In this episode we discuss:

(00:33) Introduction

(03:06) God Forbid

(05:17) Historical Knowledge

(09:30) Victorian Election

(16:35) Evangelicals Blame Abortion Demons

(19:02) Greg Smith and MAGA

(21:25) Zuckerberg Ignored the Script

(23:44) USA in the Persian Gulf

(24:26) Old fashioned CIA propaganda

(28:07) Chinese Diplomacy

(33:05) QANDA

(43:24) Chinese Suppression of Journalists

(47:22) Venezuela

(49:38) Turkey Starts Partial Payment In Rubles

(50:34) German Deflation

(51:49) New Zealand Voting Age

(53:23) History of Money

(59:55) How Japan Korea and Taiwan Succeeded

How to support the Podcast

Make a per episode donation via Patreon

or

Donate through Paypal

and

tell your friends.

Chapters, images & show notes powered by vizzy.fm.

Mentioned in this episode:

Website

We need to talk about ideas, good ones and bad ones.

We need to learn stuff about the world.

We need an honest, intelligent, thought provoking, and entertaining

review of what the hell happened on this planet in the last seven days.

We need to sit back and listen to the Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove.

Welcome back to Your Listener.

This is a podcast and a live stream all at the same time.

The Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove.

We talked about news and politics and sex and religion, all the

things that you're not supposed to talk about at a dinner party.

People don't, and that's why they're not good at talking about them.

And so we're here to fix that.

I'm Trevor, aka the Iron.

Fist with me as always, Joe, the tech guy.

Evening.

Good morning Joe.

So welcome aboard.

If you're in the chat room, say hello, Landon.

Hardbottom is there.

Excellent.

Landon, how are you?

So we will talk about China.

Of course we will at some stage Landon.

Can't help myself these days.

I'm finding at the moment actually, Joe, it's kind of a lot, not a lot happening in

domestic politics it seems, and it seems to me that sort of, sort of geopolitics

international stuff is what's really going on at the moment, seems to me anyway.

I mean it was sort of just all this outrage during the Morrison years where

there was just any number of crazy things happening in the parliament.

Decisions are being made, but all that sort of died down and we just

seemed to have a low key, sensible bunch of guys who spend question

time bashing the opposition for the things they did the previous decade.

Well, apart from Victorian election.

Yes.

Well, that's true.

Yes.

We'll talk about that.

We're gonna talk about the Victorian election.

We'll talk about about the USA and a bit of an update about China and

then various countries, Venezuela, France, Turkey, Germany, New Zealand.

And then with a bit of luck, we're gonna get onto currency and money in Japan.

And I was reading a very interesting sort of academic article about Japan

and why Japan, Korea, and Taiwan managed to break breakthrough, what's

sort of a glass ceiling, it seems for developing countries to come through

and become a developed country.

And what was it that enabled them to do it?

And it's quite interest.

Spoiler alert, it wasn't liberal free market policies that did it.

It was a lot of government action.

If you are new to the show, we sort of explore all sorts of rabbit holes and

not sure where we'll end up, but yeah.

So couple of things to deal with, first of all.

So of course this podcast is heavily involved in promoting secularism

and bagging crazy religious people who interfere in our politics.

So there is a program on ABC radio called, God Forbid, hosted by James Carlton.

And last Sunday they had a podcast and they had Allison Cords from Queensland

parents for secular state schools, and also another lady who was sort

of pro secular on there talking about religious instruction in schools.

Joe, did you get to listen to it?

Oh yeah.

Okay.

So prepare yourself because there was no, you know, there was no bishop's

priests, imams ministers there to give the, the line of the sort of

the pro religious instruction line.

So James Carlton decided that was his job and it was incredibly annoying.

Like I appreciate.

That he had to play devil's advocate to some extent, to

provide a counter-argument, but it was just super annoying.

I find the guy an annoying host at the best of time.

So anyway, look that up.

God forbid Allison did a great job and oh, seems to, Lord Don says

there's a high pitched whining coming through the transmission and

it's none of us hearing anything.

Is there anybody else hearing a high pitched whining or is it just essential?

Lord, Dawn, so let us know if you hear strange audio and we will try and fix it.

So if you can let us know the chatroom.

So yeah, God forbid, check that out.

And Allison did a great job of putting it forward, the, the case.

And the other one, Joe, was 60 minutes, apparently did an expose on what's

going on in Victoria with Evangelicals taking over reelections and the sort of

people, it's getting reselected there.

And I haven't had, I haven't actually watched it yet, cuz I

just, I can't stand 60 minutes in their approach to things anymore.

And I sort of feel like, well finally, mainstream media is caught up with what

we've been saying for the last seven years and now these things are starting

to appear, which never appeared seven years ago when we started the podcast.

So that is so that's good news.

The other thing I've been thinking about lately is I just want, just as

I read stuff, I'm finding it there's all these presumptions and this faking

of history that needs to be overcome.

So I think there's a need to reexamine the historical narrative and check if a false

historical story is being used to prop.

A contemporary bad idea.

So for example, this whole deal with China and Australia and our relationship,

I mean, who started that fight?

How did that start?

Things like the Qatar World Cup, like apparently at the moment there's

all sorts of talk about special arm bands by the different playing

groups and you know, talking about the human rights abuses in Qatar.

I mean, if we had a World Cup in America, would we be having the same discussion

about human rights abuses that we're having with the World Cup in Qatar?

And I know people can say it's what about is, but it's important to be consistent.

Like, if you think something is important, then consistently you should

apply that principle across the board.

And of course, When World Cups, if they were staged in America or in

the United Kingdom or whatever, they don't have human rights protestors

despite world catalog list of human rights abuses that have been going on.

So that sort of hypocrisy gathered by now really grates with me.

Apparently the the British team was going to do some sort of protest and FIFA

told them, well, if you do that, we're gonna give your captain a yellow card.

And immediately they folded and said, oh, well, we won't do that anymore.

So they weren't committed to the cause, I don't think.

Other things, ? Mm-hmm.

, I, I

don't think the UK or the us make it illegal to be gay.

No.

That's true, but for

punishment.

But in terms of legal in

either of those, but in terms of human rights, abusers, you know, going around

as bombing countries, indiscriminate like in terms of causing of human suffering.

Yeah.

But that's legal,

that's it's not educational

law.

No, it's not.

When they do it unilaterally, it's actually not.

Yeah, so I think if we, we look at human rights abuses and put them

in, in proportion, even something like the Chinese with their locking

up of the uighurs, like, it's hard to know exactly to what extent

that is happening, but arguably

because the press isn't

allowed to report on it over there.

No, of course not.

Like it is genuinely difficult to find out what the truth is.

We do know about incarceration rates in America.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

For, for such minor offenses of drug possession.

I don't

know if I mentioned it to you, but chasing the scream.

Yes.

He says it may be possible.

Modern America is the first society in human history that has a higher

rate of rapes of men than rapes of

women.

Yeah.

You did mention that.

Because of the high incarceration rate.

Because of the high incarceration rate.

It, it's just incredible.

Yeah.

You know, okay, find a protest about human rights abuses in China and Qatar,

but if you're going to be consistent, you have to apply it wherever you see it.

Otherwise, you're just running a propaganda line.

So you just, so we should protesting

Julian Assange in the

uk.

That's right.

I mean, I talk about political prisoners in these countries.

What about the, it's all about consistency, as you'll find

in my arguments about various things that we talk about.

I always try and maintain a consist line where you've got a principle that

you can apply if it, if you can't apply consistently, it's not a good principle.

Special pleading otherwise.

Yeah, indeed.

