Full Transcript for #28 Global - The Backlash against Revolution: Trump, Pauline Hanson and the AI Reckoning

00:03:46.000 --> 00:03:50.400 Where something you go from an agricultural world to an industrial world. 00:03:50.560 --> 00:03:53.599 I think we're living through one now, the information revolution. 00:03:53.680 --> 00:04:01.919 We've basically gone from a world of atoms to a world of bits and bytes, and on our way to a world of manufacturing intelligence, right? 00:04:02.080 --> 00:04:21.040 To me, those are the most, the most revolutionary periods because it's the deepest, most structural change when the economic basis of a society is being changed, when the political basis of a society is as a result in turmoil, when technology and economics and identity are all in play. 00:04:21.360 --> 00:04:26.800 In a sense, you know, Karl Marx described this process better than almost anybody else. 00:04:26.959 --> 00:04:33.759 Marx was a great social scientist, even though he was a kind of lousy economist and didn't understand how to how to make economies work. 00:04:33.920 --> 00:04:36.720 But he understood this process of social change. 00:04:36.879 --> 00:04:41.439 And the reason I got interested in it was precisely because we're living through one now. 00:04:41.600 --> 00:04:53.680 And I wanted to understand, okay, so it's clear to me that, you know, you look at the massive expansion of globalization in the world, the massive transformation of the economy, the transformation of identity. 00:04:53.839 --> 00:04:55.519 Think of a country like Australia, right? 00:04:55.600 --> 00:05:03.199 Like 35, 40 years ago, Australia was, you know, it would be fair to say a very, very homogenous country in many, in many ways. 00:05:03.279 --> 00:05:09.279 And now, you know, it's becoming very, very much a multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-racial society. 00:05:09.439 --> 00:05:11.279 That's a huge change. 00:05:12.000 --> 00:05:28.560 It's away from what I had in my history books, a certain date, storming the busty, people on barricades, and you know, um throwing the mayor out of office over to like a long-term process that really fundamentally changes the way we as a society and as citizens live. 00:05:29.199 --> 00:05:29.839 Precisely. 00:05:29.920 --> 00:05:39.120 And the reason you went to the to that date uh was the argument, the theory was that that event is going to fundamentally change society. 00:05:39.360 --> 00:05:43.759 But what historians now know is some of them did and some of them didn't. 00:05:43.920 --> 00:05:48.720 We now, I think, almost universally regard the French Revolution as kind of a failed revolution. 00:05:48.879 --> 00:05:50.720 Think about it, it's on its own terms. 00:05:50.879 --> 00:05:55.920 The point of the French Revolution, if you asked any school child, would tell you to get rid of the monarchy. 00:05:56.160 --> 00:06:00.639 The end point of the French Revolution was Napoleon crowning himself emperor. 00:06:00.879 --> 00:06:03.199 So even on its own terms, it failed, right? 00:06:03.600 --> 00:06:11.360 You're looking for cases where there was a, I suppose, a successful revolution, or there was, in fact, enduring change. 00:06:11.519 --> 00:06:19.680 And I think you pointed to something interesting, which is I find in the book that the changes are most enduring when they come from the bottom. 00:06:19.839 --> 00:06:22.240 There has to be change from the top as well. 00:06:22.560 --> 00:06:31.439 But if we don't have a fundamental reordering of the economy, of technology, of things like that, then the change is very fragile. 00:06:31.600 --> 00:06:37.120 You know, because it's it's basically a bunch of political elites deciding we want to change things. 00:06:37.279 --> 00:06:39.519 Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. 00:06:40.959 --> 00:06:54.800 Thinking about today's world, looking at the way you frame this discussion in the introduction of your book, you're talking about political fault lines shifting from left versus right to open versus closed. 00:06:54.959 --> 00:06:57.279 Can you tell us what this this reframing means? 00:06:58.079 --> 00:06:58.480 Sure. 00:06:58.639 --> 00:07:04.720 So if you think about the 20th century, the political fault line of the 20th century was very simple, left versus right. 00:07:04.879 --> 00:07:11.040 And it it basically was about the role of the of the state in the economy, the government in the economy. 00:07:11.360 --> 00:07:15.199 People on the left wanted more government, more regulations, more taxes. 00:07:15.519 --> 00:07:21.120 People on the right wanted less government, fewer regulations, uh uh lower taxes, right? 00:07:21.279 --> 00:07:30.160 So if you wanted to try and predict how somebody voted in 1975, the simplest way was to ask two questions. 00:07:30.319 --> 00:07:33.680 Um, are they white-collar uh workers or blue-collar workers? 00:07:33.759 --> 00:07:37.120 And do they make more or less than the median income? 00:07:37.279 --> 00:07:43.120 And you'd be surprised to see that would that was the strongest predictor of one's voting behavior. 00:07:43.360 --> 00:07:52.879 Basically, white-collar workers who are right of who were uh richer than average voted right, blue-collar workers who are poorer than average voted left. 00:07:52.959 --> 00:07:56.800 And that was true in the United States, in Europe, in Australia, in Canada. 00:07:57.040 --> 00:08:01.279 I mean, I even in India, this basic left-right divide worked. 00:08:02.639 --> 00:08:03.759 This starts to change. 00:08:03.839 --> 00:08:11.360 You know, it's a slow process, but today, when you look at it, what is striking is that that paradigm no longer works at all. 00:08:11.680 --> 00:08:14.240 In this midterm election that is about to take place. 00:08:14.399 --> 00:08:18.160 I can't tell you who is going to win, but I will guarantee one thing to you. 00:08:18.319 --> 00:08:25.120 Blue-collar workers who make less than the median income will overwhelmingly vote right of center for Donald Trump. 00:08:25.279 --> 00:08:31.839 And white-collar

workers who make more than the average income will vote left and for the Democratic Party. 00:08:32.000 --> 00:08:34.240 So you say to yourself, wait a minute, this is kind of weird, right? 00:08:34.320 --> 00:08:36.320 Like people are not voting for their interests. 00:08:36.480 --> 00:08:37.600 You often hear this. 00:08:37.840 --> 00:08:38.639 They are. 00:08:38.879 --> 00:08:40.799 The interests are now different. 00:08:41.039 --> 00:08:59.360 What we have is a group of people who are think of themselves as part of a kind of open, diverse, multicultural world, believe in free markets, free trade in broad terms, believe in diversity, believe in a kind of open politics, open society, open economics. 00:08:59.519 --> 00:09:04.399 And there's a whole bunch of people who say, no, that's all gone too far. 00:09:04.559 --> 00:09:05.919 We want to close all that down. 00:09:06.080 --> 00:09:07.120 We want less trade. 00:09:07.200 --> 00:09:12.000 We want fewer immigrants, we want less diversity, we want less multiculturalism. 00:09:12.240 --> 00:09:14.240 And that has become the great divide. 00:09:14.399 --> 00:09:27.039 So if you look at what is going on in these campaigns and these, you know, in these discussions, you'll notice very little of it is actually about I'm going to figure out how to get the economy moving again. 00:09:27.200 --> 00:09:33.759 You guys don't understand how it's all about these cultural issues, immigration being number one, two, and three. 00:09:33.840 --> 00:09:37.120 But immigration, in a way, is the easiest one to visualize, right? 00:09:37.200 --> 00:09:40.480 Like, because some of these things I'm talking about are very abstract. 00:09:40.799 --> 00:09:48.799 The globalization of the world economy, the movement of capital and labor and goods, and and that's all abstractions. 00:09:48.879 --> 00:09:51.120 It's all real, but it's all very hard to. 00:09:51.600 --> 00:10:06.240 But what is very easy to understand is that somebody moved in into the in onto your street, and he or she looks different and sounds different and worships different gods, and you say to yourself, What happened to my life? 00:10:06.399 --> 00:10:08.399 What happened to the world I used to live in? 00:10:08.639 --> 00:10:11.679 And then you get start having this deep sense of anxiety. 00:10:12.159 --> 00:10:20.000 That is what what I talk about in the book as the inevitable uh consequence of revolutionary periods, which is backlash. 00:10:20.320 --> 00:10:22.000 You always get a backlash. 00:10:22.720 --> 00:10:26.399 Yeah, and that's the that's the part again, back to the history uh element. 00:10:27.200 --> 00:10:28.960 That's probably always been there as well. 00:10:29.120 --> 00:10:33.360 Thinking of, we talked about the French Revolution 1815, right? 00:10:33.440 --> 00:10:34.799 The Congress of Vienna. 00:10:35.039 --> 00:10:38.399 That is the epitome of a backlash, isn't it? 00:10:38.559 --> 00:10:39.919 Would you would you agree, Farid? 00:10:40.000 --> 00:10:44.159 Is that that's the moment where everything went back to square one? 00:10:44.320 --> 00:10:46.559 Um, is is is that a form of backlash? 00:10:46.639 --> 00:10:56.720 But now we're experiencing a backlash from other parts of society, so not from the elites who want their old privileges back, but people who want the good old days and the safety net back. 00:10:56.879 --> 00:10:58.559 Is that the backlash now? 00:10:58.879 --> 00:10:59.600 Yeah, exactly. 00:10:59.679 --> 00:11:00.799 I mean, and you're exactly right. 00:11:00.879 --> 00:11:15.840 The French Revolution basically produced a kind of geopolitical backlash where the conservative powers of Europe gathered together, defeated the French, um, and reinstated it, but under the under the understanding, none, no more of this revolutionary nonsense, right? 00:11:15.919 --> 00:11:31.039 We're gonna risk, we're gonna restore the monarchy, we're gonna restore the, you know, there was a sense in which the sort of conservative monarchs, um, Austria, Germany, uh, Russia, uh, triumphed over this revolutionary wave. 00:11:31.200 --> 00:11:36.159 And now it's more, you're right, now this time it's more of a bottom-up uh backlash. 00:11:36.240 --> 00:11:37.919 And they're you know, they're always different. 00:11:38.080 --> 00:11:39.440 It's a fascinating case, right? 00:11:39.600 --> 00:11:44.720 Because when you go through these kind of revolutionary periods, people feel very uneasy. 00:11:44.879 --> 00:11:53.120 And they feel uneasy before a whole bunch of these changes, be technology, economic, but they can express it in cultural terms because people see that. 00:11:53.200 --> 00:12:11.679 Like as I was saying about immigrants, or you see, you know, trans people, or you see gays kissing, or you see, you know, women working in jobs that men used to work in, and all these things are very visceral reminders that the world is changing fast and you are kind of out of step. 00:12:11.919 --> 00:12:17.120 And so there is always a market for the politics of nostalgia. 00:12:17.279 --> 00:12:19.759 And this is what the right is very good at doing. 00:12:20.000 --> 00:12:22.960 The right always can sell a politics of nostalgia. 00:12:23.120 --> 00:12:27.600 The most important word in Trump's slogan is make America great again. 00:12:27.840 --> 00:12:28.159 Right? 00:12:28.240 --> 00:12:30.080 It's a return to the past. 00:12:30.320 --> 00:12:36.320 Uh, when Brexit uh happens, the the the uh the slogan of Brexit was take back control. 00:12:37.039 --> 00:12:45.840 Like again, you're going back to a period when you had, or you know, it's this image of the British Empire when it was so powerful and didn't have to worry about Europe. 00:12:46.159 --> 00:12:48.559 There's always a you know something like this. 00:12:48.799 --> 00:12:56.639 Pauline Hansen was taking you, telling you, I'll take you back to the, you know, to what Australia looked like when you were young, you know, when you

were young. 00:12:56.960 --> 00:13:07.759 So the left has always had a problem here because the left has these sort of six-point program of how to get, you know, how to retrain you economic, you know, so you're ready for the jobs of the future. 00:13:07.840 --> 00:13:13.039 Uh and and the right is like, no, I'm just gonna take you back to the good old days. 00:13:13.279 --> 00:13:14.639 You know, it's the Garden of Eden. 00:13:14.960 --> 00:13:17.759 It's the Garden of Eden versus a policy proposal. 00:13:17.919 --> 00:13:20.639 And the Garden of Eden is much more seductive. 00:13:21.039 --> 00:13:23.600 I can't believe Farid knows Pauline Hansen. 00:13:23.679 --> 00:13:27.360 Um, for everyone out there who doesn't know Pauline Hansen, she's the populist leader here in Australia. 00:13:27.600 --> 00:13:28.799 It's reached our shores, yes. 00:13:29.039 --> 00:13:36.159 She's got an orange logo and orange hair, and she's been around for many, many years, but she's only really become very successful in in recent years, like honestly, last year. 00:13:36.720 --> 00:13:39.120 20 years ago, she first came on the scene, right? 00:13:39.200 --> 00:13:52.960 And many of us looked at it and thought the Australians managed to somehow uh, you know, deal with and marginalize this this uh populist, anti-immigrant and uh voice, and now she's made this extraordinary comeback. 00:13:53.279 --> 00:13:54.960 Yeah, it's it's really surprising. 00:13:55.200 --> 00:14:06.960 And I think the forces that you um explore in your book explain that resurgence uh for her and the fact that she is now a serious political operator in this country and taking uh the the center has disappeared. 00:14:07.039 --> 00:14:09.279 She's taking a th a third of the vote. 00:14:09.600 --> 00:14:21.120 Um some of the forces uh in today's world that uh have created a backlash, globalization, innovation, and identity revolution. 00:14:21.360 --> 00:14:31.200 But these are things you talk about with reference to the Netherlands in the 17th century, uh the first revolution that you look into, the first liberal revolution. 00:14:31.279 --> 00:14:35.120 Can you tell us about the Dutch and how they unleashed these forces? 00:14:35.679 --> 00:14:36.799 And why the Dutch. 00:14:36.960 --> 00:14:37.120 Yeah. 00:14:37.440 --> 00:14:37.600 Yeah. 00:14:37.759 --> 00:14:38.480 So you know what? 00:14:38.559 --> 00:14:43.919 This was one of the revelations of one of the reasons I love writing is because you learn stuff when you write. 00:14:44.000 --> 00:14:46.480 And I thought I was going to start the book with the English. 00:14:46.720 --> 00:14:52.639 The English in creating the Industrial Revolution, the Constitutional Republic, 1688. 00:14:52.799 --> 00:14:56.480 This is when, you know, the the the glorious revolution takes place. 00:14:56.799 --> 00:15:03.600 And the more I read into it, I realized that the British had essentially borrowed a whole bunch of this from the Dutch. 00:15:03.759 --> 00:15:15.120 And then I realized that if you go back, you realize the Dutch created the first modern republic where it wasn't about courts and kings and aristocrats, it was about businessmen. 00:15:15.360 --> 00:15:17.200 It was a merchant republic. 00:15:17.519 --> 00:15:20.000 And why were they able to do this? 00:15:20.159 --> 00:15:32.960 Because the Dutch would, you know, on this tiny piece of land which was constantly being flooded, and they had to work together in a very egalitarian fashion to almost literally rescue the land from the sea. 00:15:33.120 --> 00:15:39.759 In Holland, there's a famous saying, God may have created the world, but the Dutch created the Netherlands. 00:15:39.919 --> 00:15:44.639 Meaning, like this little piece of land we have actually rescued from the sea. 00:15:44.799 --> 00:15:47.360 Um, it was not very good agricultural land. 00:15:47.519 --> 00:15:49.759 So they have to invent industry. 00:15:50.080 --> 00:15:56.000 They start trading, they start inventing stuff, and they become very quickly the richest country in Europe. 00:15:56.159 --> 00:16:07.759 They were they were in the 17th century five, six times richer on a per capita basis than France, which people thought of as the, you know, the kind of richest country because it was the vast agricultural estate. 00:16:07.919 --> 00:16:15.360 And so the Netherlands becomes this place where you start to see the beginning of modern economics, modern trade, and modern politics. 00:16:15.600 --> 00:16:21.279 So they sort of have a king, but they don't really, uh, the king is so very much a notional figure. 00:16:21.440 --> 00:16:28.799 Really, what you have is almost a government by board of directors, by a group of elders, you know, elites. 00:16:28.960 --> 00:16:30.879 Um, they start to have elections. 00:16:31.200 --> 00:16:47.840 And because the pace of change in the Netherlands is faster than anywhere else in Europe, it's the fastest growing country in Europe, which basically means in the world, you start to have a party that starts to say, in the Dutch parliament, that starts to say, this is all too much change too fast. 00:16:48.159 --> 00:16:52.080 We're we're we're being too open uh to all this, you know, trade. 00:16:52.159 --> 00:16:55.360 It's changing our traditional uh way of doing things. 00:16:55.519 --> 00:17:04.000 We're taking in too many people from outside, religious minorities, Jews, Protestants, Catholics, whoever it was being persecuted. 00:17:04.240 --> 00:17:07.279 Let's go back to the let's go back to the good old days. 00:17:07.519 --> 00:17:13.839 Um and that was the party of the kind of the old aristocracy uh that tried to make that case. 00:17:14.000 --> 00:17:27.599 Um and it was very, you know, that was a period where the Netherlands was a touch-and-go situation because it was this tiny Protestant republic in the middle of vast Catholic Empire, the Habsburg Empire, the French. 00:17:27.680 --> 00:17:30.640 And eventually what happens

is the French go in and invade it. 00:17:30.720 --> 00:17:39.680 Um and it it, you know, that's one of the reasons why the Netherlands does not, you know, come completely, you know, doesn't manage to take on the mantle. 00:17:39.839 --> 00:17:51.119 What happens is these ideas get transferred to England through the Glorious Revolution and through William of Orange, uh, who is a du who is a Dutch prince who comes to Britain and becomes king. 00:17:51.279 --> 00:17:57.119 And then Britain takes on these ideas and it becomes the richest country in Europe and the world. 00:17:57.359 --> 00:18:13.039 And so, in a strange way, those liberal ideas about how to organize your economics and politics start in this tiny little place in the Netherlands, get sort of uh get not quite driven out, but get into trouble in the Netherlands, jump to England. 00:18:13.279 --> 00:18:18.960 England then becomes so rich that it conquers the world, and then the world gets all these ideas. 00:18:19.200 --> 00:18:35.440 The reason I'm sitting here talking to you in English uh from a country that has a parliamentary democracy is because Britain borrowed the Netherlands ideas, became rich, conquered the world, colonized India, and here I am, you know, wearing Western clothes, speaking English. 00:18:35.680 --> 00:18:37.200 The reason why we're in Australia too. 00:18:37.279 --> 00:18:37.440 Yeah. 00:18:37.680 --> 00:18:39.039 And there's a common thread. 00:18:39.440 --> 00:18:45.519 And um, I'm completely off topic, but I was always interested in the rise of Peter the Great, yeah, from Russia. 00:18:45.680 --> 00:18:47.039 And he lived around that time. 00:18:47.200 --> 00:18:49.440 And uh he did his famous study tour of Europe, right? 00:18:49.519 --> 00:18:56.400 He was obsessed with boats and he wanted to open the window to Europe and bring this medieval society into the modern world. 00:18:56.559 --> 00:18:57.359 What then became St. 00:18:57.519 --> 00:19:03.200 Petersburg, you know, he had all this Dutch there, and like every book I read was a lot about the Dutch and you know, Dutch sailors and engineers. 00:19:03.279 --> 00:19:04.160 I was like, why? 00:19:04.319 --> 00:19:04.720 Like, right? 00:19:04.960 --> 00:19:06.400 And now it all makes sense to me. 00:19:06.480 --> 00:19:17.200 So but Peter the Great obviously wasn't interested in the liberal part of it, he was interested in the technology and the other innovations, but not um not what was transforming his society and his power base. 00:19:17.440 --> 00:19:21.680 Um you have it exactly right, but again, here think of the historical parallel. 00:19:21.920 --> 00:19:24.960 This is exactly what the Chinese do with America, right? 00:19:25.119 --> 00:19:26.720 They're like, we love America. 00:19:26.880 --> 00:19:32.240 We want to figure out how you do technology so well, how do you do EV so well, how do you do AI? 00:19:32.319 --> 00:19:33.599 We're gonna copy all of that. 00:19:33.839 --> 00:19:43.599 We don't want your democracy, we don't want your politics, we want the fruits of your politics, we want the con you know, the fruits of your system, but we don't want that system. 00:19:43.839 --> 00:19:46.000 Peter the Great was a perfect example. 00:19:46.400 --> 00:19:47.759 Cherry picking. 00:19:49.119 --> 00:19:57.680 Uh, you talk about uh, again, the British and of course the British Navy as the first military-industrial complex, and this globalized the Anglo-Dutch miracle. 00:19:57.759 --> 00:20:00.720 This is mercantilism and free trade. 00:20:00.880 --> 00:20:06.880 Um liberalism is a term that pops up regularly in your text. 00:20:07.039 --> 00:20:10.240 Can you can you define for us what you mean by liberalism? 00:20:10.319 --> 00:20:15.359 Because again, uh culturally here we we can kind of we can see that a little bit differently. 00:20:15.759 --> 00:20:19.759 Yeah, look, as you know, it's used nowadays in different ways in different places. 00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:28.880 What I'm referring to is the original uh idea of liberalism, which was liberals were people who were in favor of individual liberty. 00:20:29.039 --> 00:20:34.880 That's why the word you know liber liberal comes from the Latin root of or pertaining to liberty. 00:20:35.039 --> 00:20:56.880 And the liberals in all these societies were always the people who were suspicious of monarchy, suspicious of the established church, in other words, suspicious of any kind of arbitrary inherited power, believed instead in creating politics that had a rational basis, elections, laws, parliaments. 00:20:56.960 --> 00:20:58.799 Um, and that is the origins of it. 00:20:58.880 --> 00:21:17.519 And then it becomes even more about the protection of individual rights because liberals begin to realize an individual is in danger of his life, liberty, property because of, you know, of a tyrannical ruler, an oppressive church, but also uh an oppressive majority. 00:21:17.680 --> 00:21:23.680 Uh you can have majorities that can do very, very illiberal things uh from time immemorial, right? 00:21:23.759 --> 00:21:29.279 Like Socrates was put to death for asking questions by a majority vote. 00:21:29.440 --> 00:21:34.720 Sometimes the threat comes from the king, sometimes from the church, sometimes it even comes from the people. 00:21:34.880 --> 00:21:51.119 And so, in general, that that uh tradition has been, I would say, broadly speaking, on the on the left of the political aisle, except in economics, because it also believes in freedom of you know, free markets, free trade. 00:21:51.359 --> 00:21:53.920 Adam Smith was, you know, a great, great liberal. 00:21:54.160 --> 00:21:59.759 Um and so it depending on where you are, and that's what sometimes confuses things, in America. 00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:07.680 America, sometimes you would use the word liberal to mean people who are very, you know, very far to the left and the people who are free market are right. 00:22:07.759 --> 00:22:15.599 So it gets

because it's a law, it's a word that's that's traveled for six centuries uh and it takes on different meanings in different places. 00:22:16.079 --> 00:22:21.519 Yeah, and um for context, David, here in Australia, the liberals is the conservative party. 00:22:21.839 --> 00:22:22.720 Correct, that is, yes. 00:22:23.279 --> 00:22:31.119 Um and they stand for some of the things or they pr pretend or they claim to stand for some of the things you've just mentioned, but also oppose to a few that um Farid just mentioned. 00:22:31.279 --> 00:22:34.799 But uh liberty, that's that's one of the maxims, isn't it, of the French Revolution? 00:22:34.960 --> 00:22:35.519 Aaron Powell That's it. 00:22:35.680 --> 00:22:38.319 Liberty, egality, fraternity. 00:22:38.480 --> 00:22:44.559 Uh you've talked about revolutions that fail when they are directed top-down. 00:22:44.960 --> 00:22:49.759 Can you talk to us about France and why this one did not work out? 00:22:51.119 --> 00:22:54.240 So, you know, we talked about the bottom-up process. 00:22:54.640 --> 00:23:00.559 The reason the Netherlands was able to work was that the Netherlands did not have a big agricultural economy. 00:23:00.720 --> 00:23:05.839 And so it didn't have these big landed estates with, you know, lords and and and all of that. 00:23:05.920 --> 00:23:12.720 It used to be called the manorial system, you know, these manor, these manor houses on large uh agricultural estates. 00:23:12.880 --> 00:23:22.160 No, the Netherlands had none of that, so they created this trading economy with merchants and things like that, and that then led to the idea that these people have power. 00:23:22.480 --> 00:23:23.680 France was the opposite. 00:23:23.839 --> 00:23:35.440 France was very much a traditional agricultural, aristocratic society where, you know, the lords lived in almost a kind of medieval way where they had rights. 00:23:35.519 --> 00:23:48.880 They essentially controlled the entire estate with all the people who lived on it, including things like the droit de seigneur, you know, where the Lord could have sex with any servant he liked, and that was considered part of his manorial rights. 00:23:49.200 --> 00:23:53.759 That world was what France was, more than almost any other place in Europe. 00:23:54.160 --> 00:24:02.240 And it's that place, partly I think as a reaction to it, that a bunch of French intellectuals decided this is a terrible system. 00:24:02.480 --> 00:24:12.640 We need to have something which protects individual liberties, which protects, you know, and they and they borrowed a lot in their thinking from people like Spinoza and and uh and the Dutch thinkers. 00:24:12.960 --> 00:24:16.319 But the problem was that society was completely unready for it. 00:24:16.640 --> 00:24:26.799 So they forced these ideas down and they find that it's not working, so they become more and more extreme and they start using violence to try to make it make it happen. 00:24:27.039 --> 00:24:28.960 And it

doesn't take, right? 00:24:29.200 --> 00:24:39.119 If you think about the French Revolution, after the French Revolution, you go, you have you end up with five republics, one crypto-fascist dictatorship, two empires, right? 00:24:39.200 --> 00:24:58.640 They're constantly cycling through regime types because nothing is working, because they haven't allowed that process of bottom-up what you were calling reform, Oliver, that then turned into, you know, kind of like what may one might call the longer kind of revolution, the slow-moving revolution that actually changes things. 00:24:58.799 --> 00:25:02.319 Uh, they tried to jam it all down from the top and it didn't work. 00:25:02.720 --> 00:25:05.200 And there's many parallels again to the Russian Revolution. 00:25:05.279 --> 00:25:13.920 And in another interview with you, I saw that that's a specific reason why you didn't include the October Revolution in your book for that reason. 00:25:14.240 --> 00:25:21.359 Yeah, because in the in the in the case of the Russian Revolution, it felt to me like at one level it was so obvious that it hadn't worked. 00:25:21.440 --> 00:25:25.440 Um, and it was very much this, you know, Russia was a complete peasant society. 00:25:25.599 --> 00:25:31.920 In fact, Marx specifically wrote that the Russian Russia was very inhospitable to a revolution. 00:25:32.079 --> 00:25:37.759 When he was thinking about the country that would be most ready for a communist revolution, it was Germany. 00:25:37.839 --> 00:25:54.240 Uh it, you know, it's the most advanced industrial country in Europe, which had a uh a working class who could think of themselves as having class rights and and things like that, and then they would move on to uh to to kind of effect the communist revolution by nationalizing production. 00:25:54.480 --> 00:25:55.519 Russia had none of this. 00:25:55.680 --> 00:26:05.599 Russia was like a, you know, a bunch of, I mean, it was like France in that sense, totally agrarian, uh a crazy monarchical system where the Tsar literally owned the whole country. 00:26:05.759 --> 00:26:13.680 The idea that you'd find uh you know, workers whom you could mobilize, so it was all entirely top-down, ideological, never really took. 00:26:13.839 --> 00:26:19.680 Um, you had you kind of maintained Russian life in many ways despite the revolution. 00:26:19.839 --> 00:26:29.359 And the only way it was able to last for as long as it did was through a massive, extraordinary um uh use of force and and terror. 00:26:29.599 --> 00:26:40.559 That's one of the things that doesn't get talked about, which is that in order to sustain that revolution, you had to set up these gulags of prison camps for decades and decades, right? 00:26:40.640 --> 00:26:42.240 This is not a temporary thing. 00:26:42.400 --> 00:26:51.839 This was 60 years of a prison system and a police state and KGB that was literally enforcing it every day. 00:26:52.799 --> 00:27:01.519 You talk about uh the legacy of both the

French and Russian revolutions as leaving traumatized societies that fell behind their liberal democratic rivals. 00:27:01.759 --> 00:27:05.839 The following chapter you talk about is titled The Mother of All Revolutions. 00:27:06.000 --> 00:27:08.640 We go back to England and the Industrial Revolution. 00:27:08.720 --> 00:27:14.000 Can you talk about that, but also the forces of backlash that this revolution unleashed? 00:27:14.400 --> 00:27:17.920 Yeah, this is the one that's most like the one we are living through now. 00:27:18.079 --> 00:27:22.240 So the Industrial Revolution is fundamentally an energy revolution. 00:27:22.400 --> 00:27:29.119 It's the first time you were able to figure out a way to use inanimate sources of energy. 00:27:29.279 --> 00:27:35.119 You know, until now, whenever we had wanted to use energy, we had to use manual effort. 00:27:35.359 --> 00:27:41.519 So a human being had to push something: a wheel, a plow, uh, you know, a cart. 00:27:41.680 --> 00:27:49.039 And then when we got clever about it, we were like, wait, we can get horses to do this, we can get oxen to do it, we can, but the horse was probably the strongest animal. 00:27:49.200 --> 00:27:53.279 So we would measure the ability to do stuff in horsepower. 00:27:53.440 --> 00:27:54.559 That's why it was there. 00:27:54.640 --> 00:27:57.759 That's why we use the the the phrase horsepower. 00:27:58.000 --> 00:28:08.319 And then along comes the Industrial Revolution, which figures out that you can use other things, steam, coal, you know, eventually oil, uh, and things like that. 00:28:08.559 --> 00:28:14.559 And you can, I mean, now you can do things on a scale that you could never ever have imagined before. 00:28:14.640 --> 00:28:17.039 You can actually create machines. 00:28:17.200 --> 00:28:31.599 And so you're doing work that can be done, that would it would take a thousand horses, you know, uh two months of running around to uh to produce enough motion in a in a in a motor, right? 00:28:31.680 --> 00:28:34.799 Uh which you can do by just by just burning some wood. 00:28:35.359 --> 00:28:43.119 And that transforms the economy because it creates the ability to make have real machines which produce real industrial products. 00:28:43.359 --> 00:28:47.200 And now the money is increasingly in that. 00:28:47.359 --> 00:28:54.160 And so you start to see this great transformation of society where the peasants leave the farms and go to the factories. 00:28:54.480 --> 00:29:00.160 And that process of urbanization is the fundamental force of the industrial revolution. 00:29:00.720 --> 00:29:03.680 It's amazing to think about how much it transforms society. 00:29:03.839 --> 00:29:04.720 So think about this. 00:29:04.880 --> 00:29:12.400 In the United States, probably the most advanced economy in the world, in 1900, half the population worked in farms. 00:29:13.200 --> 00:29:16.000 50% of America in 1900 worked on farms. 00:29:16.240 --> 00:29:19.119 Today, 1% of America

works on farms. 00:29:19.440 --> 00:29:24.960 We produce way more than we produced then because farming itself has become industrialized. 00:29:25.279 --> 00:29:27.279 But it tells you about that social change. 00:29:27.759 --> 00:29:35.759 And so the industrial revolution is about this enormous transformation of society where people leave the farms, leave the rural areas, come to the cities. 00:29:35.920 --> 00:29:47.599 Yes, you have more money, but it's brutal, you know, grinding poverty in some cases, enormous uh di di difficulty because of the pollution and the you know the poverty and the crime. 00:29:48.400 --> 00:29:50.799 And you create the backlash. 00:29:51.200 --> 00:29:57.839 And the backlash takes the form of workers' parties, communism, uh populism. 00:29:58.240 --> 00:30:05.279 Uh and then from the right, you start to get a backlash again, the politics of nostalgia, telling you we'll take you back. 00:30:05.440 --> 00:30:09.839 We'll get, you know, we'll we will go back to an earlier time when none of this was happening. 00:30:10.079 --> 00:30:19.359 And that becomes the great drama of late 19th century politics, is you you have you have this enormous backlash to these forces. 00:30:19.519 --> 00:30:26.720 In places like Britain and Germany, you see it most vividly because these are the most advanced industrial societies. 00:30:27.119 --> 00:30:35.839 To a large extent, you know, the the if the effect that the Industrial Revolution had was to create the world of left and right politics that I described. 00:30:36.079 --> 00:30:38.720 Because you end up with basically two groups of people. 00:30:38.880 --> 00:30:43.279 How do you deal with what this this whole this beast has unleashed? 00:30:43.440 --> 00:30:51.519 And there's people on the right who say, you just let it rip because it's going to modernize society, it's going to produce greater and greater wealth. 00:30:51.599 --> 00:30:57.519 And the people on the left who say, wait, but it produces inequality, it tramples on the rights of workers. 00:30:57.759 --> 00:31:02.559 It, you know, it produ it it produces a great deal of injustice for these people. 00:31:02.640 --> 00:31:06.960 So we need government to be in, you know, that's that's the drama of the 20th century. 00:31:07.759 --> 00:31:22.160 Yes, you you quote Oliver Goldsmith reflecting on this uh this period in British history, saying that um this revolution had led to the death of the humble happiness of rural life and that wealth accumulates and men decay. 00:31:22.240 --> 00:31:26.880 And you also mentioned that Engels, he you know, started penning the Communist Manifesto in this period. 00:31:26.960 --> 00:31:34.480 But this period, uh, you're talking about, you know, the grim realities of of life for people in urban areas in the UK. 00:31:34.640 --> 00:31:40.960 Uh it was a short-term anomaly because eventually the living standards of the working class actually improved. 00:31:41.039 --> 00:31:45.200 So there was,

yes, uh a period of time which was very, very ch challenging. 00:31:45.279 --> 00:31:46.160 Um, but that changed. 00:31:46.480 --> 00:31:48.640 But didn't it improve because of the backlash? 00:31:48.799 --> 00:32:11.440 If it wasn't for the backlash and you know, the communist and or the social democratic movement as we call it now, but and then further extreme on the on the left being communist, pushing the conservatives and pushing the people in charge to make amendments, to work around and preserve their power base and their wealth by making concessions to the working class. 00:32:11.680 --> 00:32:21.119 So if if there wasn't a backlash as part of this revolution for Reed, we would have gone to another new feudal society with a few in power. 00:32:21.200 --> 00:32:21.759 Do you not agree? 00:32:22.079 --> 00:32:22.319 Yes. 00:32:22.400 --> 00:32:30.559 I mean, again, Fred, you talk about the idea uh that the recognition of the political class that we have to reform in order for things to stay the same. 00:32:30.640 --> 00:32:41.200 And it feels like this is the point in history where um instead of trying to crush uh this dissent, uh, they decided to make changes that would enable the system to continue. 00:32:41.759 --> 00:32:42.319 Absolutely. 00:32:42.480 --> 00:32:46.400 I think you've this is such a such an intelligent uh exchange. 00:32:46.640 --> 00:32:53.440 So people often talk about the 20th century and they say it was a struggle between communism and capitalism, and capitalism won. 00:32:53.680 --> 00:32:59.519 I actually think it's it was a struggle between communism and capitalism and social democracy won. 00:32:59.839 --> 00:33:17.599 Because if you look at what we have ended up with in every Western society, we have ended up with something that looks uh extraordinarily like the political program of the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1900 or Sweden in 1910. 00:33:17.759 --> 00:33:18.960 What were they arguing for? 00:33:19.119 --> 00:33:35.440 They were arguing for limitations on the hours that workers worked, pensions, unemployment insurance, medical assistance, and some kind of public health program, no child labor laws, the ability for women to work. 00:33:35.680 --> 00:33:48.640 You think about all these things that they were, that were radical, and that the at the then right was viciously opposed to every single one of these things, even in the most libertarian country like America. 00:33:48.799 --> 00:33:49.920 We have all of that. 00:33:50.079 --> 00:33:51.759 Um every single one of those things. 00:33:51.920 --> 00:34:01.440 And so it's a sign that exactly this, you know, in the old way of dialectic, you have you, you know, you have the thesis, you have the antithesis, and you ended up with the synthesis. 00:34:01.599 --> 00:34:10.159 And the synthesis in this place is some kind of way, people won't like it, you know, some people won't like it, but I call it social democracy, but that's really what it is. 00:34:10.400 --> 00:34:24.960 When you have, you know, uh full large-scale pensions, when you have unemployment insurance, when you have an enormous amount of uh uh public health programs, even in the US, which is the only place without universal help, 20 million Americans don't have health insurance. 00:34:25.119 --> 00:34:34.400 I think that's a tragedy, but remember, that means the rest do, and most of it is publicly financed in some way or the other, through tax credits, to all kinds of ways. 00:34:34.559 --> 00:34:44.320 So we have ended up in a place where we realized that you can't just have these forces rip through the system. 00:34:44.719 --> 00:34:53.519 Um, and I think we're going to go through another great debate on this issue in much the same way we did in the Industrial Revolution with AI. 00:34:53.760 --> 00:35:04.800 Because as AI starts to actually be able to produce economic wealth, as these agents are actually able to conduct economic activity, which they will be able to do. 00:35:05.360 --> 00:35:08.480 Imagine an agent, you know, an agentic banker. 00:35:08.559 --> 00:35:10.400 Um, why do you need a human being? 00:35:10.559 --> 00:35:14.239 The, the, the, the, you know, the AI can do it better. 00:35:14.400 --> 00:35:17.039 Stop picking, after all, is pattern recognition. 00:35:17.280 --> 00:35:23.440 And so once they start to do that, and then you start to say to yourself, okay, so what do human beings do here? 00:35:23.760 --> 00:35:31.199 And we will have to have a conversation, much like they did, about what is it that, what are the values we want to preserve. 00:35:31.360 --> 00:35:35.679 In order to preserve them, how do we redistribute wealth to make that possible? 00:35:35.840 --> 00:35:38.480 How do we do it in a way that preserves people's dignity? 00:35:38.639 --> 00:35:42.880 And that was exactly the conversation they had around the Industrial Revolution. 00:35:43.039 --> 00:35:50.719 Um, it was a very messy one, and as I think you were implying, Oliver, it was not like people uh generously agreed very quickly in one room. 00:35:50.800 --> 00:35:57.199 It was like strikes, you know, uh riots, World War I, you know, uh Great Depression. 00:35:57.280 --> 00:36:07.039 And out of all that, people were real came to realize okay, guys, we need to stabilize the economy so you don't have massive inequality and massive unemployment. 00:36:07.440 --> 00:36:07.679 Yeah. 00:36:07.760 --> 00:36:16.960 And in Germany was Bismarck, obviously, you know, one of the most conservative leaders, but he's the one who introduced all those reforms and health pensions that then became a model for most of the Western world. 00:36:17.119 --> 00:36:21.119 And he didn't do that by choice, he did it to uh keep his Kaiser in power. 00:36:21.360 --> 00:36:22.320 And um Exactly. 00:36:22.480 --> 00:36:26.800 I I just want to talk about what you just mentioned, having never thought about it, but capitalism. 00:36:26.960 --> 00:36:30.000 And you

said, you know, capitalism won, and you said it didn't win. 00:36:30.079 --> 00:36:34.000 It what would merged or what won is a synthesis of what we've had. 00:36:34.159 --> 00:36:38.320 We we live in Australia, we have a lot of duopolies here. 00:36:38.480 --> 00:36:44.400 You know, we've got two supermarket chains, we've got two airlines, we've got pretty much two um telco carriers. 00:36:44.480 --> 00:36:59.360 Uh and a lot of people and the living crisis at the moment of you know making ends of meat is all about um a lack of competitiveness, and even even the government is trying now to get involved because uh there's really large corporations dictating prices. 00:36:59.599 --> 00:37:01.840 And it's worse, it's worse in the tech world. 00:37:01.920 --> 00:37:06.800 Uh I work in marketing on the side, and you don't have much choice anymore where you where you spend your marketing dollars. 00:37:06.880 --> 00:37:12.719 You basically can choose between two companies, which is your meta and Google, um, and they dictate the prices. 00:37:12.800 --> 00:37:19.360 It's not like uh 10, 15 years ago where you could choose between 10 newspapers and magazines, and you just won't reach any any audiences. 00:37:19.519 --> 00:37:25.360 So, my question to you, Farid, should your next book be about capitalism and if it's actually failed? 00:37:25.760 --> 00:37:27.920 Is it still capitalism if you don't have a choice? 00:37:28.079 --> 00:37:28.719 Like, you know? 00:37:29.039 --> 00:37:40.400 You know, you raise a very important point, Oliver, which is um I think the digital economy, in a way that nobody predicted, um, has a tendency toward monopoly. 00:37:40.639 --> 00:37:45.920 Um, if you think about it when the when you know the internet came up and everyone was like, oh my God, this is amazing. 00:37:46.000 --> 00:37:47.760 It's gonna democratize everything. 00:37:47.920 --> 00:37:49.440 And at some level it did, right? 00:37:49.519 --> 00:37:53.519 Like all kinds of little shops all over the world can can be on the internet. 00:37:54.000 --> 00:37:55.440 Us talking right now. 00:37:55.760 --> 00:37:56.719 Exactly, right? 00:37:56.880 --> 00:38:01.599 But there are these areas where there is a network effect, right? 00:38:01.679 --> 00:38:07.920 You want to advertise on Google because everyone else is advertising on Google, because that has become the one place that everyone goes to. 00:38:08.079 --> 00:38:10.880 You want to do your social media on Meta because everybody else. 00:38:11.199 --> 00:38:21.119 And that means those people have a kind of global market, and they have global uh, you know, uh monopoly or oligopoly power. 00:38:21.679 --> 00:38:28.000 And I think that is something that, in my view, that's what government exists for, right? 00:38:28.079 --> 00:38:37.679 To to that is government using its power to actually create the conditions for liberalism, for genuine competition, for genuine price competition. 00:38:37.840 --> 00:38:47.840 So there's a very good book by a French economist that points out that Europe in some key areas is much more competitive and much more of a free market than the United States. 00:38:48.000 --> 00:38:58.639 And I would bet Australia would be, would be similar because the European Commission is very zealous about ensuring that there's genuine competition. 00:38:58.800 --> 00:39:00.559 So you take something like Airlines. 00:39:00.639 --> 00:39:03.920 In the US, uh there's basically an oligopoly. 00:39:04.079 --> 00:39:10.559 Some routes are done by it by United Airlines, some routes by American Airlines, some routes by Delta, and basically that's it. 00:39:10.719 --> 00:39:18.719 There's very little competition on any specific route you look at, let's say Houston to New York, well, that's overwhelmingly done by one of these airlines. 00:39:18.800 --> 00:39:21.360 So they can price it whatever they want. 00:39:21.599 --> 00:39:23.440 And in Europe, they don't allow that. 00:39:23.679 --> 00:39:29.039 Every route has to have at least two players who are price, you know, who are in price competition with one another. 00:39:29.280 --> 00:39:33.280 Cell phone services, similarly, you have to have price competition. 00:39:33.519 --> 00:39:37.599 When you see that as you do in Australia, you see some of it in Canada as well. 00:39:37.760 --> 00:39:50.559 Um, it's in Australia, it's sort of a little bit understandable because it's a small country, it's a small, rich country, so you've got the you know, it's it's a little easier to create just one or two dominant players, but that's where government has to get involved. 00:39:50.719 --> 00:39:58.559 And the problem is, uh again, what design flow and and modern democracy is politics needs money. 00:39:58.880 --> 00:40:08.960 And if you're if the if the politics needs the money, there's always going to be the reality that these big players have more political power than they should. 00:40:09.119 --> 00:40:14.639 How do you get a politics that is for the little guy in uh in in business terms, right? 00:40:14.800 --> 00:40:18.719 For the new, for the competitor to matter, for the competitor to Google. 00:40:19.039 --> 00:40:23.519 For competitors to even emerge, because we're at a stage now where they just don't have a chance. 00:40:23.599 --> 00:40:29.280 As soon as they become any big or relevant, they get either bought up or shut down in another form or something. 00:40:29.519 --> 00:40:30.559 Exactly, exactly. 00:40:30.800 --> 00:40:39.199 I saw the same, I lived through what you were just describing, and this is a little off topic, but when I was at Newsweek in 2000, it was incredibly profitable. 00:40:39.440 --> 00:40:42.960 By 10 years later, we were losing$40 million a year. 00:40:43.119 --> 00:40:43.760 Why? 00:40:44.079 --> 00:40:48.159 All the ads went to two places, Google and Facebook. 00:40:48.400 --> 00:40:52.960 I mean, literally every ad that we had, just you could just see the line going like

that. 00:40:53.039 --> 00:40:54.800 It was and it all went to just two places. 00:40:54.960 --> 00:41:00.480 So you went from a very competitive advertising landscape to basically a duopoly. 00:41:00.880 --> 00:41:02.800 Yeah, and we're feeding the monster, right? 00:41:02.880 --> 00:41:04.639 It's just getting worse and worse. 00:41:05.440 --> 00:41:17.039 I don't want to skip America, uh, even though, in terms of uh your book, you mentioned that the Industrial Revolution changed America more than the American Revolution. 00:41:17.199 --> 00:41:29.199 Um, you also talk about why no socialism in America uh and the backlash, uh, it didn't have that same sort of social democratic push that happened in Europe. 00:41:29.440 --> 00:41:31.199 Why was that the case? 00:41:32.000 --> 00:41:36.480 Some of this actually has similarities uh with uh with Australia. 00:41:36.719 --> 00:41:43.280 You know, when you have a new country where people come to it, um Tocqueville has this great line. 00:41:43.360 --> 00:41:45.840 He said Americans were born free. 00:41:46.000 --> 00:41:47.840 They didn't have to become free. 00:41:48.159 --> 00:41:51.519 And what he meant by that is how did Europeans become free? 00:41:51.679 --> 00:42:02.800 They had to overturn an entire deeply rooted social hierarchical order of aristocracy, of monarchy, of established church. 00:42:03.039 --> 00:42:09.920 And it was that process of overturning that whole system that produced European freedom. 00:42:10.079 --> 00:42:12.639 But again, there was the backlash, and so there was the clash. 00:42:12.800 --> 00:42:16.400 In America, there was no old order, it was just empty land. 00:42:16.559 --> 00:42:20.239 Well, there were Indians on it, but you know, we took care of them, unfortunately. 00:42:20.480 --> 00:42:31.280 But the reality was that when the when the white man came to America, he was coming into a place without that history of deep-rooted social structures. 00:42:31.519 --> 00:42:38.079 And in that situation, you don't end up with the kind of class conflict that you have other kinds of conflict. 00:42:38.239 --> 00:42:51.679 We had a lot of racial conflict, we had a lot of uh even ethnic conflict, but you don't have the class conflict that Marx describes as the essence of you know the communism versus capitalism clash. 00:42:51.760 --> 00:42:54.960 Um, and I think it's you know it's somewhat similar in in Australia. 00:42:55.199 --> 00:43:08.559 You need the you need the old order and all that it meant to be able to produce that that dynamic between the you know the workers, the bourgeoisie, and the aristocrats that Marx describes. 00:43:09.599 --> 00:43:15.679 And um that's why you didn't dedicate much uh time in your book to America. 00:43:16.480 --> 00:43:23.440 Well, and also because I think I think um in in in the case of America, many of these trends came out of Europe. 00:43:23.599 --> 00:43:28.239 Um and so they played, they played out in America, and you see them. 00:43:28.320 --> 00:43:34.800 Um, and because America is so important, it they they get amplified, but they didn't originate in America. 00:43:34.960 --> 00:43:35.519 You know. 00:43:35.840 --> 00:43:38.480 Liberalism for America came from England. 00:43:38.559 --> 00:43:48.719 Um, and in fact, as I point out, in that, you know, there is this chapter on the American Revolution where I point out that none of the social structures in America changed after the revolution. 00:43:48.960 --> 00:44:04.639 We maintained the entire feudal system of the South with slaves at a time when slavery was not particularly widespread anywhere else in the Western world, because we Had we were maintaining the world that that came from Britain. 00:44:05.119 --> 00:44:16.880 It was really the industrial the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution, sort of 1860 to 1870, changes America much more than uh 1770 to 1790. 00:44:17.920 --> 00:44:19.360 This has been such a rich discussion. 00:44:19.519 --> 00:44:20.400 We're mindful of time. 00:44:20.480 --> 00:44:25.599 We don't want to run out because we haven't even covered the second part of your book where you look at revolutions present. 00:44:25.760 --> 00:44:29.519 So I'd like it to take us to uh your chapter on technology. 00:44:29.760 --> 00:44:36.079 You talk about how it fomented a revolution of the mind and that we've recognized the downsides, but we don't have any treatments. 00:44:36.239 --> 00:44:49.119 And I will I just want to mention the the quote from Hannah Arendt, an incredible um 20th century author, uh, totalitarian ideologies gain traction only because we are so atomized. 00:44:49.280 --> 00:44:53.599 So, how has technology changed the way we interact today? 00:44:54.880 --> 00:45:11.039 So I think the fundamental force that technology has, particularly if you think of technology in the broadest sense of the word, it has been to kind of um shatter the the hierarchy and mysteries of the past. 00:45:11.440 --> 00:45:17.199 So when we used to look at the world, we when we didn't understand something, we said, oh my god, that's religion. 00:45:17.360 --> 00:45:20.960 Why does the sun come out in the day and go away in the evening? 00:45:21.119 --> 00:45:24.639 Well, the sun god travels across the sky with his chariot. 00:45:24.800 --> 00:45:25.920 Why is it spring? 00:45:26.079 --> 00:45:31.199 Well, Persephone, the goddess, comes out and then she goes away and then it becomes winter again. 00:45:31.360 --> 00:45:43.679 You know, we had all these and and that led to a society of an enormous amount of hierarchy, obedience, obedience to authority, religious authority, you know, uh social authority. 00:45:43.840 --> 00:45:47.280 And what science does and technology does, it shatters all that. 00:45:47.440 --> 00:45:50.079 It says, no, we can figure this out for ourselves. 00:45:50.239 --> 00:45:52.800 And we start uncovering the mysteries. 00:45:52.960 --> 00:46:01.920 But what we end up with is we find as a

result of that we are smarter, we are richer, but we are more lonely. 00:46:02.400 --> 00:46:17.599 Because we had spent our entire history in these groups, observing these common rituals, believing these common myths, uh, you know, living in a kind of settled, uh, orderly world, doing the same things at the same time. 00:46:17.760 --> 00:46:27.039 And all of a sudden, we are free from all those constraints because we now know a lot of it is hocus pocus, and you know, we don't we don't need to believe it anymore. 00:46:27.199 --> 00:46:31.280 Um, but as a result, you are you are alone. 00:46:31.679 --> 00:46:39.039 And now you have to find your own rhythms and your own cadence and at a very deep level, your own meaning for life. 00:46:39.199 --> 00:46:44.559 And it turns out that scares people, and that scares people uh an enormous amount. 00:46:44.639 --> 00:46:53.679 And it's, you know, honestly, this has been the problem uh for modern life for a long time, ever since Nietzsche said God is dead. 00:46:53.840 --> 00:47:02.079 Um, I think you've had this problem of what do you replace the certainties of faith and family and community and tradition? 00:47:02.239 --> 00:47:03.920 Nobody has a good answer, right? 00:47:04.079 --> 00:47:07.360 Like yoga somehow doesn't cut it. 00:47:07.519 --> 00:47:12.800 Um, you know, sort of a little bit of meditation on your iPhone in the morning doesn't cut it. 00:47:13.199 --> 00:47:23.199 It turns out you we we left this complete system, uh, and now we are kind of freelancing and trying to find some way to make sense of it all. 00:47:23.360 --> 00:47:31.039 And in that vacuum, you'll often find nationalism, the return of religion, some great leader. 00:47:31.199 --> 00:47:33.039 Look at the way that people follow Trump. 00:47:33.119 --> 00:47:35.199 Like it's almost like a cult leader, right? 00:47:35.360 --> 00:47:37.360 There's a sense in which he is a messiah. 00:47:38.000 --> 00:47:43.760 I grew up in India, he reminds me of those gurus and godmen that we used to have in when I was growing up. 00:47:43.920 --> 00:47:46.000 Because he can do anything and they sell like him, right? 00:47:46.079 --> 00:47:52.719 He can come into power saying wars in the Middle East are bad, and then he's in office and he's like, no, wars in the Middle East are good. 00:47:52.880 --> 00:47:55.679 And the followers are like, Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking. 00:47:56.079 --> 00:47:59.679 Shifting to economics, uh, we've talked about the loss of shared community. 00:47:59.760 --> 00:48:08.320 And you're talking you've mentioned in your book that one of uh liberalism's great weaknesses has been the inability to fill the void when old structures crumble. 00:48:08.639 --> 00:48:10.880 But you also quote uh Thomas Friedman. 00:48:10.960 --> 00:48:15.519 You talk about it's when people or nations are humiliated that they really lash out. 00:48:15.679 --> 00:48:25.280 And this is this speaks to uh again the changes in community

when we've got things like the rust belt in America getting hollowed out and what impact that has on um politics. 00:48:25.440 --> 00:48:36.000 Talk to us about how the change in economics, especially hyperglobalization since um the end of history and the fall of communism has fed into this new revolution that we see uh panning out today. 00:48:36.480 --> 00:48:54.159 I can talk about this in in a kind of uh personal way, in the sense that I w when I traveled around America giving speeches and things, and I remember being in um in Pennsylvania, which Pennsylvania people think of as Philadelphia, the big city, but large parts of Pennsylvania are very rural. 00:48:54.400 --> 00:48:56.880 Um they were very much Trump country. 00:48:57.199 --> 00:49:06.559 Um and I was in one such place giving a talk at a college, and I was sitting next to the mayor, and I said to him, Tell me a little bit of what do people do here? 00:49:07.039 --> 00:49:10.320 And he said, I'll tell you the honest truth. 00:49:10.800 --> 00:49:13.840 All the young people leave for the cities for jobs. 00:49:14.239 --> 00:49:18.880 What we're left with are people who work in hospitals and the government. 00:49:19.119 --> 00:49:20.400 And I said, Where did they work? 00:49:20.480 --> 00:49:27.920 And he said, Well, they used to work at these factories, the steel factories, the uh the automotive part factories, but all those things have gone gone away. 00:49:28.159 --> 00:49:31.760 And I said, So are they all as a result much poorer? 00:49:32.000 --> 00:49:34.960 He said, No, it's not, that's not what's really happened. 00:49:35.760 --> 00:49:46.960 Some of them have to work two jobs, but most of them, he said, Look, you look at the data, America, you know, we're still, I mean, American GDP is very high, and uh we've maybe you know, we still have done pretty well in aggregate. 00:49:47.199 --> 00:49:51.599 He said, But what's gone away is it's not that they lost their jobs, they lost their life. 00:49:52.159 --> 00:50:01.920 When there was a steel factory, everybody wanted the same steel factory, and then they would go to the same church, and they would go to the same bowling alley, and they would go to the same movie theater. 00:50:02.400 --> 00:50:10.480 And some of that is globalization, but some of it is the um the the technology revolution, right? 00:50:10.559 --> 00:50:13.599 The the movie theater went out of business because of Netflix. 00:50:13.840 --> 00:50:25.599 The people who used to sit around and uh you know go to go to these little clubs and things like that, all of that community life has gone away because so many of the anchors of that life have gone away. 00:50:25.840 --> 00:50:29.039 And so people they feel a loss of dignity. 00:50:29.440 --> 00:50:33.679 They had a kind of a job that particularly for men, I think. 00:50:33.840 --> 00:50:41.039 Men derive so much of their sense of themselves and their sense of recognition and status in society by what they do. 00:50:41.280 --> 00:50:52.480 Um, and as a result, when you when you're sort of like you don't really have a simple answer to that question, or you're like, you know, some halftime you're an Uber driver and halftime you're a home healthcare aide. 00:50:52.639 --> 00:50:56.880 You you know, you don't really have a profession that you can speak about with dignity. 00:50:57.360 --> 00:50:59.760 That's the that's the thing that's been lost. 00:51:00.079 --> 00:51:09.760 And I think that it's a very important thing for us to think about because you know, one of the solutions people talk about with the world of AI is going to be universal basic income. 00:51:10.079 --> 00:51:12.800 And I do think we're gonna have to do a lot of big rethinking. 00:51:13.119 --> 00:51:15.360 But I think we need to think about this fact. 00:51:15.519 --> 00:51:21.440 I don't think people will be satisfied just getting a check in the mail from the government every every month. 00:51:21.920 --> 00:51:24.239 You know, particularly when I think about men. 00:51:24.639 --> 00:51:35.920 To have nothing to do, to have no to be attached to no no purpose, to have no skill that you can you can claim as your own, I think that's a very big loss of status. 00:51:36.079 --> 00:51:42.000 And that kind of loss of dignity, that loss of status, I think that has a huge impact on people's lives. 00:51:42.239 --> 00:51:49.840 I mean, you look at why Russia has been so prone to Putinism, it's because they had this terrible loss of status. 00:51:50.159 --> 00:51:56.079 They went from being the Soviet Union, the other great superpower of the world, to being this basket case economy. 00:51:56.239 --> 00:52:02.079 As a result of that, people were waiting for somebody who would say to them, No, I'll I will make Russia great again. 00:52:02.400 --> 00:52:08.480 It was a politics of nostalgia all over again, and what what feeds it is this loss of dignity. 00:52:09.760 --> 00:52:12.000 And at the center of it is identity. 00:52:12.079 --> 00:52:21.760 I think what you just said, it's about who am I, how do I identify what makes me a man, um, what makes me relevant to my wife, my family, my community. 00:52:21.840 --> 00:52:24.400 And if people don't have that, uh paycheck won't cut it. 00:52:24.480 --> 00:52:28.239 Like you just said, we have to come to a close, unfortunately, Farid. 00:52:28.400 --> 00:52:30.079 Um it's very late where you are. 00:52:30.320 --> 00:52:32.800 Can we hold up the book once more, David? 00:52:32.960 --> 00:52:33.199 Yes. 00:52:33.360 --> 00:52:36.239 Um And there's so many more questions we could ask, definitely. 00:52:36.719 --> 00:52:41.440 We should uh we should definitely have another episode, but that leads me to the final question, Farid. 00:52:41.599 --> 00:52:42.880 The book's about two years old. 00:52:42.960 --> 00:52:45.440 We're in a different world now than we were two years ago. 00:52:45.679 --> 00:52:49.760 Is there something you would add now if if you

brought the latest edition? 00:52:50.400 --> 00:53:03.599 You know, I would only say that a lot of people thought when when um the book came out that I was uh exaggerating the degree of the backlash, and this was a spasm, that we were gonna, you know, that this was gonna be through it. 00:53:03.679 --> 00:53:10.000 Everybody already can see that Brexit was a mistake, you know, Trump was out of office, Biden was president. 00:53:10.239 --> 00:53:12.960 You know, what now people are realizing is no, no, no. 00:53:13.119 --> 00:53:14.320 We're in this for a long haul. 00:53:14.400 --> 00:53:36.000 Look, you know, you may end up in a situation where Marine Le Pen becomes the next president of France, the AFD wins in Germany, what that will do to Europe as a project when you have, you know, these Germany and France could both have governments that are basically pro-Russian and anti-Brussels, anti-the European Union, which is kind of difficult to imagine, right? 00:53:36.079 --> 00:53:41.599 So I feel as though the the thing I would I would emphasize is we are in this new world. 00:53:41.760 --> 00:53:44.159 It is going to take a while for us to work this out. 00:53:44.320 --> 00:53:48.800 And for the people at the center to think, oh, just just wait. 00:53:48.880 --> 00:53:52.719 You know, the popists will, the wave will go away magically. 00:53:52.880 --> 00:53:54.639 Uh, it ain't going away magically. 00:53:54.800 --> 00:54:06.960 We have to actually present a powerful, compelling articulation of political ideas that have energy and and valence and and feel contemporary, and then people might start coming back to the center. 00:54:07.360 --> 00:54:09.199 And it all started with the Dutch. 00:54:09.440 --> 00:54:12.559 At least we have someone to blame now after this interview, Farid. 00:54:13.119 --> 00:54:15.440 Um Thanks, David, for all your insights. 00:54:15.519 --> 00:54:16.480 And uh Thank you. 00:54:16.559 --> 00:54:17.760 That's been an incredible discussion. 00:54:17.840 --> 00:54:18.880 That was that flew by. 00:54:18.960 --> 00:54:20.320 Thank you so much, Farid, for joining us. 00:54:20.559 --> 00:54:22.480 Is there something you take away from the book personally? 00:54:22.639 --> 00:54:24.320 As a teacher as well, as an industry teacher. 00:54:24.639 --> 00:54:30.320 Uh like you said, the dignity, uh, what are the solutions? 00:54:30.480 --> 00:54:47.199 Um I'm not sure if liberalism is going to allow us to go back and I think the economic forces that we've unleashed make it very, very difficult um for us to rebuild community in a way that is uh meaningful for the people that feel disenfranchised. 00:54:47.440 --> 00:54:49.039 So I'm I am a bit concerned. 00:54:49.119 --> 00:54:55.599 Uh I hope that politicians and top-down we can introduce some policy that will do that, but I I'm not sure. 00:54:55.920 --> 00:54:57.199 Let's see what the future holds. 00:54:57.280 --> 00:54:59.920 Thank you very much, uh, Farid, there in New York. 00:55:00.079 --> 00:55:06.239 And for all of you listening to us, um, you can see more, literally, because we now also have a YouTube channel. 00:55:06.320 --> 00:55:08.079 So check out Putschcast on YouTube. 00:55:08.400 --> 00:55:14.480 Or once we get our website back up after the PHP glitch, thank you AI this week, um, putcast.com. 00:55:14.800 --> 00:55:17.440 And uh all the best Farid for the next book. 00:55:17.519 --> 00:55:18.320 Please let us know. 00:55:18.400 --> 00:55:19.840 I'm I'm sure you've already got ideas. 00:55:20.000 --> 00:55:23.360 I'm sure you've started maybe toting down some ideas. 00:55:23.440 --> 00:55:24.960 And um I'm already at it. 00:55:25.039 --> 00:55:25.920 I'm already at it. 00:55:26.239 --> 00:55:34.320 But with technology and war, from technology and war from from railroads and telegraph to artificial intelligence. 00:55:34.639 --> 00:55:35.119 Oh wow. 00:55:35.199 --> 00:55:36.880 Okay, looking forward to reading that one too. 00:55:37.199 --> 00:55:41.199 And this one, this one is worth definitely checking out as well. 00:55:41.519 --> 00:55:42.480 Thank you.