How do Han Chinese Immigrants Own 80% of East Asian Stocks？
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Summary
In this episode, we discuss a phenomenon where chinese people make up the vast majority of income for specific regions through southeast asia, and they control the majority of the local economy. What is it about chinese entrepreneurs and investors that makes them so dominant in these economies, and why are they so dominant?
Transcript
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hello simone i'm excited to be here with you today today we are going to be discussing the
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jews of asia the chinese and be able to say the chinese are the jews of asia they live in
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look it's it's something that people have said uh but also isn't it a thing for like
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how to make money like a jew aren't those popular chinese people like in china there's this whole
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category of books like how to make money like a jew or how to do finance like a jew or how to
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teach your kids about money like a jew i feel like there's some kind of like this these people
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get it thing going on yeah but we're going to be discussing a phenomenon where chinese people
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make up the vast majority of income for specific regions through southeast asia so like outside of
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china why this phenomenon might be happening and what we might actually be able to learn from jews
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about this phenomenon because it's happening with this vastly different culture in the chinese
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what's causing it and where can we look many people like oh it's the middleman like like merchant
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phenomenon it's not the middleman merchant phenomenon that's a stupid idea that's what
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people say to try to avoid the offensive takes i'll put a map on screen here so people can
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understand how extreme this phenomenon is okay so the bottom number on this map is the percent
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that is chinese ethnically chinese of these economies and this is han chinese and then the
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top percent is the percent of the total economy that they control oh no so in myanmore three percent
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are chinese 76 percent of the economy is chinese oh no wow one percent are chinese 99 of the economy
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is chinese why are we stepping on this hornet's nest oh in vietnam yeah this is the hornet's nest i am
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sticking my thing yeah you are just shaking it around okay and great this this has been all removed
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from wikipedia i had to go to like old versions of wikipedia because they're like this is too offensive
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in vietnam one percent are chinese they own 41 of the local economy in thailand 14 are chinese
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and they own 81 of the local economy god in in malaysia you've got 22 chinese 63 of the local economy
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oh come on oh in indonesia there's a little confusing here i can't tell because they have like
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one side here and the other side well okay so in in malaysia it might be like the bright side of
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malaysia is like 10 chinese 24 of the local economy we'll see in indonesia oh this is singapore i'm
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looking at here it's the one little thing here in singapore it's 76 are han descended they control 96
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of the economy in indonesia three percent are chinese descended they control 74 of the local
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economy in the philippines it's three percent they control 62 of the local economy so note here that
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the level of economic development of these countries seems correlated with the percent of
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han chinese within them with singapore being the highest this is in this is like calling them the
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jews of asia is honestly underselling the situation if jews control maybe maybe jews do control this
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much of the local economy and they're just better at hiding it i had so many that there's there's also
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that i mean yeah so so if i go into you know something i had written on this so over these chinese
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entrepreneurs and investors play a role in the commerce and industry throughout the economy
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the southeast asia compromising less than 10 of the population of southeast asia overseas chinese
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are estimated to possess foreign exchange reserving over 100 billion and control two-thirds of the
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retail trade and 80 of all publicly listed companies on the stock market across the southeast
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asian region so 10 of the population 80 of the stock market through their economic though their
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economic prominence is particularly conspicuous among the public companies listed on all major
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southeast asian stock markets 90 oh my god these small and medium-sized south asian businesses are
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also overwhelmingly chinese or overseas chinese they control 70 of the region's corporate wealth
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and 86 of the billionaires are of chinese ancestry
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okay so you can see why i wanted to dig into this yeah there's mm-hmm this is
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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
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this like i mean i if you'd ask me to guess i would not you would have thought it was slightly
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outsized yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so the other thing to note about these people is most
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of them immigrated out here we'll get to this in a second hundreds of years ago they are not recent
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chinese immigrants they are not doing this off of the ccp they have a very different culture than
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recent chinese immigrants may have that is much more authentic to the original chinese culture
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because they didn't undergo the cultural revolution right okay oh wow so in some ways you could argue
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because they were they were part of an intellectual class that if they had stayed in china would have
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been systematically killed and starved that they didn't have a leg up wow that's really yes so
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part of the question is why is china so dumb i'm sorry china's dumb um like this is just one of those
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episodes isn't it has made catastrophically bad decisions over and over and over again true true
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honestly like i i i i'm super i was just watching more history on what happened during the cultural
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revolution the level of profound death and suffering like i'm just yeah i'm sorry no pity that was
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i i feel that they have um despite themselves somehow had some level of wealth right now but
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most of the wealth right now is based on a a you can see our episode on what's the future of east asia
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a literal pyramid scheme based on their property market um which 76 of their wealth is in it's about
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to collapse and they had a brief period of a really enlightened leadership yay the tiananmen square
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massacre um i i actually think that dung shaoping the guy who was in charge during that he's a great
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leader for china i'm sorry he did the the few things i also think the tiananmen square massacre is
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within the west often mischaracterized as a very simple act of evil without considering that the
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people who ordered it had gone through the cultural revolution and fully understood the scale and level
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of death china might face if it underwent another revolution and that is what they were trying to
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prevent but generally there was a string of good leaders but if you look historically they've had
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tons and tons of bad leaders going back to the dowager empress and now they've got the new dowager
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empress xi jinping who is uh i i love it i was i was saying china is absolutely boned and a call
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was like a head chinese person this was one of our secret societies just china has constantly risen
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from the ashes and has a great long history of rising from the ashes and i was like excuse me why
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do you keep finding yourself in the ashes yeah do you think who lit the fire lady who do you think
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you keep setting everything on fire and now you're headed for the ashes but we see this outside of
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china and other parts of east asia like this incredible han essent group that is just doing
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economic dynamism and i think that this is the key to this but if you ask ai if you ask like articles
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they're like oh this is downstream of confucian values right where i'm like oh this might be downstream
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of like jewish culture but here's the problem with saying this is downstream of confucian values
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traditional confucian values which from the basis of chinese cultural values are not necessarily
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supportive of entrepreneurship the ideal person in a confucius thought it's a scholar bureaucrat rather
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than an entrepreneur and this is like known to anyone who knows confucius values some entrepreneurial
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attributes conflict with traditional chinese cultural values for example taking initiative and
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innovating can be seen as disruptive to the social harmony of confucian thought han dynasty society
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placed merchants at the bottom of the social hierarchy below workers peasants soldiers and
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so how did this happen this is like a really interesting question to me if when you look at
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modern chinese society it is you know people are like oh what about like deep sink or whatever
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right this new ai that's literally just trained on chat gpt that's how they did it so quick quickly
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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
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they found a way to make it really cheap by cheating that's like their entire mainland ccp society
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it's built off of but so this brings me to a question why if mainland society in china is so decrepit
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deficient in the new ottoman empire why are their cultural offshoots so incredibly good why is
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singapore doing so well why is taiwan doing so well why do they have these fabs that our entire world
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relies upon for modern technology and no one else seems to be able to copy them like they try to like
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build fabs in like the united states and they're like i'm sorry you people just like are not good
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enough at following orders or smart enough to run these like you you you cannot run the you white
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people lack the ability to run these fabs um we would let you run them if we could we can't uh and
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you want to be like well no they're just trying to hold on to the technology it's like yes that's part
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of it but why can't we copy them then clearly there's economic self-defense all sorts of motivations to be
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doing this but we seem to be unable to do it so why are all of the world's chips that like the
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entire world economy everyone has tried to copy this you know the us has tried to copy this like
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the uae has poured so many billions of dollars into trying to copy that they can't copy this
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why what about the taiwanese allows them to do this what about these people in the southeast region
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allowed them to do this what in the united states and this is where i think you're beginning to
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find something that makes them quite different from jews why in the united states do chinese
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people economically so dramatically out compete other ethnic groups in the united states other
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immigrant groups in the united states which they do that was the average income the median asian
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household wealth in the united states was 553 000 2022 dramatically higher than other income groups
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despite this success uh they have challenges reaching senior management roles asian americans hold
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only 13 percent of professional roles at large employers uh but only six percent of senior management
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positions asian americans share a ceo position at the s p 500 companies has remained around two percent
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for the last decades according to bcg henderson institute survey asian americans represent only three
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percent of executives far below the u.s population share of six percent which makes no sense so the so
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now we're untangling a riddle here okay here is the riddle as i lay it out okay in east asian communities
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chinese people end up with dramatically more wealth so chinese immigrants from an earlier period end up with
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dramatically more wealth and in leadership positions at a dramatically higher level singapore and taiwan
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have each individually become an economic and technological powerhouse that is literally
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unassailable on the world stage china is a bumbling buffoon america's chinese community out competes other
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americans at a general economic opportunity but under competes when it comes to senior positions
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all right do you want to take a crack at this before i do
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and and all of this seems to be directly contrary to what has allowed the jews to succeed which is
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as i've said i i suspect in our episode on like why did you succeed because it's not due to inbuilt
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iq differences you can see our episode on this it's cultural below the united states average
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iq which shouldn't even be close given the number of ashkenazi jews in the country it looks like
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everyone else is like functionally retarded so if if israel as i argue jews out compete because
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their ability to like go to outsiders and engage like we get emails from our podcasts 95 of our emails
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are from jews like if you were an intellectual influencer jews will just reach out to you and
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be like hey here's a idea or here's a thing other cultural groups don't do this chinese people
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highly intellectually get yeah i don't have we heard from anyone who's chinese now we've heard
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from people who have traveled and worked extensively in china but i don't think no i haven't had any chinese
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people reach out to us in the same way that jews do which is really interesting certainly yeah i think
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we've had a couple people of chinese descent i would say like two to three generations at least
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removed from mainland china reach out to us about sort of logistical and operational things
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but not about philosophy not about philosophy they're not like hey i disagree so so this has got me
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thinking okay what's going on here because the chinese seem to be like like thriving in a totally
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different way than the jews are thriving yeah okay so i think this is my hypothesis i'm gonna call it
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the cuban hypothesis okay so i've mentioned this before if you ask an american describe your average
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cuban to me like a floridian because i lived in florida for a long time they'll be like ah cubans
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cubans are really really capitalist they're really really good at business they typically run like
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large successful businesses and i'm like huh that's that's that's that's really interesting
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what are the politics of cuba and they're like oh the exact opposite of that so okay how is it the
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case that american cubans are really good at business they're really mercantile they're really
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capitalistic but the politics in cuba hate everything about that right and and are bumbling buffoons
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on the political stage is because the politics of cuba specifically squeezed out this section of
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society i think this is what happened with china and i don't think the communists did it i think
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who did this was we got two squeezes we got the han dynasty when the merchant class is literally the
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lowest class in their entire society below the workers below the students below anyone so if you're
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a merchant class in han society where are you going to be keeping your wife and kids i guess anywhere
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but han society because it sucks for you there anywhere but han society it's almost like how
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silicon valley ended up selecting for people who are willing to take big risks and they weren't
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really respected elsewhere so like all the nerds went to silicon valley but with china it was basically
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like all the nerds and all the people who are willing to take big risks and build businesses
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just needed to be anywhere but china so they just went to the adjacent area china squeezed out all
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of its capitalistic and mercantile power in multiple squeezes so it had a chance to redevelop
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in china and then they have the cultural revolution and who leaves during the cultural revolution who
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leaves with shanghai-shek and he takes them all to taiwan taiwan was founded by the previous military
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regime they went to every competent scientist or mercantilist or artist or engineer that they knew
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because they wanted to because they wanted to jump start this new empire for clarification this can be
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thought of almost sort of like looting it wasn't like they were intentionally trying to start some
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sort of a egalitarian high-minded intelligentsia empire they stole all the famous art they could find
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they stole all the gold they could find and they stole all the economically productive people they
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could find and and then and then the people so also i think there's there's the note that to leave
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your country and start fresh somewhere else especially in the past when they're like you know immigration
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was tough you didn't know like there was no like social safety net you're only looking at the people
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who survived this gauntlet so it's not just that the most entrepreneurial and brave and risk-taking
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and mercantilist and scientific or whatever people were leaving china it's also that the ones who managed
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to survive in these other countries were the ones who were both that and also good at it you know they
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could follow through and they delivered absolutely and and then in the united states i think you had a
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different population you know they'd already been squeezed a few times
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and they came to the united states and i think they struggled a bit more than the other populations
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and they struggled to reach these higher level positions and this is where something that we
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pointed out here gets really interesting and this is me being incredibly racist because i'm gonna have
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to try to make a judgment based on like the chinese people i know the jewish people i know
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what i have seen as patterns in their behavior and my interactions with them to try to find out why
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they might be culturally or genetically different right in terms of sociological profiles the way
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they engage with ideas with chinese people what i've noticed and i think that this is why of every
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one of these three populations the group that is out competing all the others is this han dynasty
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group that left yeah why are they doing so uniquely well okay because i think that we often talk about
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humans as two things laying on top of each other you have the biological hard-coded hardware which is like your
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predilections everything like that and then you have the faster evolving social infrastructure
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which acts as sort of a scaffolding for that absolutely chinese people had a higher emphasis
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historically on the scaffolding part of this identity that they had and that confucius scaffolding
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whatever you want to call it even if it doesn't seem entrepreneurial was actually really important
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to uh being chinese and acting and working chinese and that the ones who maintain that because if you
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look at the chinese in this bamboo network as it's called they are much more like og chinese like
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pre-cultural revolution chinese they have much more traditional confucius values in the way their
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families are managed and the way they marry and the way they select whites for the kids the way all of
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that yeah and i think that that has served them uniquely well and one outcome that i've noticed when
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i think of my chinese friends whether they're in the prenatalist network or anything like that
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is especially when i contrast them with jewish people because we're going to say like okay these these
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two groups are different in some way how are they different the chinese friends i have
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get really passionate sometimes about things it might be like a a fandom or liking cars or something like
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that but they don't get passionate about ideologies in the way that for example a jew will like a jew
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for every one of the tracks we release we have like five jews and no one else reaches out to us and
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these aren't even like only about like jewish things and they're like here are all of the theological
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points we need to discuss about this track yeah and and you never get this from another community
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like yeah also such respect for that i love it protestant converts to the tradition already we
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were like oh or catholic converts who are like i want to get married in this so i want to they're
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like either you guys are evil and insane or i agree with this this seems about right to me it's never
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hey let's talk through every detail of what you just said whether jews are doing this for cultural
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or genetic reasons is largely irrelevant as i've said culture is a mix of the two
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they do do it and the people who do this the very least in conversations that i've had are the
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chinese when i get in an ideological conversation with chinese people it's very clear they are
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interested in the right answer like the right answer from like a functionalist perspective well
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you would argue that they're consequentialists which we quite appreciate right you would like
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you think this would work really well and i think that this is why china has gravitated towards
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a one-party system i actually think a one-party system is natural more efficient for this cultural
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tradition which is to say that they are interested not in fighting for the sake of fighting i don't
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want to say jews fight jews fight for the jews know that jews argue for the sake of argument they
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love of all people they love doing that there's much less argumentation for the sake of argumentation
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and much more like hey we're actually trying to find out like how do we fix this right guys
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um and that leads to one party system sort of making sense but when you remove the rest of the
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confucius values when you remove the rest of their culture they suffer for that more than any other
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people on earth i think and and i actually think that with east asian culture largely speaking like
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you want to fix japan go back to bushido the these cultures rely on cultural history much more than
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other cultures they rely on the scaffolding much more than other cultures and so why are they reaching
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these high level positions in the u.s it's because if you are a culture that relies really heavily on
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cultural scaffolding you are a culture that relies on and we have actually seen this in studies that
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have looked on i think if you're talking about this in a negative context you're going to call this
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conformism it's not really conformism it's communalism versus an independent or clannish drive
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individualism versus collectivism yeah but there's really three systems there's clan based individualism
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and collectivism individualism doesn't work it's complete fantasy of the modern ultra progressive
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movement clanism works this is like my family above all else okay but then collectivism is or not my
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family but like my cultural network or my ideological group or whatever yeah collectivism is much less
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likely to be interested in fighting for the sake of fighting because that's not the way a collectivist sees
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things and i think that a collectivist mindset especially within a sub population where they
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aren't the majority is going to really outcompete a majority population especially if they have this
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cultural continuity of like ancestral confucianism do you have thoughts simone no i mean this checks
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out and i'm relaxing because it's less offensive than i thought it would be that's great not that i could
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think of anything more offensive i was just you know i mean this is a we're dancing we're tap dancing
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around the third rail you know the fret of stair moves they're great but it's also like high stakes
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yes well i mean it's about also finding out what's true and this is like an interesting question when
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you look at these differences in income like this to me poses an interesting question especially if i
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contrast it with jews who also have control of disproportionate amount of income this is like a
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fact okay like i'm sorry people it's a fact but they also have a disproportionate amount of like
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political power a disproportionate amount of nobel prize winners a disproportionate amount of like
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what why is this and this is actually something you'll also know it was the chinese by the way if
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you look at chinese nobel prize winners if you look at chinese winners of like a lot of them are
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immigrants out of mainland china now you can say well this is because mainland china is sort of
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structurally against them okay maybe or it could be that these were the communities even in a
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modern context that are going to do well like if i'm a family today in china that's going to leave
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china what okay what are traits that are going to be associated with my family we're going to be
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wealthier we're going to be do you know 50 of chinese immigrants the united states when contrast
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to that i forgot whatever it is the u.s population of a college degree we're going to be more educated
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we're going to be you know so of course this is going to select for a cream of the crop mentality
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the question is can you continue to motivate reproduction now i want to talk about trust-based
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networks called guanxi in chinese the banmu network relies heavily on guanxi a chinese concept
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referring to personal connections and reciprocal obligations these networks are built on trust
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often within families or ethnic communities in regions where legal systems may be weak or corrupt
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this is prevalent in south asia trust-based relationships are a reliable way to conduct
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business ethnic chinese entrepreneurs often prefer to work with others in their community
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because they share norms language and cultural understandings a chinese business owner might source
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goods from another ethnic chinese supplier or hire relatives because they trust them more than
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outsiders and this is seen a lot when you have a high trust society operating within a low trust
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society um what do you mean by that i mean because it guanxi implies to me a lack of trust like only if
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i know you really well and you know we've built trust over time like it implies to me that the culture
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is extremely low trust which has always confused me because how can you have a very collective okay so
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suppose you have a clan-based society which a lot of these other societies are okay sure okay um
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they they their families will screw over other like let's say indonesian families one indonesian
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family might screw over another indonesian family okay what they're saying is a chinese family that's
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immigrated there and as part of this minority community is not going to screw over another chinese
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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
00:25:35.260
more access to politicians if they have more access to whatever they can screw someone else over and
00:25:38.940
if they're the strongest political group then they can screw everyone over so you have a a minority
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
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
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
00:26:40.620
organized crime wave in like american history the mob the mafia the recent hispanic immigrants these are
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
00:27:03.420
living in that region they'd be able to dramatically outcompete us economically but jews never really
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
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
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
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
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
00:33:35.180
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
00:39:39.100
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
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
00:41:26.460
huckster negotiator but simone's always like shocked she's like wow you got a stupidly good deal
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
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