Based Camp - How do Han Chinese Immigrants Own 80% of East Asian Stocks？

00:00:00.000 hello simone i'm excited to be here with you today today we are going to be discussing the

00:00:04.300 jews of asia the chinese and be able to say the chinese are the jews of asia they live in

00:00:09.060 look it's it's something that people have said uh but also isn't it a thing for like

00:00:13.940 how to make money like a jew aren't those popular chinese people like in china there's this whole 0.99

00:00:19.840 category of books like how to make money like a jew or how to do finance like a jew or how to

00:00:23.520 teach your kids about money like a jew i feel like there's some kind of like this these people

00:00:27.280 get it thing going on yeah but we're going to be discussing a phenomenon where chinese people

00:00:32.400 make up the vast majority of income for specific regions through southeast asia so like outside of

00:00:39.160 china why this phenomenon might be happening and what we might actually be able to learn from jews 0.74

00:00:43.680 about this phenomenon because it's happening with this vastly different culture in the chinese

00:00:47.240 what's causing it and where can we look many people like oh it's the middleman like like merchant 0.98

00:00:52.860 phenomenon it's not the middleman merchant phenomenon that's a stupid idea that's what

00:00:56.600 people say to try to avoid the offensive takes i'll put a map on screen here so people can

00:01:00.380 understand how extreme this phenomenon is okay so the bottom number on this map is the percent

00:01:07.460 that is chinese ethnically chinese of these economies and this is han chinese and then the

00:01:12.000 top percent is the percent of the total economy that they control oh no so in myanmore three percent

00:01:20.060 are chinese 76 percent of the economy is chinese oh no wow one percent are chinese 99 of the economy

00:01:27.880 is chinese why are we stepping on this hornet's nest oh in vietnam yeah this is the hornet's nest i am

00:01:33.740 sticking my thing yeah you are just shaking it around okay and great this this has been all removed

00:01:41.320 from wikipedia i had to go to like old versions of wikipedia because they're like this is too offensive

00:01:44.240 in vietnam one percent are chinese they own 41 of the local economy in thailand 14 are chinese

00:01:52.300 and they own 81 of the local economy god in in malaysia you've got 22 chinese 63 of the local economy

00:02:00.360 oh come on oh in indonesia there's a little confusing here i can't tell because they have like

00:02:07.800 one side here and the other side well okay so in in malaysia it might be like the bright side of 0.82

00:02:13.160 malaysia is like 10 chinese 24 of the local economy we'll see in indonesia oh this is singapore i'm

00:02:18.680 looking at here it's the one little thing here in singapore it's 76 are han descended they control 96 1.00

00:02:24.260 of the economy in indonesia three percent are chinese descended they control 74 of the local

00:02:30.140 economy in the philippines it's three percent they control 62 of the local economy so note here that

00:02:36.040 the level of economic development of these countries seems correlated with the percent of

00:02:40.160 han chinese within them with singapore being the highest this is in this is like calling them the 0.98

00:02:46.660 jews of asia is honestly underselling the situation if jews control maybe maybe jews do control this 0.99

00:02:52.280 much of the local economy and they're just better at hiding it i had so many that there's there's also

00:02:58.180 that i mean yeah so so if i go into you know something i had written on this so over these chinese

00:03:04.020 entrepreneurs and investors play a role in the commerce and industry throughout the economy

00:03:09.280 the southeast asia compromising less than 10 of the population of southeast asia overseas chinese

00:03:13.720 are estimated to possess foreign exchange reserving over 100 billion and control two-thirds of the

00:03:19.300 retail trade and 80 of all publicly listed companies on the stock market across the southeast

00:03:24.140 asian region so 10 of the population 80 of the stock market through their economic though their

00:03:29.420 economic prominence is particularly conspicuous among the public companies listed on all major

00:03:35.180 southeast asian stock markets 90 oh my god these small and medium-sized south asian businesses are

00:03:41.580 also overwhelmingly chinese or overseas chinese they control 70 of the region's corporate wealth

00:03:47.340 and 86 of the billionaires are of chinese ancestry

00:03:55.340 okay so you can see why i wanted to dig into this yeah there's mm-hmm this is

00:04:00.620 i i i mean i i want to be surprised i'm not surprised but also i i had no idea i had no idea

00:04:08.460 this like i mean i if you'd ask me to guess i would not you would have thought it was slightly

00:04:13.820 outsized yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so the other thing to note about these people is most

00:04:22.220 of them immigrated out here we'll get to this in a second hundreds of years ago they are not recent

00:04:27.660 chinese immigrants they are not doing this off of the ccp they have a very different culture than 1.00

00:04:35.020 recent chinese immigrants may have that is much more authentic to the original chinese culture

00:04:40.620 because they didn't undergo the cultural revolution right okay oh wow so in some ways you could argue

00:04:47.340 because they were they were part of an intellectual class that if they had stayed in china would have

00:04:51.980 been systematically killed and starved that they didn't have a leg up wow that's really yes so 0.99

00:04:57.820 part of the question is why is china so dumb i'm sorry china's dumb um like this is just one of those 1.00

00:05:03.340 episodes isn't it has made catastrophically bad decisions over and over and over again true true 0.99

