Based Camp - Study Africa to Understand The Future of Europe

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.

00:01:00.100 And this is in Johannesburg.

00:01:02.820 And to give an idea, can you talk about some of the signs for crime spots and stuff like that?

00:01:08.700 Yeah, we're going to get into that.

00:01:10.000 Because yeah, they're-

00:01:10.900 No, I mean, you lead with interesting novel things.

00:01:14.800 I will show you. Okay.

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

00:02:03.680 of how things have gotten-

00:02:05.460 I want to stand and, like, jack up cars in these areas and just point to the sign and

00:02:09.380 be like, look, it's common here, okay?

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

00:02:20.860 expect?

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

00:02:28.140 carjacking zone. You carjack.

00:02:30.600 This is a carjacking zone.

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

00:02:59.220 cool.

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 1.00

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.

00:03:41.100 It piled up 13 stories high.

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. 0.79

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

00:04:20.060 shanty towns in Johannesburg.

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

00:04:58.700 literally included a picture of.

00:04:59.860 They're just a white mush?

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 0.98

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.

00:06:15.160 Where's the horse?

00:06:16.880 Liters and liters of water day are gushing out. And it's been like this for two years.

00:06:21.900 I mean, a Porsche went in there last weekend.

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 0.99

00:06:58.620 penis enlargement surgeries. I know, seriously, that that's probably not helping with the 0.96

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. 1.00

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. 0.92

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 1.00

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 0.70

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.

00:14:22.300 Yes and no. It's a combination of things.

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, 0.99

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

00:26:23.140 beautiful park in San Isidro. 100%.

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 0.75

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.

00:33:41.620 When we travel, we have to eat out.

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 0.54

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, 0.99

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 1.00

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?

00:43:31.620 Yeah. Yeah.

00:43:32.580 It was, it is very, you pay, you even paid admission fee to get in. Do you remember that?

00:43:37.540 Yeah.

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, 0.58

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 0.95

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 1.00

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 0.77

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. 0.90

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.

00:50:42.580 Oh, 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. 1.00

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.

00:51:46.900 You know how mommy's smaller than daddy?

00:51:53.300 What is this? Thank you for watching.

Based Camp - November 14, 2025

Study Africa to Understand The Future of Europe

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript