Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Interview Only w/ Ian Shapiro - Why The West Is Living In A 1930s-Style Crisis Again

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Interview Only w/ Ian Shapiro - Why The West Is Living In A 1930s-Style Crisis Again · The Chuck ToddCast

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Speaker 1: dot com use the code toodcast. Well, my next guest
1:54
Speaker 1: is the author of a terrific new book that I think,
1:58
Speaker 1: as any book out they are on sort of this
2:02
Speaker 1: geopolitical moment that we're in. I guess is Ian Shapiro.
2:07
Speaker 1: The book is called After the Fall, and what it
2:10
Speaker 1: is it's essentially from the end of I'll give you
2:12
Speaker 1: this subhead, but because it's got a phrase in here
2:15
Speaker 1: that is doing a lot of work from the end
2:18
Speaker 1: of history to the crisis of democracy, how politicisms broke
2:22
Speaker 1: our world. As many of you know, I've used the
2:24
Speaker 1: Cold War and the end of the Cold War as
2:26
Speaker 1: sort of a way to try to explain politics during
2:29
Speaker 1: the Cold War and the politics that we have today.
2:32
Speaker 1: Well in many cases, and there's times that I talk
2:36
Speaker 1: about it as if in some ways this was inevitable.
2:39
Speaker 1: But that's the strongest part of this book, and the
2:43
Speaker 1: argument that Ian makes is that this wasn't inevitable. This world,
2:49
Speaker 1: this moment that we're in, this rise of populism around
2:52
Speaker 1: the world, this fear of globalization around the world, he argues,
2:56
Speaker 1: was not inevitable. It was at we are here because
3:00
Speaker 1: of some mistakes. We may have won the Cold War,
3:03
Speaker 1: but we somehow lost the peace. And so joining me
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Speaker 1: now is Ian Shapiro. Ian, congrats on the book.
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Speaker 2: Thanks so much for having me on.
3:14
Speaker 1: Let me just start with how long have you been?
3:17
Speaker 1: How long did you work on this book? What when
3:20
Speaker 1: did you frame this thesis in your head?
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Speaker 3: Actually I gave a set of lectures that Yale called
3:27
Speaker 3: the Diveane Lectures in twenty nineteen, and they are unusual
3:32
Speaker 3: in being both a regularly Yale course and open to
3:35
Speaker 3: the general public. And that was that when I first
3:38
Speaker 3: formulated the basic thesis of you know, of trying to
3:43
Speaker 3: understand the pads are not taken. You know, how did
3:46
Speaker 3: we get from the euphoria and optimism of nineteen eighty
3:50
Speaker 3: nine to the bailful politics we've had since more or
3:53
Speaker 3: less twenty sixteen? And it was, you know, what were
3:56
Speaker 3: the choices made and for gone along the way that
4:00
Speaker 3: got us that?
4:03
Speaker 2: Yeah?
4:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, well look you it's the phrase end of history.
4:07
Speaker 1: It's the title of a I don't know if we
4:09
Speaker 1: call it now, an infamous essay by Francis Fukuyama. And
4:13
Speaker 1: it was, you know, his argument, you know, and sometimes
4:16
Speaker 1: the what he was arguing and what get and what
4:20
Speaker 1: gets remembered or two different things, right, we know that
4:22
Speaker 1: that happened sometimes in the sort of the what he
4:26
Speaker 1: was arguing about was that that there is there's no
4:28
Speaker 1: more debate on what the best system is is was
4:32
Speaker 1: his argument and that and I think now he might
4:35
Speaker 1: argue that it shouldn't have been end of history as
4:39
Speaker 1: the title of the piece, but that was the argument
4:41
Speaker 1: he was making. But it is that transition to democracy
4:46
Speaker 1: that didn't seem to that should have been the opportunity
4:49
Speaker 1: that we missed. So let's go back. It's a big
4:53
Speaker 1: portion of this you call it missed moments. So let's
4:57
Speaker 1: start from the beginning. I mean, one of the interesting
4:59
Speaker 1: things to me, and the minute you said it, I
5:02
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, why didn't we do this? Was no
5:04
Speaker 1: Marshall plan for Russia explained?
5:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I should say, you know, half of the
5:10
Speaker 3: book is about missed moments in geopolitics and international relations,
5:14
Speaker 3: and the other half is in domestic politics, and I
5:18
Speaker 3: hope we can talk about both. But you know, so
5:23
Speaker 3: you know, at the end of the Cold War, the
5:25
Speaker 3: question was, you know, what about the defeated adversaries? And
5:32
Speaker 3: you know, my argue is this not a twenty twenty
5:34
Speaker 3: hindsight argument. Very credible people at the time were saying,
5:39
Speaker 3: you know, the model for dealing with the defeated Russia
5:42
Speaker 3: should be the model should be based on how we
5:46
Speaker 3: dealt with Germany and Japan after World War Two. None
5:50
Speaker 3: other than Richard Nixon, you know, as I discussed at
5:53
Speaker 3: some length in the book, said, you know, this is
5:55
Speaker 3: the historic opportunity to investment massively in the transformation of
6:02
Speaker 3: Russia into a viable, diversified capitalist democracy and folded into
6:09
Speaker 3: the post Cold War security and economic infrastructure of the world,
6:16
Speaker 3: just as we did with Germany. And Japan, and Nixon
6:19
Speaker 3: made the point I think was spot on to not
6:23
Speaker 3: make the mistakes that were made after World War One,
6:26
Speaker 3: when you know, the victorious powers did the exact opposite,
6:30
Speaker 3: and you know, Kines and others predicted that that would
6:34
Speaker 3: lead the rise of Hitler and so forth. And so
6:37
Speaker 3: you know, Nixon's argument was invested in the new Russia.
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Speaker 3: Make it, you know, integrate it. Yelson wanted to do it,
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Speaker 3: and Isaiah documented in the book all the way through
6:48
Speaker 3: the nineties and even in the first few years of
6:51
Speaker 3: Puchain administration, he was lobbying to integrate economically with the West,
6:56
Speaker 3: to join NATO and so on, and we just, you know,
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Speaker 3: blew that opportunity by ignoring those entreaties, brushing aside.
7:09
Speaker 2: Uh.
7:10
Speaker 3: It wasn't just Richard Nixon, you know, Mitterol wanted to
7:14
Speaker 3: replace the NATO UH arrangements with a new kind of
7:19
Speaker 3: Pan European UH security structure, and many others were instead.
7:27
Speaker 3: You know, we we just ignored all of that and
7:31
Speaker 3: UH basically expanded NATO into Eastern Europe, as I detail
7:37
Speaker 3: in the book, in ways that would be bound to
7:41
Speaker 3: reinforce the reactionary forces in who were you know, finding
7:46
Speaker 3: to stop the transformation of Russia.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, is there one entity, one person that sort of
7:54
Speaker 1: you know, if you if we could go back into
7:56
Speaker 1: time and say, you know, if this moment hadn't happened, well,
7:59
Speaker 1: there would have been more integration of Russia.
8:04
Speaker 3: Well, uh, you know, I I certainly think that the
8:08
Speaker 3: Clinton administration. This is by what the way, not Democrats
8:13
Speaker 3: versus Republicans, because there's plenty of claim to go around here.
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Speaker 3: The Clinton administration did not make the kind of you know,
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Speaker 3: Marshall plan like investments in the new Russia.
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Speaker 2: Do you think.