00:05:09.820 honestly like i i i i'm super i was just watching more history on what happened during the cultural

00:05:15.740 revolution the level of profound death and suffering like i'm just yeah i'm sorry no pity that was

00:05:23.020 i i feel that they have um despite themselves somehow had some level of wealth right now but

00:05:30.460 most of the wealth right now is based on a a you can see our episode on what's the future of east asia

00:05:36.140 a literal pyramid scheme based on their property market um which 76 of their wealth is in it's about

00:05:41.980 to collapse and they had a brief period of a really enlightened leadership yay the tiananmen square

00:05:47.740 massacre um i i actually think that dung shaoping the guy who was in charge during that he's a great

00:05:53.420 leader for china i'm sorry he did the the few things i also think the tiananmen square massacre is

00:05:59.500 within the west often mischaracterized as a very simple act of evil without considering that the

00:06:07.260 people who ordered it had gone through the cultural revolution and fully understood the scale and level

00:06:13.980 of death china might face if it underwent another revolution and that is what they were trying to 0.76

00:06:20.300 prevent but generally there was a string of good leaders but if you look historically they've had

00:06:24.780 tons and tons of bad leaders going back to the dowager empress and now they've got the new dowager 1.00

00:06:28.940 empress xi jinping who is uh i i love it i was i was saying china is absolutely boned and a call

00:06:36.540 was like a head chinese person this was one of our secret societies just china has constantly risen 1.00

00:06:43.020 from the ashes and has a great long history of rising from the ashes and i was like excuse me why

00:06:49.340 do you keep finding yourself in the ashes yeah do you think who lit the fire lady who do you think

00:06:55.500 you keep setting everything on fire and now you're headed for the ashes but we see this outside of

00:07:01.260 china and other parts of east asia like this incredible han essent group that is just doing

00:07:06.460 economic dynamism and i think that this is the key to this but if you ask ai if you ask like articles

00:07:13.820 they're like oh this is downstream of confucian values right where i'm like oh this might be downstream

00:07:17.820 of like jewish culture but here's the problem with saying this is downstream of confucian values

00:07:22.780 traditional confucian values which from the basis of chinese cultural values are not necessarily

00:07:28.140 supportive of entrepreneurship the ideal person in a confucius thought it's a scholar bureaucrat rather

00:07:33.820 than an entrepreneur and this is like known to anyone who knows confucius values some entrepreneurial

00:07:38.780 attributes conflict with traditional chinese cultural values for example taking initiative and

00:07:44.140 innovating can be seen as disruptive to the social harmony of confucian thought han dynasty society

00:07:49.980 placed merchants at the bottom of the social hierarchy below workers peasants soldiers and

00:07:54.780 students so this was not a light class

00:08:01.900 so how did this happen this is like a really interesting question to me if when you look at

00:08:07.340 modern chinese society it is you know people are like oh what about like deep sink or whatever

00:08:14.300 right this new ai that's literally just trained on chat gpt that's how they did it so quick quickly

00:08:20.700 that's why it thinks it's gpt if you ask it questions that's why it gives you answers as if it's gpt like yes

00:08:26.540 they found a way to make it really cheap by cheating that's like their entire mainland ccp society 1.00

00:08:33.260 it's built off of but so this brings me to a question why if mainland society in china is so decrepit

00:08:42.380 deficient in the new ottoman empire why are their cultural offshoots so incredibly good why is

00:08:51.020 singapore doing so well why is taiwan doing so well why do they have these fabs that our entire world

00:08:57.900 relies upon for modern technology and no one else seems to be able to copy them like they try to like

00:09:03.420 build fabs in like the united states and they're like i'm sorry you people just like are not good

00:09:07.580 enough at following orders or smart enough to run these like you you you cannot run the you white 1.00

00:09:13.500 people lack the ability to run these fabs um we would let you run them if we could we can't uh and 0.97

00:09:20.380 you want to be like well no they're just trying to hold on to the technology it's like yes that's part

00:09:25.580 of it but why can't we copy them then clearly there's economic self-defense all sorts of motivations to be

00:09:32.540 doing this but we seem to be unable to do it so why are all of the world's chips that like the

00:09:39.420 entire world economy everyone has tried to copy this you know the us has tried to copy this like

00:09:43.900 the uae has poured so many billions of dollars into trying to copy that they can't copy this

00:09:49.340 why what about the taiwanese allows them to do this what about these people in the southeast region

00:09:54.780 allowed them to do this what in the united states and this is where i think you're beginning to

00:09:59.340 find something that makes them quite different from jews why in the united states do chinese 0.99

00:10:05.820 people economically so dramatically out compete other ethnic groups in the united states other 0.64

00:10:10.780 immigrant groups in the united states which they do that was the average income the median asian

00:10:16.140 household wealth in the united states was 553 000 2022 dramatically higher than other income groups

00:10:27.020 despite this success uh they have challenges reaching senior management roles asian americans hold

00:10:33.820 only 13 percent of professional roles at large employers uh but only six percent of senior management

00:10:39.980 positions asian americans share a ceo position at the s p 500 companies has remained around two percent

00:10:46.780 for the last decades according to bcg henderson institute survey asian americans represent only three