So yeah, so that's what I find myself thinking about more and more

as we're looking at things, right.

Few domestic things to go through.

And the Victorian election coming up and Guy Rundel wrote an article in Crikey.

I've been quite quoting Crikey as much as I was at one point.

They were particularly good when Scott Morrison was running a muck.

Hadn't been as good since I,

I think you might have just been disillusioned by the

fact that it's not the.

Small player.

You thought he was, it might, well, it might be part of it, but I don't think so.

I mean, I was quite happy to find this article and go with it.

Guy Rundel is an interesting writer.

He's got a good turn of phrase, and it's probably why I'm gonna

quote bits of this article because I think he's just got a good turn

of phrase at different points here.

Guy Rundel on the Victorian election politically, organizationally, and

morally, Victoria's liberal party is unfit to take power and hold office

which is unlikely to happen anyway.

He goes on in absolutely and in everywhere, every

way they're unfit to do it.

He says The liberal opposition is not simply a party in poor

shape, needing a bit of luck.

In fact, it is a destroyed organization midway through an internal party

struggle under investigation for, for numerous electoral breaches.

Studded with numerous unvetted candidates, honeycombed with

weirdos and referencing Leo Nazis.

That's good.

Internal party struggle.

Studded with numerous unvetted candidates and honeycombed with weirdos.

Honeycombed.

That's good.

Don't

get the fetish about this.

Pre referencing has zero outcomes.

Yes.

Unless you choose to follow what, who they preference?

Yep.

It doesn't affect your vote in any way, shape, or

form.

No.

But it says something about the party.

Oh, absolutely.

That they're recommending this.

So that's what he's getting at, I think.

So it's second time around Leader Matt Guy now in press conferences seems

to just hang there like an undercard boxer clicking to the ropes long

enough to earn the appearance fee.

He says this would be this would all be said more explicitly if

the two main news groups were not on the ropes he was glean to.

So yeah, it's the, the media down there in Victoria's going nuts, mainstream media in

terms of their support for these liberals.

So the latest two party preferred was 53 47, and we'll see what

happens in that election.

Yeah, with just going back to guitar essential, Lord Don says Budweiser

has an agreement for 12 years and two days out they said no alcohol

breach of, yeah, so they basically not selling of alcohol at the games.

And one of the major sponsors is a, is a beer maker.

So you wouldn't be happy if you were them?

No, no.

There was some news headline about.

Some bloke who'd walked five miles to get a pint at the World Cup.

And I thought, really?

Wow, is that the news?

Unlike the Argentinian female reporter who got robbed while she was

interviewing members of the public, and she went to report it to the

police and they then said, so if we catch this guy, don't worry about it.

We've got cameras everywhere, facial recognition, it's not a problem.

We'll figure out who it is when we catch him.

What do you want us to do with him?

Oh, really?

And she said, what do you mean?

She said, well, do you want throw us to throw him in prison for five years?

Do you want him kicked out of the country?

What?

What do you want?

Right.

And she was a bit taken aback by the fact they were just saying, what

punishment do you think we should

give to him?

There you go.

A culture where the victim.

A say in what happens?

Yeah, maybe too much, too much of a say.

Actually there was a bit more in this article by Guy Rundel basically saying

that Victoria used to be the intellectual sort of center of Australian liberalism

and, and was the first place in the world where a certain type of social

classical liberalism came together in a stable and lasting fashion.

And so you had social protection and the guarantee of positive freedom sort

of mixed together in a, in a formula that was working to some extent.

And he said that Jeff Kenneth turned the party into a SPI machine and he broke the

alliance between principles and politics.

And then Alon came Michael Kroger.

And he took his eye off the party infrastructure as evangelicals, Mormons,

and and others took over the party.

And when Covid came along, there was an opportunity to clean up the party and

get rid of some of this branch stacking.

But they didn't do it.

They didn't have the nerve.

And as a consequence you have the most energetic internal

agents in the liberal party.

Actually loyal to other forces.

Yeah.

The Christian beliefs and the extremes have become the center

and the former party center has become a series of exile camps.

So I have predicted, as you know, dear listener, the sort of splitting

up of the liberal party where.

Christian evangelicals will keep hold of the party.

And those that have become teals, if you like, will have to form some other party

of some sort, a long and painful process.

Whilst it seems like a good idea, the problem is without a second

party to keep labor in check.

We'll, will labor become so full of themselves that they'll do stupid things.

Indeed.

Yep.

And and also we've got in America with Trump announcing his run

and, you know, that could signal a split in the Republican party.

And unlike Australia, they don't have preferential voting over there.

So splitting the vote is diabolically damaging to a particular, to any party.

So if Trump.

Proceeds and keeps going and doesn't pull out, and the Republicans, you know,

endorse somebody else other than Trump.

That splitting of that conservative vote is just going to cause them huge problems,

particularly with no preferential voting.

So Macy is split there.

Macy is split.

In Australia.

We'll wait and see.

Joe nearly split his head with some boom mic or something.

Yeah.

Overexcited microphone indeed.

Right.

Okay so still on these sort of evangelicals and what happened

in America, for example,

I've got couple of clips here.

So this is one of the religious guys in America talking about what

happened in the midterm elections.

I'll play this one.

That's why there was no red wave.

Abortion changed everything.

Even though all the polls were showing that the economy was the main

issue, abortion is a religious issue.

And religion creates more passion than anything in the

world if you don't believe it.

Go to a church meeting where there's a debate going on.

So religion creates passion and there's a religion of demons that loves abortion.

That religion of pro-abortion showed up.

There we go.

A religion of demons that are pro-abortion.

I've got another one here that that I'll add.

Lemme just find this one.

This guy here, this is just sort of typical examples of what's appearing

in the media in America in response to that midterm election by pissed off

evangelicals, you gotta recognize the fact that this is a godless country.

I hate it.

It's immoral, it's wrong, it's heinous, it's evil.

But this is an evil country.

And this country will surprise you with how evil it is.

And that's why you've gotta get this outta your head that there is some silent

majority cavalry that's gonna come outta the woods and save us at the last minute.

It's not when we meet the left on the battlefield and they outnumber

us like five to one, that's it.

But the point is, when you look at these things like abortion, it's popular.

People like abortion hate it, but it's true.

And you can thank the Jewish media for that abortion's.

Popular Sodom is popular.

You know, being gay is popular.

Being a feminist is popular.

Sex out of wedlock is popular.

Contraceptives are, it's all popular.

That's all.

That's not to say it's good.

That's not to say I like that.

Popular means the people support it, which they do.

And It sucks and it is what it is.

But that's why we need dictatorship

That's ironically why we need to get rid of all that.

We need to take control of the media or take control of the government

and force the people to believe what we believe or force 'em to play by

our rules and reshape the society.

Well, there you go.

If at first you don't succeed, become a theocracy

That's right.

But if you thought, oh, that's just those crazy Americans, it'll never happen here.

I'm

sure there are people over here who very happily follow him.

Yeah.

I'm just gonna give you an idea of of one of the sorts of characters.

Let me just find this guy here.

This is Greg Smith, an Australian in America who's being interviewed

by one of the channels over there.

Here we go.

We need to save America.

Before we can save Australia.

So this is I've come here to sacrifice three months of, of my life.

Wow.

To, to support maga the, the MAGA candidates.

I've been to Arizona, New Mexico, and Florida.

And for, for me, it's just important that in order to save Australia I need, I

wanted to be here to make sure that, that we get the right people over the line.

Oh, isn't that comforting that Greg Smith is, is saving America to save us.

Find that comforting.

