DEBATE: Will China or the USA COLLAPSE first? [MUST WATCH]

Intro welcome to the J Martin Show where we dissect the greatest Minds in geopolitics and finance now what can carry you forward can also eventually drag you down this is a lesson that we see on repeat in both the business world and in geopolitics again and again and again in the rise and fall of Nations and we use that as a framework today to understand the probable outcomes of us and China competitiveness we step back from the hyper today away from The Sensational headlines and dive into what's real with my guest Richard wolf famed Economist and author I learned a ton in today's discussion I know you're going to as well this was a very concise and comprehensive Deep dive into the potential outcomes of geopolitics today between the East and the West I know you're going to love it here is Richard wolf enjoy this is J Martin all right here I'm with Richard wolf Richard it's great to have you on the program thank you for making the time my pleasure thank you so I want to U.S. - China Competitiveness start with a big question I'll leave it open-ended go whichever direction you want and then I'm just going to pull on some threads and we'll take it from there but uh a a popular speculation on my channel is people love to speculate about the outcome of us China competitiveness you do a lot of this in your writing in your work so we'll start with that uh what would you like to share your thoughts on that subject okay um I should begin with a caveat I don't really much believe in predicting the future um I understand it's an amusement you go to the amusement park and there's a an interesting person and you give them a couple of bucks and they tell you what your future will be and you enjoy and you have a good laugh if you start agonizing over what they just told you then you've misunderstood an entertainment for an actual capability nobody can predict the future I can't either what I can do and what substitutes for that and I want to put it on the table is I can tell you where things are going and on the Assumption and that's all it is that they will continue in the future sort of more or less like they've been doing in the past well then I can then tell you what will happen over the last 30 to 40 years we have been witnessing those of us willing to look at it uh we've been witnessing an absolutely unique phenomena the People's Republic of China whatever you think about it and I'm not really here neither to condemn nor to endorse anything about it but if you have eyes to see you will see Economic Development achieving things nobody thought were possible I I have a PhD in economics I got it as it happens from Yale University University in New Haven Connecticut it has a big program in Economic Development and I took those courses and I learned all that stuff nobody understood in those days what the Chinese were doing and in those days it was only the beginning and you could be excused for not paying all that much attention they were one of many very poor countries in the world who were trying to stop being poor countries in the world um Americans might have read the novel by Pearl Buck The Good Earth if you ever did read that book we had to in high school well you learned what the poverty was like it was for a Suburban kid like me it was hard to get my head around what that kind of poverty is like in the last 30 to 40 years the chines achieved a level of economic development that took several centuries in Western Europe and it took a good century and a half counting conservatively here in the United States we've never seen anything like it what the Chinese did was to mobilize borrow from the rest of the world no question but put all that together in a successful mix if your measuring Rod is econom IC growth lifting people out of poverty and let's remember 1.4 billion people four to five times the population of the United States they were able to do it not only that they now compete with the United States at the highest levels of Technology what we get from Intel or apple or you know any of the they have their equivalent and in some cases they're already ahead of us I'll give you an example 10 or 15 years ago every major car producing company in the world undertook a program to develop the electric car the electric vehicle to replace the fossil fuel burning oil and gas vehicle okay everybody did that and we have many examples of that being produced however one example outranks everybody else the electric cars of China are better and cheaper than anybody else's they won the competition that happens all the time just other companies in other countries at other times On's equivalent competitions the response of the United States has been to impose a tariff to make the better cheaper electric car from China unaffordable the current rate of tariff applied by the Biden government is 100% so for example if the electric car from China cost you $330,000 that have to be sent to China to pay for the car you've got to give them the the car dealer 30,000 to pay off the Chinese and another 30,000 100% goes to Uncle Sam so that the to an American would be $60,000 for that $30,000 car okay there are no electric cars from China on the road in the United States a quarter of the electric cars on the road in Europe are the Chinese cars the greatest producer the most successful the most rapidly growing car company in the world most Americans have never heard of it has three initials B is in boy why and D is in dog byd Corporation the response of the United States is to freeze them out this is self-defeating and to be an economist for a moment stupid why everywhere else in the world as the transition to electric vehicles is underway every competitor of the United States across all Industries will be able to buy the best car at $330,000 with which to compete with the American company whereas the American company is going to have to pay more than $30,000 for the non-tariff equivalent which will cost you40 to $50,000 for an inferior vehicle uh I don't know but when I went to school and they taught me economics this is somewhere between self-defeating and stupid and a little bit of both and since I come out of the American education system I enjoy telling people because it gives them something to think about that when I got my PhD in economics at Yale years ago my classmate was a a woman there weren't very many women taking those courses then so she you I remember her because she was unusual her name was Janet yelen okay she's now the Secretary of the Treasury in the United States government I know that she knows what I just mentioned to you is the case she knows it's self-defeating she knows it's stupid she's out there advocating it because that's the position of the government the United States is losing the competition with China I could give you many more examples if you wish this is a self-defeating Behavior typically of somebody who's desperate instead of out competing the Chinese coming up with a plan to try at least to do that you are you know lifting up the barriers they tell themselves in Washington that they're isolating the Chinese they're not they're isolating themselves and the rest of the world is watching in beused the Germans have a word for it called Shaden fo the rest of the world looking at the United States and they see an Empire going down and they get the pleasure that comes from that and we ought to wake up as a nation and figure this out okay okay thank you for that there's a handful of strings I want to pull on here uh first of all just a question for you about the rapid acceleration of Chinese development you referenced what the Chinese economy has been able to accomplish in a much quicker time than we saw in West than we ever saw in Europe and right away I got to wonder two things number one you know as we so China's Hybrid Economic System Explained to speak stand on the shoulders of giants we should grow faster and bigger than our predecessors and that's often been the case the Dutch Empire was greater than the Spanish Empire the British bigger than the Dutch etc etc so maybe that's sort of a factor of human nature and then because they were starting from such a low base I mean this is coming out of the century of humiliation in China the country had been devast stated a lot of folks in the west don't know but when America was fighting its Civil War and 600,000 people died China was fighting their Civil War and 20 to 30 million people died it was uh a scale that's very difficult to wrap our minds around and how devastating and violent that war was but that's the era that China was coming out of right and so it's a very low base which can make growth look a lot faster uh now I'm not like taking anything away from the progress and advancements of the Chinese economy but I just I wonder if that provides any valuable context Richard what are your thoughts well first of all I agree with you that is the pattern you you you and and thank God it's the pattern I mean do we want to reinvent the wheel all the time no we want to realize that people before us were smart and struggled with the environment and came up with new ways and better ways of doing things and I'm grateful for that happening but I must have I have to tell you is it Economist every part of the poor world and the poor world is the vast majority of Asia Africa Latin America for sure plus large parts of North America and Europe too but let's let's talk about Asia Africa Latin America vast majority of the people's World majority of the people's resources they are all terribly poor they all wanted 40 years ago to do something but the Chinese actually did it that's the that's the question that has to be did they build on what went before absolutely absolutely they did the Chinese for example and this is misrepresented in the west again for defensive reasons which I understand I even empathize but you know in the light of day you can't stay with it people say that the that the Chinese built on on the West's technology that's true of course that's true and but the Chinese didn't do that in any mysterious way 25 years ago they made a decision that they would say to the developed World whom they hoped to imitate United States western Europe Japan and so on we will give you a deal we understand your capitalists we understand that profit is the bottom line blah blah blah and here's what we're going to give you two things number one an educated disciplined incredibly cheap labor force and number two the biggest growing Market in the world look I I I'm a professor of Economics I've taught in business schools on and off all my life in a business school we tell budding young entrepreneurs if you want to know where to go and focus your energy go where the labor is cheap and the market is great growing okay uh they went to China and they went because they did exactly what we told them to do they made a ton of money that forced all of those who were not yet ready to do that to realize if you don't go to China too these guys are going to out compete you they're going to bring that stuff back made with cheaper labor and they have their own the Chinese market you know General Motors now sells more cars in China than it does in the United States the these are the developments and everybody wanted to do it but the Chinese did it and by the way I don't mean to single them out so much the Indians by that I mean the people in in the country called India the Indians uh they are doing a version of it not the version the Chinese and they can't quite match the Chinese yet but they are and the whole organization called The Bricks is an organization that is internationalizing the Chinese model and that too ought to worry the United States a great deal more than it currently does okay by the way Canada is a sad at this point from my perspective I'm not a Canadian I'm an American citizen I've lived and worked in America all my life but the Canadians are following the Americans in these behaviors and I don't think that's any any better for Canada than it is for the United States yeah I agreed I mean I'd love to go down that rabbit hole with you as well um before I have one more China specific question and then I want to expand globally a little bit but you know this does this give us um any useful examples because over the last hundred years we could see an example of a socialist system being the Soviet Union we can see an example of a capitalist system being America and then a hybrid system right a sort of Centralized vs. Decentralized Economies socialist capitalist system in China right and the way I've heard you describe the Chinese economy is along those lines and it made me think of this analogy I'll tell it to you you let me know what you think about it the Chinese economy is almost run like a corporation in that there's owners there's Executives there's Mana managers and there's employees and the employees work for the managers the managers work for the executives the executives answer to the owners but the employees don't really interact with the owners much at all meaning there's top down Authority for sure but among the Departments there's a level of autonomy that is allowed to function somewhat independently unless in extraordinary circumstances word comes down from the top so you have the ultra centralized socialist system which we saw did not work in Russia in that example we have a massively decentralized system in America and then this hybrid which is centralized decentralized to a point is that a accurate description and what's your what are your thoughts well you know here's my thought I don't mean to flatter you but you know if I if I were teaching in the University which is what I've done all my life you'd get a big a on your paper if you wrote that down that's right but I mean look what you've said here you have recognized that the 20th century bequeaths to us the American you let's call it the anglo-american private mostly private economic system private Enterprise private capitalist in all of that and Beque the Soviet Union the attempt as an alternative to build it with government owned and operated Enterprises at least in the industrial sector not so much in agriculture but but there too so there U.S., Soviet Union, and China's Governance Models Compared we have these let's call them for lack of better a polar opposite then it's not surprising given how human beings work that along would come a group of people who have something they don't like about the first one and something they don't like about the second one and so they conceive the idea would we get from a hybrid something that would capture the best of the one the best of the other and get rid of discard the parts of both of them that we don't like you could I think make a very good case that that's what maong the Chinese Communist part that's what they are people forget but they shouldn't that in the 1960s Soviet Union and their proteges in China came to war with one another I mean they did not agree on things that would make them shoot at each other's people and hurt each other I mean the divisions were very profound so no one should be surprised that the Chinese made the decision to welcome foreign Enterprise to say to them bring us your technology CU you are ahead of us in a dozen ways which they said if you read Chinese journals they've been full of that for years much of what those Chinese General journals did was to take from the United States and try to figure out how to do the same thing a little bit better but 90% of what they did was learn from the United States and you know and they paid for that in all the ways they normally nobody stole the T that's childish nobody stole nobody put a gun to the heads of the American companies that went over and made the deal we will give you our technology we will show it to you we'll teach it to you you got to give us the labor you got to give us access to the market we're getting profit out of it you're getting technology that was the deal that was a deal on the table crystal clear to represent it now is is really cheating it's like it's like my saying I'm going to give you $5 you give me your shirt and we make the exchange I now have five you have my five bucks I got your shirt and then I start screaming he stole my shirt no stop you didn't steal my shirt we had a deal you may have changed your mind you may regret it that's another matter but nobody stole anything from you the and the Chinese you know they resent that because for them and I've had these conversations for them that's the 100 Years of humiliation again because what they hear is the subtext you're too stupid you're too backward you're too Chinese to figure these things out and so you must have stolen it you could you couldn't have done it without you know we are the center and I know where it comes from for a good long while the United States was the center of innovation was the great breakthrough technology Silicon Valley deserves part China's Use of Western Technology of the reputation it has I get that but so do the achievements on the basis of that and if you're honest about Silicon Valley you'll know that a lot of what they did there was also borrowing things that had been developed elsewhere in the world as it has always been yeah and as as should be the case I mean that's kind of our role right is to learn and iterate and improve to make the world better when we leave it than the when we found it yes okay okay I do have one more question on China I I don't know if this is relevant but one thing I've been reading a lot about and I'm very curious about is you know how did the um the technological advancement reversal occur and what I mean is that we now think of uh uh the most advanced economies mainly being Western uh the greatest explorers in the world we think of people like Captain James Cook or Marco Polo or Christopher Columbus all Europeans uh but it wasn't that long before that in fact nearly a hundred years before Columbus set sail on the 3,000 mile journey to America there was a Chinese Explorer named Jong ha who traveled 10,000 miles from China to East Africa and whereas Columbus traveled with three ships and 90 men I believe Jeong he had 300 ships 27,000 men 180 doctors magnetic compasses Scrolls upon Scrolls of accurate Maps whereas Columbus quite literally had no idea where he was he bumped into a continent he didn't know existed and this is one of many examples of how advanced the celestial Empire of China was relative to Western economies but something big happened between Jeong he and and Captain Elliott arriving in guango during the onset of the opian wars something major shifted you have any thoughts on that Richard yes um first of all your history is is correct that the same sense I have and again it's something we find kind of often if you have a society that arises on the decay of another one one of the things that often happens is a kind of for lack of a better term chauvinism that is the winner in the game rewrites the history and in that history their own people their own communities are the dynamic are the Breakthrough are the are the are the and the achievements of others are second rate or they're downplayed and then it's not a big step until they're forgotten altogether so you know for me the example is baseball when I was young I was in love with American baseball and I was in love with a sport that I understood was white and I remember occurring to me why are there no black people in the baseball and the answer was they don't do that or they can't do that I I I was around early enough that I remember the importance of Jackie Robinson as the Breakthrough black player nowadays we understand that black people to be as mild about it as I can are very good at sports and are very important in our professional sports like overwhelmingly so and that they were now you got get the idea they were not out of the game because of their athletic skills there were other reasons and the same thing I think applies here if your economy is based in a certain way of making decisions then your civilization Rises and falls on that basis the collapse of the Chinese empires of the past were that they were built on to use the language of Economics a feudal class structure a class structure of Lords and surfs like what we had in Europe in the in you know in the Thousand Years between the end of Rome and the Renaissance or however you want to date it it doesn't matter but thatst system which enabled European feudal society to achieve remarkable things also was the seeds of their own downfall and why do I say that because it's directly applicable to what the China story China wants to cash in on all the achievements of private capitalism which are significant modern industrialization all of that but they are also aware partly because of their ideology that what can carry you forward can also drag you down and you've got to be careful to understand that possibility to be alert for it and not to miss it when it comes and here's how it came to United States and China we innovate in this country in so far and when it is Pro profitable to somebody to develop it somebody sees oh I can make a ton of money doing it this way or this new way we celebrate that we are proud of it and it achieved a lot I'm the last one to deny it I teach that material to my students what did the Chinese do they said yes yes but if you make that the key if the only Innovation program you undertake is the one that is privately profitable you are going to miss opportunities you are going to underfund Opportunities and it's going to drag you down we in China this how they explain it we in China say half the economy you do that private profit driven technological do it and we'll let you become million though after United States China is a second country in terms of the number of private Millionaires and billionaires that they have so they've allowed that to have but in the other half of the economy we're not doing that we're going to make decisions about Economic Development including technological change based on the social objectives the Communist party and its government Define so for example we want to be ahead of the United States in certain new areas we didn't have private Enterprise to undertake it who cares we'll do it we'll do it maybe the private will catch on later and they'll do it okay then we'll do something else but as long as we we're going to make decisions and there's the solution they are able to say we're going to invest in things that are Americans don't is it because Americans can't no do we lack the technology no do we have the scientist who can do it yes but we have an economic system that is so set up that those opportunities that aren't now privately profitable get the short end of their stick they're not they're not never there but they are the ones that we we dream about but we don't invest in they don't do that they have a holy you know when they talk they say is private is profit important to us yes is it the beginning and the end of the conversation oh no not the bottom line it is one among a set of objectives and our strategy is focused on all those objectives not the prioritization of private profit by the way that's what they mean when they say socialism that's what they mean right right again this is interesting I keep on coming back to the corporation analogy in the sense that like so you know I run a team of about 12 and I set the vision and the policy decisions and the big strategic decisions but I also understand that the more autonomy I can give my people the better we're going to do because my sales team is just going to have the best real-time feedback when it comes to product development my marketing team the same my production team the same because they're on the front lines and they know but also if there's not the balance if they made all the decisions on the sales team uh front for example we Chase today's income every sing every decision would come Lessons from China’s Corporate-Like Structure down to what can we convert today and we would probably abandon the long-term strategy because we're commission incentivized to get paid today right so it takes that you need that balance right of the the top down but autonomy granted and then striking that and juggling that's a whole other thing well I I I could if I could interrupt I could introduce you to a dozen Chinese strategists who would say what you just said in The Identical language that's how they understand what they're do and by the way they're poetic they talk about as I'm sure you know from your hands-on experience it's easy to say it but to navigate the differences between decentralized and Central to be sensitive enough to let the people at the bottom who have immediate knowledge act on it even if you're not so sure you can be how that's a very I mean either you're good at that or you're not but that's a people relationship they're full of that they're they're very conscious and they're very aware of mistakes they made where they by the way the mistakes they typically and I don't think it's very fair but they do it they say when we do things like you guys do in the west we make terrible mistakes right that's their way of saying we have lots to learn about the relationship between central Authority and decentral ized autonomy and and we're at the beginning of that process and we make lots of mistakes yes okay now now something you said a couple of minutes ago what can carry you forward can also drag you down right uh can you relate that statement to the American Empire in any way for me yes I mean more ways than I can then I could enumerate if we had you know 20 hours right now we maintain as a nation 700 to 800 military bases around the world no other country does anything remotely like that that is not just very expensive but that is also a kind of running the world if not by hitting people by threatening to hit people because we have troops and planes and bombs and missiles and all over right I mean right in your neighborhood and not for what are we doing well we we came out of a situation where we thought this would protect us and in some ways it did and even in some ways I'll Grant it does but you have to ask the question what else is it doing and the answer is it is defining the United States as the holder backer of what we are trying to do here in the ivory Republic in Africa or in Malaysia or in paragua it is the entity that's having a hold on the world trying to hold us back when the American uh naval fleet sits in the South China Sea you know a Stones Throw from Taiwan nobody cares about Taiwan nobody is fooled by this maybe a The U.S. Military’s Global Role few Americans who are naive this is not about Taiwan this Taiwan is not a concern for China either it's the symbolism of it all and it allows the Chinese whether you like them or not it's another matter it allows the Chinese to say look at them they are here threatening us because we are out competing them you know and neither you or I can resolve how honest or true that is it's got some truth it's got some exaggeration but we are giving them the in the the the ammunition if you like with which to characterize us uh in this way I'll give you another example there's an enormous opposition inside Europe to the war with in with Russia in Ukraine there are many many Europeans Pro capitalist anti- capitalist across the board who think that is the worst mistake of their lifetimes that struggle they are clear in their mind and I'm not arguing whether they're right or wrong I'll be glad to do that if you want but here where they are it's wrong they should never have done it it's stupid the Russians will win the ukrainians will lose end of story it's a waste of money and it is making the people of Europe Furious because we're cutting back social programs while we fund a losing war that we don't care about in the first place okay that you you don't have to agree with that but that's a real problem what are you going to do you had three elections in the last few weeks Britain France and Germany every one of those elections should tell you the same thing the mass of people are rejecting the conventional politicians you better be careful because if they're doing that there they're going to do it here too maybe Trump is halfway there already maybe what comes next will be more let me give you an example for 15 years you had the conservatives as the conditions of existence of the British working class declined over the last 20 years and they declined worse than anywhere else in the Western World the British the conservatives came up with the great idea blame the Europeans that's right up there with the United States today blame the immigrants are you crazy the United States is a country of 330 million undocumented immigrants in this country maybe 10 to 15 million people and among them the poorest people on the planet they are not going to shape the economy of 330 million that's childish that never happened isn't happening now and isn't about to happen but if people are upset enough and they are and if they've suffered enough and they have then they are vulnerable to being told okay so the British did it they left Europe with great Fair fair you know 10 years ago a little less 20160 brexit okay they have brexit their condition got worse not better which any any fool could have told them why because that's not your problem there are pros and cons about Europe that's another but the notion that by separating yourself from Europe you're going to solve your problems you got to be you you got to be crazy it's like if you stop the flow of immigrants across the border into Texas we're going to have you're going to make a freaking bit of difference this is childish but this is what people who are smart people do when they're jammed now let's look at France France has a middleof the road leader a nice young man so he hasn't got age as a problem Mr mcon okay in the National Assembly vote a month or two ago three major parties contested a left-wing party that's virtually fascist by Marina Le Pen the national front his own party the sitting president of the country and a Unity of four little leftist parties the French Socialist Party the French Communist Party the french green party and the and a French Socialist Party that takes the name France unbowed those four came together and you know what the French people did for their president his party came in third out of three mhm the number one party was a party led by a former member of the French Communist Party who is still a big leftist that's the largest political Block in the French assembly right now and then in Germany you had election it wasn't National the way it was in Britain and France it was in the Eastern region two or three um lender they're called in Germany they're like states in the United States roughly okay in those the right-wing quasi fascist party that has arisen in Germany and that that's an achievement man because Germany is where they had Nazis and Hitler so to be a right-wing you know to to salute with Hitler to have a swasa on your shirt is is it's something anywhere in the world but to do it in Germany amazing they came in first who came in second a relative itical unknown a woman Sarah vagen who is a Marxist has been a Marxist all her life was a fixure of the Marxist left in Germany decided to run on her own and comes in second okay what we're seeing here is a rejection of the status quo on a massive scale you got to deal with that and none of them are you know what Mr starmer the new head of Britain his first two acts as the new labor party prime minister he's cutting fuel assistance to poor people in England as they face the coming winter where they are desperately in need why because fuel has gone up in price why because the British can't get their hands on Russian oil and gas which is the cheap way Britain has heated itself in wintertime so they can see real clear the connection with Ukraine and Russia on the one hand and their own suffering and you know what else Mr starmer said is besides saving money on giving fuel Aid to the poor he's going to give more to Ukraine man this is the end for him Economic Consequences of Brexit and U.S. Isolationism to the end for the labor party they are creating a situation where the British working class is going to finally figure out that relying on the conservatives and the labor party back and forth between these two is not solving their problem and why am I telling you this because in the United States we are in the midst of the process of our working class reaching the same conclusion about the Republicans and the Democrats this is holding back these conflicts play out Britain is a is a basket case economically and becoming more so they don't even address the problems they have they are so caught up in not being willing to face their real problems and make the changes the Empire is gone and no matter how pompous the inauguration of their new King Charles it doesn't make it more than a piece of Hollywood Theater Okay so so if man I want to I want to select my thread here to pull on quite quite a few it's Buffet here so let me go with this I have heard from a very small number of individuals like maybe George fredman of geopolitical insights you know he's very bullish on America and he describes the rise of populism the division which you alluded to uh in America as growing pain of an adolescent Empire he's like this is traditional American Rage the protests and riots you see in the street even down to that even down to the violence this is a consequence of a free economy that can express themselves in the street and we're going through some very severe growing pains right now the other side of it is the brightest days of America's future um now you can step outside the borders of America and say well look at the recession of uh you Empire influence right and you know the way that China is sort of co-opting the global south or you could say the global majority I mean that's who lives in those countries and the most favorable demographics by the way uh in those countries as well but maybe back to George fredman's comments about uh this is not the decay of the American Empire these are growing pains of an adolescent Empire and we're still young in our journey what's your take on that Richard well you know it's partly what I said at the beginning of this conversation I I can't engage with George Freeman or anyone else in speculations I mean he has every right to imagine where this could go he imagines it that way right I don't see I don't see that if you say to me is that a possible story yeah yeah it's possible maybe maybe I will you you and I will have a conversation X years from now and you'll remind me and I'll say you know you were right I was wrong that's is it possible sure sure right we all do the best we can but I the notion the imagery of the Adolescent I wish I wish I could buy into that I don't see I I see the behavior of of old I see the behavior of old mechanisms held on to you know the Chinese a year ago began to deliver around the world a statistical result which the United Nations endorsed doesn't mean it's true or anything but and it it went like this over the last 10 years we have raised 800 million people out of poverty here in China their average income went from X to y y is higher than x by enough to say they are no longer in poverty they are in modest or whatever the terms are that the you uses okay it doesn't matter whether it's exaggerated or not probably is but you know who knows but it's the right thing to say it gives them the word that the rest of the world the overwhelming majority of the rest of the world is most interested in how can we do that let me give you a statistic just to try to help people get a handle on it I recently was invited to give a speech to an organization in losos Nigeria and in order to prepare for that speech and what they asked me to talk about I went back to reacquaint myself with this example of Africa in relationship to the United States and I did it because Nigeria is a very important country in Africa one of the most important maybe the most important in Africa okay here's a one minute summary the population of Nigeria which will amaze people is 220 million people okay that's 2/3 of the United States in Nigeria MH we are a country we the United States now is a country 50% larger than Nigeria we have 50% more people roughly okay what is the GDP the gross domestic prod the total output of goods and services achieved in Nigeria in one calendar year recently on 2022 2023 whatever I could get half a trillion dollars so about 500 billion dollar give or take what is the GDP of the United States recent year H 22 23 trillion okay that means that while the United States is 50% more people it has 50 times the wealth of Nigeria now I don't think that's a sustainable arrangement for anybody no matter what your economics are or your politics or the ideology or anything that's not sustainable you cannot especially in a world where those 220 million are in a position which they are to learn all about the difference but this is not going to work and indeed the proof of it was that the people who invited me to speak there believe that and that's what they wanted me to talk about cuz they find it intolerable and they're upset and they're bitter and they're angry or they're you know a good number of Nigerians leave Nigeria they don't want to but the difference between the life they can lead in the United States or Europe or someplace else is just so enormous that for their husband or their wife or their kids look I understand all of that my parents are refugees from Europe they came to the United States to survive and to do better which they did but it's not sustainable you got to do something you cannot fob that off but in fact that's what's being done neither Europe nor the United States is addressing this qu just doesn't do it gives them verbalism give them noise just noise the Chinese are everywhere Building Bridges erecting schools you know it's just it it's amazing to watch and we're making it like let me gold your audience we in the west we are making it easier for this to blow up in our face this selfdefense of pretending this isn't going on is killing us you know it's just you watch it's like watching a slow motion train heading into a stone wall you want to scream at the people on the train stop the train get off the train you you have the power you can do it pull the brake yell at the conductor do something but they're so busy partying that they don't recognize what's happening I think the Nigeria example is uh very important because it brings us from my perspective back to the front end of this conversation where we talked about China's Ascent over the last hundred years how quickly and how successful that's been and when you look at Nigeria uh you know and the GDP you know 50 times larger in America we're kind of like obviously like Nigeria's a mess right like but also the way to look at that is like massive upside potential right massive upside potential and with the investment access to uh cheap technology consumer goods which China will continue to provide uh those are the demographics that make those Quantum leaps when the stars align and they very well might I want to I have question if I yeah here's The Potential for a Multipolar Peaceful World an example that might crystallize it in people's mind if you go to losos you will see large huge it's one of the great cities of the world it's an enormous city right I'm going to exaggerate but not by much everybody's working with their little apple telephone that telephone which is making a lot of money because you can sell that to those people they save up because for them it's an enormous expense but it's also a window on what their economy doesn't have yeah it's a window on everything the Chinese want to get across to them you can see that by giving them that which is profitable so we do it you are also giving them an appetite for being critical of profit and you have to understand that you can't pretend it isn't happening and you can't wave your finger and say it oughton to cuz those are empty gestures they do nothing the reality is the people of Nigeria are in the process of figuring out and I can assure you of this the questions I got at the end of my talk were brilliant those people understood what I was saying and a lot more and peppered me with very good question they want big changes you're not going to fob this generation off maybe you could with their parents they said that about their own parents but not them and I and I can see it I can see it all over the place that's interesting okay so there's a lot of conversation on my channel and many of my peers channels about the first question I asked you which was let's speculate on the outcome of China us competitiveness a lot of this conversation Trends towards War there's a bleak Outlook a lot of hyperbole a lot of sensationalism and a lot of analysis look at the current hot conflicts in Europe in the Middle East as precursors to World War III that's what's next now maybe another way to look at this and I'd love to get your take is thinking Parallels Between U.S. Independence and China’s Rise back to when America fought for their independ from England horrible time for the UK and very disastrous economically I think inflation hit 30% at the beginning of the 19th century in England because they lost a big chunk of their economy the British East India Company had invested so aggressively in American cotton plantations and y y y horrible situation fast forward not that long and America becomes England's most important Ally and is probably the reason that uh the UK didn't fall to Nazi Germany because americ was able to come to their defense now short-term pain long-term gain that's my point I guess as we move from a unipolar world to probably some kind of a multi-polar world is a scenario like that at all likely or are the East and West too ideologically different for an outcome like that like is there a mutually beneficial outcome here that is being ignored because the optimistic headlines never get read people want to know about war and crashes and catastrophes uh when maybe there's actually a productive outcome that is more logical and probable but nobody wants to hear about that what what's your take I'm on the side of there is a better solution there is more logic there is greater probability I don't even mind being accused of being an optimist if that's what if that's what someone wants to say let me explain to you why though uh why I feel that way and I'll pick up on your on your history the British Empire or already beginning its decline its peaking at that time the time of the American Revolution the time of the French Revolution the time of the fact that basically Napoleon ended it even though they finished him off he also ended them there was an attempt by the British to prevent the United States from becoming what it had the potential we now know to do it fought a war and to its own amazement it lost the war of 1776 and they tried again in 1812 we had another War again with Britain again designed to crush this newcomer and the British lost again and they concluded after those two Wars that they weren't going to get the problem solved militarily to make a long complex story short they said if you can beat them join them work something out that allows them to grow and allows you to survive and to grow in your way you as a young economy you as a more mature economy it's not in coincidental that it's a very few years from the War of 1812 to the Declaration of the Monroe Doctrine when the United States says okay we're now one of the big players the Latin America the Western hemisphere is ours it's our Colonial backyard and you Europeans you can do what you want in Africa Asia but not here we we that that's ours okay that that's the assertion we have a deal we're going to get our Colonial needs met over here you do your worst over there we won't bother you there but you can't bother us here all right that is an arrangement and that avoided another war between the United States in Britain who could become allies who could even survive the embarrassment which is what it was that the colony became the master of the master of the colony that literally the roles got reversed and and we now look at the British as quaint because we're the power and they are the afterthought they pretend they're not but everybody who so here here's my my The Future of Global Competition and Leadership answer I think there are very basic similarities between the United States and China which I would be glad to tell you about and those are more than enough that a comparable deal could be and should be worked out new nuclear war war is not an option unless you're lunatic and I'm assuming that the prevailing mentality in Washington in Beijing and everywhere else is not lunatics I may be wrong about that I'm certainly I'm not privy I don't have any inside information but I'm I'm hopeful that the nuclear war option I'm also and I say this as an America Americans don't understand what what terrible War war is they just don't they've never suffered being on the losing end of a major war fought on their own territory the Chinese have the Japanese have the Russians have the Europeans have and I could go on but we haven't in World War II bombs fell in Hawaii at Pearl Harbor and never again no American city has has ever gone through that we've the only time I ever went to a bomb shelter was when I was a student in my public school here in the United States and they taught us how to get under our desk in case there was a bomb which none of us understood and thought was a funny game it's not a re and when Americans talk about war there's a Bravado that sounds like a bad cowboy movie in which you know you see the shooting and then when it's over everybody gets up and goes and have a cup of coffee or a beer you know it's not a real trauma that settles into the Consciousness you know I grew up with my grandma every time there was a loud noise in our bedroom and we were very safe and secure my grandma jumped why cuz she had been in the war in Europe and a loud noise you know it's like a soldier who comes back from the battlefield and and has to takes years or a whole lifetime to disconnect from the anxieties buried in them so my view is here's what's similar the Chinese never broke not yet from the capitalist commitment to organized production in a particular way and that way has a small group of people at the top you spoke about it earlier we both did they make the basic decisions they decide basically what's going to be produced how it's going to be be produced where it's going to be produced and what is done with the revenue and the rest of the people are employees and they have the Monopoly of the power do they share some of it sure they do especially if they're smart they understand but they that's where the power is and that's where the wealth accumulates because they keep whatever the net revenue is a disproportionate amount for the owners and the top Executives and all the rest the Chinese don't all that different but they do substitute State officials so that is very different but they ironically are going to have a harder time maintaining that system than we in the west because we have the IND ideological rationalization of it all we teach as I have done all my life in the University that this capitalist arrangement is necessary is efficient it it's all a complete and I teach it but I know that it's non I know what I'm doing I'm teaching an ideology this is like teaching a catechism in a Catholic school if you know or or any other religion I don't mean to pick out Roman Catholicism I know that we're teaching an ideology that rationalizes that the problem in China they teach an ideology that doesn't if you you open up Marx's Capital which they teach people to do Marx is all about there's another way of doing things ladies and gentlemen and in this country we call it a worker Co-op it's a horizontally organized Enterprise it's a community that decides democratically what to produce how to produce where to produce and what to do with the revenue that's an all that's what Marx was talking about and that's going to be on the agenda one way or another there and the year and then the real question becomes how will these two systems engage and struggle with the challenge that's coming from below and the irony which I don't think is far-fetched is that they have a lot to get together on they don't they they're afraid of that they're afraid here in one way but they're afraid another way there and that plus the threat of nuclear war is more than enough to be able to do together now what Britain and the United States did back in the 19th century that's really interesting and okay so and I know you have to jump I know we're out of time here you know where this where I land at this moment is you know what's the bridge from here to there and I I come back to like well you know leadership that is uh dealmaker leadership maybe that's how I'll put it and just because you you mentioned Canada at one point and we're in our own little mess up here what Canada really needs in office is a dealmaker that's it we are rich in natural resources uh we need a leader who gets the bureaucracy out of the way and allows the provinces to take their product to Market should they see fit and help us get deals done we need a dealmaker that's it right country is bigger than America with less people than the state of California like we don't need that much governance to be honest there's not a lot of people here we don't have the tensions that you find in many other countries what we do have as resources and you need that Forward Thinking dealmaker to come to power in these Western economies to see the bigger picture and the potential future outcomes but you know here's the irony and I do have to go here's the irony it's it's conversations like this that are the only hope they will generate the thinking the questioning that will produce those kinds of leaders they're not going to happen otherwise where would they get it from the the institutions of the United States and of Canada because I'm familiar with those they're stuck in ways of thinking and conceptualizing that had their role to play had their usefulness had some achievements to their credit no question I'm not you know I'm not a Monday Morning Quarterback figuring everything out retroactively but I am able to say you don't have the leader and we don't either in the United States we don't have anything close to it I don't all du respect to Mr Trudeau I see nothing nothing I see nothing and I I look at Mr Trump and I look at the Democrat I see more nothing I I I see people who are cheerleaders for what we have because that's what flies you know to a public but even that public for whom this is done it it makes me feel like the people who beat their children and say it's for the children's good yeah I understand that makes you feel better when you hit him but you know between you and me don't hit him is my reaction Richard this has been absolute pleasure I was really looking forward to this conversation and honestly it's it's been a blast so thank you so much for taking the time and coming to chat with me today my pleasure and if you want to continue the conversation at some time get back in touch with us I'd be glad to do it 100% we'll do that all right oh [Music]