00:10:51.740 percent of executives far below the u.s population share of six percent which makes no sense so the so

00:11:01.740 now we're untangling a riddle here okay here is the riddle as i lay it out okay in east asian communities

00:11:11.980 chinese people end up with dramatically more wealth so chinese immigrants from an earlier period end up with 0.60

00:11:18.300 dramatically more wealth and in leadership positions at a dramatically higher level singapore and taiwan

00:11:24.780 have each individually become an economic and technological powerhouse that is literally

00:11:30.060 unassailable on the world stage china is a bumbling buffoon america's chinese community out competes other 1.00

00:11:39.420 americans at a general economic opportunity but under competes when it comes to senior positions 0.80

00:11:48.300 all right do you want to take a crack at this before i do

00:11:56.860 no you go ahead you go ahead

00:12:01.660 and and all of this seems to be directly contrary to what has allowed the jews to succeed which is

00:12:07.260 as i've said i i suspect in our episode on like why did you succeed because it's not due to inbuilt

00:12:11.740 iq differences you can see our episode on this it's cultural below the united states average

00:12:17.260 iq which shouldn't even be close given the number of ashkenazi jews in the country it looks like 1.00

00:12:22.380 everyone else is like functionally retarded so if if israel as i argue jews out compete because 0.98

00:12:31.580 their ability to like go to outsiders and engage like we get emails from our podcasts 95 of our emails 0.98

00:12:38.300 are from jews like if you were an intellectual influencer jews will just reach out to you and

00:12:42.140 be like hey here's a idea or here's a thing other cultural groups don't do this chinese people

00:12:46.860 highly intellectually get yeah i don't have we heard from anyone who's chinese now we've heard

00:12:51.980 from people who have traveled and worked extensively in china but i don't think no i haven't had any chinese

00:12:59.500 people reach out to us in the same way that jews do which is really interesting certainly yeah i think

00:13:03.340 we've had a couple people of chinese descent i would say like two to three generations at least

00:13:08.700 removed from mainland china reach out to us about sort of logistical and operational things

00:13:13.660 but not about philosophy not about philosophy they're not like hey i disagree so so this has got me

00:13:19.340 thinking okay what's going on here because the chinese seem to be like like thriving in a totally

00:13:25.020 different way than the jews are thriving yeah okay so i think this is my hypothesis i'm gonna call it 0.99

00:13:33.500 the cuban hypothesis okay so i've mentioned this before if you ask an american describe your average

00:13:43.500 cuban to me like a floridian because i lived in florida for a long time they'll be like ah cubans

00:13:48.700 cubans are really really capitalist they're really really good at business they typically run like

00:13:54.860 large successful businesses and i'm like huh that's that's that's that's really interesting

00:13:59.820 what are the politics of cuba and they're like oh the exact opposite of that so okay how is it the

00:14:06.460 case that american cubans are really good at business they're really mercantile they're really 0.93

00:14:12.060 capitalistic but the politics in cuba hate everything about that right and and are bumbling buffoons

00:14:19.340 on the political stage is because the politics of cuba specifically squeezed out this section of

00:14:26.940 society i think this is what happened with china and i don't think the communists did it i think

00:14:35.900 who did this was we got two squeezes we got the han dynasty when the merchant class is literally the

00:14:42.540 lowest class in their entire society below the workers below the students below anyone so if you're

00:14:47.660 a merchant class in han society where are you going to be keeping your wife and kids i guess anywhere

00:14:53.900 but han society because it sucks for you there anywhere but han society it's almost like how

00:14:59.100 silicon valley ended up selecting for people who are willing to take big risks and they weren't

00:15:05.260 really respected elsewhere so like all the nerds went to silicon valley but with china it was basically

00:15:09.500 like all the nerds and all the people who are willing to take big risks and build businesses

00:15:13.740 just needed to be anywhere but china so they just went to the adjacent area china squeezed out all 1.00

00:15:19.980 of its capitalistic and mercantile power in multiple squeezes so it had a chance to redevelop

00:15:27.100 in china and then they have the cultural revolution and who leaves during the cultural revolution who

00:15:31.740 leaves with shanghai-shek and he takes them all to taiwan taiwan was founded by the previous military 0.98

00:15:37.340 regime they went to every competent scientist or mercantilist or artist or engineer that they knew

00:15:44.220 because they wanted to because they wanted to jump start this new empire for clarification this can be

00:15:49.740 thought of almost sort of like looting it wasn't like they were intentionally trying to start some

00:15:54.540 sort of a egalitarian high-minded intelligentsia empire they stole all the famous art they could find

00:16:02.220 they stole all the gold they could find and they stole all the economically productive people they 0.56

00:16:06.700 could find and and then and then the people so also i think there's there's the note that to leave

00:16:15.660 your country and start fresh somewhere else especially in the past when they're like you know immigration 1.00

00:16:21.340 was tough you didn't know like there was no like social safety net you're only looking at the people

00:16:27.020 who survived this gauntlet so it's not just that the most entrepreneurial and brave and risk-taking

00:16:33.660 and mercantilist and scientific or whatever people were leaving china it's also that the ones who managed

00:16:39.420 to survive in these other countries were the ones who were both that and also good at it you know they

00:16:45.420 could follow through and they delivered absolutely and and then in the united states i think you had a

00:16:51.580 different population you know they'd already been squeezed a few times

00:16:54.860 and they came to the united states and i think they struggled a bit more than the other populations

00:17:00.300 and they struggled to reach these higher level positions and this is where something that we

00:17:04.700 pointed out here gets really interesting and this is me being incredibly racist because i'm gonna have

00:17:09.820 to try to make a judgment based on like the chinese people i know the jewish people i know

00:17:14.860 what i have seen as patterns in their behavior and my interactions with them to try to find out why

00:17:22.220 they might be culturally or genetically different right in terms of sociological profiles the way

00:17:26.460 they engage with ideas with chinese people what i've noticed and i think that this is why of every

00:17:32.380 one of these three populations the group that is out competing all the others is this han dynasty 0.98

00:17:37.500 group that left yeah why are they doing so uniquely well okay because i think that we often talk about

00:17:44.540 humans as two things laying on top of each other you have the biological hard-coded hardware which is like your

00:17:51.180 predilections everything like that and then you have the faster evolving social infrastructure

00:17:57.340 which acts as sort of a scaffolding for that absolutely chinese people had a higher emphasis 0.99

00:18:06.140 historically on the scaffolding part of this identity that they had and that confucius scaffolding

00:18:15.740 whatever you want to call it even if it doesn't seem entrepreneurial was actually really important

00:18:21.740 to uh being chinese and acting and working chinese and that the ones who maintain that because if you

00:18:31.100 look at the chinese in this bamboo network as it's called they are much more like og chinese like

00:18:36.780 pre-cultural revolution chinese they have much more traditional confucius values in the way their

00:18:42.300 families are managed and the way they marry and the way they select whites for the kids the way all of 0.97

00:18:45.820 that yeah and i think that that has served them uniquely well and one outcome that i've noticed when

00:18:52.220 i think of my chinese friends whether they're in the prenatalist network or anything like that

00:18:56.380 is especially when i contrast them with jewish people because we're going to say like okay these these 0.98

00:19:00.060 two groups are different in some way how are they different the chinese friends i have

00:19:05.020 get really passionate sometimes about things it might be like a a fandom or liking cars or something like

00:19:11.660 that but they don't get passionate about ideologies in the way that for example a jew will like a jew

00:19:21.820 for every one of the tracks we release we have like five jews and no one else reaches out to us and 0.99

00:19:26.220 these aren't even like only about like jewish things and they're like here are all of the theological

00:19:31.180 points we need to discuss about this track yeah and and you never get this from another community

00:19:37.980 like yeah also such respect for that i love it protestant converts to the tradition already we

00:19:43.900 were like oh or catholic converts who are like i want to get married in this so i want to they're

00:19:48.060 like either you guys are evil and insane or i agree with this this seems about right to me it's never

00:19:54.300 hey let's talk through every detail of what you just said whether jews are doing this for cultural 0.96

00:19:59.260 or genetic reasons is largely irrelevant as i've said culture is a mix of the two

00:20:04.460 they do do it and the people who do this the very least in conversations that i've had are the

00:20:09.900 chinese when i get in an ideological conversation with chinese people it's very clear they are

00:20:15.420 interested in the right answer like the right answer from like a functionalist perspective well

00:20:20.460 you would argue that they're consequentialists which we quite appreciate right you would like

00:20:26.540 you think this would work really well and i think that this is why china has gravitated towards

00:20:30.940 a one-party system i actually think a one-party system is natural more efficient for this cultural

00:20:35.980 tradition which is to say that they are interested not in fighting for the sake of fighting i don't

00:20:43.020 want to say jews fight jews fight for the jews know that jews argue for the sake of argument they 0.89

00:20:47.100 love of all people they love doing that there's much less argumentation for the sake of argumentation

00:20:53.660 and much more like hey we're actually trying to find out like how do we fix this right guys

00:20:57.580 um and that leads to one party system sort of making sense but when you remove the rest of the

00:21:05.180 confucius values when you remove the rest of their culture they suffer for that more than any other

00:21:10.700 people on earth i think and and i actually think that with east asian culture largely speaking like

00:21:16.220 you want to fix japan go back to bushido the these cultures rely on cultural history much more than

00:21:21.820 other cultures they rely on the scaffolding much more than other cultures and so why are they reaching 0.98

00:21:27.020 these high level positions in the u.s it's because if you are a culture that relies really heavily on

00:21:31.980 cultural scaffolding you are a culture that relies on and we have actually seen this in studies that

00:21:36.620 have looked on i think if you're talking about this in a negative context you're going to call this

00:21:41.420 conformism it's not really conformism it's communalism versus an independent or clannish drive

00:21:47.740 individualism versus collectivism yeah but there's really three systems there's clan based individualism

00:21:53.740 and collectivism individualism doesn't work it's complete fantasy of the modern ultra progressive

00:21:58.620 movement clanism works this is like my family above all else okay but then collectivism is or not my

00:22:04.940 family but like my cultural network or my ideological group or whatever yeah collectivism is much less

00:22:12.380 likely to be interested in fighting for the sake of fighting because that's not the way a collectivist sees

00:22:17.500 things and i think that a collectivist mindset especially within a sub population where they

00:22:23.420 aren't the majority is going to really outcompete a majority population especially if they have this

00:22:28.940 cultural continuity of like ancestral confucianism do you have thoughts simone no i mean this checks

00:22:35.580 out and i'm relaxing because it's less offensive than i thought it would be that's great not that i could

00:22:40.620 think of anything more offensive i was just you know i mean this is a we're dancing we're tap dancing

00:22:47.660 around the third rail you know the fret of stair moves they're great but it's also like high stakes

00:22:53.500 yes well i mean it's about also finding out what's true and this is like an interesting question when

00:22:58.940 you look at these differences in income like this to me poses an interesting question especially if i

00:23:04.220 contrast it with jews who also have control of disproportionate amount of income this is like a 0.95

00:23:07.980 fact okay like i'm sorry people it's a fact but they also have a disproportionate amount of like

00:23:13.180 political power a disproportionate amount of nobel prize winners a disproportionate amount of like

00:23:16.700 what why is this and this is actually something you'll also know it was the chinese by the way if

00:23:20.860 you look at chinese nobel prize winners if you look at chinese winners of like a lot of them are

00:23:26.140 immigrants out of mainland china now you can say well this is because mainland china is sort of

00:23:29.740 structurally against them okay maybe or it could be that these were the communities even in a

00:23:35.900 modern context that are going to do well like if i'm a family today in china that's going to leave

00:23:39.500 china what okay what are traits that are going to be associated with my family we're going to be

00:23:43.260 wealthier we're going to be do you know 50 of chinese immigrants the united states when contrast

00:23:47.100 to that i forgot whatever it is the u.s population of a college degree we're going to be more educated

00:23:51.660 we're going to be you know so of course this is going to select for a cream of the crop mentality

00:23:55.740 the question is can you continue to motivate reproduction now i want to talk about trust-based

00:23:59.420 networks called guanxi in chinese the banmu network relies heavily on guanxi a chinese concept

00:24:04.060 referring to personal connections and reciprocal obligations these networks are built on trust

00:24:08.700 often within families or ethnic communities in regions where legal systems may be weak or corrupt

00:24:15.100 this is prevalent in south asia trust-based relationships are a reliable way to conduct

00:24:18.860 business ethnic chinese entrepreneurs often prefer to work with others in their community

00:24:23.420 because they share norms language and cultural understandings a chinese business owner might source

00:24:28.700 goods from another ethnic chinese supplier or hire relatives because they trust them more than

00:24:33.740 outsiders and this is seen a lot when you have a high trust society operating within a low trust

00:24:40.380 society um what do you mean by that i mean because it guanxi implies to me a lack of trust like only if

00:24:49.340 i know you really well and you know we've built trust over time like it implies to me that the culture

00:24:55.580 is extremely low trust which has always confused me because how can you have a very collective okay so

00:25:01.260 suppose you have a clan-based society which a lot of these other societies are okay sure okay um

00:25:06.540 they they their families will screw over other like let's say indonesian families one indonesian 0.88

00:25:12.380 family might screw over another indonesian family okay what they're saying is a chinese family that's

00:25:17.180 immigrated there and as part of this minority community is not going to screw over another chinese

00:25:20.700 family and that single differentiation leads to these communities to be able to in part play a role in

00:25:26.940 out competing these other groups because and this is true if you're talking about these southeast

00:25:31.260 nation countries a lot of them can screw each other if they have more access to the law if they have 0.99

00:25:35.260 more access to politicians if they have more access to whatever they can screw someone else over and 0.72

00:25:38.940 if they're the strongest political group then they can screw everyone over so you have a a minority 0.97

00:25:43.980 society in it was any degree of trust within them because i think that's the thing that people forget

00:25:48.380 about nepotism when it exists at a community level and when people are like oh jews are nepotistic that's 0.89

00:25:54.780 why they're out competing other group and it's like nepotism was always allowed like you were

00:25:59.980 allowed to be nepotistic with other mormons you were allowed to be nepotistic with other catholics 1.00

00:26:04.300 you were allowed to be nepotistic with other calvinists or protestants why weren't you doing that

00:26:09.820 and the answer is well you know our culture we do screw each other over occasionally it was like okay so

00:26:15.260 why was it that the chinese minority community or the jewish minority community had higher trust within

00:26:21.660 their culture right like it's like you're you're you're calling them out for saying how dare all of

00:26:26.860 you trust each other and it's like well you know you could have built a culture that did that yourself

00:26:34.300 but you didn't and if people are like oh come on like catholics certainly build high trust no every 1.00

00:26:40.620 organized crime wave in like american history the mob the mafia the recent hispanic immigrants these are 0.99

00:26:46.220 family-based systems where they all do not trust each other in the slightest you know this is not a

00:26:52.780 good way to build a lot of wells in the appalachian region where my family's historically from you know

00:26:57.820 they did not trust other people outside of the family network right and so if you have like jews 0.90

00:27:03.420 living in that region they'd be able to dramatically outcompete us economically but jews never really 1.00

