Neo-feudalism and the Middle Class Crises | Joel Kotkin

what makes Australia and the U.S stronger than the UK is the amount of land the natural resources that they can feed themselves um I mean look if the whole world trade economy ended tomorrow Australia in the United States would be two countries that would come out best [Music] well this conversation comes from Chapman University in Los Angeles and it's with Joel kotkin who I've spoken to before but has been really piling up some fantastic articles which I think tell us some really important things about what's happening to our society and why we need to be more alert and frankly more engaged now he's been described by the New York Times as America's Uber geographer uh Joel is an internationally recognized Authority on global economic political and social trends he's the presidential fellow and urban Futures at this University Chapman and executive director of the urban reform Institute as well as being the author of seven previously published books his latest book is the coming of Neo feudalism Charles A contributed to forbes.com to the City Journal The Daily Beast Collette proudly edited by an Australian American Affairs real clear politics and unheard good International flavor there Joel uh just just first up the thing that strikes me about you you're not coming from a political or a philosophical extreme you I think you it would be fair to say essentially you're a pragmatic centralist yes and yet you're seeing really warm troubling developments that we need to be more alert to well I I tend to think of myself as something of a Fabian in the sense that not necessarily like Beatrice Webb but but a a person who says Let's see what works and if if if the if the social solution works I'm I'm okay with it if the free market solution works I'm okay with it let's just find out what works but I find astounding is that you have people who will defend policies as this is social justice I said but wait California is the epitome of social justice we have the highest poverty rate in the United States we have the highest level of illiteracy in the United States how is that Progressive but what we have is almost it's almost like a post-modernist world where what you say what your intentions are is all that matters as opposed to what actually happens now I happen to come from a background where you know my my mother was a nurse my father was a doctor and taught in medical school I always thought well you know I want to know what the results are if this treatment has bad effects I don't want to do it anymore but but it's not what your intention is it's what the results are and we have completely lost that aspect and by the way it's not just the people on the left one of the reasons the conservatives do so badly is that many of them are into this sort of libertarian ideology you know they don't care what's what the effect is on other people they don't they one of my biggest critiques on Libertarians are they want to have policies which will in many cases mean that people can't own homes because Capital goes in and buys all the single-family homes and either makes them denser or rents them out I said if you don't have a population of small homeowners and small business people you're going to end up with some form of Socialism in the long run because why should a young person who has never going to buy a house never going to make much money never going to get married never going to have kids watch that person do anything but vote for Bernie Sanders Bernie's going to give you rent control he's going to subsidize your education um why why would you vote for a conservative who's just going to keep you poor yeah well uh you read an article welcome to the end of democracy back in January and I commend it to people I really do you can Google it Joel Cochran welcome to the end of democracy a rising tide of money and administrative power defines the rising autocracy so can we give us can you give us a bit of a recap of your concept of Neo feudalism first thing what is feudalism so we Bandy so many terms around right now you're teaching a lot of young people most of them probably never heard you you have that you've got right I've I've been in front of a class and there'll be 30 people and maybe two yeah it's not their it's not the kids fault no no it's what they they come out of high school with so little knowledge I mean I've had students say to me well you know during World War II didn't we didn't we uh you know fight the Chinese I said no we fought the Japanese you know I mean and and again I think they're they're but here's where I see the parallels with feudalism and obviously you know the the you know there's nobody going around with chain mail and you know uh on on horses one you have the the concentration of wealth and power that was one of the Essences of the feudal era that very few people controlled pretty much everything no middle class very small struggling middle class with no rights particularly and then a few peasants right although there were a lot of peasants and they you know and they had also they had even fewer rights you also have the sort of religious fundamentalism now the religious fundamentalism of today is not Christianity although there are some who have that the fundamentalism is more environmental gender race those have become the new religions and and there's no room for Dissent you know the you know to have a a good discussion on what we should do on climate change is as unlikely as expecting a bunch of Bishops in 900 to have a discussion about the nature of of Christ I mean that's it's that we you know so there's sort of this inflexibility then this is interesting demographically um particular Western societies are all have very low birth rates and or in many cases are headed towards a diminished population that's also the Middle Ages we went through about a thousand years where the world population didn't even grow uh we might come to energy in a moment because of course energy has been a big part of what's Let It Grow right but can we unpack this is what really jumped out at me so there's some things you've been referring to there's this concentration of power and wealth at a time when most western economies productivity stalled real wages are have been flatlining or even falling certainly since the inflation for sure squeezing out those middle classes and the working classes but at the top so just some of your numbers uh you know I mean I think here we go five years ago you write around 400 billionaires earned as much as half of the world's assets half five years ago today only 100 billionaires earned that share and some estimates are that it's even less than a hundred and there's a surprising parallel China's much the same yes or more so oh yeah China has a China is now more unequal than the United States in a communist country where everybody's equal right and nobody has private property well of course that's not the case um the difference in China is your private property uh can be taken from you at any moment and you know we'll I'm sure we'll work on it too so this astonishing wealth how are they good for social harmony in a in a free country like America in my country like Australia you know when particularly the policies Joel we've been pursuing since the GFC then through covert let's not go into the rights and wrong zone now with climate all of them in my judgment create more and more serious problems for younger people and poorer people yes definitely if you take the GFC and covert it's very easy to see we were pursuing inflation inflationary targets that were designed there was a hope for inflation we couldn't get it free money everywhere cheap money everywhere it made the wealthy wealthier the poor and the young couldn't get a start uh covered you know we know everybody's documented how we've built up debts that young people are going to inherit climate change the policies that these squillionaires out of the tech Giants and those sorts of backgrounds that the policies that they are leaning on governments to provide in fact you would argue the government and and those squillionaires are becoming Inseparable that that's well that is the problem that's clearly what's happened but they count against the middle classes against young people against less well-off right but the problem is that they also control much of the media yeah um and now you have I mean and it's come out quite uh well recently that companies like Facebook and Twitter you know are in content you know direct con uh contact with the CDC or the EPA you know the environmental agency or the or the um the people in charge of with dealing with covid and they are literally censoring those things that the government officials don't think is are good I mean it's there's I mean and of course one of the more outrageous ones was obviously the hunter Biden thing which which Zuckerberg recently admitted he said we uh you know you know the FBI agents told us that it was that it was a uh it was Russian dis misinformation no it turned out to be completely accurate but so I think that the the problem is that that that what you've got is a Confluence of Interest now by the way the pleurisy and the oligarchs will have their fights that that will happen just like during the Middle Ages there were many conflicts between um the Bish even the Bishops and the Kings that's one of the constant tensions in medieval history well we'll see that eventually um right now the the those two classes have to work together because they they're United in their opposition to you know um to the Trump people and to the Republicans in general and and against a lot of the middle class but but the but the you know it's very very difficult to see how we're going to get out of this particular pattern because I think that that you know when you look at the control of media the universities the cultural um uh institutions it's pretty one-sided um and um I'm not sure if it's the same in Australia but I wouldn't be surprised trending in the same line very much so interestingly we have more kids in the private sector non-state educative sector 90 of American school children go to state schools as I understand it but that's that's also changing um a lot of a lot of growth in charter schools a lot of growth in in private schools a lot of growth and homeschooling um what does that say it well well what the polls will tell you if you look at Gallup the belief in the institutions is that one of the lowest levels in the history of this country um yeah certainly since Gallup has been doing polls they don't they don't trust the universities they don't trust the media they don't trust the presidency they don't trust the Congress and they don't trust big business um I mean that's and and now they're increasingly skeptical of Education um this whole business where we're trying to create um sort of standards in education that are that have to follow the party line if you will that's very very painful I mean I'm very proud that uh Chapman is one of the schools that I think is to a large extent stood up against that but you know it's a terrible tide and and you know when the older the older teachers are gone and the younger ones who've been brought up in the system inherited it will be a little bit difficult yeah the stats on on the Move in Academia amongst professors teachers academic staff from roughly half and half only 30 years ago of either side of the the sort of Centrist line politically to where it's overwhelmingly one side and it's a very different one so you know I mean I I would say a lot of a lot of things I would say I'm left I was certainly brought up left of center this is the value of your perspective you're not coming for either of those extremes right and and what what I what I see is that many of my friends who are liberals and and Democrats but are horrified by what's going on they're horrified by you know policies that are clearly hurting middle and Working Class People these sort of um the demand of Orthodoxy I was always I always thought you know it's a good thing to have a debate it's a good thing to to disagree once the the term the science is settled that is one of the more dangerous phrases you know science has settled as sort of like God has spoken except the science has never settled of course it shouldn't be settled I I mean I I remember my father um who you know who was you know quite a you know person of studying in the sciences and medical sciences and he he once said you know who killed the most people in the world doctors because he said what I learned as a as a medical student in Boston in the 1930s that stuff killed people we didn't know we were just doing things that we didn't know would have that effect so you change over time as you know and and we don't we look at things that aren't working like a perfect case that's very current and I think we'll be current in Australia you cut out all fossil fuels and you and you get rid of nuclear power then you decide that you're going to have everybody drive an EV what do you think is going to happen I had a wonderful discussion with a young uh guy who's a PhD engineering student at Stanford he called me he was asking me about EVs and then he and then he said to me I said well I said well what do you think about the energy side of it and he said I'm told not to ask that question really yeah we'll come back to EVS because I think it's another area where you can feel you've just alluded to it you can feel where the debate's going it'll be all left brain thinking it'll be automotively driven you won't be allowed to question it we'll come back to that just for a moment there's two other aspects of what you wrote In This brilliant paper that I'm suggesting to everybody that I haven't read it get onto it um one is that young people know how bad things are getting and and their parents know too yeah they do and it's very interesting for me I was talking to a scientist I respect in Australia recently and he said oh it's because yeah of course they're depressed I don't think Australia's doing anything about climate change so I went and talked to a demographer who our best and my judgment in Australia what was worrying young people it's a multiplicity of things it's not just climate change it's partly that we snuffle enthusiasm for Life Adam we tell them it's if this doesn't get you that's going to get you you've got no beard climate change is going to destroy you instead of saying Life's a challenge you're gonna tackle it but there's two things that that I just want to explore very briefly one is you make the point that many young people feel they'll never own their own home unless they inherit one right that's what that's at least in this country and um uh picketty and Thomas you know the the French Economist Marxist basically um he says same thing's happening in Europe Germany France countries even that have somewhat Social Democratic systems the same things are happening young people simply are unable to accumulate their own wealth so that the key now is you make your fortunes by the old-fashioned way you inherit it and in fact I actually racially quoted you you you've noted that in Australia it's particularly bad drop off in young people being able to afford homes oh yeah I mean and and and then of course there are other effects of that people don't own homes therefore their political views Change Plus family formation is a problem they don't have children I mean we're looking at drops in fertility rates we're just we look at them and they say you know you're talking about some countries down to like 1.14 and you know which is the replacement rate is about 2.1 yeah we're talking about countries being a half to a third of replacement brain and countries like Australia which used to be I here's my image of Australia I went to Perth once I got picked up by by the driver at the airport and we were driving along and said oh where do you live you pointed up the hills and I own two houses up there and I said that's a great country that it's a great country where a guy who's making his living with a chauffeur service is able to own a house and live in a nice neighborhood and that's what a Social Democrat should be looking at how do we make life look better and what's happened is those of us who are the old social Democrats Mike Lynn May uh Rory Tashara we're we we're we're no longer part of the democratic party because they're not really interested in those issues and the environmental thing is a key element of that because if you want to say it well really we should have less children people should have less space they shouldn't have cars and they should you know they should live like like like the good surfs that they should be pick that up in a moment because it's just one other thing here that that I think it goes to this heart of the squeezing out of the middle and lower classes you say that uh covert in particular but other economic policies are killing small business yes so increasingly it's it's it's the big oligarchs you know the tech companies the whatevers there's two comments out of that is that one is that the business sector used to be ballast right in healthy democracies uh like particularly the small property owning class yeah now you know the businesses that that would still be balanced economically and socially are being squeezed out a bit out of out of business uh you know they're disappearing but the billionaires they're not they're not ballast in our society many of them want to tip it upside down right and you've written about this I think it's an interesting point and I think you know part of it is you know frankly a lot of they're engineers and they just don't understand how societies work I have a good friend who uh was the largest developer of apartments in Silicon Valley and he said to me you know I've worked with oil companies I've worked with finance companies I've worked with all sorts of companies the group The Tech group is the ones who have the least understanding of the impact of what they're doing they have no they don't understand how human beings function how societies function and they tend to have this belief that there is a technological solution if you will and of course their value system and I write about this in the book their value system is well I'm smart I went to Caltech I went to MIT of course I should be telling people what to do you know they they you know so they they've been brought up in this in this system where they feel that they are you know in a way it's a parallel with in the Middle Ages where it was whoever was the best fighter whoever could win the most you know map battles and now it's the people who gain control over the internet and gain control of finance and with the concentration you know we have to remember there hasn't been really in the last 10 to 15 years a true Mega company Rising it's the same group of same five six companies and then there were the ones on the side that come and go you know and they have different um uh trajectories but but you the amount of control that a Google Apple Microsoft um uh you know uh you know well now it's called meta you know Facebook um these people have a degree Amazon obviously they have a degree of control we've never seen you know because our everyday lives are run by these companies the amount they know about us too it's it's unbelievable I'm building all the time and they'll soon be able to predict where you and I are likely to go next right who are likely to mix with next and what sort of meals we like and you know well when I sort of state of mind we're in I mean I don't know if you've ever seen like those uh little things that the Amazon has where you know people put in their houses and it follows you around or what sort of imbecile wants Google to know what's in my refrigerator I really don't want them to know yeah and and that's a scary thing with the young people now don't really have the value of privacy because they've been brought up in a world where everything is shared and I sometimes I'll talk to my own kids and I'll say hey you know what keep that to yourself you don't have to share that with the rest of the world you can share it with your friends you can share it with us you know I'm I am so reluctant to give out any personal information because you know that could be used against me and and you know it's frankly it's none of your business that that was and you know and as an American I'm very proud of you know our traditions and you know don't tread on me and and part of don't tread on me is what is private to me is mine it's not yours it's not yours to analyze it's not yours to take advantage of now Joe um to come to the whole issue of how we're handling climate um if I can nip right back to the mid 70s I'm a young Australian fresh out of school and I find myself sitting in lectures being given by an American very high quality teaching I've got to say I've no idea where his politics would have learned isn't that an incredible thing yeah I do I wouldn't know I wouldn't have known there and still couldn't guess now anyway it was an admirable American one day he said to the class do you know what life both ethics are life boat ethics none of us had any idea anyway in essence to cut to the chase it was the view of emerging cutting-edge uh greens environmentalists of the day that the greatest challenge to Mother Earth was that there are too many of us right and we would population bomb we'd have to cut our numbers and someone would have to make some very hard decisions about who stayed in the boat and who was thrown overboard and he said who do you think what do you think it'd be worse one of the ones to be thrown overboard or one of the ones who made the decision to throw someone else out and obviously you're a monster if you're going to make those sort of decisions why do I refer to that all that time ago I think we can see this emerging again with the absolute single-minded we've offended Mother Earth we humans are the enemy of the earth without Mercy you know we must sacrifice ourselves it somehow never seems to mean the biggest agitators for climate change as they fly around in their Jets somebody else is going to there's too many of us aren't we seeing a return of a sophisticated version of life but ethics oh yeah look what you have is a first of all this has been there for a long time you know if you go into the history of the environmental movement very early on it was the Rockefellers it was um the Ford Foundation it was the um the people who owned Fiat the ignelli family the the um uh the limits to growth I mean basically this has come from the from the high level and look I I've had quotes from members of the royal family members of uh you know Jacques Cousteau basically saying well wouldn't it be great if we had some sort of virus that killed half the population of the world I mean they literally say things like that or you know the idea that people shouldn't aspire to own a house and have a backyard I mean the whole idea is so anti-human now my feeling is if you want to deal with climate change and you want to have it work in the long run you got to do it in ways that people can deal with it over time you don't cut their electric electricity you you know if you have to use nuclear power you use nuclear power you you know you don't you push things like remote work so that people don't have to commute that's something that people like and you can and and and you you can I have real results but the problem is that it's not just an idea of how do we save the planet how do we reduce emissions California we've we did a little study on this with all our policies we've chased out so much industry and so many people that when those people move to Arizona or to Texas their footprint is much bigger than it was here because one thing is you know this is It's been hot the last few days but generally speaking we have a very mild climate and we tend to have relatively low usage so for instance if my wife and our family moved to Houston or carbon footprint would double right away because we'd have to run the air conditioner for six months of the year we probably would live in a more distant location up and and the the problem is that that that the what what has become is virtue signaling it's yeah you know it's not hey you know what it's better for Australia to produce cleaner fossil fuel energy then have it done in China but we don't make that because our goal is to prove that Australia reduced its emissions by X percent aren't we great well it's global warming it's not Australian warming you know if we could take care of the the the the climate change by what we did in our individual countries that would be a different thing but it clearly China is now emitting more ghg than the EU and the U.S put together and he's because I'm glad you say that because where's the critical thinking including I have to say amongst young people you teach them I made the point to a bunch of young people in Australia the other day that they're probably on board with the green thinking in Australia we should stop our extractive Industries right well while ever China is building 170 new coal-fired power stations in Indonesia and 56 and India 45 and Vietnam 11 they're trying to lift people out of poverty that's not a bad goal in itself same thing in Africa Africa South Africa in particular you're going to be better off exporting Australian energy you know not all of our coal is cleaner but most of it is then cold it's going to be used out of Indonesia or China and it was a novel thought to these young people I haven't thought of it like that well because you know they've been they've been they've been taught that you know and of course they'll make the point well the Western societies created the all the carbon and all that okay first of all climate change was happening before the carbon though it may have made it worse which you know I'm not a scientist but I I could accept that that may be a factor but you know um climate has been a formative uh thing way before we had cars um you know if you read uh Carl Harper's great book the the the um the fate of the of Rome he talks about Rome almost as if when there was the warm period Rome did great when it got cold it began to decline these things have been happening there's the little Ice Age there's a lot of you know other things going on people don't have the whole picture and they and they they have therefore they have a very simplistic idea like everything was ideal until this well there were things happening before you know there was this thing we had here in this country called the Dust Bowl yeah in the 30s in the 30s temperatures were hotter it was drier we had we had a drought here in California in the 19th century which was so bad that they were considering abandoning the city of Los Angeles because there was no water left there was a drought in Australia in the 12th century that went for 37 years really yes see scientists tell us now I don't want to sound like a climate skeptic a chain skeptic because I'm not it is changing I'm a farmer I'm at the interface uh you know of business right my livelihood or my family's livelihood and climate so it's important but it's the way in which you're not allowed to debate the way forward in the things that we've just said another classic example is that I think the International Accounting system's wrong so Mr Olaf um you know in Sweden thinks that because Volvos are no longer made there Sweden is doing better its numbers look better because Volvos are not being made they're made in China and then taken back to Sweden right but Sweden's getting a lopsided accounting number as I understand out of it because it wasn't made there still consumed there but that's that's also I mean what we have here in California is we've chased out industry but we still buy the stuff yeah I mean so consumption rather than production right right but yes it might be a better way of measuring it but I think the the definitely a better way of measuring it but but the problem is that you have um in a place like California you know you you what you do is you chase out industry this was what may happen to Australia it certainly happened in the UK they're trying to turn around now but once you begin to destroy your industrial base which includes natural resource Industries and even agriculture then there's no Lobby for those interests anymore that's what's happened in California outside of the tech industry there's the public employees and the tech industry nothing nobody else has any any influence anymore because you've you know you've taken a state of California which which had a huge industrial base and you've essentially gutted it to the point that it's a fraction of what it was and therefore there's no and you're you're a politician or a former politician recovering politicians a Survivor a Survivor that's right or you've been through the 12-step program but but but but the reality is that that that what you have is you don't have the lobbies like here in California Agriculture just doesn't have the power it used to have yeah and then you start getting things which I think as a farmer like first of all on the question of how you deal with climate change the main thing is you have to adapt you have to how do we best adapt I don't want to hear oh there's going to be this huge um surge in the sea level which you know so far has not happened but let's say it happened well then prepare for it you know if if you're gonna have to change the crops because the climate's gotten warmer maybe you plan something different what we're doing now I mean with this the part of this extremism you're being a farmer you'd be interested in this you know the whole war on nitrates yeah and then the attempts of in in the Netherlands in part from financed by Bill Gates to wipe out the the Dane the um Dutch agriculture industry you know the you know one of the most efficient Industries in the world is in in the Netherlands the Netherlands are particularly gifted in that area you you know you wipe that out now what Sri Lanka Sri Lanka is a great example if if yes you can get rid of nitrates but you're gonna have to then we're you know you're going to lose half of your productivity half of the globe's grain production is dependent upon that at this stage we don't have the alternative Technologies it's worth just recapping everybody's focused on electricity which we'll come back to in a moment in California it's pretty interesting scenario you're facing but electricity but you've got electricity you've got um uh ammonia which is fertilizer critical to feeding people in today's Technologies uh and you've got cement and you've got steel just one way of looking at it now actually cement and steel production will have to go up in pursuit of the Nirvana In the short term anyway right if you're going to build all these wind farms and what have you so there's a bunch of really difficult issues in there and you talk about the need to adapt I'm constantly hearing in Australia is though it's like as you said it's a pronouncement the science is settled or this is what the science says but policy is being formulated on the basis that the survey show that Australians 50 of Australians think we produce between 10 and 20 of the world's emissions tiny little Australia in fact in net turns it's 1.1 now it's coming down well it's like California where you know if California went into the ocean tomorrow it would have no I mean China's increase in the month is bigger than what California does and the point I want to draw out of that is that as a farmer regardless of how I feel about climate change I know I will have to adapt if I'm going to continue producing food prepared because our chief scientist has told us that nothing Australia does will make any significant difference but that is not the mindset that is not penetrated so people are thinking with a left side of the brain the emotive side of the brain if I can put it that way not the rational side which leads me if I can to California and you yourself have called the Democrats parties uh green energy policy here a man-made disaster uh and and in your own home state you're going to ban gas and petrol powered vehicles altogether by 2035 is that sale or ban you're gonna by 2035 you won't be able to but before that what's going to be really interesting is before that they're starting to say like it's got to be 30 EVS within like two three years well you're talking about five percent now so exactly how are you going to get 30 EVS in in this market um the the you know the bottom line is what you're going to do is I think the long-term uh policy is EVS will be an elite thing that will go back to the 20s when only wealthy people drove cars and the rest of us will either work at home use ride-hailing Services take the bus that will be all Alternatives that the days where you know a working class guy in East L.A could have a car I think that's that that's what they want to get rid of I now I personally believe that if you come to California in 2040 I won't be around but let's say if you go to California in 2040 you may it may be like Cuba with a lot of old cars that have been maintained for years and years and years I mean that's what that's the other thing is what's going to happen is that people are going to buy cars Pro you know prior to 2035 and they're going to hold on to them because particularly uh I would say the Japanese cars and the Korean cars they're going to last for 10 to 15 years yeah yeah and let's tease this out a little bit more uh you're getting warnings now texts coming up on your phone saying please reduce your value usage electricity you switch to a uh uh an EV Fleet the higher the numbers go right the more electricity you need and where's that going to come from well the problem or is it your point people are going to stop driving well I think that that's what they really want to happen for lots of reasons they've been trying to get rid of the gray beans the pleurisy yeah you know the you know a lot of the academic media you know non-profit Think Tank people so this is a bit like like like life but ethics they don't actually want to tell you what they really think oh no the great thing about the British greens is though they actually say what they what they think like you know the guy at the uh uh the guardian saying oh I really hope there's a bad recession will reduce um uh the emissions there's another crazy Brit wrote something about while the war is really good because it will slow the world economy you sit there and you say what are you what planet did you come from what were you ever brought up by your parents did they ever teach you any values you know that you're not supposed to you know purposely hurt people um I mean I was brought up from uh you know a family that me and my father was the first one to go to college and you know we we uh you know my mother grew up in in the slums of Brooklyn I mean as she said a crappy neighborhood then a crappy neighborhood now um and I was the the values I was brought up is I don't think about when I think about let's say climate how do I address climate change in a way that doesn't hurt people that makes it possible for for life to go on in a decent way and there's you know do we want to invest in those technologies that might allow us to do that but that's not the the goal of the environmental movement the goal of the environmental movement is is basically I think to amiserate the vast majority of people I mean it's they they would never think that they wouldn't they wouldn't say it consciously but that's what their policies are doing and they simply don't care a friend of mine Jennifer Hernandez who's an attorney sued the state of California on behalf of 200 civil rights leaders here um and Jennifer went to uh you know with Becerra who's now HH the health secretary which is God I'm just is our choice but anyway uh and she said well don't you think this is hurting the ability for instance of Latinos to buy houses because you have the policies where it's very hard to develop and and you know then you're acquiring business and this and he said well climate change is more important so you know literally the the fate of the working class and the middle class America is much less important to the environmentalists than some sort of virtue signaling and what's funny about it is the biggest reductions in ghd in this country have come from states that are actually fairly conservative and are um I and many cases energy producers but they've gone from coal to Natural Gas the biggest reductions in in ghg are called to Natural Gas yeah and but and and to give President Obama credit you know he never went against Natural Gas you know Steve coonan who was uh you know his advisor on energy he also said you know you want to have natural gas replace coal as much as you can you can do it you can make you could replace gasoline with natural gas yes you could and it might be better than electric cars it it would get you where you wanted to go faster that and and but you know what what's happened is you know and this is my sort of cynical left-wing uh way of looking at the world a little bit which is when I when I said well look think about all the interests that are now lined up on Wall Street in particular on green energy it's the great opportunity for them you can replace an entire part of the economy with a part that's not very efficient is very expensive but you know your guaranteed profits yeah at the expense of taxpayers right because of the subsidies a lot of it's rent seeking yeah unbelievable amounts of rents I mean basically I was talking to an attorney who works on these cases he says right now if you invest in green energy you're pretty well guaranteed about a seven percent return per year no matter what one of the most staggering things that I've seen uh Joel in my own country is and I suspect was happening internationally is that in my days in government any significant policy development even quite minor ones really which would have had Financial impacts would have been modeled to death before by Treasury and finance departments before they came along well you were in the cabinet so you know how that works it doesn't seem to be happening anymore at all ideology is pipping clear thinking yeah I think that's I I think of the policies like you know I'll give Jason Furman again who was the present advisor pres advisor President Obama he said this bill that they just passed and and then the the uh huge um College loan bailout he said you you're throwing gasoline on the fire yeah you're going to bring billions of dollars up without any production without yeah you know so you're you're going to raise the prices of of everything and you're not forgiving debt You're simply