Latest / The Dutch Investors / #58 | From caveman to capitalism | An (im)perfect system

Transcript

#58 | From caveman to capitalism | An (im)perfect system · The Dutch Investors

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the Dutch Investors Podcast.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Today's episode is going to be a little different.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's a bit more of a personal and maybe a little off-topic from our usual talks.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: I just wanted to share some of my thoughts on how far we've come, show some appreciation for human ingenuity and creativity, and maybe get into a conversation about capitalism with all its imperfections.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: But before we dive in, a quick favor.
• 0:30
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• 0:35
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• 0:40
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• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for your support.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's get into the episode.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Every so often, we still watch movies or play video games to relax and just forget about everything around us.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Whether that's Fortnite, League of Legends, GTA, Call of Duty, whatever people may play, and whatever helps us switch off for a bit.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: The other day I just joined a quick Fortnite match.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing special, just wanted to clear my head.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: But I ended up in a squad with three random guys from Stockholm.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: We started chatting.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: At first it was just jokes and call-outs, but the conversation drifted.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: They knew some Dutch words, some curse words, and mentioned a few old Dutch rappers, names even most Dutch people have never heard of.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: We were just playing a game.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: But for a moment, it felt like something more.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: A connection across borders, made possible by a screen, a signal, and a shared interest.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Four strangers 1300 kilometers away, having a laugh like old friends.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Later that night I thought about how normal it felt, and how insane that actually is.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Just a few hundred years ago, if you want to talk to someone in another country, you'd need a horse, a boat, or weeks of patience.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: The idea of hearing a voice, let alone seeing someone's face, in real time across continents, would have sounded like pure fantasy.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Electricity wasn't widespread until the late 19th century.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: The internet didn't even exist until the late 20th.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And now here we are.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Random strangers from different nations laughing together over a game of fortnight.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was a small reminder of how far we've come, how connected we actually are, and how much of that is made possible by business, by capitalism, by a system that rewards innovation, scales technology, and spreads ideas across the globe.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: That quick gaming session led me down a rabbit hole about capitalism, about human progress, and how the world really works behind the scenes.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: This episode is about capitalism, for all its flaws, powers the world we live in.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's an imperfect system.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Capitalism is just one system, but honestly, it's the best one we've got.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: It is far from perfect.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: At times, profits come before people, before the environment, even before the employees who actually keep the business running.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, it can be pretty brutal.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Getting laid off to cut costs is not unusual, but it's part of how this imperfect system works.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Capitalism was never meant to be fair or kind, that's not what it's built for.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about giving people jobs out of the goodness of someone's heart.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's about capital, money, tools, resources, being used in the most efficient way possible to make more money in the future.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Before capitalism took hold, most of the world operated under feudal systems.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Wealth was inherited, not created.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: You were born into your role, peasant, noble, lord, ruler, and that rarely changed.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: The idea that someone could build a business from scratch and grow rich through trade or invention was unthinkable at the time.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: But starting around the 17th century, with the rise of merchant capitalism in places like the Dutch Republic and later in industrial capitalism in Britain, the gears began to turn.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Profits, making money, became the driving force behind innovation, taking risks, infrastructure, and mobility.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody starts a business thinking, let's lose money so we can give people something to do.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: That might sound cold, but it's also what makes capitalism work so well.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: In a way, it is not so different from evolution.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Just like in nature, only the strongest ideas, the smartest strategies, the best plans, and the most efficient models survive.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Capitalism creates constant pressure to adapt, improve, and out-compete.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: The businesses that can't keep up, they disappear, just like species that couldn't survive in the wild.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: It rewards what works and weeds out what doesn't.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And while that can be tough, it's also why progress happens at all.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Just look at the phone in your hand.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: It exists because thousands of companies, chasing profits, kept pushing the limits, improving technology, competing and driving each other forward.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: That is capitalism in action.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's not always fair, it's not always pretty, but it's incredibly powerful.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a system built on idealism, it's built on incentives, and strangely enough, that's what makes it move the world forward.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: So back when I was younger, when I was like four to six years old, my parents used to call me Rupsche Neut Genug, which means Caterpillar Never Enough.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: In English, the book is called The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's a children's book about a little caterpillar with an endless appetite.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: My parents referred to the fact that I always wanted to eat more, more desserts, yes, I loved good food, and I always wanted more gifts, it was never enough.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: I remember my dad telling me a story a few months ago about how I wanted this fire truck, a very large fire truck, and once I got it, I kinda just left it.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: I opened the gift box and that was it.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Funny enough, that story is kind of a perfect metaphor for capitalism.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: It is never enough.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: It captures the constant hunger for more profits, more market share, more power, more everything.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's an imperfect system, but it has given us far more than it's taken away.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: And thankfully, like most things in life, capitalism has its natural counterweights.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Companies that go too far, that cross ethical lines, exploit too much or lose sight of value, often end up paying the price eventually.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: There are thousands of examples of companies losing its edge, losing its value, and losing sight of profits.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's a kind of injustice mechanism, even if it's not always immediate or obvious.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Most companies are run by decent people, hardworking, well-intentioned individuals who genuinely want to build something meaningful or at least add value to the world around them.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, capitalism can be deeply unfair.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Just look at the extreme gap between the ultra-wealthy and those struggling to get by.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: But swapping it out for an entirely different system, like socialism or communism, tends to bring far more problems than solutions.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's this image of an aerial view of South and North Korea, and that image, if you just Google it, says more than a thousand words.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: One side is capitalism, the other is communism.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: You decide what it means.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: This episode isn't meant to be a debate about which system works best or whether capitalism is flawless.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's meant to remind us how incredible the world we live in actually is.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because despite the wars, the ecological crisis, climate change, and diseases that still plague the globe, we've managed to turn this spinning fireball into an interconnected society through technology, collaboration, innovation, ambition, and that never-ending urge to wanting more.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now, to go off on a bit of a rant and put our leap from caveman to modern human into some real perspective, I want to take you back.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Around 300,000 years ago, humans slowly began to master fire.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: A groundbreaking discovery.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: No electricity, no supermarket, no calendar packed with Zoom calls.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: You ate what you could find or catch, and if there was nothing, too bad.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: There was no fridge, no pantry, no backup plan.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Life was all about surviving the now, day-to-day.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Your world was maybe a few kilometers wide, just as far as you could walk without putting yourself or your tribe at risk.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: You knew the moon, the stars guided your way, but the rest of the world was a complete mystery.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: There were no maps, no written languages, and definitely no Google.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: Knowledge was passed down by word of mouth, and it often died when someone did.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Knowledge was passed down word of mouth and often died when someone did.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Fast forward to today, we have more wealth than at any other point in human history.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: The average life expectancy has more than doubled in just over a century.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: You can fly from Amsterdam to Tokyo in under a day, something that would have taken months and a lot of luck just 150 years ago.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: You carry a device in your pocket that lets you talk to someone in Brazil, order dinner, check the stock market, stream a concert, listen to the Dutch Investors Podcast, and learn anything you want, kind of instantly.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: We live in homes with heating in the winter and cold air in the summer.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: We drink clean water from the tap.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: We complain when packages take longer than two days.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: We forget how remarkable it is that we can treat infections, repair broken bones, and replace entire organs.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us live better than kings did just a few centuries ago, yet we rarely stop to notice.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: We always keep complaining.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yet we always want more.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: You have all the information you could ever need at your fingertips.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's nearly impossible to understand the mind-bending acceleration that has taken place from rubbing stones together to creating AI that completes your sentences, powers self-driving cars, or operates warehouse robots.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: We rarely stop to think about it.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: We've come so far, yet we've forgotten so much about where we started.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's easy to focus on what's wrong with the world.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes you have to zoom out.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: And this brings me back to that casual gaming session with three random guys from Sweden.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: On the surface, it was just a fun, relaxing evening, and it definitely was.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: But when you pause and think about what it really means, the technology, the global connection, the shared culture, the ease of it all, it becomes something almost magical, may I say.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: The simple act of launching a video game is the result of an enormous web of global collaboration of businesses.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: We played over the internet, made possible by undersea fiber optic cables, laid across thousands of kilometers of ocean floor by companies like TKH Group, Subcom, and Alcatel Lucent.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: The cables connect to massive data centers powered by servers from Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: They played on PlayStations from Sony.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Under the hood, they're powered by microchips from AMD, Intel, or Nvidia.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Manufactured by TSMC using machines that only exist thanks to Dutch companies like ASML.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: With ultra precise lenses made by Zeiss that operate at nanometer scale.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: I played on the HP gaming desktop.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: My gaming mouse was from Corsair, my mechanical keyboard from Razer.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: The microphone I used captured sound thanks to chips built by Dutch firms like NXP or Basie.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Chips that convert vibrations into digital signals.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Those signals were transmitted through Discord or the PlayStation Network to reach three guys sitting 1500 kilometers apart.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: And when the game ended, we added each other on Instagram, owned by meta platforms, using smartphones from Apple, Google or Samsung.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Devices that just like everything else rely on the same global web of technology, logistics, capital, design, and innovation.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: And all of that for just one hour of gaming.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Think about that for a moment.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Millions of people, hundreds of companies, dozens of countries, each contributing their piece of the puzzle.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: Not out of kindness or charity, but because it's profitable.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone's trying to add a sliver of value, and together we have built something no one could ever create alone.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: That is the power of capitalism.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: And just like the caterpillar, always hungry for more.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: And we've gotten so used to it that we've forgotten how extraordinary it all really is.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's it for today.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like always, stay curious, keep learning, and happy investing.