00:27:07.980 migrated to that region because they were immediately killed um but basically this is the thing about the

00:27:12.380 appalachian people and this is glazed over in history books but it is really funny if you look

00:27:17.900 at like mormon spread throughout a map and you see it like hits this region it's like completely stop

00:27:23.340 spreading you know quaker spread on a map like completely stop spreading why because this group 0.99

00:27:27.500 just killed anyone who was outside of their their networks no they killed other families as well it's

00:27:33.340 just that they didn't have as high a value on life and other people did you can see our videos on this

00:27:37.740 they really liked gouging out eyes and and stuff like that and we've just like forgotten that this

00:27:42.700 existed like these these cultural memories of like feral people in the hills who murder everyone

00:27:47.900 we're like them we're like ah it's so funny that we have a cultural memory of that that couldn't have

00:27:53.500 possibly been a real thing a few hundred years ago yeah but go back to the episode because malcolm

00:27:58.860 gleefully reads detailed accounts of the you know eye gouging nails people people slipping on eyeballs

00:28:04.860 after a brawl like whoa famous people you've heard of like daniel boone talks about it like

00:28:11.020 picking out a grape okay we don't have to no let's let they can go to that episode i'm just saying that

00:28:16.540 there was a reason why nobody migrated to their their territory yeah but the the south east asians were

00:28:21.980 not quite so violent but they were as corrupt and so they were able to be out competed by this and i'm

00:28:29.660 not going to say that there isn't a level of corruption to nepotism there absolutely is but nepotism

00:28:34.140 alone should never be able to defeat a dominant cultural group for nepotism to defeat a dominant

00:28:40.140 cultural group you need two additional things you need the dominant cultural group to not trust each

00:28:45.100 other so a lack of nepotism within them because they have nepotism within them that's not a problem

00:28:48.940 and you need the dominant cultural group to have a corrupt legal system often or degree of a corrupt

00:28:55.260 legal system otherwise the legal system could offset the advantages gained by the additional trust

00:29:01.340 allowed for by nepotism um and and we should note that these uh communities also didn't get

00:29:08.620 like a leg up right you're looking at how much wealth they owed many overseas chinese communities

00:29:12.940 were historically marginalized in their host countries for example indonesia and malaysia

00:29:16.220 they were denied access to land ownership or government jobs and they turned to trade and

00:29:20.300 commerce this is where i think there finally is some similarity with you which is yeah here you have

00:29:26.220 selective pressures of othering and sort of forcing you to sharpen your people and culture so it's

00:29:33.020 beneficial in the long run exactly um the bamboo network is really based around family conglomerates

00:29:41.020 which is what it has allowed it to thrive as much as it has and i think that this is also like

00:29:47.660 when you are a discriminated minority for so long in another culture it becomes easier to trust people of

00:29:53.580 your cultural group especially if there is some degree of cultural punishment for anyone in that

00:29:59.340 cultural group who breaks this trust so let's say you're a minority group like people like how do 0.99

00:30:05.100 groups like jews or like these minority chinese populations build a degree of cultural trust well

00:30:11.260 if the mainstream society doesn't allow you to own land doesn't allow you cultural

00:30:14.780 government jobs doesn't like anything like this and and they the law system treats you unfairly

00:30:18.940 you're going to care a lot about acceptance within your own community because not only will they do

00:30:24.460 differential business with you but if you screw them over they will kick you out and you will have

00:30:28.460 no way to do business so this is something that's also not talked about as historically these individuals

00:30:36.060 when they would you know say oh i'm gonna cheat my fellow jew or i'm gonna cheat my fellow chinese like 0.88

00:30:41.980 confucius original the whole network it goes around really quickly and all of a sudden they can't get any

00:30:46.940 contracts at all because right mainstream population won't deal with them and their community won't do

00:30:51.100 yeah so they they have to make do with their network so the network becomes strong yes and this is why

00:30:56.220 this network has a higher degree of trust because you can't risk burning that trust as easily as

00:31:01.820 somebody from another cultural group that makes sense yeah yeah and so that again this is where things

00:31:08.140 are finally dovetailing with jewish networks in that they're in a hostile land they are forced to be 0.97

00:31:15.820 better and stronger and they are forced to also trust each other and work together really well that

00:31:21.980 makes sense yeah so i'm wondering what are your thoughts simone on all of this do you think my

00:31:31.340 hypothesis is correct i'm vaguely trying to think back to the different things that we've read on

00:31:38.300 different national iqs and like specifically where different groups performed better i just looked

00:31:44.300 and i couldn't find a lot of evidence because i i specifically looked i was like do they outperform

00:31:48.140 like native populations on like testing and stuff like that i thought that there were some like

00:31:52.300 a sort of quanti mathematical performance was higher that's what i'm kind of remembering and i'm

00:31:56.140 wondering if some of this is a product of industries that are really thriving right now

00:32:02.140 like there being some kind of natural predisposition in the way that like we've we've posited that

00:32:08.060 whether it be cultural or genetic and likely they're intermixed because cultural and genetic features

00:32:13.980 kind of intermix over time right you know they sort of get bred into people but also the culture shapes

00:32:19.260 the people um that because jews have been really sort of shaped into people who on average may have a leg

00:32:28.220 up with communication and with public debate and public intellectualism that they ended up

00:32:34.620 disproportionately represented in areas like law and arts and you know sort of fields that that in the

00:32:41.340 end have been very influential as america has grown which has given them like outsized influence

00:32:50.380 maybe there's some kind of cultural plus genetic trait in han chinese that

00:32:58.220 has them that gives them a leg up with things like semiconductor development like with

00:33:05.180 really lean effective manufacturing things like that the average iq of singapore is 110.