transferring it to someone else right well you know this is coming from somebody I'm not a climate change skeptic I'm a farmer I actually think apart from anything else fossil fuels in the end of finite we do need to pursue Technologies we do need to pursue Alternatives but the point is this if we do it in ways that we can and permanently damage our economies unfairly hit the poor although less well-off reduce food production what we're going to end up with is a massive transfer of power and influence and capacity to you know shape the world away from the Western democracies well you know I I Europe comes to mind at the moment I mean I always use this term when I talk about energy policy in China you know if you remember Muhammad Ali he had this idea of the rope-a-dope you know let you know let you know George Foreman or or Joe Frazier spend all this energy he's dancing around and when it when when they're tired he goes and attacks them this is exactly what China is doing they're they're allowing they're they're sitting there watching us systematically destroy our economy destroy our education system and you know the way we're going in in 30 years Europe and California will and Australia will be places where wealthy Chinese and Indians go to vacate you know that's what you know we will have essentially no real role in the world economy I look at the UK as a danger for U.S and I think also for Australia what makes Australia and the U.S stronger than the UK is the amount of land the natural resources that they can feed themselves um I mean look if the whole world trade economy ended tomorrow Australia and the United States would be two countries that would come out best is there well as long as we were still free to run our own Affairs right right but but all of that taken yeah all right but but now what we're doing is we're surrendering that yeah and we're allowing another country to you know in particular to essentially take control of the world economy and you know frankly I don't think Wall Street gives a damn as long as they make money I I really you know the the biggest Defenders of China right now are the tech companies and and the uh and Wall Street it's very sobering now in the face of these enormous challenges to come back to something we were talking about earlier I worry that we one way or another uh discouraging our children the ones we ought to be really committed to helping on the way yes and you're on the front line uh of educating people here at this University so yeah you've actually been writing about it a bit um you've recently documented an alarming trend of Millennials or those born between 1980 and 2000 effectively dropping out yes of Social and Civic life um that men in particular can you give us a feel for what you're what you're seeing and what you think might be driving it well I think some of it is a sense of hopelessness which is partially the climate change you know you I think globally it's like half of young people think the world is not going to be here in 10 years I mean you don't teach people history you this is not what the scientists are saying of course not even the gloomiest scientists predictors are not saying we're going to starve you know they're saying it's going to be rougher it's going to be wilder it might be harder down they're not saying it's going to come to an end that's the politicians in the media right and and and the tech billionaires right well you know because it's it's good for them you know so so I mean I think what's happened is we also have not taught the kids um the values of Western Civilization um you know um I was talking to a student the other day and she said well yeah I'm I'm going to take her class on Shakespeare but it's Shakespearean race and I said well don't you think you would first of all you're talking about somebody who never met a Jew never met a black person probably in his entire life because England at that time was uh as the Germans would say you didn't fry find uh you know the the the um Shakespeare has got so much more to say than to focus on that issue yeah and particularly because many of these students have never really studied Shakespeare no but we now have a situation where there are major universities where you can get a degree in English without having studied Shakespeare the guy invented the language I mean basically how I don't understand how you do it you know it's just like when I was a student in uh in Latin you know bizarrely enough um if you didn't reach Virgil you you couldn't possibly think you you knew Latin because Virgil was the leading poet of the of of the Roman period so what we're doing is we're taking from our kids all the joy and all the accomplishments yes there were horrible things that happened but you know what for every Jefferson Davis you you've got a Frederick Douglass you know you've got you know there's a lot to be very proud of in this country you know when people say well this is the hopelessly racist country I said you know what 600 000 Americans died over the issue of slavery basically and you've had a black president elected twice right and and and and African-Americans are very prominent part of the society can I put a really and this is not meant to sound defensive at all but it's a genuine question is there a country that a black person would have more opportunity in in the world today than in America well it all depends you know like suppose if you were very well educated African-American and you moved to Norway you know probably you know they'd be so happy to have you that it might do well but for the average African-American I think the African-American economy is about this you know size of sub-Saharan Africa the Hispanic population in the in in in the United States is by far the wealthiest population the African population in the United States is by far the wealthiest population and by the way Africans you know have done pretty well in in some cases in the UK as well you know there were you know so I I think that that what what we forget is yes there have been disadvantages but there's we've made such enormous transformation you know black lives matters never seems to obsess about some of the terrible things that are happening in places like Nigeria no yeah where many blacks live in Daily fear of their lives there's a proportion of a population it's tragically High the number of people who are not safe right but yes let alone have no economic opportunities I mean and that's why I think that you know part of what we need to do is we need to say hey look yes this country's had a lot of bad things that have happened over time but you know you had the experience with with the Aborigines we had the experience with the Native Americans I mean they're certainly and slavery they're terrible things but think about what this country is like now like you know I I said to my my girls I I said you know my kids you know I'm old enough to remember when I went to Virginia with my parents in 1960 but there were colored only hotels I remember asking my father I said what what is that because you know we didn't have that New York and when my kid said no that couldn't have been I said you don't understand you didn't see black people on TV you didn't see you know I mean the you know some of the sports didn't really uh integrate until the 50s I mean so but think about where we are now I said if a time traveler from 1960 came to the United States today they would be astounded by the diversity not just relative to African-Americans but Hispanics Middle Eastern uh Asian of all different kinds this is a vastly different country and it's got enormous potential so I want to at least make some positive statements you know I'm I'm working on a story right now for the the City Journal in New York about about restaurants that did well um out of covid and came out of it every single one is either Asian Or Hispanic you know and the and and then you you see what they're doing with their food where they're bringing in influences from Mexico and and and combining them with influences from the Middle East I mean they're just fantastic possibilities and a society like Canada Australia United States the UK you know to some extent New Zealand have this capacity to create a new kind of culture and but isn't that the point that were decrying the institutions of our freedoms partly because so many people have behave so badly that we don't trust them anymore but the democracies have been the systems that have been able to say even at horrific costs like the Civil War this is not right we've got to correct this and if we're going to give up on democracies being the best way to evolve change when something's unfair what are we going to resort to because none of the autocratic or the feudal sort of societies that you've been writing about ever work out very well for those who are at the bottom of the park and look where do immigrants want to go I mean it they're they're all going that they're going to you know they're going to France they're going to England they're going to Australia they're going to the United States are going to Canada you know because those are free societies and I sometimes find that my immigrant friends are much more aware of the value of this Society than the second third fourth generation yes you know that's certainly true in Australia yes yes they're often the people who'll say quietly when you get into a cabin the driver you know has been from Eastern Europe or something they'll just quietly say I'm really uncomfortable about something I can see where that's drifting why can't Australians see it and particularly if you're coming from Eastern Europe you're coming from uh you know some repressive environment and you and you start seeing the government starting to censor speech or or you know that that you know like during the lockdowns where you couldn't do anything I mean one of the the things that I think we we need to understand is that there is a resentment to all this against all this control it just doesn't have really a voice yeah I mean it's you and unfortunately the only voice that gets associated with that descent is Trump that's why that's why Biden is desperate to paint the entire opposition to his policies with Trump because Trump is the best thing that Democrats have going for them yeah but at what cost I mean the attacks on the Americans who have vented let's put this way as I see it Trump may have been a divisive figure in some ways but he was more the product of division I agree totally so no one will never have gotten that far Biden the president of Biden that seems to me if I can be so bold as an outsider has talked a bit about reunifying the country but he's just launched as we said here the most extraordinary attack and this has been he says it's only the mega Republicans but then the speech goes on to make a plane it's basically all Republicans well that's a huge slab of fellow Americans and the greatest irony here is that Democrats have been funding extreme Margaret candidates against moderate Republicans that's just Cur well I shouldn't say it's correct blanket that's corrupt but it looks pretty that's pretty cynical it's very I mean their hope is will run against these lunatic Trump eastas and we'll beat them now we what I'll end up is we'll end up with at least a few of those lunatics in the in the Congress just what we need is another group of lunatics back to the disengagement of our young people um this sort of dropping out this is the age of disengagement yes definitely uh my listeners will have heard me say this before but Lord sumption on one of these conversations commented that in the 50s and 60s in Britain the labor party and the conservatives between them had more Grassroots members and around 3 million Grassroots members today the Royal Society of birdwatches in Britain has more members in the political parties and in the countries where voting's not compulsory huge numbers just never turn out and particularly young people hardly ever bother well not hardly but many of them don't even register no look it's it's are they giving up seriously giving up on our culture yeah I think well I think that they're just disengaged I mean there are a lot of factors like everything there's many factors certainly one of them is social media you know that they're they're diverted into you know in in into this fake world and I'll tell you I'm working right now we're doing a big conference here on the metaverse um and you ain't seen nothing yet if you think video games and social media are bad You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet what's coming is infinitely more immersive now there may be some very good things that the metaverse can do but the metaverse is basically virtual reality the inventor of the technology was right from here in Orange County and then was bought by by Facebook and I I was on the phone with the guy who was doing their economics they're talking about trillions of dollars and basically what it is you put on uh no at least now you put on the headset and it's like a video game but it's much more immersive and completely engaging and you know the well the potential for whatever sort of fantasy you have is pretty overwhelming so the idea would be long term you're going to have a population which spends enormous amount of its time online I mean and and it's inexorable because the the the the the oligarchy companies have an interest in having you spend more and more of your time online because they make you know that's how they make their Fortune so the metaverse I think is going to be the big game changer it's going to be where we're going to where we're headed where we're going to see that you know where people spend the vast majority of their time online and it's because right now even video games are not quite that immersive I mean they are to some extent um I think you're talking about going in and essentially creating your own reality like you don't have to have kids you can have a kid in the metaverse well we know that um a big heavy usage of pornography can desensitize people and take them out of the capacity to relate to others properly right what does this have the potential to do in terms of just to intensively intensify that and make it more uh alluring um and so you're going to have all the adrenaline rush for the dopamine impact and so forth of intimate relationships with not another human inside right except artificial humans well yeah and then obviously down the road like what we're looking at here um is that eventually more and more things will be done by robots I mean I I you know you can see what the future that's being laid out in front of us is going to be like and the one of the very few advantages of being an old guy is that uh um I won't be here to see most of it that's a pretty sad thing to say if you're trying to fire up your students well you know I I I I hope that I think I I have more hope for them I think than that I think that that that if they're presented with a different way of thinking and you know I always tell them I don't care what your politics are I'm gonna grade you on how well you write and how you back up your arguments that's all I care about but think about the different the the different sides of things think about you know that if you do a it's going to cause B and then maybe you should still do a but you ought to know that they're going to be these negatives like you know this idea that you you're going to move let's say to electrical vehicles and everything will be great well that's