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Speaker 1: Domestic you know, you know, I try to put myself
8:31
Speaker 1: back into that moment. Right, Why did Bill Clinton win
8:34
Speaker 1: that election? Because he said George H. W. Bush was
8:36
Speaker 1: too focused on world affairs? Right, that makes sense? Yeah, right,
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Speaker 1: how much? I mean, I can't help but wonder how
8:44
Speaker 1: much that impacted the enthusiasm of perhaps those in the
8:49
Speaker 1: State Department that might have been a little more forward
8:53
Speaker 1: leaning on this.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
8:54
Speaker 3: So I actually I think that, you know, it's a
8:57
Speaker 3: little more nuanced history. I think that what was actually
9:00
Speaker 3: decisive in the Clinton administration was the ninety four mid
9:04
Speaker 3: terms because until that point he was actually very open
9:09
Speaker 3: to a lot of the arguments about being much more
9:12
Speaker 3: constructive in dealing with Russia. And you know, there were
9:15
Speaker 3: sort of two camps, those pushing for the integration of Poland,
9:20
Speaker 3: Czech Republic and Hungary on one hand, and others who
9:24
Speaker 3: were saying, no, we should really focus on getting a
9:27
Speaker 3: deal with Russia. And they had come up with a
9:31
Speaker 3: mechanism to sort of stay that off, called the Partnership
9:34
Speaker 3: for Peace, which, you know, because really nobody knew how
9:38
Speaker 3: things were going to evolve. You know, was a very
9:41
Speaker 3: uncertain time, and.
9:44
Speaker 2: You know, the.
9:45
Speaker 3: Nukes hadn't yet been brought back into Russia from the
9:48
Speaker 3: former Soviet Union and so on, and so the idea
9:51
Speaker 3: the Partnership for Peace was that it would you know,
9:55
Speaker 3: temporize and say, well, okay, all these former communist countries,
9:59
Speaker 3: you know, can start cooperating through this mechanism, and you know,
10:05
Speaker 3: Yeltsin went for it, and the Easter appears who wanted
10:10
Speaker 3: to join NATO were complaining about it, but they were
10:13
Speaker 3: going along. And then what happened was, you know, nineteen
10:17
Speaker 3: ninety four midterms, new Ingridge leads the first takeover of
10:23
Speaker 3: the House for.
10:25
Speaker 2: Forty years, for forty years, and Clinton becomes spooked because
10:30
Speaker 2: he's worried about his re election in twenty twenty six,
10:33
Speaker 2: and it's about the swaying states.
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Speaker 3: It's about the polls, the Hungarians and the Czech Americans
10:40
Speaker 3: in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. And so he backs away from
10:46
Speaker 3: the whole you know, rapprochement with Russia through this Partnership
10:50
Speaker 3: for Peace and starts getting behind expanding NATAL into Eastern Europe.
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Speaker 3: And I think so after ninety four the Clinton administration
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Speaker 3: any changes on this front and goes down that path.
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Speaker 3: And then in you know, with Bush two. Yeah, he
11:08
Speaker 3: wants to get all of these countries into his partnership,
11:14
Speaker 3: his coalition of the willing to invade Iraq in two
11:17
Speaker 3: thousand and three, so he promises a whole bunch of
11:21
Speaker 3: them membership in two thousand and four, and then we're
11:24
Speaker 3: off the races.
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Speaker 1: So ultimately you're arguing that the expansion of NATO, which
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Speaker 1: has been what Putin argues right, which is the expansion
11:35
Speaker 1: of NATO, was essentially almost a form of saber rattling
11:41
Speaker 1: at the Russians, even though that was not supposedly the intent.
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Speaker 3: I think I think there was an opportunity and there
11:49
Speaker 3: have been several opportunities to transform NATO into something else,
11:54
Speaker 3: you know, at the end of the court, you know,
11:56
Speaker 3: people like Mitterol you know, saying initially, well, you know,
12:01
Speaker 3: it did this job, it's won the cult war, we
12:03
Speaker 3: should get rid of it to create something else. But
12:07
Speaker 3: then as it persisted and grew, there were questions, you know,
12:10
Speaker 3: we could it become an instrument of international peacemaking, an
12:14
Speaker 3: instrument of you know, enforcing humanitarian intervention against you know,
12:22
Speaker 3: terranist regimes.
12:25
Speaker 2: But those questions were never answered.
12:29
Speaker 3: There was never a serious reorientation of NATO's mission. Instead,
12:34
Speaker 3: it was sort of ad hoc things, you know, using
12:37
Speaker 3: NATO here.
12:39
Speaker 2: There and everywhere, you know, whether to bomb.
12:42
Speaker 3: Kosovo without Security Council authorization into in nineteen ninety nine,
12:48
Speaker 3: or to topple Godafi in twenty eleven, when in neither
12:53
Speaker 3: case was any NATO country threatened.
12:55
Speaker 2: So the question is why is NATO doing this?
12:58
Speaker 3: And you know, it never developed kind of legitimacy. It
13:05
Speaker 3: would have had to have had to be seen as
13:08
Speaker 3: anything other than an instrument of you know, unilateral Western power.
13:13
Speaker 1: The irony is that now NATO feels necessary again.
13:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, well we're back into Cold War, you know, but
13:21
Speaker 3: we we didn't have to be back in the Cold War.
13:23
Speaker 3: I mean that this is the real point of the book.
13:26
Speaker 3: That or that part of the book. It's that for
13:31
Speaker 3: you know, for the whole of the nineties, Yeltsen was
13:35
Speaker 3: banging on the door to join Europe and NATO, and
13:39
Speaker 3: until two thousand and three, so was so was Putin.
13:43
Speaker 3: We forget, you know, and Joe Biden said Putin is
13:49
Speaker 3: the most pro Western Russia figure who's and pro and
13:56
Speaker 3: pro democratic figure that Russia has ever had, you know,
13:59
Speaker 3: and he was a very different creature than he ultimately
14:04
Speaker 3: became in his second really after two thousand and seven,
14:07
Speaker 3: when we started talking about adding Georgia and Ukraine. I mean,
14:12
Speaker 3: that was really the real chipping point for the Russians.
14:16
Speaker 1: I wonder, let me just one one more one more
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Speaker 1: counterfactual on NATO and then we will move, Which is,
14:24
Speaker 1: what if we had brought NATO, What if we had
14:26
Speaker 1: brought Ukraine into NATO in the nineties and that was
14:30
Speaker 1: the and it happened sooner or you know, there's an
14:34
Speaker 1: argument that said, if we brought Ukraine in, Russia never invades.
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Speaker 3: Well, I think your counterfacture isn't ambitious enough in that Actually,
14:48
Speaker 3: early on Pouchain said it's up to anybody who wants to.
14:52
Speaker 3: Anyone can join NATO who wants. It's sovereign countries and
14:56
Speaker 3: they can do what they like. But he was doing
14:58
Speaker 3: it on the expectation that's could Russia join, and once
15:03
Speaker 3: they became frozen out, then that's when he backed off.
15:06
Speaker 2: So I think, and that's what.
15:09
Speaker 1: I keep coming back to, was it isn't one. Was
15:13
Speaker 1: it just general distrust of why there just wasn't more
15:17
Speaker 1: willingness to open the door to Russia into NATO the.
15:24
Speaker 3: You know, I mean it was it was the pressure
15:27
Speaker 3: on the Clinton administration mostly came from the East Europeans,
15:30
Speaker 3: the Poles, the Hungarians, and.
15:33
Speaker 4: They just didn't trust the Russia. They didn't want them across.
15:36
Speaker 4: They think it's in their DNA. And so then you
15:39
Speaker 4: had people in the administration Stroke Talbot really wanted to
15:43
Speaker 4: add the Baltics, and you know, Madeline Albright was really
15:47
Speaker 4: pushing for Poland, I mean for the Czech Republic, and
15:53
Speaker 4: Braziinski wasn't in the administration, was kind of hovering around.
15:57
Speaker 4: He was pushing for Poland, and so you know that
15:59
Speaker 4: that I swear the pressure was coming from and you
16:04
Speaker 4: know that's what short circuited the attempt to discover whether
16:08
Speaker 4: you know, people say, well, but you know Russia, you know,
16:12
Speaker 4: there's always been a threat, but after all, that's what
16:14
Speaker 4: we did after World War Two with Germany. You know,
16:17
Speaker 4: people Germany had twice gone to war with the with
16:20
Speaker 4: the Western Powers, and you know, many people said, well,
16:24
Speaker 4: the Germans, you know, the Germans, they're just germinally horrible.
16:28
Speaker 2: But you know who were wrong?
16:30
Speaker 1: And look at today, I mean that's basically most of
16:33
Speaker 1: Europe is looking towards the leadership of Germany at this point.
16:39
Speaker 1: You do, you do talk about the globalization issue as well,
16:44
Speaker 1: and that's a big part of this sort of, right,
16:47
Speaker 1: like this rise of nationalism and populism. Look, at the
16:50
Speaker 1: end of the day, it's all economically driven, right, It's
16:52
Speaker 1: always economically driven. Even you know, even these ethnic art
16:57
Speaker 1: fights and these there's usually you're fighting over resources, right,
17:02
Speaker 1: You're fighting over over that. So it's interesting you put
17:08
Speaker 1: the you look back at the two thousand and eight
17:11
Speaker 1: financial crisis, and you see your book is really a
17:14
Speaker 1: series of missed opportunities, right, I mean, I think that
17:16
Speaker 1: that's it's probably a good way to note it. And
17:20
Speaker 1: so NATO Russia nineties missed opportunity. You view the two
17:26
Speaker 1: thousand and eight financial crisis as a major missed opportunity
17:30
Speaker 1: for Obama explained, So, I.
17:33
Speaker 3: Think until the financial crisis, just as there had been
17:36
Speaker 3: unilateralism abroad with respect to geopolitical things, there was basically
17:42
Speaker 3: uni arorirism at home with respect to macroeconomic policy. Because
17:47
Speaker 3: you know, the backstory was the Keynesians had been discredited
17:52
Speaker 3: because they apparently couldn't deal with the stagflation of the seventies,
17:56
Speaker 3: and that led to the advent, you know, the mainstreamming
18:00
Speaker 3: of neoliberal thinking that had been hovering in think thanks
18:04
Speaker 3: for decades by Reagan and Thatcher, you know, and and
18:09
Speaker 3: the center left parties were all on the defensive, so
18:12
Speaker 3: they were getting hopping aboard that train, you know, the
18:15
Speaker 3: new Democrats in here, and the new you know labor
18:19
Speaker 3: in the UK, Meteorron's about turn in the eighties and
18:23
Speaker 3: so forth. You know, the only way to power is
18:26
Speaker 3: you know, as Margaret Actor said, there is no alternative, Tina.
18:31
Speaker 3: This became this famous phrase, you know, there is no alternative.
18:35
Speaker 3: We are it, and that became the consensus, and so
18:39
Speaker 3: you know, the center left parties all over the democracy
18:43
Speaker 3: lamd of the board. And you know, it was hegemonic
18:47
Speaker 3: until the financial crisis. Uh. And in fact, it accelerated
18:51
Speaker 3: with the collapse of communism because really there was no alternative.
18:54
Speaker 3: There's you know, communist economics was gone. But then then,
19:00
Speaker 3: you know, the world ends in two thousand and eight
19:04
Speaker 3: for three days, and what happens the elites. First of all,
19:08
Speaker 3: they reach for all the Keynesian instruments they've been decrying
19:12
Speaker 3: for decades, you know, and spend billions of dollars recapitalizing
19:18
Speaker 3: the banks, bailing out the elites and so forth. But
19:23
Speaker 3: two things, and this is the missed opportunity, I think.
19:25
Speaker 3: First of all, they continue with imposing austerity on everyone else.
19:33
Speaker 3: Like so it's Kynesianism for the elites and you know,
19:37
Speaker 3: austerity for everyone else. And they don't understand how much
19:42
Speaker 3: their legitimacy has been blown because they've been saying for years,
19:46
Speaker 3: we're the only people who know how to run capitalist democracies,
19:50
Speaker 3: We're the only people who know how to run the
19:53
Speaker 3: financial global order, you know, And now they look ridiculous
19:57
Speaker 3: because they were completely blindsided by this mess, and that's
20:01
Speaker 3: when the populist entrepreneurs see the opportunity to come in
20:05
Speaker 3: and say, no, it's not true that there is no
20:08
Speaker 3: alternative to you, guys, there is. You know, the right
20:12
Speaker 3: wing party in Germany is called Alternative. For Dutschland, there
20:16
Speaker 3: is an alternative, and we're going to be in and
20:19
Speaker 3: we're going to do a lot of things that you
20:21
Speaker 3: people don't like, and we're going to mobilize the people
20:24
Speaker 3: who've been left behind for decades, and we're going to
20:27
Speaker 3: mobilize and them by attacking you, by attacking globalization, by
20:32
Speaker 3: attacking everything you've been trying to do since the nineteen eighties.
20:36
Speaker 2: So I think, you know, what they didn't see was.
20:40
Speaker 3: That, you know, and I think this is where I
20:43
Speaker 3: fought the Obama administration that yes, he had to bail
20:47
Speaker 3: out the banks, but that also gave him leverage, you know,
20:50
Speaker 3: to say, well, the condition for bailing out Wall Street
20:53
Speaker 3: is to bail out mainstream and reinvest in in you know,
20:57
Speaker 3: new infrastructure for the twenty first century and you know,
21:02
Speaker 3: transforming the labor force and creating the conditions for broad
21:08
Speaker 3: based economic growth that's going to benefit most people instead
21:12
Speaker 3: of this model where you know, all the benefits.
21:16
Speaker 2: Go to the top.
21:17
Speaker 1: It's still capital driven essentially.
21:20
Speaker 2: And capital harvesting.
21:22
Speaker 3: You know, you know, there's Piquetti's famous book that you know,
21:29
Speaker 3: the returns to capital on this neoly liberal model I
21:32
Speaker 3: just vastly exceed the returns to labor, and so they
21:38
Speaker 3: just get further and further behind.
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23:35
Speaker 1: You've diagnosed you know what what can be undone? What
23:40
Speaker 1: you know nothing is permanent. I mean, you know that's
23:43
Speaker 1: one thing we all learn is that is the second
23:45
Speaker 1: we think something is in cement, you figure out it's not.
23:50
Speaker 1: What can you unwind? And you know, look I ask
23:56
Speaker 1: because you know, I think the I think there's a
24:01
Speaker 1: real question is what can be done in twenty twenty nine.
24:05
Speaker 1: And I obviously say that because look, we have a
24:08
Speaker 1: president now that really believes in this more nationalistic sense
24:14
Speaker 1: everything's bilateral. And I always say that, you know, once
24:18
Speaker 1: the biggest economy in the world does it, everybody else
24:21
Speaker 1: is going to start to raise barriers. And that's what
24:23
Speaker 1: we've seen. So how do you begin to undo some
24:26
Speaker 1: of this if you think it can be undone in
24:28
Speaker 1: twenty twenty nine, what does it look like? What's what's realistic?
24:32
Speaker 3: Well, I do think you know, what we are not
24:34
Speaker 3: seeing is a realistic Project twenty twenty nine or realistic
24:40
Speaker 3: equivalent of the Project twenty twenty five that the Republicans developed.
24:45
Speaker 1: And well, that's because the left can't agree on right,
24:50
Speaker 1: there's this I always say, there's a sixty percent majority
24:53
Speaker 1: against populism, trump ism, nationalism, whatever you want to call it.
24:59
Speaker 3: But that's all agree exactly. But so you know, what
25:03
Speaker 3: are the right ideas? So I think I don't think
25:07
Speaker 3: unwind is the right word, because you know, the good
25:12
Speaker 3: policies for the twenty thirties and twenty forties are not
25:15
Speaker 3: going to be a rehash of you know, New Deal
25:19
Speaker 3: liberalism or or Great Society liberalism, because we're living in
25:23
Speaker 3: a different world.
25:25
Speaker 2: But what is.
25:26
Speaker 3: Needed is a model for capitalist economic growth that's going
25:32
Speaker 3: to produce benefits that are widely shared, and that means
25:37
Speaker 3: investing in twenty first century infrastructure. It's applied AI.
25:45
Speaker 2: It is.
25:47
Speaker 3: Investing in the in the labor force in ways that
25:50
Speaker 3: will make them able to adapt to what's coming down
25:54
Speaker 3: the pike.
25:55
Speaker 2: So I do think they're people.
25:56
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm very impressed by people like Gina Riamando's
26:02
Speaker 3: take on these form of Biden Common Secretary and Governor
26:07
Speaker 3: of Rhode Island. I mean, she's very focused on developing
26:12
Speaker 3: transformation the labor force to be you know, you're able
26:20
Speaker 3: to compete in this new environment.
26:24
Speaker 1: She's interesting. I was at a at an event with
26:26
Speaker 1: her and she was sort of the main guest smart
26:30
Speaker 1: and she said something, and I remember this couple of
26:33
Speaker 1: years ago, it was after she left office, but she said,
26:38
Speaker 1: you know what nobody talks about anymore, that we haven't
26:40
Speaker 1: we haven't reimagined our public school public education system in
26:43
Speaker 1: a hundred years, you know, And it's like that you
26:47
Speaker 1: want to talk about workforce transformation, it actually begins with
26:50
Speaker 1: sort of reimagining our public education system, which is just
26:53
Speaker 1: an atrocious mess right now.
26:56
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
26:56
Speaker 3: If you look at literacy rates and math rates, you know,
27:00
Speaker 3: they're terrible. And you you know, the left tends to
27:04
Speaker 3: talk too much. I think about you know, civic education
27:07
Speaker 3: and so on. You know, what we need is K
27:10
Speaker 3: through twelve literacy, and that prepares people for.
27:16
Speaker 2: The workforce. But it's not just that.
27:19
Speaker 3: I think, you know, the world in which people finish
27:22
Speaker 3: their education with a high school or college and then
27:25
Speaker 3: work for somebody for thirty years and then retired.
27:28
Speaker 2: That world is never coming back, and.
27:30
Speaker 3: So we're going to need a workforce that can constantly
27:33
Speaker 3: be retrained, go back into you know, all kinds of
27:40
Speaker 3: education because the rate of change in the economy is
27:43
Speaker 3: so fast and I'm.
27:43
Speaker 1: Well, let's take this, let me, let's let's take this,
27:45
Speaker 1: because what you're talking about is is, look, the modern
27:49
Speaker 1: employee for the next thirty years has to be flexible. Yeah,
27:53
Speaker 1: but there are certain things you have to provide for
27:56
Speaker 1: them in order to allow them to be flexible as employees. Yeah, right,
28:01
Speaker 1: Why do most people get a job today because they
28:04
Speaker 1: need benefits, they need health care, they need certain things
28:06
Speaker 1: that come with the job, and that actually prevents flexibility,
28:12
Speaker 1: that prevents portability. That was in theory while Obamacare was
28:17
Speaker 1: designed the way it was designed, but it isn't quite
28:20
Speaker 1: working that way. What I mean is this a rethinking
28:25
Speaker 1: of the social compact in order to give workers more
28:29
Speaker 1: flexibility to survive in this new era. So what do
28:33
Speaker 1: I mean by that? That's childcare, that's healthcare? I mean
28:37
Speaker 1: does the state have to expand? And I know that's
28:41
Speaker 1: going to make some people uncomfortable if that's the answers.
28:44
Speaker 2: Yeah.
28:44
Speaker 3: So, you know, a lot of the writing about this
28:48
Speaker 3: try it makes it distinctioning what they call predistribution and redistribution.
28:52
Speaker 3: So the old welfare state and a tax the rich
28:55
Speaker 3: and give people handouts are the poor is very unappealing.
29:00
Speaker 3: First of all, people don't like being given handouts. They
29:03
Speaker 3: want to work and earn a living. And the politics
29:07
Speaker 3: of taxation is explosively toxic anyway.
29:10
Speaker 1: Correct, It just blinds people.
29:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's I think the smart way to go
29:16
Speaker 3: is to incentivize business to see that it's it's in
29:21
Speaker 3: their interest to invest in the sources of social and
29:26
Speaker 3: economic infrastructure that's going to produce a workforce that they're
29:30
Speaker 3: going to want to hire. And so, you know, I
29:33
Speaker 3: think that is more the direction. You know, I did
29:37
Speaker 3: a book in twenty twenty with a guy called Michael
29:40
Speaker 3: Gratz or called The Wolf of the Door that's about
29:43
Speaker 3: the kind of policies that promote that, and I'm just
29:47
Speaker 3: building on that in my current book. But yeah, exactly,
29:51
Speaker 3: you've got to have you've got to have portable health insurance.
29:55
Speaker 3: They're more nice, expensive ways to do that. You've got
29:58
Speaker 3: to have childcare. You've got to have the things that
30:02
Speaker 3: make it possible for people to work flexibly, because you know,
30:07
Speaker 3: we're still living in a world in which between thirty
30:11
Speaker 3: and forty percent of the US population cannot find four
30:15
Speaker 3: hundred dollars for a medical emergency without borrowing it or
30:19
Speaker 3: putting it on a credit card that they can't pay
30:21
Speaker 3: off at the end of the month. You know, so
30:23
Speaker 3: people are one financial hiccop away from having a car
30:28
Speaker 3: repossessed or you know, defaulting on their mortgage.
30:32
Speaker 2: You know, that is not that is not viable.
30:36
Speaker 3: For people who are going to be moving from job
30:39
Speaker 3: to job and going to have to retrain themselves and
30:42
Speaker 3: perhaps have to move physically.
30:46
Speaker 1: And you know, I want to talk about migration here
30:49
Speaker 1: a minute, in two different ways. We usually talk about
30:51
Speaker 1: migration with immigrants, but you know, one of one to me,
30:55
Speaker 1: one of the things that people don't do enough and
30:59
Speaker 1: we don't encourage enough is domestic migration. Right. Arguably, domestic
31:04
Speaker 1: migration is what got us out of the depression as
31:06
Speaker 1: much as as government did. People just decided, I'm going
31:09
Speaker 1: to go move somewhere else where there's jobs, and you know,
31:12
Speaker 1: we had you know, and that's that's healthy if you haven't.
31:17
Speaker 3: But it's hard, and so yes, we make it hard.
31:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, And in in a way almost we can't, because
31:26
Speaker 1: if you don't encourage domestic migration, then you are going
31:29
Speaker 1: to be more reliant on on on international migration immigrants.
31:34
Speaker 1: And if you're an economy that doesn't, then you know,
31:36
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I don't think our economy can survive
31:39
Speaker 1: and thrive without immigration. But we're in a moment right
31:43
Speaker 1: now where obviously, whenever there's a whenever there's a concern
31:46
Speaker 1: over resources, everybody points at foreigners first.
31:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, that is one of the biggest
31:52
Speaker 3: challenge because all of these countries where the politics of
31:55
Speaker 3: immigration is so toxic, they all need immigration because they
32:00
Speaker 3: all have shrinking working age populations supporting expanding retired populations.
32:07
Speaker 3: And if you look at the demography of this, it's
32:10
Speaker 3: absolutely terrifying. What's coming, Okay, I mean in.
32:14
Speaker 1: Order for me to get so security, well, you know,
32:16
Speaker 1: I'm convinced there's going to have to be a massive
32:20
Speaker 1: you know, I joke. They're not going to just open
32:22
Speaker 1: the borders. They're going to be offering incentives to fly
32:24
Speaker 1: over the border. You know.
32:26
Speaker 2: Yeah.
32:26
Speaker 3: But so if you you know, if you look and
32:29
Speaker 3: here that you know, if we separate the politics from
32:32
Speaker 3: the from the economics of it just for a minute,
32:38
Speaker 3: you know, if you look at the countries that have
32:41
Speaker 3: who are not clamping down massively on immigration, like in Europe,
32:46
Speaker 3: it's who is it, It's Spain and it is Poland.
32:50
Speaker 3: Poland's got, you know, got a lot of Ukrainian immigrants.
32:53
Speaker 3: In Spain has immigrants from Latin America and from Morocco,
32:58
Speaker 3: and it's a government that's quite friends to immigration that
33:02
Speaker 3: they're performing very well. And all the economists will tell
33:05
Speaker 3: you they're performing well because of the immigration.
33:09
Speaker 2: And you know, the.
33:12
Speaker 3: If you remember, one of the things Trump was running
33:15
Speaker 3: on in twenty four was, you know, he was saying, well,
33:18
Speaker 3: the jobs are going to immigrants.
33:21
Speaker 2: It was one of the accurate things Trump actually said.
33:24
Speaker 3: But it doesn't matter because you know, we have very
33:27
Speaker 3: long unemployment and it's a segmented economy. The immigrants are
33:32
Speaker 3: not taking American jobs anyway. But so the fact that
33:35
Speaker 3: we're creating jobs that go to immigrants or the Spanish
33:38
Speaker 3: are or the Polish are. The point is that then
33:42
Speaker 3: earn an income and pay taxes which then can support
33:47
Speaker 3: you know, the expanding retired populations. And so you know,
33:53
Speaker 3: finding a way to make that politically ailable is hugely
34:02
Speaker 3: important because without immigration, we're just going to have intergenerational
34:06
Speaker 3: class warfare as you have more and more and more
34:10
Speaker 3: retired people being supported by shrinking shrinking shrinking working as
34:15
Speaker 3: a population. I mean, the basic arithmetic just doesn't add up.
34:20
Speaker 1: So to get back to where we started, but looking
34:23
Speaker 1: at it from a slightly different prism, because you talked
34:26
Speaker 1: about how you know, we didn't we treated Russia, we
34:29
Speaker 1: treated the end of Cold War more like the end
34:31
Speaker 1: of World War One, than the end of World War Two,
34:34
Speaker 1: So do you You know, Neil Ferguson is probably the
34:37
Speaker 1: most prominent writer about this, which is, are we living
34:41
Speaker 1: in a nineteen thirties world right now?
34:45
Speaker 2: In some respects we are.
34:48
Speaker 3: In that that was also a period of massive economic dislocation.
34:53
Speaker 3: It was also it was a period of fragmented political
34:56
Speaker 3: parties all over Europe where and particularly on the left,
35:03
Speaker 3: you know, the all the scent the parties on the
35:07
Speaker 3: left were squabbling with each other rather than paying attention
35:11
Speaker 3: to what was happening with the rise of right wing populism,
35:17
Speaker 3: and you know, the the going off the gold standard
35:23
Speaker 3: produced sort of you know, massive internal dislocation in all
35:27
Speaker 3: of these countries and it didn't end well. So you know,
35:31
Speaker 3: I think a lot of the challenges others us sort
35:35
Speaker 3: of structurally similar to the challenges that existed then, you know,
35:41
Speaker 3: and so we really it makes it all the it
35:44
Speaker 3: makes it more all the more imperative that we think
35:47
Speaker 3: about getting to a world in which there can be
35:50
Speaker 3: what economists call inclusive growth. Growth is benefits are broadly shared.
35:57
Speaker 3: I mean, it's not rocket science. You know, if if
35:59
Speaker 3: mos people are not benefiting from economic activity, they didn't have.
36:07
Speaker 2: Any reason to support the existing order.
36:11
Speaker 3: And you know, while the populists don't have policies that help,
36:16
Speaker 3: you know, they don't work because you know, first of all,
36:19
Speaker 3: they're fighting the lost war. The jobs are not going
36:22
Speaker 3: to immigrants and globalization anymore.
36:25
Speaker 2: The jobs are going to technology.
36:27
Speaker 3: Secondly, you know, they are choking off the one source
36:32
Speaker 3: of support for government revenues that is so vital. We've
36:38
Speaker 3: just talked about that. So it's not like they have
36:40
Speaker 3: the answers. They mostly thrived by attacking the mainstream elites,
36:45
Speaker 3: not by defending you know, if you look at Nigel
36:49
Speaker 3: Farage or the alternative for Deutschtein or a marine Leapen,
36:53
Speaker 3: their policies are fantastical. So it's not like they have answers.
36:57
Speaker 3: They're political gas Sellen is you know, attacked delegitimate the
37:04
Speaker 3: existing at least and say you don't have the answers,
37:08
Speaker 3: which is true, and so you know that the part
37:11
Speaker 3: is to have answers.
37:13
Speaker 1: Is anybody getting this right?
37:16
Speaker 3: I think I think Spain is a pretty good example. Uh,
37:20
Speaker 3: and it's the best performing economy in the OECD has
37:24
Speaker 3: been for the last year. And you know, you don't
37:26
Speaker 3: have to you don't need to talk to you know,
37:29
Speaker 3: you don't need Paul Krugman to you know, go read
37:32
Speaker 3: the Economist magazine, Go and read the mainstream for Financial Times.
37:37
Speaker 2: Why are the Spaniards doing so well?
37:40
Speaker 3: And it's it's because, you know, here you have a
37:44
Speaker 3: prime minister in Sanchez who just who he says, you know,
37:48
Speaker 3: we can be open and wealthy or closed and poor.
37:53
Speaker 3: It's you know, and sure there's a far right populist
37:56
Speaker 3: party called Vox in Spain, but you know it's support well,
38:00
Speaker 3: it's not half of what the National Rally in France
38:05
Speaker 3: are getting. Alternative fin Deutscheiner getting in in Germany. So
38:09
Speaker 3: I think, you know, I think that's it's one example
38:14
Speaker 3: where that bucking the sort of the standard story and
38:20
Speaker 3: doing pretty well. Spain's is, as I said, it's probably
38:25
Speaker 3: the best performing economy in Europe right now.
38:30
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Speaker 1: And yes, I too, am a customer. There's one giant
40:09
Speaker 1: topic we haven't discussed since the follow the Cold War,
40:13
Speaker 1: and that's the rise of China. Yep, how does that?
40:19
Speaker 4: You know?
40:19
Speaker 1: There's this, there's a there's now a new consensus. I
40:23
Speaker 1: think in the elite circles of Washington there's still a
40:26
Speaker 1: bipartisan I always say the bipartisan foreign policy consensus is
40:30
Speaker 1: still quite strong right in the quote unquote blob as
40:33
Speaker 1: some that are derivative of it, I want to be
40:37
Speaker 1: a little derision towards it. But the new collective wisdom
40:42
Speaker 1: is we got China wrong, and do you accept that promise?
40:48
Speaker 2: I do think we got China wrong.
40:51
Speaker 3: But I think it's a little different than the other
40:54
Speaker 3: things I talk about in my book, because in every
40:57
Speaker 3: other decision I talk about in my book, there were
41:01
Speaker 3: many people at the time saying don't do this, or
41:05
Speaker 3: do the opposite of this, and people blew them off
41:09
Speaker 3: and ignored them.
41:10
Speaker 2: Whereas I think, you know, if you go.
41:12
Speaker 3: Back to the nineties, people really didn't get it.
41:18
Speaker 2: I mean, there's not the equivalent of the Richard Nixon.
41:22
Speaker 3: Or the George Cannons or the you know or the
41:25
Speaker 3: you know, They're not a whole lot of people saying so.
41:30
Speaker 3: In that sense, yes we got it wrong, but it
41:33
Speaker 3: is more of a twenty twenty hindsight judgment than it
41:35
Speaker 3: is with respect to these other topics. That having been said,
41:41
Speaker 3: I think that the way we're responding to China now
41:46
Speaker 3: is crazy because you know, I mean, on the one hand,
41:51
Speaker 3: you know, the Trump trumps big motivation is the decline
41:55
Speaker 3: of America and China is our principal rival. But everything
41:59
Speaker 3: he's done doing is benefiting China enormously.
42:04
Speaker 2: I mean enormously.
42:05
Speaker 1: I just look at this. I mean, you know, take
42:09
Speaker 1: the unintended consequence from the choking off of the straight
42:13
Speaker 1: You've now got small developing countries and mid sized countries
42:16
Speaker 1: who are very dependent on oil from the Gulf going
42:20
Speaker 1: all right, we've got to do a transition to alternative fuels.
42:24
Speaker 1: And where are they buying their supplies. There's only one
42:27
Speaker 1: market that has them to China in ain't the United States.
42:30
Speaker 3: And you know, they're diversifying their trade, they're accelerating their
42:34
Speaker 3: investments in Europe, you know, and we're still you know,
42:39
Speaker 3: we're still dependent on Is.
42:40
Speaker 1: It possible China's model is going to win the twenty
42:43
Speaker 1: first century.
42:45
Speaker 2: I doubt it. I mean, I don't think they have
42:47
Speaker 2: a model in the sense that.
42:50
Speaker 3: You know, everyday there's every time you have an authoritarian
42:55
Speaker 3: country that does well, especially in initial phases of industrial industrialization,
43:03
Speaker 3: everybody starts saying, oh, you know, that's got to be
43:06
Speaker 3: the model.
43:07
Speaker 2: But you know, it's very.
43:09
Speaker 3: Hard to run a complex economy with an authoritarian government
43:15
Speaker 3: because you know, you the reason competition is important is
43:23
Speaker 3: not just for efficiency, but also for generating information. And
43:27
Speaker 3: the price system is a system of information. And so yeah,
43:31
Speaker 3: it's fine when you've just got when you've got to
43:33
Speaker 3: build you know, railroads and bridges.
43:36
Speaker 2: And basic infrastructures obviously what you have to do.
43:41
Speaker 3: But once you get into more complex economy, you need
43:46
Speaker 3: you need price mechanisms, you need people to be able
43:51
Speaker 3: to make their own investment decisions and so on. And
43:56
Speaker 3: you know, Chinese facing huge economic challenge.
44:00
Speaker 2: Of their own.
44:00
Speaker 3: They've growth slow down, They've got huge inequalities between the
44:07
Speaker 3: prosperous regions and on the coast and the rest of China.
44:12
Speaker 3: So they you know, and they've they've then have their
44:17
Speaker 3: own challenges. So I don't think the Chinese model is
44:23
Speaker 3: you know, going to run rampant. And you know, if
44:25
Speaker 3: you look, they've made some dumb decisions too. If you look,
44:29
Speaker 3: we talked about demographics. Their one child policy is now
44:33
Speaker 3: coming home to roost with disaster of enormous proportions for
44:39
Speaker 3: the next twenty years.
44:41
Speaker 1: You know, they got a worker problem, right, huge.
44:44
Speaker 3: Problem of a shrinking workforce and expanding retire So actually,
44:49
Speaker 3: you know, the medium term prognosis, the Indian India looks
44:53
Speaker 3: better than China if you're sort of taking the now
44:58
Speaker 3: the twenty five year.
44:59
Speaker 1: View of it's interesting about India, how would you you know,
45:02
Speaker 1: sort of India is in some ways further along this
45:05
Speaker 1: nationalist road than even the United States, right, yeah, in.
45:09
Speaker 3: Some ways, but they have much better demography, and the
45:14
Speaker 3: economy is very decentralized, and you know, the politics is
45:23
Speaker 3: very messy, but it is competitive, you know, and you know, look,
45:27
Speaker 3: Modi lost his majority and he's got to do coalition
45:31
Speaker 3: politics now, and I think that's all to the good.
45:35
Speaker 3: You know, I think just as you need competition for
45:39
Speaker 3: healthy economics, you've got to have competition for healthy politics.
45:43
Speaker 2: And so I think it's it's uh, it's great that
45:46
Speaker 2: you know.
45:46
Speaker 3: That they that they're forcing to be forced to come
45:52
Speaker 3: to grips with that.
45:53
Speaker 1: So there's there's a parallel that I've been obsessed with,
45:56
Speaker 1: and I just would love your take on it, which
45:58
Speaker 1: is you know, but for the longest time, it felt
46:02
Speaker 1: as if the United States exported its politics, you know,
46:05
Speaker 1: what succeeds, and it would export out to Europe and
46:08
Speaker 1: all of this stuff. Right, you know, you wouldn't have
46:10
Speaker 1: had Tony Blair without Bill Clinton. You might not have
46:13
Speaker 1: had you know, you know, although Maggie Thatcher came for Reagan,
46:16
Speaker 1: but you know, sort of there's always been this synergy.
46:19
Speaker 1: And I'm watching the UK major parties suddenly not look
46:22
Speaker 1: like major parties anymore. Right, the likelihood that the next
46:27
Speaker 1: national election has two parties not named Labor or the
46:32
Speaker 1: Tories in the top two slots is pretty high. Now, look,
46:37
Speaker 1: they have a system that supports this. But when you
46:39
Speaker 1: look at the parallel tracks the UK has been on
46:41
Speaker 1: politically and the United States has been on politically, it's
46:44
Speaker 1: been a series of rejections, and the only way the
46:47
Speaker 1: Outparty has won is by frustration with the end Party.
46:51
Speaker 1: There has not been a essentially the Outparty really hasn't
46:54
Speaker 1: gotten reelected, right, It's just been this sort of you know,
46:58
Speaker 1: even the times where Conservatives kept their majority, they had
47:00
Speaker 1: to have a new leader, right, there had to be
47:02
Speaker 1: some sort of some sort of change. Yeah, are are
47:07
Speaker 1: are we here in the United States? Is sort of
47:11
Speaker 1: like are we on the tail end of this? Like
47:14
Speaker 1: what happens in the UK is eventually going to happen here.
47:16
Speaker 1: Our parties may collapse and we may see two new
47:19
Speaker 1: parties or something like it, or maybe we've already had it,
47:22
Speaker 1: you know, and Trump just kept the name. He basically
47:25
Speaker 1: started a new party, but he just kept the name
47:27
Speaker 1: of the old one.
47:30
Speaker 2: Well, I'd say to a couple of things about that.
47:33
Speaker 3: First of all, these two countries are very likely to
47:36
Speaker 3: have two parties.
47:38
Speaker 2: They might not be these two because of that.
47:42
Speaker 3: If you have single member district big single member districts,
47:45
Speaker 3: you're going to get this.
47:46
Speaker 1: There's no other way to do it.
47:47
Speaker 3: But could you know that doesn't mean parties don't disappear.
47:51
Speaker 3: We had a scrambling in the eighteen fifties Britain. You know,
47:55
Speaker 3: the Liberal Party disappeared in the early twentieth century, but
47:58
Speaker 3: you probably with these electoral systems, you'll probably end up
48:02
Speaker 3: with two parties just to be doing I think you're
48:04
Speaker 3: one hundred percent correct when you say the only way
48:09
Speaker 3: parties are getting elected in these countries is by uh
48:14
Speaker 3: rejecting the incumbents. It's not what the but you know,
48:18
Speaker 3: I think it's because both parties have essentially been pushing
48:22
Speaker 3: the same policies, and the problem with the policies is
48:26
Speaker 3: that they benefit that all the benefits flow to the
48:31
Speaker 3: to the top, and most people get left behind. So
48:35
Speaker 3: what I where I You know, I think that the
48:38
Speaker 3: it's the economy stupid was.
48:41
Speaker 2: Sort of right.
48:42
Speaker 3: But I have a I actually have a paper called
48:45
Speaker 3: It's grown out of the my after the full book
48:48
Speaker 3: that we're talking about. It's called it's the politics stupid
48:52
Speaker 3: in the sense that it's it's the way in which
48:55
Speaker 3: political elites have responded to the economic changes that that
48:59
Speaker 3: is caused, saying that their rage against the mainstream political
49:03
Speaker 3: elites in that sense, saying it's the economy stupid doesn't
49:07
Speaker 3: quite capture it, because it's really the failure of political
49:10
Speaker 3: elits to think about what the leaving, you know, the
49:18
Speaker 3: everything to the market in a globalized economy was going
49:22
Speaker 3: to mean for their voters and respond to it.
49:24
Speaker 2: And that's the real knob of it.
49:30
Speaker 1: In the nineteen thirties, the era led to a war,
49:34
Speaker 1: to a hot war. I'm actually more optimistic that we're
49:38
Speaker 1: not going to head. That our economies are so integrated,
49:43
Speaker 1: war is more difficult, right, I mean we're already seeing
49:46
Speaker 1: that with Iran, right like Trump, what might make more
49:49
Speaker 1: strategic sense, he realizes it just so screws up the
49:53
Speaker 1: global economy and he's desperately trying to get out. You
49:56
Speaker 1: can kind of feel it, and the problem is the
49:59
Speaker 1: Iranians can see it too, and they're using that is leverage.
50:04
Speaker 1: But what does that tell you that, I mean, does
50:09
Speaker 1: it give you a tiny bit of optimism that we're
50:11
Speaker 1: probably not going to end up in a world war
50:13
Speaker 1: like we did after the nineteen thirties.
50:15
Speaker 3: So I think that that there's an optimistic story there
50:21
Speaker 3: and a pessimistic story. So the pessimistic story is, well,
50:26
Speaker 3: you're just saying the stakes ares o higher. So yeah,
50:30
Speaker 3: you know, because that all these economies, you know, despite
50:35
Speaker 3: the trade will These economies are so integrated.
50:38
Speaker 1: So we've all learned this COVID. COVID really taught everybody this,
50:42
Speaker 1: I think.
50:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that you know, if it does all blow up,
50:48
Speaker 3: the results are going to be even more catastrophic than
50:52
Speaker 3: doing the Great Depression. And you know, we saw this
50:55
Speaker 3: during the financial crisis. You know, what did everybody do
50:58
Speaker 3: even though the US housing market at of course the
51:02
Speaker 3: whole thing in the American banks were going bankrupt, everybody
51:06
Speaker 3: was buying treasury right well, the whole world was flocking
51:09
Speaker 3: to buy treasuries because it was the safe the safe haven.
51:13
Speaker 3: And you know, now, you know, with forty trillion dollars
51:18
Speaker 3: of debt, people say, oh, well, you know, at some
51:22
Speaker 3: point it could really just implode still. But you know,
51:26
Speaker 3: if you look at even a country like China, how
51:29
Speaker 3: much they have invested in US equities in the stock market.
51:33
Speaker 3: You know, so you know, you could say, nobody's going
51:36
Speaker 3: to want to pay the costs of really upsetting this
51:40
Speaker 3: apple card. But if it does kind of come unstock,
51:45
Speaker 3: you know, it's so it's the stakes.
51:50
Speaker 2: The stakes keep going up, and so it's.
51:53
Speaker 3: Sort of mutually assured destruction if you like, uh, you know,
51:57
Speaker 3: if anybody really lets it.
52:00
Speaker 2: You know.
52:00
Speaker 3: The other thing I would say on the optimistic front is,
52:04
Speaker 3: since we're having a pretty gloomy discussion here.
52:07
Speaker 1: I know what you know, there's a distinction.
52:11
Speaker 2: Between optimism and hope.
52:13
Speaker 3: And you know, Martin Luther King towards the end of
52:16
Speaker 3: these life lives is the optimistic anymore.
52:19
Speaker 2: But he's hopeful.
52:21
Speaker 3: Well, you know, think about think about Imagine it's nineteen
52:27
Speaker 3: forty six and you were born in nineteen hundred, you're
52:30
Speaker 3: forty years old. Forty six years old, okay, and somebody
52:35
Speaker 3: said to you, what is the future hold in any
52:38
Speaker 3: of the Western democracies, the US? What is the future hold?
52:43
Speaker 3: You look back on your life, what did you just
52:46
Speaker 3: what did you live through? You know, World War One,
52:49
Speaker 3: you know, the thirties, the Depression, World War two, fascism.
52:54
Speaker 3: You know, you would look at the world that you'd say,
52:57
Speaker 3: it's just one catastrophe after another. And if somebody had
53:00
Speaker 3: come along and said, well, actually we're on the verge
53:03
Speaker 3: of you know, four decades of the most incredible inclusive
53:07
Speaker 3: growth the world has ever seen. Yeah, you have just
53:11
Speaker 3: said they're not as So, you know, I think it's
53:15
Speaker 3: it is important to understand the big structural forces, but
53:22
Speaker 3: you know, they're not overdetermining and overdetermined, and it's not
53:25
Speaker 3: the case that there are things there's nothing we can do.
53:29
Speaker 2: Yeah.
53:30
Speaker 1: One final area that I think we don't talk about
53:35
Speaker 1: enough in the geopolitical space is these rise of stateless corporations. Yeah,
53:44
Speaker 1: and we're going to have a handful of massive companies
53:48
Speaker 1: that are going to be arguably as influential, if not
53:53
Speaker 1: more so than you know, you know, we always let
53:57
Speaker 1: me put it another way, The governorship of California has
54:01
Speaker 1: always described, well, it's the fourth largest economy in the world,
54:04
Speaker 1: and d da.
54:04
Speaker 2: Da da da.
54:05
Speaker 1: Well what's Google? What's Amazon?
54:08
Speaker 2: Right?
54:09
Speaker 1: Like, what's what's whatever? Elon Musk is building which will
54:13
Speaker 1: include a dominance of low orbit satellites, and they don't
54:18
Speaker 1: think we and already we've seen this. He can turn
54:20
Speaker 1: Starlink on and off and have an impact on which
54:24
Speaker 1: side has the upper hand in the war between Russia
54:27
Speaker 1: and Ukraine. This doesn't feel like something one country can
54:32
Speaker 1: manage anymore. But this seems to be a challenge that
54:36
Speaker 1: didn't exist in our previous eras of sort of of
54:40
Speaker 1: uh of of world consternation, if you will.
54:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, although you know, the you know, the Robert Barons
54:50
Speaker 3: and all of them.
54:51
Speaker 2: They had copper power in their own era.
54:53
Speaker 3: And you know that's why you got you know that
54:57
Speaker 3: Teddy Roosevelts and and so on, you know, deciding to
55:00
Speaker 3: get behind anti trust and you know it is it is,
55:06
Speaker 3: it is, you dead right, it's you know, one of
55:09
Speaker 3: the huge challenges of our era that in some sense,
55:13
Speaker 3: you know, we've got a world in which there are
55:17
Speaker 3: kind of.
55:19
Speaker 2: Global oligarchs who.
55:24
Speaker 1: Some of them don't even want to live in a
55:25
Speaker 1: country they'll live on uh, you know, you know, they
55:28
Speaker 1: want to be you know, they want to be citizens
55:30
Speaker 1: of an island that they create.
55:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, but at the end of the day, you know,
55:35
Speaker 3: they do need people to buy their products.
55:37
Speaker 2: They do, you know they do.
55:38
Speaker 3: They can't create a world of you know, dispossessed thrones. Uh,
55:45
Speaker 3: using choosing my words metaphorically there, because you know, at
55:50
Speaker 3: the end of the day, they they they need markets,
55:53
Speaker 3: they need demand, they need consumers, they need.
55:56
Speaker 2: You know, so life or has more imagination than us,
56:01
Speaker 2: but it does.
56:02
Speaker 3: I mean, it seems to me they're going to have
56:04
Speaker 3: to be mechanisms to regulate what they do, and governments
56:09
Speaker 3: are going to have to cooperate to the with the
56:14
Speaker 3: design and implementation of them. A lot of it will
56:17
Speaker 3: need to be carrots more than sticks. I mean, I
56:20
Speaker 3: think it's really important to recognize uh and and I
56:25
Speaker 3: think this is a message. You know, I generally think
56:29
Speaker 3: of myself as someone who's eclectic in my politics, but
56:34
Speaker 3: a message the left needs to to hear is, you know,
56:40
Speaker 3: if business is not part of the solution, it's going
56:43
Speaker 3: to be part of the problem. The notion that anybody
56:46
Speaker 3: is going to ram solutions down the throats of business
56:51
Speaker 3: is crazy. Labor is too weak all over the world.