00:33:11.660 okay come on like that doesn't help that sort of teasing on the rest of the world at that

00:33:17.340 come on i mean iq absolutely helps no this is one of those depending on the source type things

00:33:28.220 um

00:33:35.180 um in one uh it goes to 108.87 and in another it's at 105.89 uh the one i have for taiwan by the way is

00:33:58.220 106.47 for the united states you're looking at 97.4 for the uk it's 99.1 for china it's 104.1

00:34:10.220 you know it's not the only thing but it helps and i mean i think what you also know just by the nature

00:34:16.860 of how singapore was formed you have a combination of iq by the way is 92. wow so singapore

00:34:27.260 yeah oh wow okay yeah i'm just saying like there's something yeah it's not just culture and selective

00:34:35.580 pressures and what is what is it called survivorship bias but it it's also there's some

00:34:42.140 there's something going on well no i mean it is selective bias if i created a country that was

00:34:48.300 for only like the very smartest of jews that country is going to smoke every other country 1.00

00:34:53.980 yeah yeah well and i guess that's why you were like why when for example china more like to a

00:35:02.780 greater extent took back hong kong where countries not like free visa like move here like to anyone who

00:35:09.820 was like a certain income level yeah yeah above yeah like why not like you you just got like a

00:35:16.140 like a flash sale of brilliant citizens why are you not i mean i think new zealand is trying to start

00:35:24.220 to do this people overvalue ethnicity and undervalue micro communities is the point of all and performance

00:35:33.820 yeah and and i i was just saying this to someone who listens to the podcast sometimes recently because

00:35:39.020 they were trying to argue that like national iqs really matter and you had argued in some previous

00:35:44.380 podcast about the reverse flint effect and that you thought the most important factor was that

00:35:49.500 mostly lower iq people maybe having more kids and in his argument he linked to a sub stack article

00:35:55.820 was more like no actually it's more that lower iq countries just have higher birth rates still

00:36:01.180 and i i argued in response that like no our argument always has been that whatever the iq of a

00:36:06.940 population is at any given point it doesn't matter because selective pressures can so quickly change

00:36:11.980 that and like the the smartest population today like like you point out like with china like the han chinese 1.00

00:36:20.700 before like the the full rise of of yeah i mean it looks hostile to them you know may have been very

00:36:27.580 very smart and then they they squished out all these incredibly agentic people and these aren't not

00:36:33.820 we're not necessarily talking about iq as a trait in isolation we're talking about in this case like

00:36:37.900 just kind of success social profile mercantilism risk-taking all of this yeah yeah and like because

00:36:43.340 these are the things we care about again like there's so many people who have insanely high iqs

00:36:46.860 who get nothing done in life and we have zero respect for that like i don't care yeah how smart you are 0.87

00:36:51.420 you can be dumb as a rock and get a lot done so whatever but again like that i think that that's 0.92

00:36:57.580 our big bugaboo with things like iq like it i don't care what your group is right now i care about 0.99

00:37:03.820 selective pressures and culture and future geopolitical trends and i do think things like

00:37:11.420 what society will need and value in the future are really important things that cultures and

00:37:16.860 nationalities and countries need to be looking at because again like maybe this kind of like the the

00:37:22.620 ways in which um han chinese appear to thrive really worked well with the rise of technology and and the

00:37:29.260 ways that that jews are super powered on average in various ways like really worked well with the rise 1.00

00:37:35.260 of media and law and forms of civilization that that needed that kind of talent what kind of talent is

00:37:42.540 going to be needed in the post ai world like who's going to thrive what traits are going to thrive in

00:37:47.660 that world and and who's going to have influence your culture around that yeah because i don't i don't know

00:37:53.900 if it's if it's like jewish intellectual engagement i don't know if it's going to be you know han chinese 0.78

00:38:01.260 get it done build shit you know make things precise whatever i you know like what what i it's hard for 0.83

00:38:08.620 me to to think through because it's it's hard for me to know how agi is going to play out but i'm very 0.86

00:38:14.300 curious to see she's being really cute right away well she's it's been difficult today but well i think

00:38:24.300 yeah it's it's a question and the question is how much can you even control what dice you've been

00:38:30.620 given are gonna matter you know and are those dice gonna be relevant in the current yeah like what

00:38:37.820 if you've been dealt like successful middle management bureaucrat dice like this is the

00:38:43.660 worst hand to be dealt in this generation right how how do you even adapt to your family what do you

00:38:49.340 do you know do you i don't know do you go change your marriage criteria and like try to do a bunch of

00:38:55.580 outgroup outgroup breeding and rebuild your culture i actually disagree i think whatever dice you were

00:39:01.420 given you should try to build a family culture that is copathetic with those dice whether it's

00:39:07.900 adopting traditional confucius values or whether it's or updating them for modern context as we

00:39:13.020 have with our religious beliefs right you know like are you going to adopt and innovate or are you going

00:39:19.980 to retreat i see yeah so basically if you've been dealt a blowtorch you can't be like well i'm going

00:39:26.620 to turn it into a snow machine you you have to figure out where your blowtorch matters exactly like

00:39:32.700 okay so here it was me right like i am

00:39:39.100 science i am a person who in my early career was a scientist

00:39:47.580 i am not a person who could be a scientist i might want all of my chips in the science field

00:39:56.860 but that is not you know me simone i like i couldn't even survive you often joke i couldn't

00:40:02.940 even survive in a larger kind of company yeah you admire it but it's you don't have the aptitude for

00:40:10.460 your scientific work yeah yeah in in long focus and work like diligence and organization yeah yeah

00:40:17.580 yeah i mean you're very diligent but you're not in like an organized way

00:40:21.340 not only that but i'm also not that kind of a shape rotator like i am really i i can do math

00:40:29.340 because i'm a uniquely smart person and i can do physical and chemical shape rotating to like

00:40:35.580 understand molecular science but it doesn't come naturally to you it's not like the shapes rotate

00:40:40.220 in front of you in anticipation in a class and molecular scientists i'm always the bottom oh

00:40:46.700 what am i uniquely good at i can smoke people who have spent their entire lives studying like for

00:40:53.180 example textual analysis of the bible and i've been seeing this more and more recently as people reach

00:40:57.740 out to me and i'm like oh my god this person's an expert and they suck compared to me like why am i 0.83

00:41:01.740 this good at bible stuff i literally didn't study this at all growing up and somehow i can just be

00:41:09.820 like oh don't you know about this story or this story why why does this all like oh of course because

00:41:14.060 my ancestors sorted for this for generation after generation after generation i'm naturally good at

00:41:19.580 business stuff i do not admire business stuff i do not want to be the the talker hater trader 0.80

00:41:26.460 huckster negotiator but simone's always like shocked she's like wow you got a stupidly good deal 0.73

00:41:32.780 on that how are you so good at negotiating and i was just like i don't know it's just like what i'm 0.65

00:41:37.980 like i am not high culture okay i am a overly aggressive overly vulgar overly ambitious overly

00:41:49.100 like i i i i have a knowledge of who i am and that lends itself to a few professions whether it

00:41:57.180 is being a creative and trying to make this ai video game or trying to uh do the boldest thing

00:42:03.420 possible as people have said like multiple like people like malcolm you always just like have some

00:42:07.820 idea and are just like i'm gonna do it no matter how crazy it is or that or being the type of person

00:42:13.740 who people like to follow because they're like well and this is another segment like my answer

00:42:19.020 doesn't have done his own people like to like even as a kid like i didn't even meet i like one

00:42:23.180 thing that happened in my high school is like i thought of myself as like like a nerd whatever

00:42:27.420 kid and i learned the kids i didn't even know like didn't my name is like a write-in for like

00:42:31.420 class president like some kids organized like why did you do that and they're like well because

00:42:35.260 everybody like trusts you i was like but what but you don't like me and they're like yeah but like we

00:42:40.940 we we know that you're like you do something fun and but again trust trust is predictability too

00:42:47.980 you can someone you can trust it doesn't have to be lacking yeah and i guess like i know what

00:42:54.460 my good traits are but they're not the traits that i like ideologically identify with but like i don't

00:43:00.220 like try to force myself to be a scientist yeah but i think so yeah to like extrapolate this back to

00:43:05.260 like a larger thing and how should people look at their own cultures and families and future and

00:43:08.700 relevance in a post-ai world what are you good at what what what is your genetic inheritance

00:43:14.700 collectively as a family and personally and how can you find a place for that to fit in the future

00:43:22.060 and then invest in that find the things that you seem to have just like all the dice rolled in your

00:43:27.980 favor like with this media stuff i didn't know i was good at playing the media i didn't know i was good

00:43:33.340 at this sort of like larger social manipulation apparently i'm awesome at it but i didn't

00:43:39.180 like this isn't what i wanted for my life i wanted to be a famous scientist

00:43:45.420 right i want to be people like this anime dr stone you should watch dr stone they're like you'll

00:43:51.500 i am not dr stone in dr stone i might be the greed guy i greed is justice is what he always says but

00:43:59.980 yeah i i am definitely not a doctor i want to be a dr stone but i just lack any of those capabilities

00:44:05.820 well anyway know your strengths know your weaknesses i need to make you mop a tofu so

00:44:11.580 i'm going to be excited love you simone i love you too gorgeous and i love your beautiful treats

00:44:26.380 oh

00:44:32.220 I'll go.

00:44:33.220 I'll go.

00:44:34.220 I'll go.

00:44:35.220 Howdy, howdy, howdy, howdy, howdy, howdy. 0.57

00:44:39.220 Wow!

00:44:40.220 Hi, how are you doing?

00:44:44.220 Hi.

Based Camp - February 21, 2025

How do Han Chinese Immigrants Own 80% of East Asian Stocks？

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript