Study Africa to Understand The Future of Europe
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
186.65169
Summary
The G20 Summit is being held in Johannesburg this month, which is putting it back in the news as the city scrambles to not humiliate itself. So that s why a lot of people are now talking about how crappy it is.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello, Malcolm. I'm so excited to be with you today because we're going to be talking about
00:00:03.640
Johannesburg coming to a city near you. Why? Because it is crumbling, but crumbling in very
00:00:08.520
interesting ways in which not only is it falling apart, but it has these protected walled gardens
00:00:14.240
where things are actually really nice. And we need to expect this to happen a lot more in the
00:00:19.120
future. But let's give some context. The G20 summit is being held in Johannesburg this month,
00:00:24.440
which is putting it back in the news as the city scrambles to not humiliate itself.
00:00:30.000
One big deal, people come to visit. So that's why a lot of people are now talking about how crappy
00:00:34.100
it is. I mean, it always has had problems. But the Wall Street Journal recently did this hilarious
00:00:39.020
piece on it, and we'll share the highlights. There's some great pictures from it. And there's
00:00:43.200
also this ironic side note, which I think is really wonderful, that the summit, the G20 summit that's
00:00:49.480
happening this month, the theme is solidarity, equality, sustainability. And it's focused on
00:00:55.900
inclusive economic growth, food security, and technology-driven sustainable development.
00:01:02.820
And to give an idea, can you talk about some of the signs for crime spots and stuff like that?
00:01:10.900
No, I mean, you lead with interesting novel things.
00:01:15.780
Just to give you a teaser, here is a sign that you can now find in Johannesburg. For those
00:01:24.160
who are just listening, it's at a road sign. It's just a big red dot, and it says, crime
00:01:28.980
hotspot. So they're not trying to, like, stop crime.
00:01:33.420
So what they've done is, and I sent you an article on this, the policing system in Johannesburg
00:01:39.260
has gone to just sort of labeling parts of the city where you are likely to have certain
00:01:44.720
types of crime committed, and then tell you what crime is likely to be committed to you.
00:01:49.660
Like, carjackings frequent here. And then the cops are intentionally avoiding these areas.
00:01:55.840
Yeah, they're just like, oh, there's going to be crime here. Guess we better stay away
00:01:59.620
from it. Don't want to get hurt, you know? Like, this is the police. This is just kind
00:02:05.460
I want to stand and, like, jack up cars in these areas and just point to the sign and
00:02:11.600
No, no, like, really, though? I feel like, at this point, you kind of have impunity if
00:02:16.160
you're carjacking an area. You're like, listen, you were warned, sir. Like, what did you
00:02:21.340
It's like, it's like a, like, deer crossing or something.
00:02:24.180
Yeah, like, well, okay, so this is the crosswalk. You cross in the crosswalk. This is the
00:02:31.900
This really is a great time to remind people that Johannesburg, like I said, represents
00:02:38.680
the future. So what we're going to do is dive in to some more detail on the state of
00:02:42.580
Johannesburg, which has some fascinating sci-fi dystopian vibes. We're also going to talk about
00:02:47.800
how we're seeing some of this model go to places outside Johannesburg. So first, the degradation.
00:02:55.160
So you get to live in a sci-fi dystopia if you live in Johannesburg now. That's really
00:03:00.120
Yeah. I mean, who doesn't want to live in a sci-fi dystopia? If you just look on X, like,
00:03:07.020
sort of top posts about Johannesburg, here's an example of just sort of like a video of
00:03:11.100
the city. Just, it's crappy. It looks like a third world country. It doesn't look very
00:03:17.100
good. There's the famous Pond Tower. You've heard of this one. It's that big circular tower
00:03:22.340
that for a long time was just taken over by James. Yeah. And then what happened to it?
00:03:26.060
So actually it is, it has been reclaimed. There's this, this great YouTube short though,
00:03:30.200
I'm going to send to you where there's this guy like very enthusiastically standing in the center
00:03:33.860
of the tower being like, this is where the dead bodies were dumped.
00:03:36.940
And this is where all the dead bodies were and all the trash.
00:03:43.280
Because people literally would throw their trash into the center of this tower. But yeah,
00:03:49.520
it has actually since been reclaimed and it now has multiple shops and people actually
00:03:53.380
live in there, but it still looks kind of, kind of dystopian and ruined. And then of course you
00:03:58.740
and I actually went to Johannesburg in 2018. We toured the Soweto township, which is one of the not
00:04:05.400
nice areas. I'm just going to send you some of the photos that we took there, sort of showing that
00:04:10.700
the state, these are, these are very much shanties we visited.
00:04:13.680
So what she's mentioning is, is that we, Simone and I did a tour of one of the townships, like one of the
00:04:21.940
Yeah. I actually included one photo of me when we were in the school we visited just for proof that we were
00:04:27.680
actually there, me like showing the kids the photos, but like, you know, there's, you can see there's a photo
00:04:33.180
of like the school lunches that the kids were served there. Like this is not a nice place to go to.
00:04:38.860
I mean, like the kids actually were amazing. The teachers were fantastic. Like the actual
00:04:42.880
community that we interacted with when we went there, the, all the people are great, but the
00:04:48.200
infrastructure is terrible. There are constant power outages. There are constant water outages.
00:04:54.100
I don't know to what extent people are experiencing food insecurity, but the school lunches that I've
00:05:01.560
It's, it's, it's, yeah, it's white mush of some sort. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but it's very much
00:05:05.420
like Oliver Twist. I want some more porridge kind of, yeah, that's, that's the mood we're going for
00:05:09.900
here. And I also shared some signs, some signs that were on just like a random wall that we walked
00:05:15.220
by that for the men, there's, there's penis enlargement. And then for the women, there's
00:05:19.540
abortion. I think it says same day, pain-free with, with a number to call just so, you know,
00:05:26.020
I love it for men and women. Oh my God. Imagine going for like an abortion that you just saw as like
00:05:32.380
a sign on a wall in Johannesburg. Yeah. I feel like this is this, this is the, the Johannesburg
00:05:37.380
version of him's and hers vitamins. I'm sure you've seen like the extensive ad campaigns for
00:05:41.480
him's. I love that you took a picture of this. Yeah. And they're all over the wall too, right?
00:05:46.660
Yeah. It's, it's just like, get, get what you need, you know, gender specific. And then the,
00:05:52.180
what really prompted me to, to dive back into this was just this fantastic wall street journal piece
00:05:58.160
called welcome to Johannesburg. This is what it looks like when a city gives up. Subtitled
00:06:03.480
tourists are dumbfounded by the many signs of apathy in South African city, the Josie jacuzzi pothole.
00:06:10.020
When it comes to service delivery, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
00:06:16.880
Liters and liters of water day are gushing out. And it's been like this for two years.