Can we ban him from coming back?

? Can they keep him like they kept Ken?

He, Ken

Ham.

Yeah.

There we go.

That's the sort of stuff that is going on.

It sounds crazy.

It sounds over the top, but it is happening.

And the, the depths that they've reached in America, it's only.

A matter of time before it, it gets here as well.

So look forward to that.

You did see the pictures of Gina at, was it Trump's

announcement?

Yes.

Gina Reinhardt was at the Trump announcement.

Yeah.

I to make America great again for Australia.

Yeah.

Yes.

I also saw that they weren't allowing people to leave the room.

Like apparently he was talking for quite a while and people were starting to

get outta their chairs and head for the exits and they basically didn't want

didn't want the room to look half empty.

So they just didn't let people leave.

They just stayed.

Yeah.

Quite a few people

left and then security went no more not allowed to.

That's it.

Yeah.

Oh dear.

Okay.

Got another clip here for you.

I thought these were gonna be in a more coherent, organized fashion,

but still in USA and it's all about us exceptionalism expecting

these nutts to be coherent and

organized.

It's hard to put them, it's hard to line them up coherently.

But this is a clip where Zuckerberg was being interviewed about

about American exceptionalism.

So it's some sort of like senate inquiry or something like that.

So let me just find this one and and pull this one up.

Zuckerberg, here he is.

And Mr.

Zuckerberg, quite a story, right?

Dorm room to the global behemoth that you guys are only in America.

Would you agree with that?

Senator?

Mostly in America.

You couldn't do this in China, right?

Or.

What you did 10 years.

Well, Senator, there are, there are some very strong Chinese internet companies.

Right?

But you're supposed to answer yes to this question.

. Okay.

Come on.

I'm trying to help you.

This is right.

I mean, give me a break.

You're in front of a bunch.

The answer is yes.

Okay.

So thank you.

Now your, your testimony, I've certainly got some new respect for Zuckerberg

. Cause he's not totally,

Yeah, I was saying only in America said, well, he couldn't

happen in China, could it?

And he, well actually it can and it does.

He probably

has dealings with bang.

No, not bang.

Good.

What's the other one?

The huge one Alibaba.

Is that what you, Alibaba or whatever.

Alibaba is as big as AWS in

it's big.

It's, it's, it's huge.

Alibaba is like four times.

I think it is the size of Amazon.

Huge.

Yeah.

And yeah, but

I meant in

terms of hosting.

Oh, okay.

Don't about that.

Yeah.

If you've

got your own internet service, you can run it up on Alibaba

service the same as you can with

Amazon.

Right.

And, and they are

maybe not in the west, but certainly in other countries.

They are one of the biggest

providers.

Yeah.

So anyway, good on you Zuckerberg, for actually listening to the question and

just refusing to just agree and yeah, it's difficult as it is to say you have

to give the guys some some marks for that.

So he ignored the script.

Good on him.

No, I think he looks more robotic

than data.

He does look strange character.

You gotta say that.

The US is going to put over 100 unmanned vessels in the Persian Gulf.

They're going to deploy these drone boats under a task force to

work against Iran in the region.

Imagine if China decided to or Russia decided to do that in the Gulf of Mexico.

Mm-hmm.

But we've done, even bat an eyelid doesn't make, doesn't make any news at all.

Like, but Iran's the access of evil.

Yeah.

This is the hypocrisy and the inconsistency I keep talking about.

I've had these couple of clips here.

I'm gonna throw a lot of clips on this episode.

This one is about CIA propaganda, cuz this is relevant because once

again I'm painting a picture.

Why am I painting a picture?

America doing bad things or painting America in a bad light.

Why are you always banging on about it?

Trevor, ? Well, because the mainstream media is doing a

perfectly fine job of the opposite, somebody has to fill in the gaps.

That's what I'm trying to do here to some extent, is just fill in some of what

you won't see on the mainstream media.

So let me find this one about look, just

cuz you get your news from RT doesn't

mean all of us do.

Yeah, I can't get RT any, I'm not getting it from rt.

Let me see.

CIA propaganda.

Let me just check.

I've got the right one here.

I do.

Here it is, this one.

Bear with me and here we go.

This is a former CIA CIA agent of some.

Well, give me a concrete example of how you used the press this way.

Well, for example, in my, my war, the Angola War that I helped to manage

one third of my staff was propaganda.

I had prop gists all over the world, principally, and

London, Kinshasa and Zambia.

We were, we would take stories, which we would write and put 'em

in the Zambia Times, and then pull them out and send them to a, a

journalist on our payroll in Europe.

But his cover story, you see, would be that he would, he had gotten 'em

from his stringer in Luaka who had gotten 'em from the Zambia Times.

But after that point, the journalists Reuters and afp the

management was not witting of it.

Now, our contact man in Europe was, and we pumped just, just dozens

of stories about Cuban atrocities.

Cuban rapists.

We didn't know of one single atrocity committed by the Cubans.

It was.

Your raw false propaganda to, to create a, an illusion of communists, you know,

eating babies for br that's what makes it so difficult to trust the bad stories

you hear about groups who are opposed to the us It's so difficult to know

where the truth lies on these things.

Just gotta take everything with a grain of more than a grain of salt.

It's just really hard to know where the truth is when the US just openly admits.

Yeah.

We just get small media groups to take stories and then we get bigger

media groups to take them from them.

Yes.

Yeah.

And this is what's happening in Australia where essentially the Murdoch Press

and the Costello press come out with nonsense about all sorts of issue.

And God down ABC just repeats these stories and I'm gonna sort

of get onto some examples of that.

So we have a sort of a similar they're situation.

Yeah.

Especially anything about Dan

Andrews Oh yeah.

Or about Schoolies.

Yes.

What's the thing about Schoolies?

Anything in particular news.com

has been running stories for the last four days about the horrible

behavior of those kids at Schoolies.

Right.

The latest one was they found a list of wish, a wish this, that some

teenage boy had, things he's gonna do at Schoolies, which is just fantasy.

Yes.

And it's, oh my God, how disgusting this

is.

They should be in doing some form of national service and

getting discipline probably.

Yeah.

Yeah.

China and.

Diplomatic measures.

So I've had a G 20 and president G has met with all sorts of people over the

last few weeks, both at the G 20 and then at, since he's been on a plane, he's

been meeting all sorts of other groups.

They've all been falling over themselves to have a meeting with them.

And Australia managed to have a 32 minute meeting.

And interestingly, Joe, a lot of the right wing press has been quite

favorable about albanese meetings with president G because the business councils

and the other groups really want it.

Like, I think they are saying, enough, enough, we've gotta sell stuff.

So I found,

but it also gives them reasons to demonize him later on as being

controlled by the communist Chinese.

That's true.

That's true.

So there's been largely positive press about him meeting with the Chinese with

some notable exceptions that I'll get to.

But what has you know, basically the, the argument I've been running over the

past few months is the sort of end of us hegemony and China flexing its mess

muscles and, and creating relationships with other groups and sort of oil

and gas playing important role in, in breaking this sort of hegemony up.

So things that have happened Bloomberg had an article saying

this is about the computer chips, we talked about that in previous weeks.

And Dutch Minister says, US cannot dictate approach to Chinese exports.

The country will make its own assessment.

The official tells the newspaper.

So she had a meeting with the Netherlands and shortly afterwards the Netherlands

says, we're gonna make up our own mind about whether we supply machinery

that let you make computer chips.

We had Albanese actually came out and said, Australia is unlikely

to support Taiwan's push to join the comprehensive and progressive

agreement for transpacific partnership.

So basically, Albanese has said we're not interested in having

Taiwan as part of a trade pack.

That's a sort of a, a pro-China line.

Well pro mainly in China line the Thai Prime Minister has sped up a high-speed

railway system that's been built by the Chinese the Italian Prime Minister.

Expressed the need for China and Italy to further and deepen their economic ties.

And she stated that Italy rejects joining factions against China and the

Indonesian president dissipated in a ceremony again about high speed rail.

And what else have we got here?

Chile has supported China to join the c p tpp, this trade group, and New Zealand's

come out as well and expressed the need to deepen their relationship and affirmed

the one China policy and what else we got.

Spanish Prime Minister said that his government will create easy and safe

environment for Chinese companies to invest in Spain and French.

President Macron said that France does not seek faction confrontation.

They'll deepen their ties.

He welcomes Chinese companies to invest in France.

So there's a lot of countries coming out now and basically saying,

we're just gonna deal with China.

And it's gonna be really interesting to see if the US can corral

enough allies to do its bidding.

Well, of course, the cheese

eating surrender monkeys are willing to

work with the Chinese.

What was that?

The the, the cheese Eating.

Surrender monkeys.

Cheese.

Eating Surrender monkeys.

Right.

Do, do you not remember during the Coalition of the Drilling?

No.

Is the

French called the, the French.

Oh, were they by the Americans.

Oh, okay.

We called cheese Eating Surrender Monkey Monkeys.

That was when they named, cause they refused to join the

coalition of the Willing Yeah.

Coalition growing.

Right.

And they, they renamed french fries to Freedom Fires.

Mm-hmm.

. Yeah.

So I mentioned before about the ABC parroting a lot of the right wing

Murdoch and Castello press points.

And look, I did not watch the whole q and a episode, but I

heard about what happened on it.

So I saw enough to create this clip that I will put on now for you about

q and a and its episode on China.

Featuring of course, Stan Grant and put him up there with James Carlton

as somebody who's incredibly annoying.

Allison has joined the chatroom I saw.

Good on you Allison.

We, we did a little shout out early in the podcast to congratulate you on your work.

Okay, here's about two minutes from q and.

Why was Anthony Albanese shaking hands with the man whose

regime is accused of genocide?

S Jing is proving power is everything.

The world can't ignore him.

He's self-proclaimed.

Best friend Vladimir Putin is threatening nuclear war on Ukraine.

Tonight are our interests more important than our morals?

Welcome to Q Day.

Here's a question from Bob vcu.

After the Holocaust of World War ii, we all said never again.

So why is Albanese shaking hands and smiling with the Chinese dictator?

She, while the genocide against the Tibetans, the Uighurs and the Fallen gone

practitioners is still going on Santa.

What did you think?

It's a very good question and one that should be put to the Prime

Minister and this government.

I, you know, obviously these sorts of things are very complicated and

China and Australia's relationship has had a bit of a rough patch the last

couple of years, and I can see that, you know, this government's trying

to sort of, repair some of that.

And that was probably part of that.

And I think these things are complicated, but I do think that a big part of

these conversations that happen within diplomatic circles are about

symbolism, and it does say something to be seen publicly shaking hands

with someone whose government is accused of very serious human rights

violations, the Tibetans, the Uyghurs, and various other things, including

as well as, you know, dual Australians that are in detention in China.

Who, you know, many beliefs should be brought home.

And these are concerns that should that, that are very worrying.

And you know, yeah, I, I, I agree.

I think why, why was the Prime Minister shaking hands with the

leader of a country that has a very.

Questionable human rights track record.

The Prime Minister in meeting President G was an important

meeting because dialogue is good.

Making sure that we talk look so happy to be doing it.

There was a big smile on his face.

Well, I mean that, I guess the question goes to you in not speaking to the

Chinese leader for such a long time, is it beneficial to the national interest to

have that conversation on human rights?

Well, didn't put that question to Joe Hockey.

Did it help the Uighurs that Australia was in the deep freeze

during the Morrison years?

No.

No.

So did that, do you changed behavior if you don't speak to

someone about their behavior?

So if we're not in conversation with China, which by the way is our biggest

trading partner and there's what a million Chinese Australians living here,

what is going on?

What is going on?

But even Joe

Hockey doesn't agree with them.

Just, why is the prime Minister shaking hands with the the pres?

G?

Why is he, well, why is he shaking hands with anybody?

What and Stan Grant, did he

not shake hands with the Saudi

prince?

You out your fingers afterwards, make sure they're all there.

And you know that other lady at the very beginning, they, oh yes.

Well, you know there's dual Aussie in detention.

You know, this is a very good question.

Why is he shaking hands?

Well, he shook hands with the US president and the UK Prime Minister

and they're holding Australian citizen Julian Asange in a prison in Belmar.

No question about that.

Oh God.

It just pisses me off the, just hypocrisy of these people.

If you want to play that game and you are demanding that, this respect

of human rights, then you've gotta be consistent across the board.

And the abc Stan Grants promoted as some sort of China expert.

He's a, just a deal.

Just the fact that he's lived there for a few years hasn't helped him at all.

So I just find that unbelievable that our national broadcaster has

descended to such a level where they're saying he should have looked grumpy.

Okay, maybe he had to shake G's hand, but he should have looked

grumpy and not willing to do it.

Is that suggestion is that then

you've we've got, you look kish, don't you?

I know.

It just, you look stupid.

It's just the most insane stuff.

And presumably that's one of the best forums on the ABC to discuss issues

along with the insiders in other groups.

If you talk to people like, you know, right wing Tony or others like that,

they all talk about how biased the ABC is and just a left wing rebel.

And I just have these arguments saying, no, they're not.

Have you watched it?

Have you seen things like this?

They're often parenting in the Murdoch press that it's biased.

Yes.

I just find it astounding that we've reached this, this level

of craziness with our media.

Complete waste of time to be watching these programs complete.

Not only a waste of time, it's just going to fill you with

nonsense and an indoctrination.

Don't subject yourself to it.

Get, if you're gonna get indoctrination, get it right here on this podcast.

Is . We're we're happy to

Indoctrine.

Are you?

Yeah.

John's finished with insiders.

Yeah, cuz it's again, just full of, full of crazy.

I mean, they had He's that guy from the Australian Foreign

Affairs editor, Greg Sheridan, calling Jacinda a lap dog of China.

He's the greatest lap dog of the usa We've got, anyway, she was

shaking hands with

she wasn't she?

Yes.

And Joe smiling, looked happy.

Can you believe it?

Very me.

That shouldn't be allowed.

Yeah.

Ah, so in contrast the bbc, I put something the second.

Yes.

Jeffrey Sax was being interviewed on the bbc and this was I think an

interview about the climate change.

Cop Cop 27, is that what it was?

I think so, yeah.

Meeting in Egypt.

And so have a look at this where the presenter starts to, Sort of do an abc

and this Jeffrey Sax responds Before going any further, I'll play this one.

Biden administration's been strongly critical of China's actions on human

rights, but engaging on climate change.

Do you see that as a strategy that can actually work?

I'm not sure why BBC started with listing only China's human rights abuses.

What about America's human rights abuses the Iraq War together

with the UK completely illegal and under false pretenses.

The war in Syria, the war in Libya, the continued sanctions against civilian

populations in Venezuela and Iran, walking away from the Paris Climate

Agreement for the last four years, unilateral trade actions that have been

deemed illegal by wto, so one can make.

Anything one wants, but we have really serious human rights violations

by the United States abroad.

