Speaker 2: something Matt and myself have been talking about in terms
5:04
Speaker 2: of you know, it was always thought back in the
5:08
Speaker 2: day that the if you could solve illiteracy, right and
5:11
Speaker 2: that everybody could learn how to read, then you can't
5:17
Speaker 2: keep you know, you can't keep the lies from people, right, like,
5:20
Speaker 2: because back in the day, most people didn't know how
5:24
Speaker 2: to read for centuries, and you normally had like some
5:28
Speaker 2: a person in position, either a priest or a lawyer
5:31
Speaker 2: or something like this that you had to rely on
5:34
Speaker 2: to not only read the text, but interpret the text
5:37
Speaker 2: for you because it was done in a specialized vocabulary
5:41
Speaker 2: meant for you to not understand. Like, it was very interesting.
5:46
Speaker 2: I had a friend because I live in Quebec and
5:49
Speaker 2: I've I've also lived in the other side of Canada,
5:53
Speaker 2: that I've struggled with the French language because there's so
5:55
Speaker 2: many grammatical rules, like insane, like really over the top
6:00
Speaker 2: grammatical rules. It's like a nightmare. And one of my
6:04
Speaker 2: friends whose French said like, well, you know, they did
6:06
Speaker 2: it on purpose to make it really difficult for the
6:09
Speaker 2: common person to be able to speak properly, and it
6:13
Speaker 2: was actually a form of control that way in terms
6:17
Speaker 2: of what kind of societies you could enter into. So anyway,
6:21
Speaker 2: it was thought that once people could read, this was
6:24
Speaker 2: going to be a problem solved. Now we're in an
6:26
Speaker 2: age where people are technically literate, although honestly with comprehension
6:31
Speaker 2: level not quite. And we have so many books now
6:35
Speaker 2: that are available online. You can read whatever you want.
6:38
Speaker 2: You don't even have to travel physically to a library
6:42
Speaker 2: that will hold that physical copy of the book. We
6:46
Speaker 2: have a huge wealth of information on the internet, and
6:50
Speaker 2: no one is looking at it, and no one's really
6:54
Speaker 2: studying anything for too long because there is this information overload.
7:00
Speaker 2: Everyone's just like kind of chasing the ambulance, so to speak,
7:04
Speaker 2: Like whatever is the new big news item. Everybody just
7:09
Speaker 2: rushes over to it, and the memory of like what
7:14
Speaker 2: has even happened a few months before on that subject matter,
7:18
Speaker 2: it's just it's not being there because people are being
7:21
Speaker 2: overloaded so much with information. It's like the conspiracy theorists,
7:29
Speaker 2: you know, they're they're being overloaded since COVID with so
7:33
Speaker 2: much information that it is actually a form of extreme disorganization.
7:39
Speaker 2: It would be equivalent, uh or maybe even worse than
7:43
Speaker 2: if you like never woke up, so to.
7:46
Speaker 1: Speak, Cynthia, what is your background?
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Speaker 2: Has absolutely nothing to do with the things that I
7:55
Speaker 2: write about.
7:58
Speaker 1: That's a good stought to actually, because I preferred dogging
8:01
Speaker 1: to people who can think outside of the box.
8:05
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I had to self teach myself, right because
8:09
Speaker 2: for all of my twenties and my thirties were also
8:17
Speaker 2: like I was working, but as like a professional student.
8:20
Speaker 2: So I had done. I went from engineering to biochemistry
8:25
Speaker 2: to I have a degree in molecular genetics, and I
8:30
Speaker 2: got that degree, and then I decided I'm not going
8:33
Speaker 2: to work in this field because I realized the research
8:36
Speaker 2: was going nowhere. I thought it was going to be exciting.
8:39
Speaker 2: I thought I was going to be on the advent
8:42
Speaker 2: of changing the world in a positive way, and I
8:46
Speaker 2: last year for that program was a complete wake up
8:50
Speaker 2: call that my professors were all actual losers who were
8:54
Speaker 2: not really doing anything with their research. And then I
8:59
Speaker 2: didn't want to work for a pharmaceutical company for ethical reasons.
9:03
Speaker 2: And then I went into nursing actually just to get
9:08
Speaker 2: a job, a practical job where at least I was like, well,
9:11
Speaker 2: I'm going to do something good with that. And I
9:14
Speaker 2: worked for about five years as a nurse in very
9:17
Speaker 2: intensive fields, and then I realized that that was also
9:24
Speaker 2: not going to actually be an ethical career for me
9:26
Speaker 2: because they were doing some not so great practices in
9:31
Speaker 2: my opinion, with the patients. And Matt actually opened the
9:35
Speaker 2: door for me to get my first paid writing gig
9:39
Speaker 2: with Strategic Culture, and then I realized, oh my god,
9:42
Speaker 2: I could possibly get paid to write, and then I
9:46
Speaker 2: just went in that direction.
9:49
Speaker 1: This is a strange segue. I can't put it, but
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Speaker 1: I somehow feel that there is a connection between your
10:00
Speaker 1: killer genetics and the topic of limits to growth. I'm
10:06
Speaker 1: not sure where where the link is, but I know
10:07
Speaker 1: it's somewhere there. But when you're our last chattered a
10:11
Speaker 1: few years ago, we spoke about this and it's so
10:14
Speaker 1: interesting that obviously want to talk to you about it again.
10:18
Speaker 1: If we find a place to start, I guess the
10:20
Speaker 1: best position will be what are the limits to growth?
10:29
Speaker 2: Well, that is the issue, and I start off with
10:36
Speaker 2: my paper, which is what our conversation is going to
10:39
Speaker 2: be based off of, which people can find on my
10:42
Speaker 2: subseac Through Glass Darkly by Cynthia Chang. But I open
10:47
Speaker 2: it up with the question, obviously, a limited resource is
10:52
Speaker 2: defined by how limited that resources and if resources are renewable,
10:58
Speaker 2: which is the case for every reason, then the question
11:02
Speaker 2: is at the speed that that resource can be renewable
11:05
Speaker 2: is going to define how it is actually a limited resource.
11:11
Speaker 2: And so there's a there's there are a lot of
11:13
Speaker 2: examples that I go in with that, but maybe to
11:17
Speaker 2: start our conversation, this question is actually a political one
11:21
Speaker 2: more than even a scientific one. Unfortunately, there's a lot
11:26
Speaker 2: of pseudoscience in in you know, I mean academia itself
11:33
Speaker 2: is has become a huge problem in all of its subjects.
11:37
Speaker 2: But this concept, which maybe I don't know, I've heard
11:43
Speaker 2: that the Carnegie Foundation had a lot to do with
11:46
Speaker 2: like messing things up. But yeah, the concept of limited
11:51
Speaker 2: resources seems to have come completely out of the Club
11:55
Speaker 2: of Rome, and they had a publication called the Limits
11:58
Speaker 2: to Growth and the Club of when it was brought
12:02
Speaker 2: into existence around nineteen sixty eight, and they publish Limits
12:07
Speaker 2: to Growth in nineteen seventy two. They were linked to
12:12
Speaker 2: the World Economic Forum right from the beginning of the like.
12:16
Speaker 2: Basically their blueprint is the blueprint for the World Economic Forum,
12:23
Speaker 2: and so there's limits to growth like they're they're basically
12:27
Speaker 2: saying that. It's very Malthusian as well in terms of
12:31
Speaker 2: we're going to hit a carrying capacity. And if you
12:34
Speaker 2: look at most life forms on Earth, there is what
12:40
Speaker 2: they call a plateau where you're living in a certain
12:44
Speaker 2: environment and once like let's say rabbits, right, once rabbits
12:49
Speaker 2: reach a certain population size within their environment, they're going
12:53
Speaker 2: to hit a plateau where their population is going to
12:56
Speaker 2: just like flatline. They can't increase past this population number
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Speaker 2: because the environment cannot, you know, supply the needs of
13:08
Speaker 2: that population. The problem is is that humans can't be
13:14
Speaker 2: compared to something like that because we invent new things
13:19
Speaker 2: that are a complete qualitative shift. And Thomas Malthus is
13:26
Speaker 2: the one that really started this, who worked for the
13:28
Speaker 2: East India the British East India Company, by the way,
13:32
Speaker 2: as did Adam Smith. Like all of these things are
13:34
Speaker 2: very all of these like ideas in science and economics
13:40
Speaker 2: from Thomas Mouthus and Adam Smith were actually to serve
13:44
Speaker 2: a British a political policy of the British Empire and
13:49
Speaker 2: very directly for the British East India Trade Company. They
13:53
Speaker 2: were they were salaried by this company. And he's the
13:58
Speaker 2: one that started this whole concercept of you know, carry
14:03
Speaker 2: that the human human population would reach a carrying capacity,
14:06
Speaker 2: and he had prophecied it would be one hundred years
14:09
Speaker 2: from when he had When he had, you know, brought
14:13
Speaker 2: us to everyone's attention. And it's as with these, you know,
14:18
Speaker 2: types of predictions, they're always wrong, and yet somehow we
14:23
Speaker 2: continuously believe in them. And he predicted it was going
14:27
Speaker 2: to be one hundred years from them, which was going
14:29
Speaker 2: to be around the end of the eighteen hundreds, and
14:31
Speaker 2: it was totally off because there's actually an industrial boom
14:36
Speaker 2: because there were discoveries, inventions, a lot of machine tool
14:41
Speaker 2: industry that was discovered during that time, and scientific discoveries
14:45
Speaker 2: that had a total game changer for things and changes
14:50
Speaker 2: our relationship to the resources in our environment. So like,
14:55
Speaker 2: for instance, coal can be just this useless lump of
14:59
Speaker 2: you know, black soot, you know, or if you know
15:04
Speaker 2: how to unleash the energy would then coal It was
15:08
Speaker 2: a huge Yeah, there was problems with pollution, but there
15:12
Speaker 2: was also a lot of increase in standards of living,
15:15
Speaker 2: like people I think forget like how arduous what we
15:19
Speaker 2: consider now with really basic things like washing your clothes
15:24
Speaker 2: was once you had access to electricity. So these that's
15:32
Speaker 2: the question in mind, is that our relationship to what
15:36
Speaker 2: is naturally around us will constantly change as we form
15:40
Speaker 2: inventions that change our relationship to these things. But the
15:45
Speaker 2: limits to growth they have like mathematical models where they
15:50
Speaker 2: try to tell us that it's inevitable that you're going
15:54
Speaker 2: to hit a plateau. What it really means is that
15:57
Speaker 2: they want to enforce an economic political policy that justifies
16:04
Speaker 2: that we stop growing. And you can see like Europe,
16:07
Speaker 2: a lot of the European countries were very foolish and
16:11
Speaker 2: they had shut down their nuclear power and now they're
16:14
Speaker 2: in a situation where they're purchasing their energy for like
16:18
Speaker 2: ten times the price from the United States, like in
16:22
Speaker 2: the case of Germany, when they could have been using
16:27
Speaker 2: this energy and producing it for themselves. So they're still
16:31
Speaker 2: reliant on the so called dirty energy from other countries.
16:35
Speaker 2: And it's been shown that Germany is like the biggest
16:39
Speaker 2: model for like the renewable energy sector. It's not actually
16:45
Speaker 2: able to meet the needs of the German people without
16:50
Speaker 2: decreasing the center of living dramatically. And when the limits
16:56
Speaker 2: to growth came out, there was this big was it
17:00
Speaker 2: ABC special on Australia's largest computer, which this is hilarious
17:06
Speaker 2: for anyone who wants to. You can look it up
17:09
Speaker 2: on YouTube where you can look it up. In my article,
17:11
Speaker 2: I have it embedded. But this supercomputer predicted, depending on
17:16
Speaker 2: the parameters you put in it, when the world would end.
17:19
Speaker 2: But no matter what, the conclusion was that the world
17:23
Speaker 2: would end, but the date would change depending on the
17:26
Speaker 2: parameters you gave. It sounds like, you know, the computer
17:29
Speaker 2: was a little bit biased, but if you look at
17:33
Speaker 2: what it was projecting, even for something like chromium availability,
17:37
Speaker 2: which I have as an example in my paper, it
17:40
Speaker 2: was totally off and it predicted that chromium availability was
17:45
Speaker 2: going to go down. But because we were able to,
17:49
Speaker 2: you know, discover a different way of using it and
17:53
Speaker 2: producing it, we're actually like it, just like it was
18:00
Speaker 2: up so high in reality to the graph that you
18:06
Speaker 2: can't even fit it on the graph, Like our chromium
18:08
Speaker 2: chromium availability is actually exponentially higher than what this supercomputer predicted.
18:17
Speaker 2: And I think that these kinds of examples are just
18:20
Speaker 2: very good examples of how mathematical models, which are computer models,
18:26
Speaker 2: are incapable of predicting qualitative change because that's not something
18:31
Speaker 2: you can compute. It's not a linear or exponential type
18:36
Speaker 2: of consistency in something.
18:38
Speaker 1: It's the same thing with climate change. You can't use
18:41
Speaker 1: a mathematical model to determine how Earth is going to
18:45
Speaker 1: look temperature wise or climate wise in one hundred years time.
18:48
Speaker 1: There are too many variables.
18:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, and well that's something we discuss in our
18:55
Speaker 2: rising type film the cursive game theory. Is that right?
19:00
Speaker 2: Because game theory was uh von Nuimann and all of
19:05
Speaker 2: this is linked right, like with the cybernetics and game theory. Uh.
19:11
Speaker 2: These are all things that are also used to justify
19:13
Speaker 2: limited resources zero sum game thinking, which is all a
19:17
Speaker 2: lie to stop people from thinking that they can collaborate
19:21
Speaker 2: with each other for like a win win scenario using
19:25
Speaker 2: China's phrase. But yeah, like von Neumann had said that
19:31
Speaker 2: if you have more variables, it should be easier to predict,
19:35
Speaker 2: and he actually uses the solar system as an example
19:40
Speaker 2: in his in his you know, the start of his
19:44
Speaker 2: game theory book, which is hilarious because if you look
19:48
Speaker 2: at how the planets are interacting with the several moons
19:51
Speaker 2: and so forth. There it's not uh, it's not like
19:55
Speaker 2: a linear uh uh relationship. And the more very variables
20:00
Speaker 2: you would put into a system like that actually increases
20:04
Speaker 2: the complexity. It doesn't increase the simplicity of prediction, because
20:10
Speaker 2: you know, they have the stupid thing of like the
20:11
Speaker 2: spray can and you can you can predict like how
20:14
Speaker 2: many atoms or whatever based off of like the probability,
20:18
Speaker 2: Like that's like the easiest thing to do. But it
20:23
Speaker 2: showcases that they don't actually understand anything about what shapes
20:29
Speaker 2: most of life. And the fact too that our solar
20:32
Speaker 2: system is supposed to be traversing through a galaxy where
20:36
Speaker 2: we're going in and out of all types of things
20:40
Speaker 2: in an environment that is always changing as well in
20:43
Speaker 2: terms of like cosmic rays and all of this sort
20:46
Speaker 2: of thing, so which seems to affect also our Sun's
20:51
Speaker 2: activity level.
20:54
Speaker 1: So you know, there's way which by the way, is
20:56
Speaker 1: also mathematical modeling.
21:01
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, yeah, because we can't really know for sure
21:06
Speaker 2: this galaxy is. But I do, like, I do think
21:10
Speaker 2: that there is a good point in thinking that we
21:13
Speaker 2: are constantly moving through something in the universe and that
21:19
Speaker 2: the environment is changing because we don't We're not the
21:22
Speaker 2: only thing in the universe, and we're going to be
21:26
Speaker 2: interacting with other things. And cosmic rays are one thing
21:31
Speaker 2: that we can measure that are changing, depending assuming on
21:36
Speaker 2: where we're traversing in the universe. But the cosmic rays
21:39
Speaker 2: of what we're getting from the universe are varying. But
21:43
Speaker 2: I also say, very very complex and.
21:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, so what would have been the motivation to develop
21:53
Speaker 1: this limits to growth idea? I mean it seems to
21:57
Speaker 1: fit very neatly into you know, depopulating Earth, mass surveillance,
22:04
Speaker 1: mass control, and sphere.
22:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that was actually one of the scenarios for
22:14
Speaker 2: the supercomputer was to show like how much you could
22:17
Speaker 2: slow down the end of the world if we had
22:21
Speaker 2: birth control put in place. So they were putting different
22:25
Speaker 2: parameters in like pollution controls, you know, birth control and
22:31
Speaker 2: these sorts of things. I think that an interesting quote
22:36
Speaker 2: to answer your question from one of the co founders
22:39
Speaker 2: of the Club of Rome, Sir Alexander King, who wrote
22:43
Speaker 2: The First Global Revolution. He said, thirty years after the
22:47
Speaker 2: Club of Roma started in searching for a common enemy
22:52
Speaker 2: against whom we can unite. We came up with the
22:56
Speaker 2: idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine,
23:02
Speaker 2: and the like would fit the bill. In their totality
23:05
Speaker 2: and their interactions, these phenomena do constitute a common threat
23:10
Speaker 2: which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating
23:14
Speaker 2: these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap
23:17
Speaker 2: which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms
23:22
Speaker 2: for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention
23:26
Speaker 2: in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes
23:31
Speaker 2: and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy, then,
23:35
Speaker 2: is humanity itself. So it's like our just our very nature,
23:43
Speaker 2: our existence, the fact that we interact with things, which
23:46
Speaker 2: is a lot of what the environmentalists, although now the
23:50
Speaker 2: environmentalists apparently also have an issue with trees being polluters,
23:54
Speaker 2: like it's getting really insane.
23:57
Speaker 1: But we are the parasites.
24:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're We're are the problem. We are the problem
24:04
Speaker 2: because we change things too much. Because, as I was
24:09
Speaker 2: mentioning before, other species are not able to change their
24:13
Speaker 2: environment like we are. Because we can do that, it
24:17
Speaker 2: must be a bad thing. Even though we can change
24:20
Speaker 2: a desert, for instance, the Sahara Desert and return it
24:23
Speaker 2: back to a lush green you know area that was
24:31
Speaker 2: I forgot what the specific term was for it, but
24:34
Speaker 2: it used to be a super green like lush area.
24:39
Speaker 2: And the water has like fallen underneath the area of
24:44
Speaker 2: the Sahara Desert. And it's incredible, like how many people
24:48
Speaker 2: will argue that we're not allowed to touch it. And also
24:52
Speaker 2: the Sahara Desert is the reason why so many hurricanes
24:55
Speaker 2: hit the eastern coast of the United States is because
25:01
Speaker 2: of the drastic temperature change of the air currents going
25:04
Speaker 2: over the Sahara Desert and then over the ocean before
25:07
Speaker 2: they get to the East coast. And so this isn't
25:11
Speaker 2: like you can argue just like a climate change issue,
25:17
Speaker 2: right like the water fell through for whatever reason. And
25:23
Speaker 2: we have the ability to address these sort of things.
25:26
Speaker 2: And green deserts like China and India are the leaders
25:30
Speaker 2: right now actually in growing man made forests. And you
25:34
Speaker 2: see like the satellite pictures you can get you know,
25:38
Speaker 2: NASA satellite pictures, or you can get it from somewhere
25:40
Speaker 2: else if you don't trust NASA. But the thing is
25:44
Speaker 2: is that we can create these man made forests. But
25:47
Speaker 2: even that now is not acceptable by the environmentalists to
25:51
Speaker 2: create man made forests. It's like the idea is you
25:56
Speaker 2: basically should you know, not exist, and you should you know,
26:01
Speaker 2: not do anything with your life, and this makes you
26:05
Speaker 2: a very easy controlled person in the setup of the
26:10
Speaker 2: world Economic form, which the Club of Rome is basically
26:14
Speaker 2: the bible for the World Economic Forum, which its viewpoint
26:19
Speaker 2: is that you shouldn't own anything. They've made that very clear.
26:23
Speaker 2: People should be renters. You know, we have huge companies
26:28
Speaker 2: like Blackstone that are the world's largest landowner that are
26:33
Speaker 2: like most younger people now and middle aged people cannot
26:37
Speaker 2: afford houses. Back in the day, it was like considered
26:42
Speaker 2: a basic thing for you to be able to purchase
26:44
Speaker 2: a house. Now people who even have houses are losing
26:48
Speaker 2: their houses because the taxes are so incredible. By the way,
26:52
Speaker 2: in China they don't have these kinds of taxes. A
26:56
Speaker 2: lot of people discovered this when TikTok was temporarily shut
26:59
Speaker 2: down and people were looking at red note and they
27:02
Speaker 2: were realizing that, you know, there were a lot of
27:05
Speaker 2: things that were actually beneficial in other places in the world,
27:10
Speaker 2: including China, in terms of the tax system, and that
27:14
Speaker 2: our tax system is actually I live in Canada, but
27:16
Speaker 2: our tax system is also very bad. You can lose
27:19
Speaker 2: your house even though you paid for your house. But
27:22
Speaker 2: these companies like black Soone and black Rock are buying
27:26
Speaker 2: up the houses their black Rock is buying up a
27:29
Speaker 2: whole bunch of key industrial infrastructure strategic things throughout the world,
27:36
Speaker 2: including airports and ports and such, and they're owning it
27:42
Speaker 2: by a billionaire collective and they're trying to shut down,
27:48
Speaker 2: you know, the country's ownership of these things, which is
27:53
Speaker 2: viewed as like the people's ownership. So all of these
27:57
Speaker 2: kinds of policies are basically to just to fy this
28:02
Speaker 2: new phase shift that we view as like the the
28:07
Speaker 2: next stage that they want to put everybody on a
28:11
Speaker 2: trajectory of of a you know, a centralized government control
28:16
Speaker 2: allocate the resources that they do have into a centralized thing,
28:21
Speaker 2: but to keep the the atrophying, the scarcity going because
28:28
Speaker 2: you can control it. Because Hdul said, like that was
28:31
Speaker 2: the worst thing, was the industrial boom in the eighteen hundreds,
28:35
Speaker 2: And why was he saying it Besides the fact that
28:38
Speaker 2: it creates it created a huge population boom as well.
28:42
Speaker 2: Was that if you have a lot of areas developing
28:46
Speaker 2: and innovating and creating independently. It's very difficult to control
28:53
Speaker 2: that from a centralized form. And even with like things
28:58
Speaker 2: like cybernetics and so forth, which are all meant to
29:01
Speaker 2: service a centralized node, and that's what they're basically. That's
29:07
Speaker 2: why people are increasingly thinking that to be creative in
29:12
Speaker 2: the sciences can only you know, result in some kind
29:16
Speaker 2: of Frankenstein monstrosity.
29:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean an underlying thread here is you're making
29:23
Speaker 1: the argument that correct me if I'm wrong that there
29:28
Speaker 1: isn't this finite set of resources because humans have the
29:33
Speaker 1: ability to adapt, innovate, invent, and change as we go along.
29:41
Speaker 2: Yeah. One one very simple example before I go into
29:45
Speaker 2: a more complex example is like our relationship to food.
29:49
Speaker 2: You know, for people who think that everything that we
29:52
Speaker 2: touch it's like made worse. Most of the fruits and
29:58
Speaker 2: vegetables that you are eating, We're not like that. Naturally
30:02
Speaker 2: we made them into those things. So, like an apple
30:06
Speaker 2: is the apple that we know today is not what
30:10
Speaker 2: existed naturally. We created that through you know, a form
30:15
Speaker 2: of genetic engineering, not in a lab. You know, this
30:19
Speaker 2: was done like you know, centuries ago by being able
30:23
Speaker 2: to splice a branch onto another tree, and they were
30:27
Speaker 2: able to create you know, all of these different kinds
30:30
Speaker 2: of things. The banana, the watermelon, the eggplant, you know, corn,
30:36
Speaker 2: all of these things did not exist at all as
30:42
Speaker 2: a like nourishing as what they are now because we
30:48
Speaker 2: made them into those things, or even livestock as well,
30:53
Speaker 2: they they're not. That wasn't something that was natural. But
30:58
Speaker 2: I think that the fruits in the vegetable example is
31:00
Speaker 2: a very beautiful one because I think most people would think, yeah,
31:04
Speaker 2: like if you know what a korn looked like, originally,
31:07
Speaker 2: it wasn't even edible. I think that you this is
31:11
Speaker 2: definitely a positive thing that we we've we've done. In
31:16
Speaker 2: terms of a more complex example, it's a nuclear energy
31:21
Speaker 2: and the reason why nuclear energy has been given such
31:25
Speaker 2: a bad rap is again for political reasons, because if
31:29
Speaker 2: you had nuclear energy, it has the most it has
31:34
Speaker 2: the most reliable energy that it can offer, even nuclear waste.
31:38
Speaker 2: At this point, it's it's it's a non issue. If
31:41
Speaker 2: people want to look up, you know, more information on this,
31:45
Speaker 2: just refer to my article on my substack what determines
31:48
Speaker 2: the limit to growth? Because we can't go through everything
31:50
Speaker 2: in that article in our in our talk. But the
31:54
Speaker 2: next advent is fusion energy. And it's very telling right
31:58
Speaker 2: that in the United States it's for decades now they've
32:01
Speaker 2: always said, you know, oh it's thirty years away. It's
32:04
Speaker 2: thirty years away. And if you look at the funding,
32:07
Speaker 2: the funding has been at the achieved nuclear fusion never
32:13
Speaker 2: you know, the funding has just been way too low.
32:16
Speaker 2: Now that China has done a lot to put in
32:20
Speaker 2: for nuclear fusion such that they're making ongoing discoveries and
32:26
Speaker 2: it looks like it is a reality. Now you hear
32:30
Speaker 2: the United States talking about it again, like at the
32:33
Speaker 2: Lawrence Livermore Institute, for instance. But if you look at
32:37
Speaker 2: their website, it's specifically for military applications, and that shows
32:43
Speaker 2: you the attitude, right like the energy is not being
32:47
Speaker 2: thought of as what it can do for society. It's
32:51
Speaker 2: the only concern the United States has shown in terms
32:55
Speaker 2: of meeting China in this race for nuclear fusion is
33:00
Speaker 2: from a military standpoint. But the beauty of nuclear fusion
33:05
Speaker 2: is that on the Moon we have helium three, and
33:10
Speaker 2: helium three with nuclear fusion is like a massive game
33:15
Speaker 2: changer where you basically can have like a sort of
33:19
Speaker 2: you know, Jetson's scenario, like energy will not be short
33:25
Speaker 2: anywhere in the world. And that's like a nightmare for
33:27
Speaker 2: someone who's like a world economic form person because controlled
33:33
Speaker 2: artificial scarcity means that you can it's the hend that
33:36
Speaker 2: withholds right, you get to control a lot more if
33:41
Speaker 2: people have to come to you for that loaf of bread. Right,
33:46
Speaker 2: if no one has to come to you for the
33:48
Speaker 2: loaf of bread, you don't have any leverage on people
33:52
Speaker 2: anymore at that point. So helium three would be a
33:56
Speaker 2: game changer and energy would be bountiful. Think about like
33:59
Speaker 2: what electricity was able to do for a lot of
34:03
Speaker 2: the parts of the world. And by the way, JP
34:07
Speaker 2: Morgan was also saying that people shouldn't put He was
34:13
Speaker 2: not advocating electricity for the masses. And you know, they
34:16
Speaker 2: were saying all the all of these stories that it
34:19
Speaker 2: would spook the horses and it would create chaos and everything.
34:23
Speaker 2: But he had electricity for his house. It's like an
34:27
Speaker 2: old game. But anyway, if the whole world could have
34:31
Speaker 2: access to this, it would set back these types of
34:36
Speaker 2: you know, agendas totally far back again, like it happened
34:40
Speaker 2: in the eighteen hundreds with the industrial revolution. And the
34:47
Speaker 2: other really positive note for nuclear fusion is the plasma torch.
34:54
Speaker 2: Right now, the plasma torch exists with nuclear fission, but
34:57
Speaker 2: it's a lot more energy intensive, a lot more expensive.
35:01
Speaker 2: But the plasma torch has the ability to reduce anything
35:05
Speaker 2: into its elemental form, even its ionic form. So you
35:10
Speaker 2: could take landfills and turn them into resource minds, like
35:14
Speaker 2: you wouldn't have any kind of garbage anymore with the
35:19
Speaker 2: plasma fusion torch, because with fusion it would be very cheap.
35:26
Speaker 2: You can break down anything, so you wouldn't have to
35:28
Speaker 2: do mining like we do now, like so extensively. You
35:34
Speaker 2: could extract what we already have. You can build materials
35:38
Speaker 2: that are actually a lot stronger also with the fusion torch.
35:41
Speaker 2: So there's so many positives to these sorts of things.
35:45
Speaker 2: With Really the pollution for this sort of thing is
35:51
Speaker 2: also pretty much a non issue. So it's really sad
35:56
Speaker 2: that people have been so beaten down and brainwashed, and
36:00
Speaker 2: obviously Hollywood dystopic movies of the future always being bleak, bleak, bleak.
36:07
Speaker 2: You know, we don't really have any movies ever talking
36:10
Speaker 2: about any kind of positive potential scenario. It affects your imagination, right,
36:15
Speaker 2: It affects your ability to think of something outside of
36:21
Speaker 2: the box that you've been put in. And that's I
36:24
Speaker 2: think the biggest thing here is that they've been just
36:28
Speaker 2: pummeling from all angles this idea that it's just going
36:34
Speaker 2: to get smaller and smaller, it's going to be entropic,
36:38
Speaker 2: rather than the reality that if we actually looked to
36:42
Speaker 2: these types of innovations, you know, we could have a
36:48
Speaker 2: huge advancement in the standard of living everywhere.
36:55
Speaker 1: If I've fly between Cape Town and Jannisberg, it's about
36:58
Speaker 1: to our flight. I look out the window, Cynthia, the majority,
37:04
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly of that land mass below me is empty.
37:10
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, yeah, I mean, if you the best thing
37:13
Speaker 2: to do as well as well, Yeah, I mean for Canada.