00:06:24.000
So what it tells you is that somebody is not doing their job.
00:06:26.720
Join us on Sunday. As we dive into the depths of the Josie jacuzzi.
00:06:31.160
I just, I want to read the beginning of the article to you because it's just so good. And it says it
00:06:35.760
all, but I'm also going to send you some highlight photos of, by the way, if you're wondering what
00:06:40.360
the TFR of South Africa is these days, it's 2.2. I mean, that's pretty good.
00:06:45.280
They're almost below replacement right now. Yeah. I mean, well, but it's, it's a poverty.
00:06:50.400
Doctors must be good. You know, I mean that they're handling it.
00:06:54.340
And I wouldn't expect, I wouldn't expect to still be fertile after one of those roadside
00:06:58.620
penis enlargement surgeries. I know, seriously, that that's probably not helping with the
00:07:03.280
fertility. Those are both basically probably two forms of curtailing the population.
00:07:07.940
So the wall street journal article signs tell you what crime you're like, most likely to fall
00:07:12.940
victim to at highway exits and intersections. Beware of hijacking hotspot or smash and grab hotspot.
00:07:19.060
Homeless people routinely direct traffic when the stoplights don't work.
00:07:23.780
Minibus taxis that ferry workers around the city often drive on the wrong side of the road to avoid
00:07:29.200
rush hour traffic. I mean, that's sometimes I wish taxis would do that.
00:07:34.140
Johannesburg, South Africa's biggest metropolis markets itself as a world-class African city.
00:07:39.560
It's home to some of the continent's biggest companies and its largest stock exchange,
00:07:43.960
but private firms have gradually taken over public services from security to healthcare,
00:07:48.940
to mail delivery, insurance companies, fix potholes and sponsor fire brigades to reduce
00:07:54.920
claims. Now, this is really important. That last sentence, this is what we need to expect in the
00:08:00.700
future. And this is why Johannesburg is different. Okay. One thing I want to highlight is that while I
00:08:06.200
just shared a bunch of photos of like Soweto township that we saw, you know, we've been in other
00:08:12.320
places that are not very wealthy and they don't feel that different. Like one of the more popular
00:08:19.780
complaints about people in Johannesburg is that people will like, just, you'll be sitting at a
00:08:23.920
restaurant or on a street and someone will just grab your phone and steal it from you. That happened
00:08:28.160
to me in Peru. Yeah. But the thing you didn't really dwell on the Soweto jacuzzi.
00:08:34.500
We're going to get to that in the article, but my, the point I want to add though, is what makes,
00:08:38.240
so we've seen basically the bad neighborhoods in Johannesburg didn't feel too different to me
00:08:44.820
from bad neighborhoods in the United States and bad neighborhoods in Peru and other countries we've
00:08:49.840
been to. What is different about Johannesburg, and this is very important, is that they have
00:08:55.400
experienced this for so long and so systemically that private industry and private individuals
00:09:01.200
are starting to step in where the government is failing because now it's so expected. The government
00:09:07.880
is so corrupt that people are like, well, I'm just not going to depend on it anymore. So literally
00:09:13.440
that insurance companies are fixing potholes because they're just not getting fixed. They're
00:09:18.620
sponsoring fire brigades to reduce claims, to, to save money and that homeless people are directing
00:09:25.500
traffic. I think this is what we're ultimately going to see more of in the rest of the world.
00:09:30.540
And people need to be thinking about this when they decide where they want to live,
00:09:34.120
what companies they want to deal with, and, and when they can go somewhere where they can expect
00:09:38.940
private individuals and private industry to step in or governments will fail because where you don't
00:09:44.640
want to be is where you, you move somewhere where government fails and nobody steps in. Like you're
00:09:50.860
just literally written off entirely because that is going to happen in many places as well. So I'll go
00:09:56.240
back to the wall street journal article. It's all become a bit embarrassing for the South African
00:10:00.380
government, which is about to set host to the G20 summit meeting of heads of state in November.
00:10:06.240
In March, South African president, Cyril Rampoza, chided Johannesburg officials for what he claimed is
00:10:12.200
not a pleasing environment and told them to address the slew of issues ahead of the meeting.
00:10:17.380
City of Joburg is as ready as it ever will be for the G20 summit, said a spokeswoman for
00:10:22.940
Johannesburg, Mayor Dada Morero. Morero, the city's ninth mayor in 10 years, in May, launched a task
00:10:30.980
force dubbed the bomb squad to address service delivery issues in various neighborhoods. Some of
00:10:37.440
the team's achievements, according to Morero's spokeswoman, the resolution of a 15 day water
00:10:42.040
outage, 15 days without water. There are water outages all the time in Lima, Peru too, where we
00:10:47.160
lived, but 15 days is next level. The restoration of power to 1000 households within one day,
00:10:52.940
of a substation failure. 1000, 1000 households, not even a storm. And the Octavian, we will
00:11:00.480
find the power cord when we're done recording. Okay. Can you say hi to the fans? What do you
00:11:06.400
know about Africa, Octavian? I know about Africa, that they have like, that the president, like
00:11:13.940
have a, not like a real vehicle and a door and a decoy. That's nothing to do with Africa.
00:11:24.180
Nothing to do with Africa. I don't know. Oh, okay. Octavian, go ahead, go back downstairs and I will come
00:11:29.780
and get you. If you can leave me alone for a little bit. And the rectification of a seven year long
00:11:34.380
water backlog blockage for 24 hours or in 24 hours. So a seven year long water blockage,
00:11:40.920
these are just, they're, they're issues that have clearly been left behind by the government.
00:11:45.240
Just nobody cares. Yeah. When you, when you get this, well, because they don't see,
00:11:48.700
they see their job as collecting taxes and spending them on themselves and their cronies,
00:11:52.600
not actually doing the job of governing. Yeah. And then there's the Josie Jacuzzi. So in August,
00:11:57.440
a popular investigative journalism show ran a segment on the Josie Jacuzzi pothole in the
00:12:01.860
Brandberg area of Johannesburg, the six foot deep pothole had been filling with water for years,
00:12:07.480
even causing low water pressure in nearby houses. There's this great new segment that I shared with
00:12:11.840
you. I'll send you a link again, if you want to include it in the video. We're like literally the,
00:12:16.060
the journalist gets in like scuba gear and like an inner tube and just like jumps in. It's just like,
00:12:22.240
ha ha ha. It's, it's so bad. There's also going to people's houses. Yeah. They're, they're,
00:12:27.020
they're nicknaming the potholes. There's another pothole that's called Kennedy's can or sorry,
00:12:30.920
Kenny's Canyon after a local politician. And it was, it was, it was dug by Johannesburg water as
00:12:36.480
it searched for a leak. Drainage pipes, fire cables, and piles of sand were left blocking
00:12:42.300
a lane of traffic for more than a year while the 26 foot deep hole filled with water. In July,
00:12:49.320
South Africa's biggest opposition party held a birthday party with cake for its one year anniversary.
00:12:54.960
In February, a borehole that was being drilled on private property in the Kilimari suburb went straight
00:13:00.400
into a tunnel used for the Galtrain, a 50 mile commuter rail system that operates partly above
00:13:05.640
ground and partly underground. The tunnel flooded with water and soil interrupting service for more
00:13:11.140
than a week. Quote, think of it as a scenic surface route, a chance to see Johannesburg for a change,
00:13:16.300
Galtrain said in a statement after the mishap, quote, you may discover a new favorite coffee shop
00:13:21.460
or a massive pothole. It's Johannesburg after all.
00:13:24.620
Oh my gosh. Amazing. Note that the reason why that particular train was shut down was because
00:13:32.640
someone was digging a borehole in a suburban neighborhood. The reason why they were doing
00:13:38.480
that is because the water gets shut off for 15 days at a time. And borehole water is actually
00:13:44.820
to reach well water. Yeah, exactly. Is that they were just trying to get basically water autonomy
00:13:50.340
because they couldn't depend on the city and they just broke more of the city in doing that.
00:13:54.660
What does it make you feel better that we have well water at our house?
00:13:57.580
Yeah. And actually that's one of the things I want to point to, like, where are you getting your
00:14:00.880
water? Do you have backup power? Like all these sorts of things are things that families need to be
00:14:05.360
increasingly thinking about as we move toward demographic collapse. And as in general cities,
00:14:10.960
and especially American suburban cities, reach a point where they increasingly experience cascading
00:14:16.480
bankruptcy. And we're going to talk about that next.
00:14:18.220
No, and this is all downstream of just like extreme wokeism.
00:14:24.820
No. So the type of bureaucracy and corruption we explicitly see in South Africa.
00:14:30.880
Oh, that. Yes. That's all apartheid based. Yes. Yeah.
00:14:34.660
Yeah. And, and I think that it is in structure, very similar to the way that many progressives
00:14:42.180
in the United States, like, look at Mondami, right? Like New York is a hellscape right now,
00:14:47.140
right? Like all the businesses are moving out. It's, it's empty everywhere you go. The crime
00:14:53.080
is constant. Well, same with California. If they institute that billionaire tax, that one time,
00:14:58.260
like 5% of your total wealth unearned included tax or whatever, to like just pay off California's
00:15:04.180
debt like that, they're just going to leave. Yeah. But the point being is that with the
00:15:09.240
Mondami situation, New York knows how bad it is already. And yet they're still voting on a guy like
00:15:15.980
this who will only make every one of their preexisting problems worse. Well, I partially
00:15:21.400
think when it comes to Mondami that he's the woke or progressive version of Trump, where it's,
00:15:27.380
it's clear from polling and coverage and interviews as well, that a lot of the people who are voting for
00:15:31.840
him don't actually think that he's going to make things better. In fact, I think they believe he's
00:15:36.020
going to make things worse, but they also just want to like take a hammer to New York and just
00:15:43.740
bust it up because they're just so angry about everything. It's very much the same way that
00:15:48.480
people wanted to vote Trump into drain the swamp and just break Washington DC because they just
00:15:52.420
freaking hated it. So I think that's part of what's going on. There's one more thing though,
00:15:56.360
that I wanted to point out. That's just so great. And just a wonderful absurdist detail about
00:16:01.080
Johannesburg and how bad it is. And also kind of what we should be expecting in other cities in
00:16:04.980
the future. Sometimes citizens, this I'm reading from the wall street journal article again,
00:16:10.100
sometimes citizens clap back in 2013, the provincial government that encompasses Johannesburg
00:16:15.520
implemented an electronic toll system on major highways to recoup costs, recoup costs on cities
00:16:22.180
associated with expanding roads in the, for the 2010 soccer world cup. Since then, most of the city's
00:16:28.540
residents refused to pay ignoring invoices and threats of legal action. Alcindere Condi, 66 works
00:16:36.520
in construction and says he has never paid an e-toll. He estimates he owes around $3,000, but stopped
00:16:43.200
getting bills years ago, quote, because the postal system doesn't work. Wait, so what is this e-toll
00:16:50.060
for? It's a bill for- It's toll roads. There are toll roads in Johannesburg and the citizens have just
00:16:55.880
decided to not pay them. And they don't even receive the bill because the postal system doesn't
00:17:01.360
work. Quote, if they prosecuted me, they would have to prosecute the tens of thousands of others
00:17:06.120
in courts and they couldn't handle it. Like the courts literally couldn't help them prosecute
00:17:12.940
all of the unpaid bill holders because the courts don't work. So the roads don't work.
00:17:21.240
They tried to fix them by charging people tolls. The people don't pay the tolls. And partially,
00:17:27.260
the bills aren't even getting to them because the mail doesn't work. And even if they tried to take
00:17:30.860
the people to court because they're not paying the toll road bills to fix the roads that aren't working,
00:17:36.960
they couldn't because the courts don't work. So- Yes. And I think when people think that this is,
00:17:41.920
again, something that can't happen by you, it absolutely can. We are seeing our cities degrade.
00:17:48.120
And as they degrade, the voters are not course correcting. They are going more woke. That's
00:17:53.900
why I brought up Mondani, right? Like the- Well, I mean, you even see this actually. I mean,
00:17:59.700
this is something that gets covered a lot around the world. And especially increasingly, speaking
00:18:04.040
of Mondani in New York, in New York with criminals, for example, not being prosecuted properly for things
00:18:10.880
like shoplifting. And this is something that you highlighted a little bit earlier, the issue with
00:18:15.220
police in South Africa. You sent me a Conversations with Tyler podcast episode with Tyler Cowen,
00:18:20.240
in which he interviews the author, Johnny Steinberg, who spent around 350 hours writing around with
00:18:27.020
South African police between 2004 and 2007. So quite a long time ago, and things are much worse
00:18:32.940
now. Basically, he shares in this interview that there was only policing with consent. Police would
00:18:39.300
only go where basically when they were called. So most of the things that they actually were
00:18:44.820
looking at while on their shifts or whatever, were domestic violence cases where people asked them to
00:18:50.120
come. Though even in these cases, it's very normalized to pay police to investigate crimes when
00:18:56.780
you actually want help. So you basically have to bribe police to investigate a crime.
00:19:01.980
Yeah. So the you can either include a clip, but basically Cowen was like your work in the police
00:19:09.560
in South Africa. If there were two policemen in a township in South Africa, how large is the crowd
00:19:14.020
they can successfully confront and still manage to handle Steinberg? It depends very much on the
00:19:18.940
circumstances where they are and the time of day. But if it's a Saturday night and if there are 10 to 20
00:19:23.820
people and they're young, those two cops don't want to be there. They'll make sure they're not
00:19:28.420
Cowen. So they just don't even show up and take the call. Steinberg. Yeah. When I was riding around
00:19:34.180
with them, it was really amusing. They have an equivalent of the CompStat system, which told them
00:19:40.220
where the hotspots were, which was where they had to police. And they'd make absolutely sure to do the
00:19:46.740
opposite and not be in the hotspots. Because if there were only two of them, they were not sure that they
00:19:51.920
could control people. So this is the state, again, of Johannesburg.
00:19:57.020
What do you know how bad this is going to be in parts of Europe where cops don't even have guns?
00:20:01.300
Yeah. Where they just have their fabulous batons, like in the UK. I would point out,
00:20:05.360
though, one thing that they discussed briefly in this Conversations with Tyler interview
00:20:08.900
is, okay, well, are people in Johannesburg afraid of the police, right? Like you have to bribe the
00:20:15.440
police to get them to do something, to get them to help you. Where you also bribe police a lot,
00:20:20.000
very classically, is in Mexico. But also in Mexico, the police are actively scary. You're really
00:20:25.160
worried that the police are going to hurt you. And basically, the guy being interviewed,
00:20:31.440
Steinberg, was like, ah, they'll rough you up and stuff, but people aren't scared of the police like
00:20:36.120
they are in Mexico. And I just want to point out that Johannesburg isn't worse than rough parts of
00:20:44.520
Mexico, than rough parts of Peru, than rough parts of any country with somewhat similar per capita GDP.
00:20:51.120
And Peru and Johannesburg basically have this. I would note that it is worse in a way that you're
00:20:55.540
not really discussing here, which is to say, and I always know that this is something you have to
00:21:00.320
be careful about, is to assume that a developed country that is collapsing is going to be at an
00:21:05.800
equivalent level of quality of life to a country with an equal GDP that is developing. And that just
00:21:11.500
isn't the case. Yeah, yeah. And that's true. But yeah, Johannesburg, you go and then you go again
00:21:15.380
in 10 years and it's worse. Peru, every time we went and we loved this, there'd be some new
00:21:19.980
construction. There'd be something new that was built, something that was improved, something that
00:21:23.400
was fixed, a new bridge, a new road. You're right. And it's very difficult. But the bigger issue is
00:21:28.340
the way that utilities collapse. When we were in Peru, I don't think we had a single power outage
00:21:34.520
the entire time we were there. Yes, we did. In fact, just the last time that I was in Peru,
00:21:39.300
in the nicest neighborhood, there was a power outage and I was in the nicest hotel of the nicest
00:21:44.540
neighborhood. We had water outages and we had power outages and you're just conveniently
00:21:48.180
forgetting. No, if we had them, it couldn't have been more than once a month. Yeah, it wasn't
00:21:53.540
frequent. It wasn't that frequent. And the water outages, you would typically receive a warning
00:21:57.860
about them. Yeah. So how long, sorry, what are you considering? Was it like one power outage every
00:22:04.720
like two? It would often be like for 12 hours in a day. And in Johannesburg, it's like 15 days. So
00:22:10.680
obviously it's way worse. Yeah, yeah. But they were rare enough that it never inconvenienced me in a
00:22:17.080
meaningful way. It inconvenienced me because I wanted to take my shower and I couldn't take my
00:22:20.680
shower and I'm on a schedule. And you're like, well, if I have to go one day without a thing,
00:22:24.440
it's not so bad. And I'm like, no, if I can't have it at 3 p.m., which is my time to take a shower or
00:22:28.380
whatever, like then I freak out. But me losing internet or power is a big thing because I spend
00:22:32.800
my life online, right? Yeah, but you would just tether to your phone and use batteries for that.
00:22:37.160
Yeah, I just tethered to my phone. That's why you don't remember it. It's very different. I agree.
00:22:40.740
It's different if it's 15 days. But again, my point is this is something that isn't unique to
00:22:46.740
Johannesburg. What is unique is that Johannesburg has these wild gardens. And in Peru, we couldn't
00:22:52.420
evade it. We were in the nicest neighborhood, in the nicest city in Peru. And there were still
00:22:57.660
water outages that I could be at the Marriott Hotel in Muir of Flores and still experience a power
00:23:02.860
outage meant, you know, something different from in Johannesburg where you have backup power,
00:23:07.980
you have borehole water, and you live in these wild communities. So I want to talk about these a
00:23:12.120
little bit. Then I'm going to share some examples of some of these wild estates. They have private
00:23:17.740
security, they have borehole water, and they look totally different from Johannesburg. So I'm going
00:23:23.240
to send some links with some of like the little like promo videos they have.
00:23:26.360
Some of the more notable ones in Johannesburg are Danifem Golf Estate. And there's also Country
00:23:54.500
Gardens Estate. The Danifem Golf Estate is more old and then the Country Gardens Estate is newer.
00:24:02.980
And here's some pictures of the Country Gardens Estate houses. They're like very modern, very pretty.
00:24:09.940
You would never know that these places were in Johannesburg.
00:24:12.640
That's very interesting. In Peru, there isn't anything like this.
00:24:14.500
Exactly. Exactly. You can't escape the hazards of Peru. Whereas in Johannesburg,
00:24:21.220
you can absolutely escape it. There were like little suburb developments for like wealthier
00:24:26.580
people that you could go to. Yeah, but you were still on the main grid. They weren't these
00:24:30.980
walled communities with private gardens. They didn't have like a literally like different feeling
00:24:35.060
environment. Right. And I think that this is actually, again, really telling when I'm talking
00:24:41.860
about the difference between a collapsing developed economy and a developing economy.
00:24:45.860
Yeah, because those nice neighborhoods in Peru, like it's with the expectation that everything's
00:24:50.180
getting better. Whereas in Johannesburg, they've declared bankruptcy. They're like, I don't know.
00:24:53.780
I'm just like, this is our space colony. Yeah, I'm cutting myself off from society.
00:24:57.060
Exactly. But it also was due to the extent of the collapse. It's when you reach a certain level
00:25:01.540
of collapse. And this is actually something that we should probably talk about or like name in our
00:25:07.140
advocacy or whatever. I'll call it just the inflection point, which is the point at which it is worth it for
00:25:14.100
communities to cut themselves off from the state grid. And in Peru, they haven't reached the
00:25:21.140
inflection point yet because of the expectation that, well, the state grid is always getting
00:25:26.100
better. The power grid is always getting better. The water supply is always getting better. It's
00:25:30.260
going to get better. Yeah. It's always getting better. So even if it's not perfect today,
00:25:34.900
and you know, you've got like me with pretty high standards. I'm like, it's not perfect,
00:25:39.940
but it's usable. Like I can live with this. The only reason why Simone cared is because
00:25:43.940
she's autistic about like showering and stuff like that. And she can't be like,
00:25:47.940
I'm just going to take a shower later in the day. God forbid. No. But in Johannesburg,
00:25:53.220
and then that is why in Peru, that even when I go to the, and we lived in the second nicest
00:25:57.620
neighborhood. Oh, we lived, Miraflores is the nicest. What do you think?
00:26:00.980
Farronko is better? San Isidro, I believe it was called. Oh yeah. San Isidro was super,
00:26:07.380
yeah. Like more residential. San Isidro is generally considered slightly nicer than Miraflores.
00:26:11.220
Miraflores is like more touristy and San Isidro is more like... Residential. Bougie. Bougie. But like
00:26:17.620
the thing about like San Isidro, San Isidro isn't walled. You can walk through the center of this
00:26:24.980
It's got these old trees. Yeah. And it's just absolutely beautiful. And there were some gated
00:26:30.340
parks that belonged just to really fancy apartment complexes, but they were always open. You could
00:26:34.980
walk in and they did not have private security. Yeah. Yeah. So there were gated parks, but you
00:26:39.140
could just walk in. Like nobody cared. We, we on our morning walk, because we go on a walk every
00:26:42.820
morning, we'd always walk through the gated communities and nobody cared. Nobody ever stopped
00:26:48.180
us, which is very different from, I assume these gated communities in Johannesburg, where to get
00:26:54.180
into them is going to be quite a thing. And there's also a tone thing. And I want to talk about that
00:26:59.140
because it's, it's also this, like this bifurcation of society that we need to be talking about and,
00:27:04.980
and, and getting ready for, because like you keep saying with AI, people are just going to be left
00:27:09.460
behind. They're going to be sort of rendered obsolete. And you absolutely see this in Johannesburg.
00:27:13.860
Until it happens. When we did our video on like, when is AI actually going to start changing things?
00:27:18.100
When is it actually going to change, you know, my job or my employment or anything like that? Because we,
00:27:22.500
you know, we'd had fans tell us like nothing seems to be happening yet. Nothing seems to be happening
00:27:26.900
yet. And I'm like, guys. When you notice it's happened, it's already too late. You've already
00:27:32.100
been left behind. The ship has left for Mars and you're still on earth. And now, you know,
00:27:36.820
we're getting things from our fans of, you know, I was working at Amazon and you know,
00:27:40.900
they did that big automation thing where they replaced tons of employees with AI. And we're having
00:27:45.220
like our fans who like we talk to regularly have their livelihoods replaced. And that this,
00:27:51.860
this is now I think hitting people like, oh, they told me this was going to happen. They told me this
00:27:58.100
would change everything about my life. And you know, I, I maybe thought that I wasn't seeing it
00:28:03.460
until it completely transformed my own life. I mean, it's going to be the same as this.
00:28:07.300
Yeah. This is going to seem like something that's never going to happen until it happens
00:28:11.860
to you. And then you're like, oh yeah, people were talking about this like nine years ago or
00:28:16.180
something that, that, that weird nerdy Collins couple. It's also just so futuristic and dystopian,
00:28:21.940
like the lifestyle inside these wild gardens. You'd think that like, there's a lot of residual
00:28:27.700
guilt or like concern about, you know, the people outside or something like that. And really not.
00:28:32.420
And you can kind of get a feeling for this in the Johannesburg related subreddits on Reddit,
00:28:36.820
where the wealthy post about their gardens and swinging, like one of the, the most active
00:28:42.660
Johannesburg subreddits is just for swingers and Johannesburg only like white people who live in
00:28:48.420
these gated communities. And when you look at the posts, you know, often it's like expats talking
00:28:53.060
about what they miss and it's mostly the thunderstorms and the Hakaranda trees. And then there's some
00:28:59.220
really interesting threats where people are asking for advice on, for example, moving back and in seeing
00:29:04.980
the people's posts on like giving advice to someone, for example, who's an expat from Johannesburg who
00:29:10.500
moved to the UK and is thinking about going back to Johannesburg from the UK. Cause you know,
00:29:14.580
No, I'm, I'm seeing this a lot too. I mean, actually had a guest on our show,
00:29:18.020
the aristocratic utensil, who's like, yeah, I'm moving back to South Africa. The UK is just getting
00:29:21.700
too sketchy. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's that's, I mean, it's a thing and it's, and it's interesting
00:29:27.540
because keep in mind, like Johannesburg, we just read about how much of a mess it is, but to these
00:29:32.100
people that is completely irrelevant to them, because again, these are like off the grid borehole,
00:29:38.420
independent power, private security communities that look like paradises. Like the pictures I showed
00:29:43.300
you, the links I gave you, like, these are really nice.
00:29:45.700
And they look like paradises in a way that nothing in Peru really does. Yeah. Like actually really
00:29:50.580
high quality paradises. Even the nice stuff has like, you can tell it's like paper thin.
00:29:56.420
And that actually begins to feel suffocating for a while if you're living there.
00:29:59.620
Yeah. Like the food you're like, like it's plated beautiful and it looks like Michelin star restaurant,
00:30:04.180
but it tastes like sand. I mean, it's just not that good.
00:30:08.100
It's got that, that, you know, like it wasn't really made with the highest quality ingredients.
00:30:13.140
It wasn't really made with that. And that there's just nowhere you can get,
00:30:17.060
and that's the thing because when we're there and this is, you know, we'll probably begin to see this
00:30:21.460
in the rest of the world too, is we were, you know, by Peru standards, because we're making a decent
00:30:27.940
salary in the US, we were able to live like very wealthy people, like, you know, fancy restaurant
00:30:34.500
every day, you know, et cetera. Right. And even with that, it still felt suffocating after a while.
00:30:40.980
Yeah. But going back to this, this threat of, of giving advice to someone considering coming
00:30:45.940
back one person, it was just, it was great. Cause they're like, it's a great country.
00:30:49.780
Their quote was, or their post was only problem with South Africa is the theft of taxes and neglect
00:30:55.460
when it comes to maintaining things, as well as the large amount of poor folks left out.
00:30:59.700
They eventually end up doing crime as there is nothing for them to advance in this country.
00:31:04.020
So it's a statistic that you will likely end up being a victim of crime here,
00:31:08.900
as well as suffer with electricity or water issues. Otherwise it's a great country in all caps,
00:31:15.060
but like basically what most people were saying, and here's a representative post or a response to
00:31:19.780
their, their inquiry. It's not too bad, especially if you have the funds to stay in a place with
00:31:24.660
borehole water and backup power, come live here. Most people here, meet people here, spend money in
00:31:29.860
small businesses, pay the Uber drivers, enjoy the restaurants and touristy stuff you haven't done.
00:31:35.540
Spend the pounds. Cause this person can still make money in UK, UK pounds. Our economy benefits
00:31:42.260
of the tourism, tourism, maybe it suits you too. So basically people are just like, yeah, I mean,
00:31:47.540
like just stay in our walled gardens. It's great here. Like everything else is horrible, but like
00:31:52.180
that doesn't affect us. And that that's how it's going to be. The people who move off to the
00:31:56.020
walled gardens everywhere in the world as this happens. But I want to think about,
00:32:00.740
because I think something that people don't think about is how this affects like your daily life.
00:32:05.380
If you're living in one of these walled gardens, because it's going to be very different than your
00:32:09.300
daily life today. But just to say that you're not going to want to just like leave the walled gardens
00:32:15.220
for a restaurant. So today, if you live in Manhattan, you can be like, oh, I want to go to the best
00:32:19.940
whatever restaurant, right? Like I want to go to a Chinese restaurant that fits like my specific
00:32:25.860
palette and that I've been to before. I want to go to a nice Italian place or something like that.
00:32:29.940
When you're in the walled gardens, you are generally going to be locked into the restaurant
00:32:35.060
that is in that particular walled garden or the two or three restaurants there, or the one grocery
00:32:40.980
store in that walled garden. It's actually quite limited. You really don't have a lot of choices.
00:32:45.220
Yes. So it dramatically lowers the amount of choice you have in life to be in this environment.
00:32:53.700
It's not like you've actually maintained your true level of wealth.
00:32:57.860
You still want to be in the walled garden though.
00:33:00.420
No, you still want to be in the walled garden, but I've already noticed how throughout the course
00:33:05.380
of my life, the way you and I relate to consumerism has completely transformed in part due to a changing
00:33:12.820
global economy, which is to say that early in our relationship, you know, we went to barbers,
00:33:19.220
we went to restaurants, we relied on doctors. We, you know, all of this, like we had a specialist
00:33:27.700
who we would go to for like, we went outside the house for pretty much everything. And now we're
00:33:32.820
trying to get more and more from within the house.
00:33:35.220
And now almost everything we make, I haven't been to a restaurant in maybe a year at this point.
00:33:43.220
When we go travel, but I'm talking about like when we're at home.
00:33:46.660
So it is very, very rare for us to go to restaurants. We don't do barbers anymore.
00:33:52.820
We do all our own haircuts. We don't do, even when it comes to fixing things, we typically have
00:33:57.380
like a guy who lives next to us, who we hire. Like we do not do as much stuff that integrates us with
00:34:03.620
the wider economy. And this has really transformed our lives.
00:34:07.380
Yeah. Well, and also we, we chose a house with a well water and we, we, we don't have a septic
00:34:15.060
system like, or sorry, like a septic pit. So like that, that is one point of liability. This is
00:34:19.860
something though, I want to point out though, the importance of also looking at your infrastructure,
00:34:25.460
like your electricity and your water, and also sort of your security. And, and I want to go into
00:34:31.540
why this really matters. So we've talked about this. I'm not going to go too deep into it in
00:34:35.780
terms of how cities are not going to be able to maintain their infrastructure as demographic
00:34:41.300
collapse plays out. Malcolm has covered that extensively in other episodes, but the long
00:34:45.700
story short is that when cities start to see lower populations as a product of demographic collapse,
00:34:51.540
as the population declines, that doesn't mean that the cost of maintaining their, their power grid
00:34:58.420
and their sewer systems goes down in proportion to the number of people. Like it's it, they're still
00:35:04.260
the same cost and it just far fewer taxpayers. So these systems start to crumble. And you saw
00:35:10.100
this happen with cities like Detroit. However, if you live in the United States, especially if you live
00:35:14.820
in a suburban area, this is likely to be much worse because even with stable and sometimes growing
00:35:22.340
populations in your city, you are likely to still see crumbling infrastructure. And I think that's,
00:35:28.340
that just shows how much this problem is going to be compounded and accelerated in certain areas,
00:35:33.860
which should also factor into your calculations. So where you can learn more about this is from
00:35:39.540
Strong Towns. It's this, this movement that's been around for over 10 years at this point, but they've
00:35:44.500
been really pointing to the liability of American cities specifically, given how they were developed.
00:35:49.940
Basically just a really short excerpt from their top sort of warning. But they're really against
00:35:54.260
suburbs. They are, they're really against suburbs. They're really more for like more sustainable cities
00:35:59.380
because the way that suburbs have been built in America are, it's not sustainable. Here's how they put
00:36:04.340
it. Since the end of World War II, our cities and towns have been, have experienced local economic
00:36:09.460
growth using three primary mechanisms. One, transfer payments between governments where the federal or
00:36:15.860
state government makes a direct investment in growth at the local level, such as funding water
00:36:20.660
system or a sewer system expansion. Two, transportation spending, where transportation infrastructure is
00:36:27.140
used to improve access to a site that can then be developed. Three, public and private sector debt,
00:36:33.220
where cities, developers, companies, and individuals take on debt as part of the development process,
00:36:38.980
whether during construction or through the assumption of a mortgage. In each of these,
00:36:44.020
the local unit of government benefits immediately from all the permit fees, utility charges and
00:36:50.260
increased tax collection. This is real money that provides for the current budget. Cities also assume
00:36:56.100
the long-term liability for servicing and maintaining all this new infrastructure, a promise that won't
00:37:02.340
come fully due for decades. This exchange, a near-term cash advantage for a long-term financial obligation,
00:37:09.540
is one element of a Ponzi scheme. Over a life cycle, a city frequently receives just a dime or two of
00:37:17.540
revenue for every dollar of liability, a ridiculously low level of financial productivity. So in long story
00:37:24.420
short, cities have been like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, like build, build the thing. And then they just
00:37:28.580
don't think about how they're going to pay for it over time. And now the bills coming due, cities are like,
00:37:34.260
now they need to re redo and overhaul their sewer systems or electricity grids. And there's just
00:37:38.740
not the money for it. Yeah. So the thing with strong towns is I'm going to argue it's kind of a scam
00:37:44.420
system. I've talked about this and it is a real problem that suburbs development in the United
00:37:50.100
States are going to have to deal with. The problem is, is that it is an astronomically smaller problem
00:37:56.980
than the problem the cities are dealing with. True. Yeah. Because they're not, they're not thinking
00:38:01.220
about demographic collapse. They're only thinking about like, literally if, if populations keep
00:38:05.140
growing, this is an issue that needs to be addressed. If things stay stable. Yeah. And
00:38:09.060
they're not thinking about the bureaucratic spiral that cities can get into when we talk about the
00:38:13.780
increased costs of doing little things like, you know, millions of dollars for a porta potty in New
00:38:17.940
York, right? Like this is a, I think it was 10 million or something, but like, this is the real thing
00:38:24.100
that is happening in, in places like Manhattan and places like San Francisco to the point where it's just
00:38:29.940
not economically sustainable. Yeah. And I think we're already seeing or politically sustainable
00:38:34.180
because the cities are so ideologically captured. Yeah. Yeah. And so the cities just like, there's no
00:38:40.980
way you can fix this in the way that they want to fix it. They want to put all the fancy green spaces
00:38:45.220
in cities and make cities look nice and make them more walkable. And it's like, but that doesn't change
00:38:51.300
the roving gangs of criminals that no one is willing to convict. You know, that doesn't change the
00:38:57.940
unsustainable process of like converting luxury hotels into immigrant shelters and stuff like that.
00:39:04.420
Yeah. No, they haven't. And well, keep in mind, strong towns was founded like before this was an
00:39:10.020
issue. So. Right, right, right. But, but I could have predicted that it was going in this direction
00:39:15.060
because I did predict it was going in this direction when I've talked about this before.
00:39:18.020
Yeah. The suburbs, yes, they're going to have to increase taxes,
00:39:22.100
but suburbs already just don't charge a lot in taxes when, when contrasted with cities.
00:39:28.100
Yeah. Like total cities are, cities are way more expensive though. And I'll get into this
00:39:32.660
in another, another episode, but yeah, people in suburban areas may pay more taxes than you'd think
00:39:36.820
and more than we ever expected. So just to note, just to note as, as bills come due. And I think that's
00:39:42.740
one of the reasons why our taxes as people living in a not urban area are still really high,
00:39:48.500
but I want to just circle back to, to what Johannesburg shows. We need to expect basically
00:39:53.940
cities where police may come when called, but don't proactively police, like don't expect to
00:40:00.420
be protected where you're going. Don't expect people to actually be prosecuted for crimes. Also
00:40:05.940
a place where you may need to pay police to actually do their job or literally just hire private security
00:40:11.140
or investigators or people to solve problems when they arise. You should also expect a future in which
00:40:17.700
maybe like in Johannesburg, insurance companies fix some infrastructure just to reduce their own
00:40:22.820
costs. But what we're seeing more in the United States is insurance companies just leaving states
00:40:28.020
entirely like the state of Florida, like the state of California. They're like, nope, I'm not doing it
00:40:32.580
anymore because I will not make money because literally like these cities are burning and the
00:40:36.980
hurricanes are taking out entire coastal towns. I cannot like, I cannot be solvent and function there.
00:40:43.380
So I don't even, I think Johannesburg actually is kind of lucky in that insurance companies are
00:40:46.900
filling in potholes. It's kind of nice. Also, I do think it's notable that in Johannesburg,
00:40:52.020
you have homeless people directing traffic where traffic lights are down. We are going to see
00:40:55.860
citizens helping more than you might expect. And I think that that's, that's cool, but you want to
00:41:00.580
live in an area, maybe like a Catholic community or an Orthodox Jewish community where you can actually
00:41:05.460
expect your community to step in where the government fails. Because in very like, we'll see a very like
00:41:10.900
diverse urban area. Like the cities you're talking about, Malcolm, right? People aren't culturally
00:41:15.780
cohesive enough to want to help each other out. They're too divided.
00:41:19.060
Well, culturally cohesive communities in cities, like the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.
00:41:22.420
Yeah, like sub-communities, but just make sure you know who's going to watch your back. Because in
00:41:27.700
many places, there just isn't that sense. Even if people who are like racially, ethnically,
00:41:32.820
culturally homogenous, sometimes you don't get that. Quite often you don't get that. So you just,
00:41:36.580
especially in like a progressive liberal area, people aren't really, they don't have each other's
00:41:41.780
backs the same way, I find at least. That's not, you know, I didn't grow up with that sense.
00:41:46.020
And then you also need to just expect more of these walled communities with private security
00:41:50.100
and independent backup water or electricity. And you're already seeing this kind of starting to
00:41:54.100
happen. I mean, like there's sort of this wealthy early adopter thing. And what you know,
00:41:59.140
and you can already see in various places is, for example, Mark Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel,
00:42:05.700
building their walled gardens and compounds. I'm sending you a picture of architectural renderings
00:42:10.900
of Peter Thiel's New Zealand compound. It's sort of built into a hillside, obviously, you know,
00:42:16.340
like to, you know, for like nuclear protection or whatever, but it's quite modern and pretty.
00:42:20.180
Mark Zuckerberg's Hawaiian compound, which is called Kalao Ranch or whatever. It features a 5,000
00:42:26.580
square foot underground shelter connected by two mansions. Sorry, it connects two mansions with
00:42:32.020
tunnels. There's a blast proof concrete and metal door. There's an escape hatch. There's living areas.
00:42:37.300
It has its own supplies. So billionaires are early adopters in this and they're taking it
00:42:42.500
way overboard, but they're trying to sort of build their own little atomized version of a walled garden.
00:42:48.420
But then I would also point to the fact that we know, I'm not going to name anyone, but like,
00:42:52.740
we know people who are being sort of sponsored by very, very wealthy benefactors to try to create
00:43:01.140
new walled gardens. We were at one point, for example, invited to join a bunch of this,
00:43:06.500
like one of these people who's sort of being sponsored to investigate this and some of her
00:43:11.060
influential techie friends to spend some time together in this community in, I think,
00:43:18.100
upstate New York, right? Called Chautauqua. I just sent you a bunch of pictures that we took when we were there.
00:43:22.660
Which is kind of this like Main Street, USA, very romantic, very pretty, forgotten,
00:43:28.180
very much walled garden city. Remember the security we had to go through to get in?
00:43:32.580
It was, it is very, you pay, you even paid admission fee to get in. Do you remember that?
00:43:38.420
So there are already communities like this that people are now trying to replicate.
00:43:42.020
I think culturally America is more amenable to this in it, to the extent that a lot of Americans
00:43:48.180
are already attempting to do this. Like, I think the American sort of settler selection pressures,
00:43:53.940
that especially if you're talking about the Americans whose ancestors went to the West and
00:43:58.740
stuff like that, uh, really selects for, you know, wanting to be cut off from the rest of society.
00:44:05.300
Yeah. And then we see it in all these different ways that like you have the billionaire compounds,
00:44:09.300
you have already existing walled garden communities like Chautauqua. And I want to point
00:44:13.300
out Chautauqua isn't like this, this conservative, it's actually like a super NPR liberal, barefoot,
00:44:19.620
Jew, Clinton, kind of like a beautiful idealistic American, maybe a little bit waspy too, but like,
00:44:28.340
it's, it is not, it's not a conservative gun toting militia place. It is, it is where very progressive,
00:44:36.820
influential speakers go to speak at an amphitheater. It's very idyllic. Yeah. It's, it's,
00:44:42.260
it's the NPR tote bag of a, an idyllic walled paradise, but yeah, that, that also techies are
00:44:47.860
trying to replicate it in their own image, in their own way. But then there's also, of course,
00:44:52.660
the, the city states, there's the Prospera's there's the praxis of, of it all where people
00:44:57.460
are trying to create these more like sort of tech forward entrepreneurial communities. So it just like,
00:45:03.540
it is already happening and we should just be paying way more attention to where it's happening
00:45:08.420
and how it's happening. And I, what I want people to really consider carefully
00:45:12.100
is where their families should be set up long-term logistically. What's the climate like? How
00:45:16.580
much can you get energy and water independence? What's the security situation? How about food
00:45:20.820
security and, and how can you, how energy water and food independent can you get? Because these
00:45:26.900
things are going to increasingly matter. And while these well gardens work in Johannesburg now,
00:45:33.140
I don't know how long they're going to work because right now they're, they're basically being funded by
00:45:37.780
sort of inherited wealth, a lot of remote workers, you know, like, so just, I want people to think
00:45:42.900
about these things. And I hope that, that talking about Johannesburg and how it's been playing out
00:45:47.060
and how other communities like these are playing out will help people think about it.
00:45:51.700
Yep. No, I think that the, looking at the way that developing economies and developing sort of
00:45:57.060
infrastructure is different from, from a collapsing developed economy.
00:46:01.140
That's also a really good point. Yeah. A place on the upswing is very different from a place on the
00:46:05.380
downswing. And places like Lima are going to be on the downswing eventually, right? Like there's just
00:46:13.220
no getting around it. And this is, this is true across Latin America. Like Latin America is uniquely
00:46:17.380
effed right now because Latin America got a lot of its business dealing commodities with China and
00:46:23.620
China is sort of in a state of collapse right now. So the downswing that you're seeing across Latin
00:46:29.380
America is unlikely to abate. And, and Africa is the same way. Africa did a lot of commodity
00:46:34.420
trading to China. And so these types of countries are only going to get worse. Like the corruption
00:46:41.700
in Johannesburg is not going to get better unless you like, I don't know, had some sort of a military
00:46:50.020
coup or something like that, but even that's all too corrupt at this point.
00:46:53.460
Yeah. It's all too corrupt. Yeah. And I think, yeah, the reason why Johannesburg
00:46:58.500
is this early beacon of this walled garden, the future dystopia is
00:47:23.460
sorry. My, my laptop is very little battery capacity and I didn't plug it in. The reason why
00:47:45.540
Johannesburg has these walled gardens is, is because basically like the post-apartheid mess that was
00:47:52.340
created and all the corruption has produced a world where everyone, it's just, it's unfixable.
00:47:58.260
Whereas everywhere else, there's like this plausible fixability. And well, I think you need sort of
00:48:03.460
dictatorial style, like El Salvador, like leadership to get fixability in, but I don't think it could
00:48:10.580
happen with in Johannesburg, unless you went back to like an apartheid like system, but not necessarily
00:48:16.020
an apartheid where whites are on the top. Like maybe it'll be one tribe is on the top or something like
00:48:19.700
that Wakanda. You, you, you basically need, see the problem with Johannesburg right now is there's
00:48:26.740
too many factions and none of them really care about any of the other ones. Yeah. That is a big
00:48:31.140
problem. There's just like a lot of, I can't remember these specific tribes that like really
00:48:35.060
freaking hate each other. Yeah. And, and, and so they're all sort of pulling from the same pool
00:48:40.580
and they are just like, well, how do I help mine? Right. Because they don't really care that their
00:48:46.180
actions are unsustainable or hurting wider society. Well, no, what I'm saying here is I'm
00:48:52.740
not saying apartheid was good. Nobody clipped this and say that I'm saying apartheid was good.
00:48:56.500
But what I'm saying is, is that if you had just one of the tribes uncontrovertibly at the top of
00:49:03.700
society, then they would understand that if they acted in a corrupt way, they hurt their own tribe the
00:49:10.340
most. Yeah. Right. And so that's how you can build a society that works, but because they all
00:49:16.740
are pulling from the same pool, it's almost like, okay, suppose that you have like an investment fund,
00:49:21.860
right. And we have a big pile of money, but that money is supposed to be invested in things that make
00:49:27.940
a, a return every year. Right. However, I am sharing this pool with a hundred other people and
00:49:35.860
any one of those people can come and take money from that pool whenever they want.
00:49:40.260
It's a classic tragedy of the conversation. Yes. So I'm effed. I'm like, well, then I got to take
00:49:44.420
as much as I can right now because everyone else is taking from it. But now suppose that only my
00:49:49.140
family could take from that pool. Well, now all of a sudden I have a reason to not take from the pool
00:49:54.260
because I want my family to benefit from, right. And that's the problem that you have in South Africa
00:49:58.900
that you're going to increasingly have because of incredibly loose immigration policies that have caused
00:50:03.860
cultures and groups of people to immigrate to countries where they have no sort of shared
00:50:11.140
identity or belief in a, in a collective outcome. More tragedies of the common. Yeah. Yeah. So
00:50:18.420
prepare for the end. We love you all. Yeah. The weird thing. So many people that are like,
00:50:24.100
are you in different houses? You know, seeing you walk in at the end of a video that we are one,
00:50:28.820
not the same person in drag, just rerecording these episodes. And two, that we are actually
00:50:34.820
in the same house. And that when my laptop dies, I just tiptoe into Malcolm's room.
00:50:38.660
All right. I love you. I'm glad we got these episodes in.
00:50:40.660
I love you too. It was a great episode. Thank you.
00:50:45.620
And now I'm going to go help Octavian. What are you guys watching?
00:50:49.140
Where did he go? He's going over there. Oh, he's at the edge? I think he has a baby.
00:51:05.780
Wait, I think he saw a baby. Wow, that's a big praying mantis. I think he just, I think he just got a baby, dude.
00:51:13.700
Did you know that praying mantises eat their husbands? The mommies eat the daddies in the praying mantises.
00:51:30.900
Okay, go watch it, Octavian, or you'll miss it.
00:51:35.940
Yes, that's the mommy one. The daddy ones are smaller in praying mantises.
00:51:38.500
That's because the daddy wants our babies. No, they're not babies. They're just smaller.