Not to mention in insurrection on January 6th in our own country, not to mention

the continued massive racism, white supremacism and abuse of incarceration of

hundreds of thousands of people in the us black, African-American people of color.

So I think that the whole premise of this story is a little bit odd.

No, but sorry, I'm looking, sorry if I may, I found, I found the framing

of it, it not what I expected.

I thought we were going to talk about climate change, which we should.

But I think that the idea that there is one party that is so guilty, how can

we talk to them, is just a strange way.

To address this issue.

Well, hang on.

I'm, we have a United State.

If I could, I'm hoping we have a, I'm hoping we can have a conversation.

And if I could just say I'm, I'm using, and, and what I'm saying back

to you here is we are also using the framing of the Biden administration.

We're also talking from the perspective of how Joe Biden himself and those

around him have talked about the human rights abuses in China.

So you always, excuse me for one moment.

The US always attacks other countries.

It holds itself sacro saying

that's the way to do it.

Brilliant.

Hadn't seen that happen here.

Had not seen that happen here.

Well,

What's the name on the ABC?

Used to hold politicians to

account.

Mm-hmm.

hasn't happened in a while.

Mm.

But he was right in the way he talked about framing and Alison,

that goddamn James Carlton on that.

God forbid if I just backtrack to that, he would just try and frame things in

a manner that was just crazy actually.

You can understand why politicians sort of get media training to basically

just ignore the question and just say the thing that they want to say.

And I think the classic is the,

not that I'm a fan, but the Jordan Peterson interview with Kathy Newman.

I think it is.

Yes.

Yes.

So what you're saying is No, I'm not saying that at

all.

That's right.

Yes.

Don't frame just, I'm not gonna let you frame the whole

thing the way that you are.

So the that sort of stand rant Kwando episode was an example of, of framing

and it made it really difficult for people to, to You know, to break

through that framing, you have to be as aggressive as Jeffrey Sax was in that

interview with the bbc where he just said, no, I'm not having a bar of this.

You are framing this in a way that I'm just not gonna start with.

So not easy to do.

Some other examples of stuff as I get through more clips that

I've had stored for a while here.

This is a situation in China where this professor, oh no, where there

was a I hope I've got it here.

No I don't.

It was it was basically a clip of this.

UK journalist in China, and he was stopped by the authorities from, he

was just standing on a street doing a piece to camera, and he tweeted and

said imagine if China's journalists in other countries were hassled like

this by the police for simply filming a TV piece to camera in the street.

This happened during the recent party Congress, and I'd

forgotten about it by the way.

We had no choice but to pack up and go.

So party Congress, he's on the street doing a piece to camera authorities

come along and say, move along.

In his tweet he was saying, imagine if this happened to Chinese journalists.

But the same sort of thing actually happened in the UK with UK journalists.

So there's been a span of incidents recently, Joe,

with people pouring paint on.

Works of art and then gluing themselves to the wall and there was something

going on and these guys were filming it.

I'll just play part of this one in the uk

it what do you do moment?

You're arrest, so can tell you I'm pressed, I'm a of the press.

I give you three months and show you press.

I'm obviously you can't arrest me.

Don't, because I'm here.

I'm a press.

I'm coming up.

I'm, I don't know by You only need that.

Yeah.

Can be detain one, searching for Yeah.

You are currently detained.

I'm quite obviously a member of the.

There's a lot of background noise, so I'll cut it short, but

they're on a bridge with cameras.

They're obviously part of the press filming something, they get arrested.

So it does happen everywhere.

Yeah.

It's not to say that it's acceptable, of course it's not, but it's just, I, I

There was an ABC article about a 16 year old down in Byron who got a beating from

the cops, and it was filmed from the balcony of a, an apartment that was either

looking, and it

was certainly alleged.

The cops then went round, they couldn't see the people in the balcony, but

the bystanders at ground level, they went around and threatened them,

saying, I hope you haven't filmed

that.

Right.

Yep.

Happens everywhere.

Mm-hmm.

, unfortunately, some places are more of a police state than others.

But you know, as I look around the world and think of places where I'm likely

to be beaten up by the police when I'm innocent or worse shot dead while

I'm eating a hamburger in a McDonald's car park or something like that.

You know, the place I'm thinking of anyway, that's a bit of a

wrap of or shot dead after you

called 9 1 1.

Yes.

That was that Australian woman indeed.

Yes.

Who was very threatening in her neg in the middle of the night.

Yes.

Yes.

That's it.

Yeah.

So that's just a bit of a rundown of just hypocrisy, if you like,

in the way things are reported.

It's really difficult to know where the truth lies, and it's a real

challenge to keep a balance in your head and go, hang on a minute, let's

just not necessarily fall for the normal good guys, bad guys narrative

that's trying to be imposed here.

Maybe they're all bad guys, for example, and there are no good guys.

All cups are bastards.

Mm.

Oh.

Okay.

Still going around the world.

Venezuela, a pariah state, Joe, under sanctions had their money

confiscated to be communist.

Yes.

And had all their assets confiscated.

And basically Macron said of Venezuela, it's not been a democracy for a long time.

I'm in favor of having the sanctions.

Pressure on the regime will bear fruit when those who

impose sanctions work together.

That was him four years ago, but something's changed.

Joe Oil.

Mm.

Venezuela happens to have a lot of it, and France happens to

need some because the supply of energy now is a little bit shaky.

And at the cop 27 meeting basically Macron settles up to Nicholas

Maduro, had a brief conversation.

It's on the video, and treats him like a long lost friend and says, we

must get together and do more things.

And just capitulation, just a total sucking up by Macron to Maduro

despite official that the sanctions,

the French have been very maybe not anti-American, but

certainly willing to go it alone

on, on various things, right?

Yes.

Such as not joining the coalition of the drilling.

Yes.

But also

opting out

of nato.

Yeah.

When it's convenient.

When it's convenient.

Yeah, absolutely.

Mm.

Well, and there's a, an article also headline was Macron Calls

Russia, one of the last imperial colonial powers on Africa Visit

So according to Alan McLeod, that was the precise time.

That irony died forever.

I mean, the French president calling Russia one of the last imperial

colonial powers in Africa, ah, dear.

France has gotten in London, Africa.

No, but they'd like to throw the influence around wherever they can.

Okay

Turkey is starting to pay for Russian gas in rubles.

That's a big move.

If the rubs are

devalued at the moment.

Sounds like a good plan.

Are they devalued?

I have no idea.

I don't think they are.

I think they've, they actually dropped momentarily at the start

of the Ukrainian war, but they're now back to their pre-war levels.

Just an example of countries like Turkey, Iran, Russia, China starting to deal in

energy in things other than US dollars.

And as I've mentioned before, when the US dollar went off the gold

standard Britain woods and it was no longer equivalent to certain number

of ounces of gold by arrangement with the Saudis it became equivalent to

a certain number of barrels of oil.

And if that starts disappearing, then that's the end of the line

for the American Hege money.

German inflation.

For the month of October, Joe dropped 4.2%.

Have you heard of inflation dropping?

See, the consumer price index in Germany dropped 4.2%.

Oh, in this negative?

Yes.

So they have deflation?

Yes.

That's a lot.

So is that a bad thing?

I dunno that it is a bad thing.

But it's sign of an economy

that's about to explode.

It's, it's, it would, it would've me worried.

I mean, or is screw no, I think this is I think this is, you know, adjusted,

seasonally adjusted and things like that.

I would assume they do the same sort of stuff, but, you know, there's a

graph there where everything looks very normal then a huge spike of 8%.

Now a negative 4.2%.

You know, the one thing about currency is major fluctuations are not good.

You want confidence in your currency because currency relies on faith

and as soon as it starts bouncing around, that's not a good thing.

So that's a German inflation rate dropping.

And Joe, did you see that New Zealand's voting age is under review?

Because some young some young Kiwis started a legal claim

and said it's discrimination to not allow 16 year olds to vote.

No.

I

know that it's been talked about for a while,

lowering age of voting, so I had some victory in a court case and They've

got some sort of Bill of Rights type legislation that says you cannot

discriminate on the basis of age against people over the age of 16.

So some young kiwi said, well, we're not allowed to vote.

That looks like discrimination.

So that's moving along in New Zealand.

You think a 16 year old is

then we're screwed?

Or sorry, McDonald's is screwed.

All of the fast food joints are

screwed.

What?

Why would that be?

Oh, cause they under

eighteens because they pay 'em below minimum

wage and you think they'll then vote for the party that bumps up

the minimum wage for 16 year olds?

Well, but

I mean, even if, if they're considered to be old enough to have equal

rights to adults, Joey, that won't happen.

They'll say we, we can send you off to war at 16, but we're still only gonna

pay you a 16 year old's wage probably

cause you're still living at home with mom and dad, therefore

you don't need a rear wage.

Ah, where are we up to?

Okay.

That's around the world.

We've dealt with quite a few countries.

History of money.

Joe is not what you think.

So this is gonna be interesting in relation to cryptocurrency.

So there was a big run on a particular type of cryptocurrency and even

Bitcoin, which is sort of the largest of the cryptocurrencies, has

suffered some major falls in value.

Thinking about money most, so this is from an article in the history of money.

Most of us have an idea of how money came to be.

It goes something like this.

People wanted to exchange goods for other goods, but it was difficult to coordinate.

So they started exchanging goods for money and money for goods.

This tells us that money is a medium of exchange.

It's a nice and simple story.

The problem is that it may not be true.

We may be understanding money entirely wrong.

So work by some academics has been on this.

All this is in the show notes, by the way, for the patrons.

What they've said, or what they've found is the origin of money is more

like this, that in pre-market futile societies, there was a system of

maintaining justice in the community.

If somebody committed a crime the authority, and let's call him,

the king would decide the criminal owed a fine to the victim, and the

fine could be a cow, a sheep, or chickens, depending on the crime.

And until the cow was brought forward, the criminal was indebted to the

victim, and the king would record the criminal's outstanding debt.

So this changed over time, rather than paying fines to the victim.

Criminals were ordered to pay fines to the king This way resources

were being moved to the king who could coordinate their use for the

benefit of the community as a whole.

And this was useful for the king, for the development of society.

But it became more than just sort of criminal fines, it was expanded and the

king created debt records of his own.

You can think of them as pieces of paper that say the king owes you.

So next he went to his citizens and demanded that they give

him the resources he wanted.

If a citizen gave their count to the king, the king would give the

citizen some of his king os U papers.

Now, accounts seemed more useful than a piece of paper, so it seems silly that a

citizen would agree to this, but the king had a solution to make sure everybody

would want his king owes you papers.

He created a use for them.

He proclaimed that every so often.

Citizens had to come forward to the kingdom and each citizen would be

in big trouble unless they could provide little bits of paper that

showed the king still owed them.

In that case, the king would let them go.

So essentially, dear listener, money was created between the kings and the palaces

and the people, little Chis of what the king owed to people and what people

then owed to the king or the palace.

And because there would be periodic taxation, you would need to supply some

of these IOUs in order to pay a tax debt.

And that's how money was created.

It was transactions between the public and the king.

It wasn't created.

Initially as a means of exchange between people.

And so you have to think of this in today's world with

cryptocurrency and its its value.

So the Australian dollar, for example, will always have some value in Australia

because the Australian government will say to its citizens, you need to pay

tax or a fine or something else, and it's gotta be in Australian dollars.

So you will, they'll always have some value because you'll always have to

pay tax with some Australian dollars.

That's not the case with cryptocurrency.

There's no, well, with the crazy exception of El Salvador, which stupidly

sort of made a cryptocurrency almost like its its country's own currency.

Just ignoring that.

Crazy situation for the moment.

No country is going to say, oh, you can pay your tax with cryptocurrency.

That's not how it's going to work.

So it doesn't have the inherent value cryptocurrency that sovereign

fiat currency has because that need for it comes about in many

ways because of the underlying need to pay a tax in that currency.

So yeah, so that sort of explains a little bit about how you should

think about cryptocurrency and Joe, there's all sorts of work being done

in the podcasting world where people can listen to podcasts and donate

cryptocurrency as they're listening.

There's these apps that are starting to allow that.

And if you've got a light, there's a certain number of apps that allow it.

If you've got a cryptocurrency wallet, you can transfer Satoshi's.

You paying magic beans to.

No, just Satoshi's.

The, the good thing about about it is there's the transactional cost of

transferring Bitcoin or Satoshi with Satoshis are a fraction of a Bitcoin.

If, if you're trying to transfer money from credit cards, there's

always a transaction cost that eats away, whereas they don't have the

same amount of you can do very micro transactions, small transactions in

cryptocurrency without whitling away, fuck the planet over at the same time.

Cause the biggest problem with cryptocurrencies

is the amount of energy required

to, to mine it.

Yes.

Cuz these computers are just churning away, um mm-hmm.

. Exactly.

Yeah.

So anyway, think about all that.

When you, if you are crazy enough, I mean, if you have a

little bit of cryptocurrency.

Just as a means of exchange, like 50 bucks in a wallet somewhere, cuz you're

just swapping small amounts for somebody.

Fair enough.

But think very, very, very, very closely about whether you would

ever use it as something to invest.

So

no, I'd get my money outta crypto soon as possible.

Yes, indeed.

Okay, so that was that was that.

And now I wanted to go final topic and I wasn't sure if I was gonna get to

this, but looks like again, so this is to do with Japan and I found this

article which was by a guy called lemme just the size of this window.

Correct.

Robert H.

Wade.

He is a professor of global political economy at the London School of Economics.

The New Zealand citizen worked at the instituted development

studies at Sussex University.

He worked at the World Bank, he worked at the US Congress.

He was a Prince University and at MIT and around university.

So he's got some credentials in in economics and political economy.

So this is looking at Japan in particular, and Taiwan and Korea.

And why did those countries end up becoming developed, prosperous first world

countries when other countries did not?

And I've been banging on for a while about neoliberalism and what it did to.

Latin America, the Global South.

Joe, you finished reading that book by Naomi Klein Shock Doctrine.

Oh no,

I watched the documentary.

Right?

Where'd you see that?

Are you saying that right?

No, no, it's legal.

Okay.

He,

he was set up to stream media off your local hard drive.

But they've now got into streaming movies and they've got a whole bunch, mostly

stuff that nobody wants to watch, but in their documentary section there's some

awful stuff like zeitgeist, but then there's an honest liar or the unbelievers,

a couple of the other documentaries that were probably 10 years old.

And one of them was the Shock Doctrine.

Mm-hmm.

, which is Naomi Klein.

Delivering a lecture at a university.

Oh.

Chicago School of Economics.

Okay.

But interspersed with video of various things to illustrate

her talk.

Right.

Okay.

Cause I was thinking, I didn't know there was a documentary on it, but Yes.

Okay.

It's her talking about it at at a university giving a lecture type thing.

Yeah.

I mean,

80% of it is film of whatever's going on that she's using as an illustration.

And then the final 20% is her talking on these points.

So she's, she's effectively

the narrative.

Okay.

So doctrine actually I found a very influential book to read.