37:18
Speaker 2: Canada is an even worse example, I think than what
37:21
Speaker 2: you're talking about. If you look at the population density
37:25
Speaker 2: of Canada, it's hilarious. I have an image of it
37:28
Speaker 2: in my in my article for people who want to
37:31
Speaker 2: to to look it up. There we have like a
37:36
Speaker 2: population size I believe that is smaller than the population
37:40
Speaker 2: of California for all of Canada, and if you look
37:43
Speaker 2: at where the population is placed, it's all along the
37:48
Speaker 2: border of the United States because we everything and matt
37:54
Speaker 2: has done a lot of work on this, Matthew Eric
37:57
Speaker 2: and basically we were supposed to be a kind of
38:05
Speaker 2: special kind of colony of the British Empire. I mean
38:08
Speaker 2: we still are, by the way, like we still have
38:11
Speaker 2: the Governor General and they and the Privy Council, and
38:14
Speaker 2: they reserve the right to remove our Prime Minister if
38:17
Speaker 2: they if they want to, which they did do for
38:19
Speaker 2: Australia once. But we were supposed to be a very
38:27
Speaker 2: simple existence. Anything that we were given in terms of
38:31
Speaker 2: like rail and industrial improvements was often because the United
38:36
Speaker 2: States had developed those things first, and you know, in
38:41
Speaker 2: order for us to feel like we're just as good,
38:45
Speaker 2: those things were allowed. But it's usually you know, done
38:49
Speaker 2: as a sort of you know, way to to make
38:53
Speaker 2: the population not look towards the United States as uh,
39:01
Speaker 2: like innovators. There's a history where like Ben Franklin and
39:06
Speaker 2: Lincoln both Ben Franklin tried to make ties with Quebec
39:10
Speaker 2: and Lincoln was I think making ties with the British Columbia.
39:14
Speaker 2: There are always these seductions for entering into the United States,
39:18
Speaker 2: and I think that it's very telling that our population
39:21
Speaker 2: is totally like it's all along the actual border of
39:26
Speaker 2: the United States.
39:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm just looking now. Sorry, I'm sorry for interrupting,
39:31
Speaker 1: but I'm looking at the map now of Canada, the
39:33
Speaker 1: population density map, and you're right, it just runs along
39:37
Speaker 1: the border. The overwhelming majority of Canada is just on
39:41
Speaker 1: the map. It's just great, which means is nothing there.
39:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that that, I mean, most people
39:48
Speaker 2: hearing what I just said would be like, what like
39:51
Speaker 2: Canada is just developed, like having its certain minor developments
39:56
Speaker 2: and advancements technological and industrial wise because of the United States.
40:01
Speaker 2: But how else are you explaining why we haven't been
40:05
Speaker 2: able to develop a significant population density that has a
40:10
Speaker 2: certain distance away from the American border. I find it,
40:15
Speaker 2: you know, very bizarre, but needless to say, we have
40:19
Speaker 2: a lot of space, especially in Canada. There was a calculation,
40:24
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's still like within the ballpark of accuracy,
40:29
Speaker 2: where someone had calculated the population size could be fit
40:33
Speaker 2: into Texas with a certain sized townhouse, just a one
40:40
Speaker 2: level townhouse, and yeah, that we would be able to
40:45
Speaker 2: fit the entire human population into Texas with townhouses. Let
40:51
Speaker 2: me see if I can find the example here, right,
40:54
Speaker 2: so it's it's not at the time of this calculation,
40:59
Speaker 2: it was seven point four billion people in the world.
41:01
Speaker 2: Now it's higher than that, but you still have like
41:04
Speaker 2: a bit of an estimation here at Texas is one
41:07
Speaker 2: hundred and seventy million acres or six hundred and ninety
41:11
Speaker 2: five thousand kilometers squared approximately, And if you have a
41:16
Speaker 2: population size of seven point four billion, then you could
41:21
Speaker 2: house the entire population into Texas with twenty seven thousand
41:26
Speaker 2: people per square mile, which is about thirty three foot
41:30
Speaker 2: by thirty three foot plot of land per person, enough
41:34
Speaker 2: space to fit a townhouse for every person on the
41:36
Speaker 2: planet in Texas.
41:37
Speaker 1: Because you know that the counter augument will be that's
41:41
Speaker 1: not fair because a lot of the land needs be
41:43
Speaker 1: used for farming, its uninhabitable, et cetera, et cetera.
41:49
Speaker 2: Well, first of all in terms of the farming situation,
42:00
Speaker 2: and we can change our relationship to the land with
42:03
Speaker 2: certain techniques. And Alan Uh Salvery I think his name
42:08
Speaker 2: is He's.
42:09
Speaker 1: Done a lot of work Adam.
42:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, sorry, I said Savary or Salvery, He's done
42:16
Speaker 2: a lot of work Savory.
42:17
Speaker 1: I think it's savy as in luck.
42:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, sorry, sorry, for butchering the name, but uh yeah,
42:23
Speaker 2: he's done actually some really good work to show how
42:26
Speaker 2: you can very simply help the land because a lot
42:30
Speaker 2: of the land in Africa, for instance, uh has drought
42:35
Speaker 2: issues and the vegetation isn't growing because uh the was
42:42
Speaker 2: it he was he was using the cattle to go
42:43
Speaker 2: over it, and the cattle was also you know, it
42:48
Speaker 2: had its Uh it's it's fertilizer. It's stole fertilizer on
42:52
Speaker 2: the land. But by doing a certain kind of rotation.
42:55
Speaker 1: It was helps It's not as regenitive forming. I'm sorry
42:59
Speaker 1: for drifting.
43:00
Speaker 2: Farming exactly, and that there was like it helps with
43:03
Speaker 2: like because vegetation, if it's just dying over top of
43:07
Speaker 2: the land, you can think of it as sort of
43:09
Speaker 2: like necrotic tissue, right or you're like you're having too
43:11
Speaker 2: much dry skin in an area. You have to like
43:14
Speaker 2: exfoliate it. That the cattle going through this was helping
43:19
Speaker 2: to you know, deal with the old vegetation as well. Anyway,
43:24
Speaker 2: there's a kind of as you said, regenerative process in it,
43:29
Speaker 2: because there was a technique used before that that was
43:32
Speaker 2: was not so good for the land. So even just
43:35
Speaker 2: doing very simple things like that you can you can
43:38
Speaker 2: help the land. There are other ways too, obviously, of
43:41
Speaker 2: like trying to keep water more inland and by just
43:45
Speaker 2: the kind of things that you're growing on the land
43:49
Speaker 2: and the sort of thing. But it's it's not just
43:54
Speaker 2: a land issue. And if you if you look at
43:57
Speaker 2: some of the statistics, we're at actually producing enough food
44:03
Speaker 2: right now even with all of the bad farming practices
44:07
Speaker 2: because there farmers have become very uneducated with how to
44:12
Speaker 2: manage land properly, which is another issue. There's a really
44:15
Speaker 2: good documentary called something like Kiss the Ground or something
44:20
Speaker 2: like that. Woody Harrelson is the narrator for it. It's
44:23
Speaker 2: really well done and it showcases like how to do
44:26
Speaker 2: farming properly, and also the fact that depending on when
44:29
Speaker 2: you're measuring the CO two in the atmosphere, because when
44:33
Speaker 2: farmers are tilling the soil, it's releasing because you know,
44:37
Speaker 2: the soil the underground has a whole bunch of carbon
44:41
Speaker 2: dioxide in it. Because there's a whole ecosystem with the
44:45
Speaker 2: root system and the fungal network, it's quite complex, so
44:51
Speaker 2: that when farmers are tilling the ground during farming season,
44:55
Speaker 2: the CO two level in the atmosphere increases dramatically from
45:01
Speaker 2: you know, an off season of not tilling, which also
45:05
Speaker 2: tells you something about like this idea of trying to
45:08
Speaker 2: measure CO two level as if like it's just us
45:11
Speaker 2: affecting the earth, and never mind the fact that you know,
45:16
Speaker 2: vegetation needs very high CO two levels, and we have
45:20
Speaker 2: things like CO two generators in greenhouses that you know,
45:25
Speaker 2: have like incredibly high CO two levels, and the vegetation
45:29
Speaker 2: loves it, and they obviously they release oxygen when they're
45:33
Speaker 2: taking in the CO two. So you know, I don't
45:38
Speaker 2: understand how the CO two argument has has ever like
45:42
Speaker 2: stood stood its ground for as long as it has,
45:46
Speaker 2: or even the amount of CO two in the ocean
45:49
Speaker 2: right or or or volcanoes. But anyway, it's it's been
45:51
Speaker 2: a natural process that has been you know, sustaining life.
45:56
Speaker 2: But we actually, if you look at how farming is
45:59
Speaker 2: done now with all of its problems, we're producing enough
46:04
Speaker 2: to feed the world population right now, and we are
46:08
Speaker 2: using less and less space for farming because we are
46:11
Speaker 2: becoming more efficient, so we can already feed the world population.
46:17
Speaker 2: And it's true that like if you're living in certain areas,
46:21
Speaker 2: you're not going to be able to produce everything for yourself.
46:23
Speaker 2: But we have like, uh, we have global trade, which
46:27
Speaker 2: is a good thing when it's done you know, responsibly
46:31
Speaker 2: and to cooperate.
46:33
Speaker 1: In the way, not in the way Trump's doing it
46:35
Speaker 1: with tariffs.
46:36
Speaker 2: No, yeah, that's that's a form of weaponizing. Those are
46:42
Speaker 2: not even protective tariffs. I've actually done a paper on this,
46:47
Speaker 2: because he talked about McKinley a lot, William McKinley, who
46:50
Speaker 2: was the president who was known for high protective tariffs.
46:54
Speaker 2: He McKinley himself has uh, you know, written about how
47:00
Speaker 2: if you tariff everything, it is actually a revenue tariff.
47:04
Speaker 2: It is not a protective tariff, because if you're tariffing
47:07
Speaker 2: things that your country is not producing and won't be
47:10
Speaker 2: able to produce anytime soon at the level that your
47:14
Speaker 2: population needs, you're basically just putting attacks on something that
47:18
Speaker 2: needs to be imported. It's a revenue tariff. And that's
47:21
Speaker 2: what Trump is doing. He's doing a revenue tariff. So
47:25
Speaker 2: he's collecting money from this revenue tariff at the expense
47:29
Speaker 2: of the domestic manufacturing companies in the US and the
47:34
Speaker 2: people as well are all paying more for this collection
47:39
Speaker 2: of things that he is God knows what's what it's
47:43
Speaker 2: going into. But it's not building up the manufacturing base.
47:46
Speaker 2: It's not building up the standard of living. Also, on
47:49
Speaker 2: a quick note, he said he would cap the credit
47:51
Speaker 2: card interest rates at ten percent. He still hasn't done that,
47:55
Speaker 2: and that was a huge promise he was making at
47:57
Speaker 2: the beginning of his term, his second term, and he
48:00
Speaker 2: never did it, and that's a very you know, why
48:03
Speaker 2: people need to stop making excuses at this point right
48:07
Speaker 2: like there's been just for people who are supportive of him.
48:10
Speaker 2: It's just endless, endless excuses, And I mean, there's no
48:14
Speaker 2: excuse for something like that. Why make such a big
48:17
Speaker 2: Scott Bessett was also like, yeah, we're going to do this.
48:19
Speaker 2: They haven't done it. Why haven't you done it? The
48:22
Speaker 2: credit card default rates are like incredible right now and
48:26
Speaker 2: people are like getting more and more in debt and
48:29
Speaker 2: you haven't you haven't done anything to address that, but
48:33
Speaker 2: massive tax corporation tax breaks during his first term, things
48:39
Speaker 2: for companies like Walmart. So anyway, we are producing enough
48:47
Speaker 2: food for everybody, and it's more of like a vocalized scarcity,
48:53
Speaker 2: and those are for economic reasons.
48:56
Speaker 1: The limits to growth argument is that we should fear
49:01
Speaker 1: scarcity because it's all around us. And what you saying
49:06
Speaker 1: is that we actually have an abundance of most things
49:08
Speaker 1: thanks to our ingenuity and innovation and away the way
49:12
Speaker 1: in which we adapt.
49:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, I you know, if you look at how things
49:19
Speaker 2: have naturally developed, like, there's a lot of positivity in
49:25
Speaker 2: our history of how we've how we've been innovating things,
49:30
Speaker 2: and how we've been able to increase the standard of
49:33
Speaker 2: living of people. Like, even though we have more people
49:36
Speaker 2: on earth, if you look at the standard of living
49:39
Speaker 2: of how it was centuries ago, it's higher. Even though
49:43
Speaker 2: things could be a lot better, it is way higher.
49:46
Speaker 2: Like the way most people live now is better than
49:49
Speaker 2: how kings and queens were living for centuries. You know,
49:53
Speaker 2: during human existence, it's a massive quality shift for the good.
50:00
Speaker 2: And what's sad is that we've had a lot of
50:04
Speaker 2: interventions and interferences and sabotages by groupings of people. Just
50:11
Speaker 2: look at the wave of assassinations that occurred in the
50:14
Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds that brought in the
50:17
Speaker 2: First World War. These were all things to stop what
50:21
Speaker 2: I see as a natural momentum towards economic cooperation. There
50:27
Speaker 2: was an idea and like people could recognize that these
50:33
Speaker 2: kinds of developments were going to unlock a lot of
50:38
Speaker 2: good goodness for people, prosperity, and this had to be
50:44
Speaker 2: sabotaged if you wanted the old forms of oligarchical control,
50:50
Speaker 2: because before scarcity was more of a real thing because
50:54
Speaker 2: we didn't have innovations like we do today to use
50:58
Speaker 2: a lot of the resources that we are now using
51:02
Speaker 2: that created abundance. Now that that was unleashed, especially during
51:07
Speaker 2: the eighteen hundreds, you know, it was harder to argue that.
51:11
Speaker 2: So there's been a lot of efforts to control the
51:17
Speaker 2: kind of pseudoscience and put people into a mental cage
51:24
Speaker 2: because if you if you believe in this sort of thing,
51:27
Speaker 2: then you know, again, as we were saying, it's it's
51:31
Speaker 2: you're easier to control. But if you look at the
51:34
Speaker 2: actual solutions that are really out there, there is no
51:39
Speaker 2: reason for us to be so cynical. It's it's always
51:44
Speaker 2: a political reason that something is not going well, or
51:49
Speaker 2: a lot of the scientific ideas, for instance, that have
51:51
Speaker 2: been used for like the bad that's because there's a
51:54
Speaker 2: military industrial complex. A lot of scientists they get they're
52:00
Speaker 2: not being properly funded by the universities anymore. Unless you
52:04
Speaker 2: tote a line, and you're usually doing useless worker or
52:07
Speaker 2: i'm sorry, destructive work, or if you're doing something like
52:11
Speaker 2: as a really big game changer, you're bought by the
52:14
Speaker 2: military industrial complex and they can, you know, acts your program,
52:19
Speaker 2: or they can hijack the program from you. So these
52:23
Speaker 2: are the forms of control that are are creating the
52:27
Speaker 2: cynical situation that we're in right now. But ideas and
52:33
Speaker 2: innovation are in themselves not bad. You know, like fire
52:37
Speaker 2: can be used for good or it can be used
52:40
Speaker 2: for bad. It's a tool.
52:45
Speaker 1: Oligoks don't lack abundance.
52:48
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, they don't like people. Well, I mean, David
52:52
Speaker 2: Suzuki said that he wants he thought the ideal world
52:57
Speaker 2: population size was something ridiculous like one hundred million people.
53:03
Speaker 1: China, which has supposedly got one and a half billion people.
53:06
Speaker 1: I don't know what the total population actually is. I
53:09
Speaker 1: mean I was in Shanghai recently and the claim is
53:14
Speaker 1: that it has around twenty sixty thirty million people. Well,
53:17
Speaker 1: if that's true, and I don't I don't have any
53:21
Speaker 1: reason to doubt that it's true. But it certainly is
53:24
Speaker 1: not overcrowded.
53:28
Speaker 2: That's actually an example I use in my paper. So, yeah,
53:35
Speaker 2: Canada has a population in twenty twenty of thirty eight
53:40
Speaker 2: million and Shanghai. Okay, So, and Canada has about nine
53:46
Speaker 2: point or like ten million kilometers squared is the size
53:51
Speaker 2: of Canada. Shanghai has twenty six million people as of
53:56
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, So I guess the same numbers what you're say,
54:00
Speaker 2: and six three and forty kilometers squared. And yeah, Shanghai
54:06
Speaker 2: is one of the nicest cities in the in the
54:10
Speaker 2: world at this point. And shen Zen as well as
54:14
Speaker 2: is nice. And there's a lot of other cities in
54:17
Speaker 2: China at this point that are like way nicer than
54:20
Speaker 2: anything that you're going to find in Canada or the
54:23
Speaker 2: United States or even really Western Europe. At this point,
54:27
Speaker 2: like there's just there isn't a growth happening. And the
54:30
Speaker 2: nice thing about how these cities in China are developing
54:34
Speaker 2: is that there are a lot of parks. There's the
54:38
Speaker 2: huge park in Shanghai, the Century Park. So you know,
54:44
Speaker 2: it's not that you can't have vegetation, and I know
54:48
Speaker 2: that China is looking into having vegetation interspersed all around,
54:53
Speaker 2: you know, buildings, which is obviously a good thing, not
54:58
Speaker 2: just for the air, but you know, that's another political
55:02
Speaker 2: thing that has happened if you look at the kind
55:05
Speaker 2: of war that has happened in architecture. Architecture has been
55:10
Speaker 2: made to be purposefully ugly for a lot of like
55:15
Speaker 2: the twentieth century buildings, they were done on purpose, Like
55:19
Speaker 2: I find it hilarious. I was talking to Matt about
55:21
Speaker 2: how you know, when the bad communists are portrayed in movies,
55:25
Speaker 2: like the Soviet Communists, and you always see like their
55:29
Speaker 2: buildings are just concrete and there's there's like if there
55:33
Speaker 2: are windows, it's still like, you know, it looks kind
55:35
Speaker 2: of like a prison sort of system. But our buildings,
55:40
Speaker 2: we have a lot of buildings that look like that.
55:43
Speaker 2: In I was in Germany recently. Germany, the buildings are
55:48
Speaker 2: really ugly. In Quebec, our buildings are super ugly. They
55:53
Speaker 2: could look like penitentiary buildings. And I know in the
55:57
Speaker 2: US as well, And that was done on purpose to
56:01
Speaker 2: have this idea of like if you don't have beauty,
56:04
Speaker 2: that also affects your level of optimism, right that if
56:07
Speaker 2: it's just day to day drudgery, you're going to your
56:09
Speaker 2: nine to five job in the subway, which is ugly,
56:12
Speaker 2: and then you're walking through the streets and it's ugly,
56:15
Speaker 2: like it affects how you're thinking as well. Everything is
56:19
Speaker 2: done to try to minimize what is your natural tendency
56:23
Speaker 2: to be a creative, optimistic person that wants to have
56:28
Speaker 2: solutions to problems and stuff. And in China, it's really
56:33
Speaker 2: nice to see that there is actually a lot of
56:37
Speaker 2: optimism that you can achieve great things because look at
56:41
Speaker 2: what they've accomplished in just like ten years. It's a
56:45
Speaker 2: huge game changer. So of course the population is going
56:48
Speaker 2: to be a lot more optimistic. Whereas for us living here,
56:51
Speaker 2: I mean, most people are not even paying attention to
56:54
Speaker 2: what's going on in China. They're not paying attention to
56:56
Speaker 2: any of the positive news that's going on right in
57:00
Speaker 2: their face. A contradiction to how they're viewing the world
57:04
Speaker 2: because they can't escape their reality that is within their
57:09
Speaker 2: day to day you know, observances. But the reality is
57:14
Speaker 2: that life could be very different if we addressed these
57:18
Speaker 2: political restrictions that have been put on.
57:22
Speaker 1: Us well, I mean these terms like communist and capitalists,
57:29
Speaker 1: they seem to be Western terms. Chinese people don't seem
57:33
Speaker 1: to care much about what these labels are. And by
57:36
Speaker 1: the way, if China is communist, then please let's import
57:41
Speaker 1: some of that to South Africa because we desperately need
57:44
Speaker 1: that kind of growth. So whatever they're doing, I'd like
57:48
Speaker 1: to bring some of that to my side of the bond.
57:51
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that China just needs, you know, like
57:56
Speaker 2: Godfried Leibniz, who, for those who don't know, he is
58:01
Speaker 2: the one who actually discovered calculus, not Newton. Newton claims
58:05
Speaker 2: that he lost the proof of his discovery of calculus
58:09
Speaker 2: because his poodle named Diamond burnt down his house with
58:13
Speaker 2: all of his work and he could never regenerate the proof. Sure,
58:17
Speaker 2: and we use Leibniz notation in universities. So Leibniz had
58:23
Speaker 2: created a whole bunch of his own terms vocabulary to
58:29
Speaker 2: describe things within the sciences that he was discovering. I
58:33
Speaker 2: think China at this point needs to create a new
58:36
Speaker 2: word for the economic social system that they have, because
58:41
Speaker 2: I agree words like communists capitalists they're severely inadequate to
58:48
Speaker 2: describe what China is doing. I like to use the
58:52
Speaker 2: word at least like meritocracy is something that China is
58:56
Speaker 2: clearly using in its form of governance, which is a
59:00
Speaker 2: very good thing. Obviously you should be selected based off
59:06
Speaker 2: of your merit, but yeah, we definitely need a new
59:10
Speaker 2: word for what China is doing. A lot of people
59:14
Speaker 2: they have either the view in the West who have
59:18
Speaker 2: a bit more of a favorable idea of China that
59:20
Speaker 2: if they're communist leaning, they're like, oh, well they're capitalists
59:24
Speaker 2: now in order to achieve ideal communism. And then I've
59:28
Speaker 2: heard the opposite of like, oh well they're like communistic now,
59:32
Speaker 2: but they're heading towards capitalism more and more. And it's
59:35
Speaker 2: like it's it's not any of those those things. Really.
59:41
Speaker 1: I have a word what abundance?
59:46
Speaker 3: Okay, yes, yeah, So when it comes to limits to
59:54
Speaker 3: gross I mean, this is a an idea of policy framework,
1:00:01
Speaker 3: a formula that has been adopted across the world by
1:00:06
Speaker 3: as you say, politicians and governments and those in the
1:00:09
Speaker 3: sort of oligarchy classes.
1:00:11
Speaker 1: I mean, how do we push back?
