It's important to know these things. I guess or so I keep telling myself,
not what your country can do for you, what you can do for
your country. Mister gerbatchaf tear down this wall, read my lifts. Either
you were with us or you were with the terrorists, even if they've never
been on TikTok. Your trackers are embedded in sights across the wind. TikTok
surveils us all and the Chinese Communist Party is able to use this as a
tool to manipulate America as a whole. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long
and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lilas and the day we talked to Nick Ever
said about demographics, Russia, China, what's next? Let sabrisels a podcast.
We never get bored. Welcome everybody, It's the Ricoche Podcast Nuver six
hundred and thirty five. Why don't you join us at ricochet dot com.
Go there now, take a look, and you're going to find the site
you've been waiting for all your life. It's been there for decades, two
decades, stretching into the mists of history and hopefully going on into the years
to come. Because people like you will join and also joining me now me
being James Lelex here in Minneapolis or Rob Long in New York, I presume
in Peter Robinson in California. Gentlemen, Welcome, welcome, welcome there.
We are coming to the end of the month, close to it, April
Spring Beckons and the glorious site of a bipartisanship agreement on TikTok TikTok of all
things. The CEO appeared on Thursday before the House Energy, Well Energy,
and Commerce Committee to perhaps fend off a regulatory crackdown. However that may take
form shape. They may have to spin it off into the Texas Project it's
called. They may have to be more transparent about whether or not they're actually
in coo hosts with the people who are putting we years in camps. If
you saw any of that, gentleman, what did you think of it?
And are you heartened or dismayed? I know Rob doesn't think that TikTok should
be banned at all. He thinks that's a bridge too far. So well,
well, I guess what I what I feel like is that it's um,
it's a lot of theater. I'm not sure I know what it's supposed
to do. I'm not sure that TikTok collects any information about Americans that Amazon
and Google and Facebook and all those things don't. I mean, before you
go any fire, can you tell me one critical difference between TikTok and those
companies you just mentioned. Well, yeah, I mean TikTok is you know,
TikTok reports to the Communist Party of China, Right, It's also a
huge American hedge funds one giant pieces of it. Depending on how you look
at it, the data is the data, where the data is kept is
look. Look. I think that being more careful about where our data is
it is probably a good idea. But the idea that, amongst all the
threats that are reat in America an American sovereignty today, that we should be
I think wasting our time with the trivial triviality of TikTok is kind of silly.
TikTok is dangerous to American children because social media is dangerous to American children.
American I cus are going down, not up for the first time ever.
And so but I wouldn't I wouldn't say TikTok is uniquely more dangerous than
Instagram or Snapchat or Twitter for that matter. I mean as somebody who I
mean, I'm familiar with all of them. I'm not a big fan of
them. I guess Instagram I like as I'm old, but the actual I
mean, to be quite honest, the the supervision on TikTok is better than
the supervision on Twitter. Twitter is a pornography delivery device. That's what it
does. Now, it's porn. You don't see porn on TikTok. There
are words you can't say on TikTok um, so we have to be careful
about. I mean, look, I hate to try answer to but my
answer to brother Rob, my answer to Brother Rob is this nice try.
The distinction is that TikTok reports by means that we that are not necessarily that
are that are difficult to outline because the Chinese want them to be difficult.
It reports to China. It's owned in one way or another. The ultimate
authority is China, and the ultimate authority in China is the Chinese Communist Party,
and fools that they are. They proved it by announcing just before the
hearings were to begin, I believe the day before the hearings were to begin
that they the Chinese Communist Party would oppose a forced sale of TikTok, meaning
they feel it's theirs Okay I found yesterday heartening. You can say, and
you are right, that there are worst problems addressing the country facing the country.
But it's a sloppy democracy. Democracy is always sloppy. One of the
rare areas of agreement, one of the real bipartisan places of agreement is that
everybody now recognizes that China is a threat. Cold War two has now begun
in Ukraine. It's an old fashioned proxy war in one way, Ukraine is
our proxy. Russia is now China's proxy. This has gotten serious. Nancy
Pelosi. I will give you a long list of charges against Nancy Pelosi,
but she is opposed to China. She visited Taiwan to put a thumb in
the eye of the Chinese and Nancy Pelosi's Democratic Party rex sis TikTok as a
danger. And because there's a lot of theater. Of course it's half eggnor
and so forth. But because there is a bipartisan consensus on this, Dan
Crenshaw thanked the CEO of TikTok for bringing Congress together legislation of some kind is
very likely to come out of this. I think, so China is bad,
It's really dangerous. And if the way of standing up to China involves
a great deal of silliness, so be it. Okay, I agree with
most of that, except that my concern is that it doesn't it doesn't go
beyond the silly and the window dressing. Our entanglements with China are so deep
and so complicated and so dangerous. And I agree with you about the danger
that to focus on a social media application, which by the way, doesn't
have that much data that's useful to the Chinese, isn't right now a purchasing
platform, unlike Instagram. Seems like we're going to exhaust ourselves the way people
in Congress often do with a trivial matter, and not get into the deeper
stuff like the continuing number of American businesses that do business in China, the
continuing dependence on Chinese capital, the continuing dependence on Chinese electronics and component manufacturer,
or the hearing that was taking place at almost the same time in a
different hearing room on the defense budget, which is clearly inadequate. The defense
budget is the usual little increment over this overwell, you spent last year's of
vast sums and they're sat the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joys
Chiefs saying no, no, no, no, this is plenty for China
for standing up to China. No problem, that's serious. I agree that's
serious, and it wasn't being taken seriously. And that's just defense. What
I mean the commercial entanglements that American business, in American commerce has right now,
and it seems to me that you know, there's a certain amount of
that. That's that's why I don't I'm not arguing that TikTok is not a
threat in any way. I actually feel like TikTok is more of a threat
as it's because it's part of a social media tendency which has been dangerous and
has been you know, kind of cretinizing a lot of Americans. But I'm
more concerned with what with how we get financial the large financial institutions including insurance
companies, electronics, component manufacturing, virus and medical research facilities, and how
we disentangle commercially from China. I don't see a path to standing up to
China, to holding it back from its ambition to be the regional hegemon.
As they say, I don't see a path to do that as long as
we are this and meshed with them economically. That is the difference between Cold
War One and Cold War two. You have hearings like this in order to
sort of set the stage for introducing more people to the idea of unmeshing.
There's already a lot of people who post pandemic thinking about wait a minute,
Okay, I've been coasting along on this nice, gauzy, warm, humid
breeze for all of these years, thinking that we get and we get involved
with China. They liberalized, they get rich. They're not comedies anymore.
I mean, they're really not comedies anymore. They call themselves comedies. But
come on, with all that commerce and all that money and all those skyscrapers,
it can't be comedies. And eventually everybody's going to get along because they
need us and we need them, and we got some cheap goods and that's
great, and they're getting richer and all. Well, it doesn't work anymore
for a variety of reasons. Is I think we're going to hear in the
rest of this show, so a lot of people post pandemic, all of
a sudden had a twig snap in their brains say, wait a minute,
this is not working out for us. All of a sudden, they were
the guys who sent this thing here, whether inadvertently or not. I think
it was inadvertently. They're the guys who lied about it. They're the guys
who made it, probably with funding from our inmeshment here. They're the guys
who bought up all the cop They're the guy, wait a minute, can
we maybe not can we maybe start making some stuff ourselves? And that's no
longer a small little crazy adam floating around in the body politic. I think
a lot of people are looking to re shore or to reposition. People are
happy when we find that, oh they're building in India, they're building in
Vietnam. That's good. Let's have some more of that, because China is
not our friend. So what do you do then to amplify that idea amongst
the people who pay a lot of attention. Maybe you show them exactly what
this little thing in their hands is doing. And I agree with Rob.
The problem is not TikTok as much as it is the criticization. Great word
of what social media has done. Every time that you see a mob of
youth in a McDonald's or a target or a shopping mah god, start to
attack somebody. Half the people are landing the blows on the other half of
their cameras up black mirror style, holding it to get it, to put
it on world, start to put it on TikTok, to immortalize this great
moment of mob violence in order to get themselves clicks and light. These people
are lost, that generation, that part, that element of society is lost.
So I don't think you can train them to think that this is all
until they grow up and realize it. Maybe that is in a way that
you behave. But something that says, this device in your hand is doing
something to you. Snapshot, Yeah, I don't know you snapchet Twitter the
porn deliberty device. You know, it depends how you follow it to pop
up in my feet. I get mostly news and the rest of it.
But just talking about the actual I'm talking about the the the aggregate, okay,
media delivery on Twitter. But TikTok is different in the sense of that
is there a TikTok in China? No? There isn't They have a completely
different, separate app for that, and it has different algorithms, and it
has different instructional purposes. It glorifies people who go to school and learn their
lessons and learn math and the rest of it, and instills into them,
you know, Middle kingdom superiority, the one that they god for us,
seems to have an algorithm in it that services the craziest stuff. And so
we keep having this, this feedback loop of insanity that keeps amplifying until the
more and more you get jaded, more and more and more and more with
this little destructive device that preaches nothing essentially but pranking and anti social behavior.
And I mean, yes, there's all the other things that people use TikTok
for, but is it a societal destabilization device at its worst? Yeah?
And if you'd gone back forty years and said, I predict the future in
which a communist nation will put into the hands of our uses a glowing grass
glass rectangle that will break down their social ability and we'll be powerless to stop
it, it would have been paranoid, coldware nonsense. But now we kind
of shrug and say, what are you going to do? And besides,
we have bigger problems. We can walk and chew gum. We can separate
TikTok from its Chinese elements, do something about what it amplifies in the you
know, in the name of providing an alternative to people. That isn't this
bread and circuses in the palm of their hand nonsense? That is correct,
none, that's not going to happen if we get rid of TikTok, right,
I mean bread and circuses? Is Snapchat? I mean Snapchat's in an
American company, and it's just as just as addictive and just as weird,
and just as all those things they're They're a little bit friendlier. They don't
have an entanglement with the Chi coms, And I understand that is an issue,
But I'm not even arguing that we shouldn't be concerned about it. I'm
just we should arguing that there are other the other the device that you're looking
at this software on is the to me, let me finish is a bigger
problem than the software that you're using. The device is manufactured in China with
uh in Chinese factories. That that is to me a higher priority. How
do we get phones in our hands that don't rely on economic dealings with the
Chinese. That's a very difficult problem. Cook is working on that problem.
Yes, he's working on that problem because he said he knows that sentiment in
this country. I beg your pardon. Yeah, Tim Cook is working on
that problem because he knows that sentiment in this country has shifted. And he
will have had the televison in his office in the background yesterday and thinking,
and he'll be thinking to himself, Ooh, maybe we'd better move out of
China a little faster. By the way, my favorite summary statement on all
this, professor Jennifer Lynde at Dartmouth tweeted, proving that a brilliant professor can
use Twitter. It's on TikTok. Jennifer lynd of Dartmouth. It's a tough
issue to be sure. On the one hand, TikTok shares user data with
an a How's ai superpower rival, and on the other hand, it recks
kids brains. It's both. I wanted to agree with Rob when he was
going off. I wasn't trying to cut into disagree. I was cutting into
agree because yes, the problem is the device in our hands. But actually
I wasn't thinking of it as being where it's from, and where the materials
come from, and who builds it. I'm thinking about the actual existential nature
the device itself. I love my phone. I love being connected to every
single piece of information in human history. I love getting all of my music.