Essentially looked at various ex examples around the world where countries

experienced a shock, which might be a weather event or a natural disaster.

Earthquake tsunami might be some other shock event.

And basically her premise was that there were right wing forces that were all set

to go in the event of countries being in a crisis situation, and they would swoop

in and convince whatever authorities were there to allow them to make changes.

That essentially opened up the economy to multinationals sold off public

infrastructure and other sort of typical neoliberal policies that would be brought

in and the public who were in shock.

And maybe if there'd been a tidal way, they were still at high ground sheltering

in the jungle while their fishing village was then being demolished.

And a bunch of sort of tourist.

Accommodation was being put up, things like that.

That was part of the sort of premises.

Yeah.

She said the first experiment cuz it was all Friedman, isn't it?

And the Chicago School of Economics.

Yes.

Yep.

So Chile was the first experiment Yes.

Followed by Argentina.

And it was interesting as these right wingers took over and implemented the

Chicago school policies, how basically inflation just went through the roof Yes.

And ended up screwing the,

The low economies.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Interesting.

And then talking about Maggie and how she tried to, but how she balked at

becoming a right wing dictator and said that there were some policies that

were just a bridge too far for her.

Right.

Even though she was best mates with General Pinoche mm-hmm.

thought he was a great guy.

Yes.

Yeah.

Brushed up

until Spain extradited him and then prosecuted

him.

Right.

Did she give up on him then?

Did she Well, no, cuz she

wasn't a prime minister, but she was standing by his side whilst

he was being extra from the uk.

I think he was arrested in the UK and then extra

Spain.

Yeah, yeah.

And of course the General IMF World Bank policy is with, say, developing

countries and let's just typically think South America is, they would

say to them, you guys are in trouble.

We gave you a loan, you haven't repaid it.

What you've gotta do is sell off your public infrastructure

to multinational corporations.

You've gotta let them come in and buy all of your good stuff and you can then

use that money to pay off your debt.

You have to reduce your social services.

And you you know, you cannot put in any sort of trade barriers.

So you might want to start a manufacturing sector, but you can't

put in a trade barrier to protect that industry in its infancy while

it's trying to get up and running.

So that makes it impossible for these countries to develop industries of

industrial industries of manufacturing or high tech because you can't

just go from zero to competing against the existing players.

You need some protection.

And the World Bank and the IMF just don't allow these countries to do it.

They ban them from protecting these industries, and that's the

secret to developing an industry.

And so anyway, the question is, How did Japan, Taiwan, South Korea end up and

to some extent also Singapore Hong Kong, how did these countries break through and

and actually manage to become successful?

Cheap, wasn't it at the time?

So, Well, it's a combination of things, Joan, but the, the narrative that would

like they'd like to tell you is that it was liberal minded, free enterprise

that allowed these countries to succeed.

Cheap labor, didn't spend much relied on cheap labor and

therefore undercut everybody.

To build up an industry is, is kind of, you know, one story for example,

but that's not what happened, . So in this article, and again, it'll be

in the show notes for the patrons.

How did they do it?

So I've highlighted bits from this article, which is gonna

take me 10 or 15 minutes to go through and paint this picture.

So abstract.

Few non-western countries have reached the general prosperity of

Western Europe and North America.

Just about all of the countries which were in the periphery in

1960, remain in the periphery today.

The clearest exceptions are in capitalist Northeast Asia, namely

Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea.

And you could add Singapore and Hong Kong to that.

So how did they escape the periphery?

How did they do it?

And he says here, the Northeast Asian countries remain among a still smaller

set of non-Western countries, which have developed mostly indigenously

owned firms across a broad range of Mabel, major global industries.

They're able to act as first tier suppliers to Western multinationals.

So in these countries, they're locally owned and operated

and they're able to compete.

And the types of industries that they're in includes chemicals, petrochemicals,

electronics, steel ship building, cars, car parts, and more recently, biotech,

advanced semiconductors, nanotechnology, and even space exploration.

So these countries are located some 9,000 kilometers across the Pacific

from the world's biggest and most innovative market, mainly the usa.

While next door to the usa, Mexico has languished, nowhere near

achieving what these countries did.

It did.

So how exceptional is the economic performance?

How many non-Western countries have reached the general level of

prosperity of Western Europe and North America in the past two centuries?

And in this article, he says, fewer than 10 countries have managed to do it.

And there was a World Bank study in 2013 that confirmed this conclusion.

It identified 101 countries in 1960 as middle income, and found

that of those only 13 reached high income almost five decades later.

So 101 countries only 13 managed to do it.

And there's a table there, which shows the average income of countries in 1970 as a

percentage of US average income, and then it shows their average income in 2010.

So 40 years later, again, as a percentage of.

US income.

So take for example, Taiwan.

In 1970, the average income in Taiwan was 20% of US average income.

And 40 years later, 40 years later, Taiwanese reached the point where the

average income is 80% of the US income.

So it's an amazing performance.

Japan was 50%, now it's 70%.

South Korea was 10% in 1970 10% of the American wage, average wage.

And then 40 years later, the average South Korean was 70% of the average American.

Whereas you look at countries like India, it was 5%, and now it's only 10%.

Brazil was 15, now only 30.

So that's the sort of.

Progress that they're talking about.

And this article says that there's seeing to be some sort of glass

ceiling or some trap that stops countries progressing through.

And the next section discusses the causes proposed by analysts writing in mainstream

economics, often called neoliberalism.

So by the 1980s when Northeast Asia's rise began to attract attention,

most economists viewed their subject through the lens of neoliberalism.

So they looked at these successful countries, most economists, and

said, oh, that's the free market working in these countries.

So neo-liberal philosophy says that the market is the best

institution for growth and liberty.

Even where there are market failures, you're best just leaving

things untreated because the cost of correcting them through state

intervention is is dangerous.

And they look for a maximum degree of openness to the international economy.

And maximum integration.

And the idea that governments would curb competition in the interest of helping

some firms and industries while they're sort of, getting themselves organized.

That's not part of the formula.

So the World Banks 1993 book called the East Asian Miracle proves this thinking.

It examined the causes of success in eight high performing Asian

economies, and the book argues that openness to international trade.

Based on largely neutral incentives was the critical factor in their growth.

Basically saying cuz they were open to trade, that's why they succeeded.

And and this sort of confirmed the whole Adam Smith neoliberal argument

and and, and basically the world bank promoting market liberalization pointing

to these countries as success stories.

But according to this paper, the writer says that's not the case.

And it's a far more interesting answer than that.

And it turns out that the answer is closely related to geopolitics of

Northeast Asia and the United States.

Beginning in the late 19th century there were three orders in East Asia.

So we had Japan.

With its basically Japan colonized career in Taiwan.

And the Japanese colonial government treated career in Taiwan as offshore

farms, mines and industries, and they were closely integrated.

So by 1940, somewhere between 50 and 70% of Korean and Taiwanese

children were in elementary school.

And all three countries were more homogenous in terms of ethnicity and

religion than most other countries.

So that's interesting.

For starters that Japan colonized Korea and Taiwan and basically

Japanese, them and their cultures became very close and education was

a big part of what was going on.

Second area was Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, so we had the

colonialists transformed the economy except for Hong Kong into commodity

production for western markets.

So thinking sort of Indonesia for example, we had the Dutch had colonized

Indonesia and basically market Yes.

And plantations, rubber, rubber, stuff like that.

Big landlords an emphasis on single crops and, and a Landon class.

So in those sorts of countries colonial governments was more passive.

So the Dutch were passive in the sense of accepting the incumbent landed elites

and allowing them to just do what they wanted to do provided the plantations

were operating so, In those countries.

By 1940 only about 2% of children were in elementary school, in the

French colony of Vietnam, for example.

So whereas Japan, when it colonized career in Taiwan, had 50 to 70%

of children in elementary school, France, when had colonized.

Vietnam only had about 2% of children in elementary school.

And then the third area, so we had Japan with Korea and Taiwan.

That's one area.

We had these sort of colonies with plantations.

That was the second area.

And then China, different case altogether.

, so turning back to Japan, Japan was forced in the mid 19th century

to do stuff for some 250 years before the mid 19th century.

Japanese rulers.

Isolated the country.

And then in 1853, Commodor Perry of the US Navy sailed into Edo,

which is now Tokyo harbor with a fleet of warships and demanded that

Japan open up to American commerce.

Nothing's changed.

1853.

Nearly 200 years later, they're still doing it sailed.

He learned it from the British.

Come on.

Yeah.

Sailed in and said except the Americans didn't wanna occupy,

they just wanted companies to operate and just wanted free trade.

Yeah.

So he sailed into the harbor in 1853 and demanded that the Japanese

open up their economy, so his visits send shockwaves through the Japanese

country's leaders who fear that America might take Japan as a colony.

Because they had just watched.

What had happened to China and thought, well, don't want that

happening to us, are we next?

So the Japanese government responded with wholesale reforms to create a

centralized state and national identity as the basis for a strong military.

And they had this thing which was, if we take the initiative, we can dominate.

If we do not, we will be dominated.

So they saw the writing on the wall and got their act together.

So the meja restoration of 1868 launched a frenzy of industrialization

and militarization that lasted several decades, and they had a real

developmental mindset that emerged.

So there was a big push in state capacity.

They sent teams of officials around the western world to investigate ways

to organize a modern society such as tax system, post office railroad.

Army, parliament, judiciary, and the like.

And then they implemented the best models that they could at home.

So Japan militarized so fast and effectively that in 18

94, 18 95, its Navy defeated.

China's and Aade later defeated rushes.

And this sent a shockwave through Western governments because for the

first time in the modern era, an Asian state defeated a European state.

So Japan went on to become the first non-Western country to catch

up with the West in broad measures of production structure, military

strength, and mass living conditions.

So a combination there of, of culture and also pressing need, having seen

what had happened to China and not wanting to succumb to the same fate.

After the war, Japan continued to be ruled by this developmental mindset,

which had been sort of institutionalized during the maje, the mija restoration

and in the buildup to the war.

And a similar mindset was also institutionalized in Korea and Taiwan.

Just read on here.

So basically also the developmental mindset emerged from the combination of

a few factors, lack of natural resources.

So above all, land and energy, having actual a lot of natural resources is a,

can be a bad thing, Joe, because one, you just get lazy in that you rely.

The natural resources thinking of a country maybe in present world that

has abundant natural resources and just is fairly lazy as a result and allows

that industry to essentially dominate in the Yes, bringing the wealth.

And you don't bother doing anything with your other manufacturing industries cuz

you think, ah, why should we bother?

We can just dig stuff up.

Mm-hmm.

, well, so Japan wasn't able to just dig stuff up.

The other disadvantage of that is if you do have stuff that can

be dug up, countries like America want to take possession of you

and take the stuff from you.

So if you don't have it, then they don't want to take it off you.

Is a, is another sort of benefit of it.

So it forces you to work on creating an industrial developmental capacity and

Places like America are not tempted to invade you and, and take your minerals.

So there's that aspect.

They also had an abundance of people, I was

gonna say the Americans prefer to invade, stick in a puppet regime.

Yes.

And then take the stuff.

Indeed.

So they had that in their favor.

They had to reconstruct from the war, but they weren't starting from zero.

They had actually built up a, a civilization.

And so they just had to reconstruct.

They knew how to do it.

And they had lots of American money.

Yes.

And, and the well, and the re the other thing that they had in their

favor was communist China and Russia on the doorstep and the American fear.

That communist China and Russia would start to take over the world.

So they wanted some friendly countries.

There is a bowl walk against the yellow peril, if you like from

communist China and from from Russia.

American

protector for many years after the war anyway, wasn't

it?

Yes.

So we're gonna get into the detail of that.

So there's a few advantages for Japan in that it was already industrial

develop, developmental via culture.

It was spooked by what happened to China.

So it ramped up, it lost the war, but it had no natural resources.

So it's forced to rely on its people.

Had a large population that was well educated and it It had the benefit

of having a nearby threat so that the US would want to bolster it as

a counter to that communist threat.

Right.

Just turning briefly to Taiwan the native Taiwanese, most of whose ancestors

had come from the mainland two or more centuries before and had experienced

50 years of total separation from the mainland under Japanese rule, saw the

chanka as foreigners and vice versa.

So they were very Japanese by that point, the Taiwanese.

And in South Korea they had a tightly disciplined military dictatorship.

They used that external threat of communism North

Korea as its justification.

And the the ruler park, 1961.

He had been educated in Japanese military academy, served in

the Japanese army in Manura.

He had studied the history of the Meja restoration and the role of the

state in Japan's industrialization.

And so he was a chief architect and driving force of career's development

until his assassination in 1979.

So that was from 61 to 79.

He's an interesting, fun fact.

Soon after he took power, he arrested leading businessmen and threatened

them with jail for corruption unless they left for the United States

and returned with export orders.

That's one way of doing it, isn't it?

I, I make a living as a sales rep.

I tell you that, that that would really focus the mind on getting some orders.

Mm-hmm.

The dominant political philosophies of these countries emphasized

order and nationalism more than liberty and free enterprise.

So where the West likes to paint these countries as lovers of

liberty and free enterprise.

In fact, culturally that cra Yeah.

Having known people who grew up in Singapore, that

was very much an autocracy.

Indeed.

So before the second World War, you, United States had little presence in

Northeast Asia, but after the war, containment of communism became a

top priority and the US saw China and North Korea as a severe threat

to the US sphere of influence.

So the US poured in assistance.

To its three Asian allies providing troops, economic advisors, political

advisors, teachers accompanied by large financial transfers, essentially,

dear listener, because of the threat of communist China and North Korea,

the Americans pretty much did a textbook of of how to help countries

out and make them successful.

On the downside, they did send them their Mormons.

Yes.

Did they send them the Mormons or did the Mormons just sneak in?

Oh, the Mormons went anyway.

Yeah, it's like rats and sailing chip.

They're just there anyway US advisors helped construct centralized top

level agencies, the plan, the use of various scarce capital and helped

construct an effective civil service.

During the American occupation of Japan from 45 to 52, the Japanese government

instituted the most restrictive foreign trade and foreign exchange control

system ever devised by a major free nation and did it with American blessing.

Okay, so in the seven years, immediately following the war, Japan had incredibly

restrictive foreign trade protectionism.

Exactly.

The country's renaissance was helped much by the Korean War as well because

Japan was the main source of American procurements for the Korean War.

And the Japanese Prime Minister at the time later declared that the

war was a gift of the gods because of the business that it generated.

Incidentally, it was the Korean War that that basically emptied

the US government's coffers.

And sent it into deficit where it had to break with the gold standard

because it was the money spent on the Korean War that finally broke

the back of, of the American budget.

But I digress.

Okay.

US government gave strong backing for land distribution in all three countries,

meaning they helped with land reforms that enabled people to get a piece of

land, ordinary people, and they provided support for industrialization by curbing

the landed classes and strengthening peasant support for the state so that the

peasant population, the rural population, felt good about what was happening