you know there's going to be a lot of pain along the way that and basically you know particular people will feel it more than others but but they're but I I I still believe that ultimately young people are not stupid they're not I mean I find my the kids I teach they're actually they're smart they're technologically you know much better than me um they they know how to they they they they really I think there is this interest I I think the Z's the next generation will be better than the Millennials and I think the Millennials will become more conservative over time as they start thinking about buying a house or and look that's what's happening when we look at who's leaving California it's young middle class families that's who that's who's leaving because you can't buy a house here I mean how do you buy a house in a in a state where if you on the coastal counties you're talking about minimal seven eight hundred thousand dollars U.S for a very modest home in an area where if you have children you're probably going to send them to private school so you don't move to Texas for the weather you don't move to Texas for the food you don't move although there is some good food there but you don't move to Texas for for the topography I mean there's no question California is infinitely nicer than Texas I mean I'm sorry I mean there's just no way I couldn't possibly comment well but but I can't so but in Texas there's up still there's opportunity and in Texas there's some idea of at least some protection of your basic rights now the problem that Texas has is it has a far right that has its own agenda which isn't so great but for people when they're moving if I can move to a nice suburb of Dallas and buy a house for 450 000 instead of eight hundred thousand and I'm in an area where I can send my kids to the public school it's a kind of a no-brainer you know and what you do is you you know in the middle of the summer you go and spend a month in California final question you come from what you would call a pragmatic Center any thoughts on what might bring this country back together given that it's divided from top to bottom at the moment and that threatens its coherence and therefore frankly the liberal Global Order that it's overseen well towards the end of the second world war one of my biggest disappointments with President Biden has been that he didn't do that as you pointed out and he's chosen to become extraordinarily divisive even though he the the whole green New Deal like what are you doing you know why are you threatening so many people's lives why are you obviously there was not a lot of uh significant analysis of the fiscal impacts I think that there are politicians in both parties who conceivably can make could make a difference I I'm thinking particularly of junk in in Virginia uh Hogan um in in Maryland I mean there are several of these politicians who are out there and have been very successful it's just that the national media and the national um uh you know political establishment has been pushing things on the extreme like you know what I'm if I see a a republican who's willing to impeach Trump for January 6th I'm much more likely to vote for that Republican than a republican who's going to back a guy who clearly does I mean my sense with Trump is he's not a he's not a fascist you know he doesn't have enough coherency in his worldview to be a fascist he you know he didn't govern as a fascist um but um but I think what we are having is a kind of fascism but almost a sort of melding of feudalism and fascism but it's coming more from the left and the right but there is an element in the right that is scary I mean there's no question about it I mean what bothers me is liberals don't see the threat from the established government side and the conservatives don't see the threat from you know some from their far right they you know they just you have how do you take January 6th and dismiss it you know it it was a very serious issue you know talking about you know hanging the vice president that's pretty bad you know I'm sorry and there's no there's no really excuse there but I do think people maybe after after the the horrible uh secession of trump and then Biden maybe we'll find something different you know we've we've managed out of those situations before you know we um we very often even when the country's been very divided eventually we do find ways of of coping with it um and um you know the the basic constitutional structure is still very good um and I think people want stuff that works and then the question is how do we communicate that how do we get it like right now the problem is by someone like me I end up writing mostly for conservative Publications because the liberal Publications aren't going to listen to what I'm saying because it doesn't follow the party line you know this sort of stalinization of particularly the of the liberal media is pretty astounding I mean and and that's why you have people like Bill Maher you know who are saying hey look you know right now the the progressives are the most boring intolerant unfunny group of people out there it's certainly unfunny you know you're saying that in Britain well Britain's always been known particularly in Australia where we understand British human for their comedians they they they're genuinely funny people breaking themselves up some of them are literally leaving Britain they're saying there's no room for humor anymore well the same thing in this country you know try to try to watch a Woody Allen movie or a Mel Brooks movie or Richard Pryor movie those movies you can't you know they're they're gonna have things in them that that uh you know Dave Chappelle you know there's lots of these guys out there and you can't you can't say this you can't say that well humor is all about making fun you know I mean and and you you can't do that anymore and could you imagine Blazing Saddles being made today I don't think so ended you know Blazing Saddles actually you know Mel Brooks is very liberal and and the point of view is very liberal but it's funny you know and and and he makes fun of things that that are that you know that involve race the the humorlessness is just it's so terrible and what was the last time there was a really good comedy yeah well uh that's right I mean it's matched only by the mercilessness of the judgments if you accidentally sent off a tripwire yeah and no forgiveness and I don't know how any culture works you know the smallest culture or a family right through our nation works if you can't forgive and forget well and I think that's also part of the problem and sometimes they dredge up something that somebody tweeted 10 years ago or some you know or had a posting that was you know and look I mean young people do stupid things I don't think there's any of us older people who didn't do something stupid When We Were Young something that we're sorry we did or something we said that where we wouldn't say today so we're going to say Hey you know I'm gonna because I said something about you know gay people 20 years ago I'm a horrible person and therefore can't be you know it can't even be allowed in the Public Square that's the kind of world we're headed towards it's kind of world that it's up to us you know to try to stop well you make a magnificent contribution I recommend your writings to anybody who hasn't come across them really appreciate your time I've been very kind well my pleasure [Music]

Channel: John Anderson

Views: 80,654

Keywords: John Anderson, John Anderson Conversation, Interview, John Anderson Interview, Policy debate, public policy, public debate, John Anderson Direct, Direct, Conversations

Id: qitEnYvVZPQ

Length: 69min 14sec (4154 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 09 2022