I love my movies. I love the way it tells me how I
can get home and with another's traffic. Everything about it I love. But
the fact is is that it is a portal also to madness and sociopathy,
and disconnected from all of the traditional elements of society that have bound us together
low these many millennium. The problem is that people want what is coming through
it. If there is a channel, if there's an app that shows nothing
but disembowelings and in decapitations, I don't want to watch that. I'm not
going to watch that. I'm just not in the same sense that if you
put a pile of guns and drugs in the middle of an Amish community,
they're not going to start killing each other and getting high. The culture that
people bring to the thing is the problem. And we have a culture that
has the guardrails peeled off, that have the stop sticks removed, the speed
bumps shaved down, and now there is a absolute complete race to the bottom
that everybody's enjoying for likes and lulls and clicks. And that's the problem.
The problem is the culture of the people who come to this device in the
first place, not the device, not where it's made, not the app.
The problem is the culture in the people who are making things worse.
Oh man, do I feel old? But I don't. Actually, I
don't feel you know. And the thing is, I've been working out,
I've been watching my diet. I feel pretty good. But the question is,
you know, you do all these things to extend your lifespan. What's
the point if you feel old? Well, the point is is that it
is possible, you might say, to extend the lifespan and feel youngers.
That is that can you do that? Well? According to a Harvard scientist
and Nobel Prize winning breakthrough, absolutely it's possible. Oh well, by lengthening
your telomeres. Your telomeres they protect your DNA and they play a critical role
in the aging process. But many of us struggle with a shortening telomeres thanks
to stress and unhealthy food and obesity and more. That's why we recommend youth
switch youth Switch is an all natural, doctor approved and manufactured right here in
America. It contains a potent blend of adoptagens to promote healthier telomeres and longer
lifespans, boosts energy, and can support regeneration of healthy organ systems as well.
You can try youth Switch for yourself risk free today and you will also
receive a free bottle of Ageless Brain as a bonus. It's a great product
to help you improve your focus and your memory and your mood. You'll also
received four bonus ebooks to boost every aspect of your health and longevity. Go
to Youthswitch MD dot com slash ricochet to claim your supply of youth Switch and
all five bonus gifts. That's youth Switch MD dot com slash ricochet to order
youth Switch today, and we thank youth Switch for sponsoring this the Ricochet Podcast
and now we're welcome to the podcast. Nicholas Eberstadt he holds the Henry Went
Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. He's the author of Russia's
Peacetime Demographic Crisis and the book Men Without Work, America's Invisible Crisis, and
he's written extensively on demographics and economic development throughout the world. Welcome Nick Well,
we had g and putin meet today. Each country faces their own demographics
for different reasons. China's suffering in war, will suffer some say, the
catastrophic fall out of the one child policy. All Russia. It's got a
lot of men who get drunk and don't reproduce, and they're slaughtering huge numbers
of their future generation in a pointless war. So pick one of those,
whichever you wish to discuss first, and tell us what the situation really is
demographically for the other countries we seem to be facing and squaring off against Bielder's
choice. It's a no limits alliance with a lot of demographic limits. Right.
So in Russia, the biggest problem is is the paradox of high education
low human capital. They've got a europe style education profile, lots of time
trapped in classrooms, but they've got a health profile for young men that looks
kind of like the country of Haiti. It's not even third world. It
would be unfair to say it's a third world profile because a third world would
object. That's apart from that's apart from the casualties they're suffering in Ukly.
Apart from the casualties, they they casties not improve it. They've they've figured
out that you don't need to have starvation and communicable disease to die prematurely.
They do it through injury and through vodkacascular disease. So they're they're punching way
below their weight economically because they've got this kleptocracy which smothers the value of human
resources. And part of I think what's been going on for the last two
decades with the Kremlin, with Putin's Kremlin, is trying to engage in increasingly
risky behavior, getting away with it to compensate for this down glide path.
And you know, it works. It works until it doesn't. And now
we're kind of seeing what happens when when it may not work anymore. And
China, Nick, your piece in the Wall Street Journal I've lost track now
about ten days or so ago, in which you argued that, of course
you repeated the figures on China, the demographic collapse in China, not collapse,
but the shrinking of the Chinese population. But you argued in a way
I had never seen before that it poses a particular problem for China because of
the traditional Chinese family. Could you draw that out, Star Well, I
mean the current circumstance with the birth drop and you could call it a collapse
over the last six years, because I think that tells us that there's something
really snaky going on there. But that's for a moment or two from now.
I've done some homework with a friend and colleague of mine at Penn State,
a really good demographer named Ashton Verderi, and we've kind of we've projected
out, we've modeled out what happens to the Chinese family in the decades immediately
ahead. And the reason that you haven't seen anything on this before, Peter,
is because you know, demographers, like economists or like dogs with a
dog dish, right, if there aren't any data, they don't play with
the data. And no government in the world collects information on family structure,
you know. They censuses were started in you know, the Mediterranean and in
East Asia to mobilize military manpower and attacks people. So it's all headcounts and
households. We went through and simulated what was at what had actually happened with
families in China over the past century and where things look like you're going,
and it's a it makes all of the headcount stuff look a lot more acute
and makes it look a lot more pessimistic. So there's there's a a collapse
of extended family, and you can say collapse. It's a really it's like
a roller coaster ride down and there's no way to stop at And it's also
a tilt towards taking care of old people. There'll be more more parents to
look after for middle aged people than children. And China, if I understand
the argument, I'm going to bring my ignorance to bear on your genius neck
here. I'm going to try to layer my own questioning your peace with my
attempt to understand it. In Chinese society historically, it's a little bit it's
a little bit like it Italy in the senses you have centuries in which the
government has never really to have been trusted, and so the family networks of
family, extended families, this has been the network of trust that has permitted
economic activity to take place. Your great uncle knows somebody's grandfather. You're in
Shanghai, but the grand great uncles in Singapore. Therefore we can do business
together, and China is particularly dependent as compared with Northern Europe and the United
States, where we have a different structure, different more trustworthy government. Historically,
China is particularly dependent on for its economic vitality on the extended family.
Have I got that roughly correct? You? Not roughly? You put it
perfectly? I mean that's absolutely perfect. Are perfect. It's social. It's
been the social safety nap since before the time of Confucius. It's also been
the economic springboard during good times because you can borrow money or get help from
your extended family. And if you don't have an extended family, who you're
going to call? And I'm sorry, one more question if I may,
and over to Rob and James. I'm feeling greedy with you here, Nick,
But the dramatic economic growth in China of the last three three and a
half decades in which we've seen figures vary, but some hundreds of millions of
people lifted out of really die or poverty. And that took place. This
is a multiple choice question with only two choices. That took place. A
because the Communist Party of China discovered a new form of government that would prompt
and encourage and foster economic growth and the Communists did it or b because the
Communist Party of China had the wits to get out of the way and permit
the traditional Chinese extended families to get to work making use of the twentieth and
early twenty first century technology. The government did it, or the government got
out of the way. That's a tough one. How long do we ah
can't stand it? Wants to jump in. There's a there's a trick.
There's a that was a trick question because there they got the benefit of something
that they had no right to profit from, which was an explosion in Kim
that happened um kind of unbeknownst to anybody. Thanks to improvements and health before
the one child policy kicked in, and you know, generations got smaller.
China had a kin explosion after the death of Mao. Between like basically the
death of Mao and about twenty ten, there was a proliferation of cousins,
uncles, aunts, sibs. And this is because mortality stopped, because it's
because mortality survival improved. So I mean so so they'd always had been born
in the past, but now they got to live to a youth, middle
age, old age, and one of the I think hugely we hadn't seen
this. We stumbled on this ourselves doing this homework, But in retrospect it
looks like one of the really important things, not just in China but in
the rest of East Asia in the so called economic miracles, was the explosion
of family ties. You know, there's just a lot more family to rely
on, and that's been overlooked by almost all economists and sociologists who've looked at,
you know, this fantastic economic rise. Hey, Nick, thanks for
joining us. So if I could just talk about America for me, because
it seems to me as how old I am that I remember certain optimism despite
the fact that you know, a billion, bajillion years China has been a
place where people buy things and not sell things. In fact, that's been
the conflict with China since the beginning, Right, they wouldn't buy anything we
had, so we made them buy um. And then with Russia, we
thought when so unique collapse, you thought, well, they've tried everything else,
so maybe they'll actually have a democracy. You don't be wobbly one with
they'll have one. Well we learned the lesson there and the two kind of
optimistic American maybe now naive seeming naive theories were one, trade engagement, economic
engagement is gonna solve China's problems. Like China's They're gonna figure there. They
want to make money, They're gonna they're going to figure it out. They're
not going to be a trouble in our They're friendly. This is the friendly
despot, right, I mean, you know, we even created Panda,
you know, the whole panda. We people thought of China as an interesting
place the way they would never have thought, they would never have said going
to you know, some kind of despotic dictatorship was just had the same kind
of benign benefit. And people sort of expected that Russia, having tried everything
else, it's kind of like into a European groove of some kind of you
know, messy parliamentary whatever with the you know, but it'd be all great.
You know, this is an incredibly crude character. But the end of
history, right that we could see the future, and the future was going
to be pretty good. So now we have at this cross roads. We
have we have the very strange thing where the China and Russia of agreeing not
a Greek so much was the president, she goes to Moscow. He kind
of fleeces Putin, who needs him desperately. Putin gives away the store,
including an enormous amount of of of Chinese autonomy in a region that the Chinese
and Russian has been fighting about for a thousand years, which is, you
know, the far eastern part of Russia. But it looks like they're making,
um, they're making separate deals, and they kind of think the two
of us can make a go of this. So what are we left with?
As Americans are to say, well, you know what, turns out
capitalism isn't such a great solution, after all, free trade isn't such a
great solution. After all, Maybe a little economic isolationism would be useful.
I mean, is that what's what do we do now that the old Chivalists
are I think disproved? Well, well, Rob, First of all,
what we're left with is we're left with all of the good parts of the
world. I mean, this is like point, This is like Losers Club,
And you know, I know which team I want to be on.
Boy, if I take a look at the if I take a look at
the human resources there, I mean, the idea that this is going to
displace the US or the West is kind of it's kind of a laugh riot.
I mean, my my friend and colleague at American Enterprise Institute, the
always prescient Derek Scissors China Economy X, about fifteen years ago, did a
very detailed calculation to figure out the exact date when China surpasses the United States
economy, and the date is never right. So we're now seeing the We're
now seeing kind of what peak China and declining Russia look like. They can
be very very, very unpleasant and dangerous even though they're not going to surpass
US. I have a sick fascination with North Korea, whose GNP is zero.
But North Korea can cause a lot of trouble with the zero GMP.
So countries with real gmps, if their revision estates, can be a lot
of trouble. What we what we ought to have learned during the in retrospect
embarrassing post Cold War era, this you know, kind of sleepwalker, you
know, dreamland three lost decades of strategic thinking. Is that our our bet
on China, which was not unreasonable in the seventies and early eighties, didn't
pan out. You know, we didn't we thought that really we could not
just enrich China but liberalize the CCP and get a friend, you know.
And we've been way too slow to wake up to this, in part because
we've got a new threat that we didn't have from the Soviet Union, which
is all of the vulnerabilities that have been created by economic integration into our economy
with a power run by the economy run by the CCP, so the CCP
can attempt to manipulate the United States from inside in a way that the Soaves
never could have done because they were a nothing burger an international trade So what
you mean is TikTok, TikTok's look at the NBA, ye, look at
Disney. This is just in the cultural can be part of the you know,
part of the discussion. You're groveling to the CCP about this stuff and
complaining about scientists, but at the same time doing it ever President she tells
them to do. That isn't exactly the preemptively negotiating against themselves to try to
pretty favored. I mean, I think it's called cow talent. Yeah,
okay, So speaking of cow talent, which I believe is is it a
I think it's a Hindu word or maybe that brings me to another. So
put on our Kissinger hat. You know, big strategy, big things right.
UM's often wrong, but it's I am given to it. But never
less than interesting, never less than interesting. It feels to me like there
is one big, giant country that's an economic engine, a total mess,
the world's most populous quase democracy, India, and it is once again a
race to see who what side they're going to be on, because if they
decide, you know what, actually, you know our traditional allegiance, you
know, the traditional certainly since independence to their neighbor to the north in Russia.
Um, how important is it now for us to say, all right,
it's the West and the democracies plus India? Are they should we we
be looking at that? I guess is what trying to say? Is that
would that be the Kissinger strategy? Oh? I think absolutely. We want
to find as much as much friendship with India as we can get away with.
Hey, nick, I'm the one who asked the good questions. Well,
don't don't give him, don't give him a cold star. You know
what, what do they say? There's something about silvereign gold, you know,
find the new ones keep the old, Yeah, exactly. And our
oies really are old. I mean they're kind of like declining and you know,
declining in uh in terms of headcount and getting very old. They need
more from us than they did in the past. Because of that, we
should be on the I mean, America's got talent should also be in international
relations, right, we should be looking for new friends Vietnam, India.
I have the crazy idea that after the current unpleasantness in Tehran, we may
have an alliance with the Iran and the future. What say that again?
Just repeat those very same words. What I have this? I have this
funny idea that after we get over the temporary unpleasantness with Tehran that we've had
since seventy nine, that we may have a we may have a beautiful friendship
in the future with Iran when they get a new government. Yeah right,
oh, until change money, a tiny change in management. First about brick
wise, we're casting about for others. What about Brazil? Often, as
the saying goes, the greatest country that never was, always on the edge
of its potential, never reaching it. But there's hope, isn't there?
Brazil? Brazil could be a helpful friend I even within Brazil. I've got
a kind of a fixation with Mexico. And I know this is unfashionable,
but I do the arithmetic. If you have never been held back by fashion,
nick, never in your law of glorious career, well go ahead,
let's hear it. Okay, if you do the numbers on Canada, Mexico,
and the US of A. In terms of talent, you know,
Mexico's got a lot of political master to clean up. Maybe it never will,
but in terms of the royal talent, there's more educated, skilled workforce
in let's call it naftaland and then there is in Europe than there is in
China than there is in India any other part of the world. And our
let's not call it Fortress America, but our North American thing could turn out
to be the best thing that we've ever had. Wow, this is great,
so fantastically counterintuitive, which I like. But I guess what I'm more.
I mean, here's my concern. Yeah, that all sounds kind of
fine, It all sounds going to work out. And I can remember going
to conference. I can remember I think I gave a speech once. I
wrote something once about how everybody's right, the brick countries Brazil, Russia,
India, China are going to drive innovation and prosperity and productivity in the early
twenty first century, and all those those four countries are going to have this
wonderful flooring. And none of that happened. I mean, even in India,
which is you know, a lot more the most stable of those countries,
it's still kind of a yeah, it's it's it's it's got something.
Yeah. Right, So I'm make a note of that everybody. By the
way, the moment rob formally announces a worldwide trend, it evaporates. Oh
my god, it's I'm the worst concern is that, um is that here's
my concern. My concern is that there's an American attitude, I should say
my attitude, which is that there's a natural law that states that things will
kind of get better and that they'll get better with you know, economic exchange
and slow incremental movements to democracy. Not perfect, but it's going to get
better. It happens automatically. But I am now, I'm old enough to
realize that nothing happens automatically. Uh, things happened because and so if we're
going to create the North American economic fortress, which I like. Well,
we're going to create a kind of a global idea to fight the newly emerging
unity between Russia and China, which is like China's the big brother, clearly
the big brother, clearly pulling the strings. What do we have to do?
Like, what do we get at? What do we do? That's
not going to be automatic, that's not going to be reading an essay in
Foreign policy telling us it's going to happen automatically. Well, we have to
start by waking up from our post Cold War era dream world. We would
have thought that the invasion of Ukraine would have been enough for that, but
it apparently it's only you know, we want to stay asleep. We've had
a we had this extraordinary and completely aberrant generation when there was such a surfeit
of American power that we could be feckless at home and feckless internationally, and
it didn't seem to we have so much wealth and so much power away and
think, well, you know that isn't going to last forever, and uh,
sooner or later, there's going to be a call for grown ups,
and um, you know, it would be nice to have a couple of
them around. You know, you take a look at people like the late
great George schultzm you had out at Hoover. I mean, where where's the
next one of those guys going to come from? We need them, we
need grown ups. Hey, Nick May, I here's my closing question for
now. You have such a fascinating mind, however, that I intend to
go after you again and again and again. Nick and I did a show
an uncommon knowledge on what to anybody other than Nick the opening your opening position,
naturally enough, would be the demographics is the biggest bore you could possibly
imagine. I did a show with Nick on demographics which has been viewed something
like four and a half million times because Nick makes Nick may things interesting.
Okay, here's what I am responding to your tone, and I want to
make sure that I'm hearing it right. Here's the case for pessimism. The
two leading candidates for president of the United States, one is demented and the
other is nuts, and they're both old. The banking system, the FED
has injected so much liquidity into the economy since two thousand and eight. Let's
be honest, they have no idea how to wind this down without risking bank
failures, widespread systemic failures out here. When SVB went down last week,
I guess it was two weeks ago. Now you'd think Silicon Valley would be
there's so much wealth. Do you think they'd be insulated from that old fashioned
word. Panic? People were really scared, really scared. Okay, polarization
in Congress, decay of the American family, test scores going down. And
now we look at Ukraine and World Cold War two has begun. Ukraine is
our proxy. China is using Russia as its proxy. The Chinese are tough,
they're smart, They're willing to use artificial intelligence to monitor their people in
a way that the KGB could never even have dreamt of. Things are really
looking bad. You mentioned Mexico. Oh, for goodness sake, you've got
Amlo Lopez Obrado, the current president, who is dismantling the one non corrupt
institution in Mexico, which was the election Bureau. I've heard arguments that the
Mexican Navy is also non corrupt, but because it spends most of its time
at sea. But there he is dismantling the one non corrupt piece of Mexico.
Things are terrible and we're losing, And then Nick Eberstadt comes on and
says, well, you know, I can't have a soft spot from Mexico.
Well, you know China ship the idea that they could take us.
Are you serious? Do you You really are pretty cheerful about the prospects.
Is that correct? We can always screw it up. I mean sometimes we're
good at that. But we have so many cards in our hands. We
don't understand how much advantage we have some of our adversaries do I mean we
have. We are living through a very curious time. We've had three decades,
a long spate of I think what in retrospect will be seen as sub
par political leadership, both red and blue. I don't know why it's been
so poor at the last three decades. Somebody will explain it. Sometime.
With a little bit of leadership in the United States, things would look real
different, just the way they look real different when we went from nineteen seventy
nine nineteen eighty three. This is just I could kiss you. This is
such a lovely way to go into the weekend. Nick. It's what I
said, It is to easy, right. We just need you know.
It's like it's like being just stop being Assume good leadership, right, right,
right, assume a ladder. Yeah, you're right, You're absolutely right.
A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting in a Mexican bar talking
to a bunch of Canadians, and I could, within within my range of
vision, we're four hundred people from India. Indian immigrants had come to America,
and everybody was marinating in the same identical cultural broth, with its own
differences and having a great time. So if it's possible in that Mexican resort,
by God, we can make it happen on the international global stage or
so. I'd like to think so much more to talk to you about,
including the domestic ramifications of what our Labor Force Participation Act is, but that'll
be the next time we talk to you, which we hope is soon.
Thank Nick for force you. Well, then we're going to We're going to
get you on the calendar right now, because it's great to talk to you.
And also, as Peter notes heading into the weekend, the idea of
carrying a kernel of optimism in one's breast as you flounced, is in a
long time madness. We love it. Nicholas Eberstat thank you for joining us.
The book Men Without Work and Russia's peacetime demographic crisis. Buy them,
read them, learn doctor again, and say a load of the other genius
under your roof missus Mary Everstet, I think to have lunch with her today.
I'll pass. Please please, please do, please do all the best.
Thank you, guys. Have a good weekend. Thank you, have
a good weekend. And now it's rob long to tell you why Ricochet is
not just some cyber thing, as they used to say. I love this.
I bought a shirt on Amazon the other day and the color was cyber
lime, which was really bright. I had seen cyber as an exciting intensifier
used since the nineties, when it was one of those words that they just
sprinkled up cyber cafe George Foreman's cyber grill, you know, because it had
a little bondy blue plastic thing on it. But cybernetically, that is not
the extent to which Ricochet is confined. No, yes, it operates in
the real world. Right. Yeah, we are telling you to get out
of the matrix and uh come and visit for real m The best. One
of the best parts about being a member of brickichet is that you could come
to meetups and they are fun, and we have some coming up, so
just let you know. I think less than a month from now, three
weeks from now, maybe three and a half weeks, New Orleans, New
Orleans, it'll be the French Quarterfest. It's April fourteenth through the seventeenth.
Um, come, I'm come and say hi. Well, there's a schedule
on the site. Go find it. If you're not a member, please
join and then come to New Orleans. French Quarterfests is really lots of fun
New Orleans. This is a perfect, perfect time to come to visit New
Orleans. It's warm, it's tropical. You feel like it's a summer all.
Um, and I'll be there. I'm gonna be there, and I
think I think others will be there. I think Charlie Cook's going to be
there. I don't know. I can't if I can't commit to that,
but I think he's gonna be there. He and I were like, uh,
defecting back and forth. Try to figure out what it can be there.
I'm fourteenth to the seventeenth. Sign up, get yourself there. Uh.
Flicker is doing a meet up in on April twenty seconds. So a
few days later in Stillwater, Minnesota, which is um, I don't know,
up there somewhere or um, yeah, it's and then to the left
of me at the moment, to the left of you, whateverything to the
left of you, James um. And then of course uh in Winston,
Salem that we're talking about one in Mitchell Lot so um come to those.
But it's also possible they do not work for you in terms of location or
timing. Here's the solution. Join Ricochet and have one. Just announced that
you're going to have one, and you will find Ricochet members will be right
there, ready to ready to meet up. So one of the best things
about the Internet is that you get to meet people in real life, and
that is one of the greatest parts of Ricochet as well. Winston always reminds
me of the jingle you know, Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.
And there was actually a debate, a national debate about the bad grammar.
I'm trying to think of the last time we had a grammatical you know,
a grammar related debate in this country about such things. That goes back to
what I was saying before about how low we fallow. But you know,
I always hope always green shoots all the rest. Even you have to look
to other countries. The Dutch, of course, the Dutch Farmer Party,
which does not want to have all their farms shut down for global warming,
staged remarkable electoral victory. That's good many of France, and we're not sure
how exactly are we supposed to think about France, gentlemen, because as little
as possible as possible, a lot of people are saying, well, Macron
has no choice. He's going to raise the retirement age. And I you
know, those Frenchs who don't want to work in the first place are all
getting upset about this. Envisioning just repeat what's going on. He's he's raising
the retirement age from sixty two to sixty four, right and then and there
in a country where it's already illegal to work more than forty hours. And
the result of this rob riots, riots, garbage strikes, um, all
what they called many festa up and down. It's like a national grev.
Yeah, that's the great, that's what a strike is. A greb and
greb because you have a grief. Um, I was in a shop once.
This is a long time ago. Uh, this is kind of why
I love the French Um, the sup dramatic. And there was a suddenly
there was a many Festeschia students down the street, down the boulevard, and
there was like loud and noisy, and so we kind of went into the
shop and kind of like just like what them passed, and they passed their
shouting things and everything, and I couldn't really see the signs. So I
asked the lady, like, what is it, you know, pukua greb,
you know, what's the reason. And she kind of shrugged that great
GALLICX shrug and she's like, you know, the students, and she said,
the French students are protesting because, of course, the for the uncertainty
of the future. Like yeah, well that's the literally definition of the future.
What how could you possibly satisfy an angry mob when their argument is we
make the future more certain? Um. The interesting thing about France is and
and French politics is that Um and Macrol may be wrong. I mean,
he has passed this, this is already the this is French law. He
can do that, he did it, Um, but his calculation is that
France is still France and people liked to um. They like the screaming to
happen after the change has occurred. The screaming and the yelling is very important
part of French politics. So there was a study of a pole I read
as a while ago, so may have changed, but well it was basically,
you know, ninety five percent of all French people think, you know,
obviously we're gonna have to raise the retirement age. There's like math,
you know, they're good at math, there they they they're they're the high
school baccalaureate is actually very very good at math. But not now, that
was their argument. But not now. So percent of people think they're gonna
have to raise the retirement age. Nine percent people like but not now.
Um, and that cross figuring that you'll do it. They'll protest, they'll
be garbage in the streets of Paris for the next you know, a week
or two, and then you know everybody will just say yeah, GaX,
shrug, and that's it's done now. Um. It's a very Unamerican attitude,
right. The Americans like to argue and fuss and fight and complain and
bitterly debate before they actually enact legislation. In France, they do it,
you know what, because when they know something's inevitable, that doesn't mean they're
going to be happy about it. So that's against the curious thing too that
we hear all the time about the Arab street. We have to worry about
the Arab street when in fact, the only country in which politics really truly
do take place in the street it's friends. Yeah, right, since seventeen
eighty nine the street has actually mattered. But also remember I think that you
know, the Dutch farmer thing is true about the French farmer thing too,
that these are countries that have a very, very emotionally you know, I'm
a hugely emotionally deep identification with farms and farming and even if it you kind
of roll your eyes at it a little bit, it's certially part of the
national identity. And they don't want these farms to go. And it's yeah,
the fronsport founder in the Holland and they don't, they don't. All
of that reclaimed land is where they grow the tulips, in the potatoes and
the stuff. Right, it's really important. And when you I think what
happens is when you sort of start to especially for agricultural rule. When you
start to outsource that to Brussels, to the EU, they're gonna be there's
gonna be trouble. There really is going to be trouble. I mean,
all of the global warming, all the climate change stuff is coming from Brussels,
and there's you know, I mean, they may meekly acquiesced, but
there is. Whatever happens in Ukraine, it will be. We're hearing a
lot about well, the thing to do about Ukraine is making a member of
the EU. It will take years and years of negotiations before Ukraine is ever
permitted to join the EU for precisely that reason. Ukraine is an enormous agricultural
country. If they let it inside the EU, it places pressure on French
farmers and on farmers, and the farmers are one of the most powerful interest
groups in the European Union political structure. Anyway, just a little observation there,
we've numbed Jane. It's interesting though, how this appears domestically. I've
seen a lot of people who are looking at what's going on in France on
the right and saying, finally the people are standing up to their wef masters.
I hear that a lot, and they're cheering them on as though they
think that the end result of this is somehow Macron slumps out in shame and
a new government of the people is installed, which worked out there to the
left of oh well, for France in seventeen eighty nine. And then you
have the people on the left who are cheering this on because anything that sort
of results in street fires and people protesting and the rest of it is automatically
good if it happens in Europe by the right people. Now, if they
were agitating for lesser government or for some social or cultural or ethnic thing that
the left did not approve, this would be fascism, of course, and
we'd be very worried about it. But they're not. So what's funny is
the idea somehow that the youth in France at the age of twenty twenty two,
the ones that Rob was referring to, will go and burn things on
behalf of six two year olds who might have to work a little bit more.
I find that a remarkable piece of cross generational solidarity. Or they just
like the fun of destroying things, and I think it's probably the latter of
just getting out and starting the fires and and and participating in a long standing
French tradition. Why as Rob I'm sure knows, and Peter too. It's
interesting to walk in some old areas of Paris and there's a bullet hole right
there from eighteen forty eight you can put your finger through because you know the
commune got here and had a beef about this et et. So yeah,
it's Rob's right. It'll burn over and the change will be made and people
will continue to It's a remarkable I will end with this. If I were
a French, i'd be retired by now. I can't possibly imagine what I
would do with my well, I mean I know what i'd do. I
would continue to write. I would continue to do what I do now.
I just wouldn't be paid for it. I wouldn't have a place to go.
I would It's bad to identify as your job because then you end up
at the end of your life stripped of your identity and you become a bit
useless. My father lived at the age of ninety three because he was still
involved in the business that he built. And for some people it's good to
hang it up and do the things that you want to do. But the
idea somehow that I would be lesser in my life, would be less happy
if I were retired boggles the mind. And the people who in France who
want, you know, what are they doing? Are these people in the
civil service who want to shuffle this off as quickly as possible so they can
just sit in the cafe and smoke the goalas and the rest of it.
I don't know, but I'm happy that I'm permitted to do what I do
for as long as I do. Right now, I think in our office
is a monument to a columnist who died at about the age of one hundred,
and he was putting it out until the day now, right towards the
end, when he had to do a radio interview, they would walk him
downstairs, they'd take him around the corner, they'd turn him around, and
they'd give him a little push in the direction of the radio station, and
there would be somebody the other end of the block who would lead him,
receive him, to receive him right, and there'd be somebody there to take
him up and do the rest of it up right. Herb Kane, Herb
Kane is that guy. Yes, Herberkane is that guy. I remember,
Yes, he used to write about having his regular deliveries of vitamin V vitamin
V for vodka deep into his nineties. And I remember Mark Stein once told
me about an editorial meeting at the Telegraph in which they were talking about Princess
Diana and the and the scandal, and at the far end of the table
Bill Deeds, then in his nineties, spoke up and said, Wow,
that's not quite the way the approach we took during the abdication crisis, right,
So, James, when you get to retire, never, I never.
I have absolutely no intention of retiring. I'm already one of the longest
running By the way, I don't want to start a long conversation because we've
been on for an hour. But don't you, guys, ancient as we
are, don't you have the feeling that there are things that you're only just
now figuring out, That there are aspects of your bit ways of approaching certain
writing. I know Rob is taking on a new project, podcasting project.
I feel as though there's still more to learn, and that I'm I'm only
just now figuring certain things out. No, there's always more to learn.
There's always there's never a day where you can't find out it's something new that
you didn't know before. There's never a day that isn't benefited by taking one
random factor or one picture from a newspaper or one little clip that you got
from a nineteen fifty new magazine and exploring it and looking at it and going
on Wikipedia and linking and linking until you're spiraling down that rabbit hole and you
dump out at the other end of it and you realize, oh my gosh,
the reason that the Burbank, the Burbank City Hall was designed by this
guy who also did a series of other beautiful schools in California. And look
at that one there, it's the Lou Hoover Elementary School. Who is Lou
Hoover. Lou Hoover happened to be the wife of Herbert and Lou Hoover was
the one who made it possible for the wife of the first black congressman to
come to a t at the White House. And that was a big scandal.
And look at this article here that was written about it in nineteen twenty
nine by who, by James Kilgallan kill. James Kilgallen is wait a minute,
is his daughter Dorothy his daughter is Dorothy. Let's type this on YouTube.
Oh my gosh, there's a what's by line where they're all blindfolded and
Dorothy kill Gallan is actually trying to figure out the identity of her father.
It's tremendous. And there's Bennett Surf and my gosh, he says something too,
And what a wonderful thing I just learned. I didn't know any of
this before. The architect the meaning of the reliefs in the Burbank City Hall,
the fact that the priest t scandal actually happened, how newspapers responded to
it in nineteen twenty nine, which is fascinating because the sort of institutional racism
you might expect is not evident in a lot of Southern papers. All of
these things took about an hour and enhanced my day. Now when I write
about them, I'll learned something new about the craft of writing, because I'm
a big deal this year about getting rid rid of Semi Colon's period. Actor.
As Victor Organ would say, this podcast was brought to you by youth
Switch. Please support them for supporting us, and that's great. If you
could leave a five star review on Apple podcast, that would be great.
Which is the exclamation point. I think that Victor Borgan did's right reviews.
I'll allow new listeners to discover us, and that helps keep this show going.
If you're interested more in the t scandal, that the priests scandal,
James Kilgallen and all that stuff, you will be able to find that next
week at lilacs dot com on Thursday. But of course we'll see everybody in
the comments at Ricochet four point and I say four point zero while I can
next week, boys, next week, next week Ricochet, Join the conversation,