56:56
Speaker 3: You know, you need, you're going in need. And by
56:59
Speaker 3: the way, something that history that is forgotten is one
57:05
Speaker 3: of the reasons we got the New Deal and the
57:08
Speaker 3: Great Society and the social democratic welfare states in Europe
57:12
Speaker 3: was that business was very open to them. They're not
57:15
Speaker 3: all business, but there was a significant business elites who
57:21
Speaker 3: took the view, you know, we better make sure the
57:24
Speaker 3: work is done, conclude they have nothing to lose but
57:26
Speaker 3: their chains, because then they you know.
57:30
Speaker 1: I think healthcare is a great place to start. If
57:32
Speaker 1: you could take the cost of healthcare off the books
57:35
Speaker 1: of Amazon, I promise you Amazon will be you know,
57:40
Speaker 1: will be aboard. I mean they you know, if that's
57:42
Speaker 1: the trade off, I think there's there's something to be done.
57:46
Speaker 1: I always thought that you can.
57:48
Speaker 3: Invest in education, healthcare, education, they care. Yeah, Now that's
57:53
Speaker 3: one of my central arguments, and I think it's hugely
57:56
Speaker 3: important and incentivizing incentive business to be part of the
58:02
Speaker 3: solution rather than trying to you know, go after them
58:07
Speaker 3: with sticks because it's not going to work for party
58:12
Speaker 3: for the reasons you've been.
58:13
Speaker 1: Look, I tend to agree with you, but I have
58:15
Speaker 1: a feeling that the left in our country here has
58:20
Speaker 1: not they want their shot at this and they feel
58:23
Speaker 1: like they haven't had their shot.
58:25
Speaker 3: Well, what I would just say, and this does really
58:29
Speaker 3: concern me, which is, you know, the Trump administrations on
58:35
Speaker 3: every measure is you know, cratering. It's with popularity, including
58:39
Speaker 3: the signature issues that got it elected, like inflation, the
58:44
Speaker 3: economy generally, immigration, and the left is kind of reveling
58:49
Speaker 3: in the shot in Fluida. But you do look at
58:53
Speaker 3: if you look at the numbers, that the Democrats are
58:57
Speaker 3: more unpopular than they were in the early nineteen nineties
59:00
Speaker 3: when language brought the Republicans back to power. And yes,
59:05
Speaker 3: they could stumble back into office, if you know, if
59:09
Speaker 3: the Republicans self destruct, but six months later they'll look
59:13
Speaker 3: like the Starmer administrator.
59:15
Speaker 1: I was just going to say, we this is exactly
59:17
Speaker 1: what happened in the UK. Yeah, Labor won this giant election.
59:23
Speaker 3: Have a center left government comes to power with a
59:26
Speaker 3: huge majority. He could do anything at once and has
59:30
Speaker 3: no idea what it wants to do.
59:32
Speaker 2: So you know it did is it?
59:35
Speaker 1: Is it too big? I mean I kind of think,
59:37
Speaker 1: you know, this is why I think or I think
59:39
Speaker 1: sometimes the coalition's too big. I think the Democratic the
59:43
Speaker 1: anti Trump coalition is too big to govern. They can't
59:48
Speaker 1: agree right like you do have.
59:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, but Starmer didn't need all of them.
59:53
Speaker 1: He could have had, could have he could have had.
59:55
Speaker 3: You know, forty or fifty Labor and Peace voting against
59:59
Speaker 3: his policies and still gotten them all through parliament. He
1:00:02
Speaker 3: just didn't have policies, you know, he was he was
1:00:05
Speaker 3: just withering. And that's what I worry about. For the Democrats,
1:00:10
Speaker 3: what do you.
1:00:10
Speaker 1: Make of mom, Donnie? But what do you make of
1:00:13
Speaker 1: mom Donnie? And because you know, if he succeeds, I
1:00:18
Speaker 1: think you will see the socialist Democrats on the rise nationally.
1:00:23
Speaker 3: Well, what does succeed mean is you can't succeed as
1:00:26
Speaker 3: an urban mayor in America because the vas majority of
1:00:29
Speaker 3: what he says he wants to do would have to
1:00:31
Speaker 3: be done in Albany. And you know, he can open
1:00:34
Speaker 3: a few grocery stores. But I mean, what what is
1:00:37
Speaker 3: he really You know.
1:00:38
Speaker 1: It's a great question. I don't know what success looks like.
1:00:41
Speaker 3: I mean, I think being a mayor of a big
1:00:47
Speaker 3: urban city in America is sort of the question is
1:00:50
Speaker 3: is I don't want to say, how do you fail?
1:00:52
Speaker 2: But it's pretty close.
1:00:53
Speaker 3: I mean, how many people go from that onto national politics.
1:00:58
Speaker 2: It's just it's just you you know, it's.
1:01:02
Speaker 1: To do a job. To do the mayor's job. Well,
1:01:04
Speaker 1: it's kind of dirty, very yeah, very and.
1:01:10
Speaker 3: You know they're largely price takers. They're not you know,
1:01:14
Speaker 3: unless he can get Albany to cooperate with his agent.
1:01:19
Speaker 2: You know.
1:01:20
Speaker 3: Now he's an extremely shrewd guy, a very smart guy,
1:01:24
Speaker 3: and but you know, you it's a very good example.
1:01:28
Speaker 3: He's got to think of positive incentives for business in
1:01:32
Speaker 3: New York that are going to have big spin offs
1:01:35
Speaker 3: for the people he really cares about, and that's the
1:01:38
Speaker 3: creative challenge for the twenty first century.
1:01:41
Speaker 2: If you you know, you could, you know, you could.
1:01:45
Speaker 3: Love the lost era of powerful trade unions and all
1:01:49
Speaker 3: of that. But you know, the private sector unionized workforce
1:01:53
Speaker 3: in the United States it's like eight percent.
1:01:56
Speaker 2: It's this is you know, it isn't there is not
1:02:00
Speaker 2: coming back.
1:02:02
Speaker 1: Well, I this is a really provocative book. And like
1:02:04
Speaker 1: I said, it sort of dovetails where you know, and
1:02:07
Speaker 1: when people ask, you know, what happened to American politics
1:02:11
Speaker 1: and I'm like, well, if you bring back the Cold War,
1:02:14
Speaker 1: you might be happy again. Well we've brought back a
1:02:17
Speaker 1: Cold war.
1:02:19
Speaker 2: Uh.
1:02:19
Speaker 1: And we didn't know how to win the last week.
1:02:20
Speaker 1: We didn't know how to win the piece. And after
1:02:22
Speaker 1: the last one, book was terrific. So congratulations. I appreciate
1:02:26
Speaker 1: the time.
1:02:26
Speaker 2: Well, thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it.
1:02:30
Speaker 1: And where can people find your work? I mean, how
1:02:32
Speaker 1: often do you when you say you write some extra
1:02:34
Speaker 1: papers if people are interested, is there other places that
1:02:37
Speaker 1: you write?
1:02:38
Speaker 3: You know, just googled me up, gone my website. There's
1:02:42
Speaker 3: working papers there, all my other books there excellent. But
1:02:47
Speaker 3: you know, this is the this is the this is
1:02:49
Speaker 3: what we've been talking about today. The end of the
1:02:52
Speaker 3: after the Fall is the culmination of off what I've
1:02:57
Speaker 3: been doing for the well.
1:02:58
Speaker 2: And you know it.
1:03:00
Speaker 1: I always say that further away we get from nineteen
1:03:02
Speaker 1: eighty nine, the clearer this thesis looks.
1:03:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know.
1:03:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, it always takes. It takes a generation, or takes
1:03:12
Speaker 1: almost twenty five to thirty years to fully understand what happened.
1:03:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll leave you with a Grade one line from
1:03:19
Speaker 3: Ernest Hemingway on that point, when they asked him how
1:03:22
Speaker 3: he went bankrupt, he said, first gradually, then suddenly my favorite.
1:03:27
Speaker 1: I love that line. I think I use it for
1:03:29
Speaker 1: so many things these days. Yeah, but there's there's always
1:03:32
Speaker 1: something to it, and it's just terrific. Great to thank
1:03:35
Speaker 1: you so much
1:03:35
Speaker 2: For having me