1:00:17
Speaker 2: That's a good question. I think that obviously there's not
1:00:22
Speaker 2: one answer to that, and what I do and what
1:00:28
Speaker 2: MATCH does as well, because we're not hired by a
1:00:32
Speaker 2: think tank, we're not hired by a government. So we
1:00:37
Speaker 2: write for the average person, whoever that might be, and
1:00:43
Speaker 2: whatever job that they have. But we try to give
1:00:46
Speaker 2: out information to educate people because we think that, you know,
1:00:55
Speaker 2: knowledge is the first step to anything, and people, I
1:01:00
Speaker 2: think don't give themselves enough credit when you think about
1:01:04
Speaker 2: how much effort is being put into social engineering and
1:01:08
Speaker 2: predictive programming and creating a dystopic you know concept for
1:01:15
Speaker 2: so many people in the movies and everything, so that
1:01:18
Speaker 2: it limits your imagination. Why are they putting so much
1:01:22
Speaker 2: work into things like Netflix and Prime Video and so
1:01:26
Speaker 2: forth to have this global controlled narrative where everyone is
1:01:31
Speaker 2: increasingly thinking along the same lines. This is a massive,
1:01:36
Speaker 2: massive project. It's done because it matters what you think
1:01:42
Speaker 2: as the common person, it matters. And what I can
1:01:47
Speaker 2: say is that it's important that if the people understood
1:01:52
Speaker 2: their power in recognizing something and even just simply calling
1:01:56
Speaker 2: it out, it would really it would be a huge game,
1:02:00
Speaker 2: and it would offer certain people who are working against
1:02:03
Speaker 2: that added protection. I think that's one of the tragedies unfortunately.
1:02:08
Speaker 2: You know, like during the sixties and the seventies, during
1:02:12
Speaker 2: the civil rights movement in the United States, where you
1:02:14
Speaker 2: had both Kennedy brothers assassinated. You had Martin Luther King assassinated,
1:02:20
Speaker 2: Malcolm X assassinated. What happened was there was a vacuum
1:02:25
Speaker 2: that was created and then there's a failure of the
1:02:29
Speaker 2: population because the population needs to have a certain merit
1:02:35
Speaker 2: as well in order to protect those people who are
1:02:42
Speaker 2: good leaders. Right, if a population is unable to protect
1:02:49
Speaker 2: those leaders, that creates a very dangerous situation as well.
1:02:54
Speaker 2: So the population has to have an ability to recognize
1:02:59
Speaker 2: very basic concepts. Back in the seventies and eighties, like
1:03:05
Speaker 2: Ein Ran was not a popular person the way that
1:03:09
Speaker 2: she was talking, because it was still understood that population
1:03:13
Speaker 2: growth was good. You know, economic development was good, Industrial
1:03:17
Speaker 2: progress was good, nuclear energy was good. It's taken a
1:03:23
Speaker 2: long time to beat that out of people, and a
1:03:26
Speaker 2: lot of it has been done with wars as well,
1:03:30
Speaker 2: like the First World War, the Second World War, Korean War,
1:03:34
Speaker 2: Vietnam War. The James Burnham who was Trotsky's lieutenant in
1:03:41
Speaker 2: the United States but then ended up working for the
1:03:45
Speaker 2: CIA and was probably linked to British intelligence before that.
1:03:53
Speaker 2: I've written about him which people can find on my
1:03:56
Speaker 2: sub stack. But he had said the managerial revolution which
1:04:02
Speaker 2: he published in like the nineteen forties, during the whole
1:04:04
Speaker 2: Alvie Huxley Brave New World or Wells nineteen eighty four,
1:04:08
Speaker 2: these it's not a coincidence that all of these things
1:04:10
Speaker 2: were coming out around the same time. Was that the
1:04:15
Speaker 2: world would need to have a bunch of wars in
1:04:18
Speaker 2: order to create a reset, in order to have a
1:04:23
Speaker 2: centralized system. That he was favorable to fascism being the
1:04:29
Speaker 2: centralized form of governance. But whatever it was they were about,
1:04:37
Speaker 2: you know, centralization and the wars were key to that
1:04:43
Speaker 2: kind of reset. That's what has been happening during the
1:04:47
Speaker 2: twentieth century and during our time, is that they keep
1:04:51
Speaker 2: having these very violent interventions and also forms of economic warfare,
1:04:56
Speaker 2: like ne Only Klein wrote the shock doctrine, where you're
1:04:59
Speaker 2: also like attacking the economy and free market is one
1:05:08
Speaker 2: of the ways to do that. Actually, when you look
1:05:10
Speaker 2: at Pinochet, Chile's Pinochet for instance, But these have all
1:05:16
Speaker 2: been interventions into something that would have naturally gone on
1:05:21
Speaker 2: a totally different course that would have been very positive.
1:05:25
Speaker 2: So people have to take the time to look into
1:05:29
Speaker 2: these things. And it's not so hard, you know, like
1:05:34
Speaker 2: just look for just look at places in the world
1:05:37
Speaker 2: where there has been an actual abundance, as you said,
1:05:42
Speaker 2: an increase in standard of living. No one can deny
1:05:44
Speaker 2: that China has addressed the poverty crisis that they were
1:05:48
Speaker 2: in twenty years ago. Poverty is largely like a non
1:05:54
Speaker 2: issue at this point in China. This is a massive success,
1:06:00
Speaker 2: thought impossible by most people. So the solutions are there.
1:06:06
Speaker 2: And if we don't want to live in a world
1:06:10
Speaker 2: of you know, the World Economic Forum mandate, then we
1:06:16
Speaker 2: all have a responsibility as a citizen. If you if
1:06:19
Speaker 2: you want to be treated as a citizen, if you
1:06:21
Speaker 2: want to be treated as a free person, you have
1:06:23
Speaker 2: to take responsibility as well for the solutions to to
1:06:29
Speaker 2: things that that are out there. They're they're already you know,
1:06:33
Speaker 2: staring at us in the face. We just have to,
1:06:35
Speaker 2: you know, support those kinds of ideas.
1:06:39
Speaker 1: Okay, Cynthia, How can I follow your work?
1:06:44
Speaker 2: The best way is through my substack Through Glass Darkly
1:06:48
Speaker 2: by Cynthia Chung. And you can also check out our
1:06:51
Speaker 2: nonprofit Rising Tide Foundation, which we have a substack or
1:06:55
Speaker 2: a website which is a dot.
1:06:56
Speaker 1: Net Okay, and then I'm going to add a preview
1:07:03
Speaker 1: to something of yours what's it called?
1:07:06
Speaker 2: Oh right, So, the Rising Tide Foundation. We have an
1:07:10
Speaker 2: ongoing docu series we have three episodes to it's called
1:07:15
Speaker 2: Escaping Calypso's Island and it's basically covering along the themes
1:07:19
Speaker 2: of what we're talking about. But the trailer that if
1:07:23
Speaker 2: you can share, would be wonderful as episode to the
1:07:26
Speaker 2: Curse of Game Theory, which talks about how we don't
1:07:30
Speaker 2: live in a limited resource world and how game theory
1:07:33
Speaker 2: has been used to justify zero sum theory and limit
1:07:40
Speaker 2: our idea of what's possible.
1:07:43
Speaker 1: All right, I'm going to touch that to the end
1:07:45
Speaker 1: of this episode, but for now, Cynthia Chang, thank you
1:07:48
Speaker 1: for joining me in the trenches.
1:07:51
Speaker 4: Glad glad I could be here today.
1:08:16
Speaker 2: We have to prepare our for a more angry world.
1:08:19
Speaker 5: It is common in our modern day and age to
1:08:22
Speaker 5: hear the phrase zero sum. This theory of zero sum
1:08:28
Speaker 5: first originated with the advent of game theory, the mathematical
1:08:32
Speaker 5: theory of games of strategy.
1:08:35
Speaker 2: The quality of life is going to go right back.
1:08:38
Speaker 5: To practical new zero. But can we be certain that
1:08:41
Speaker 5: we do live in a zero sum world governed by
1:08:43
Speaker 5: limited resources and selfish self interests?
1:08:52
Speaker 2: After all, it.
1:08:53
Speaker 5: Is acknowledged by the theorists themselves that the entire functioning
1:08:57
Speaker 5: of their mathematical model relies upon the assumption that we
1:09:01
Speaker 5: are governed by selfishness.