The Auron MacIntyre Show - How Commerce Shapes Empires ｜ Guest： NewsFist ｜ 7⧸13⧸26

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, how's it going? Thanks for joining me this afternoon. I've got a great

00:00:13.000 stream with a great guest that I think you're really going to enjoy. We started a series

00:00:18.340 reading John Glubb's essay about the fall of empires, the life cycles that they go through.

00:00:24.640 we found last week in the first few sections a lot of really good insights that i think

00:00:31.600 you know we don't agree with everything that glob predicts in this work but ultimately it is

00:00:36.660 a work that has a lot of prescience to it something that helps us observe these cycles

00:00:42.160 and hopefully at some level avoid them happening to the west if we can so we want to look at this

00:00:48.240 you know the way that he dissects the development of these empires and see if there's anything that

00:00:52.920 we can rescue for ourselves in order to better our situation. Joining me again to discuss this

00:00:58.420 essay is Mr. News Fist. Thank you so much for coming on, man. Always a pleasure, Ron. Thanks

00:01:02.840 for having me back, man. Absolutely. So this week we're focusing on the section about commerce and

00:01:09.820 the expansion of empire. We already talked a little bit how empire is a natural development

00:01:15.700 of most civilizations that are expanding and growing. And so this is something that we see

00:01:20.760 a pattern repeated over and over again this natural desire to kind of exert influence beyond

00:01:26.280 your natural borders spread your way of being spread your influence and glub is going to lead

00:01:31.700 off today in section 10 with commercial expansion we're going to be talking a lot about the impact

00:01:37.800 of wealth and money and how that changes civilizations over time in a very predictable

00:01:43.380 way so that said let's dive right into number 10 commercial expansion the conquest of vast

00:01:50.220 areas of land and their subject subjection to one government automatically acts as a stimulant

00:01:56.940 to commerce both merchants and goods can be exchanged over considerable distances moreover

00:02:02.980 if the empire be an expensive one extensive one it will include a great variety of climates

00:02:09.400 producing extremely varied products which different areas will wish to exchange with one another

00:02:14.880 the speed of modern methods of transportation tends to create in us the impression that far

00:02:19.800 Loan commerce is a modern development, but this is not the case.

00:02:23.720 Objects made in Ireland, Scandinavia, and China have been found in the graves and ruins

00:02:29.040 in the Middle East, dating from a thousand years before Christ.

00:02:33.980 The means of transport were slower, but when a great empire was in control, commerce was

00:02:40.640 freed from the innumerable shackles imposed upon it today by passports, import permits,

00:02:46.560 customs boycotts and political interference the roman empire extended from britain to syria and

00:02:53.120 egypt a distance in a direct line of perhaps 2 700 miles a roman official transferred from britain

00:02:59.920 to syria might spend six months on the journey yet throughout the whole distance he would be

00:03:05.120 traveling in the same country with the same official language the same laws the same currency

00:03:09.360 and the same administrative system today some uh some 20 independent countries separate britain

00:03:15.880 from Syria, each with its own government, its own laws, politics, custom fees, transports,

00:03:22.220 and currencies, making commercial cooperation almost impossible. And this process of 0.84

00:03:27.000 disintegration is still continuing. Even within the small areas of the modern European nations,

00:03:32.660 provincial movements, expanded secession, or devolution tend further to splinter the continent.

00:03:40.820 the present fashion for independence has produced a greater number of tiny states in the world

00:03:46.700 some of them consist of only one city or one small island this system is an insuperable obstacle to

00:03:53.500 to trade and operation the the present european economic community is an attempt to secure

00:04:01.140 commercial cooperation among small independent states over large areas but the plan meets with

00:04:06.240 many difficulties due to the mutual jealousies of so many nations. Even savage and militaristic

00:04:12.880 empires promote commerce, whether or not they intend to do so. The Mongols were some of the 0.97

00:04:18.360 most brutal military conquerors in history, massacring the entire population of cities. 0.92

00:04:24.160 Yet in the 13th century, when their empire extended from Peking to Hungary, the caravan

00:04:30.500 traded between China and Europe achieved a remarkable degree of prosperity. The whole

00:04:35.440 country was in the territory of one government. In the 8th and 9th century, the caliphs of Baghdad

00:04:41.580 achieved fabulous wealth owing to the immense extent of their territories, which constituted

00:04:48.040 a single trade bloc. The empire of the caliphs is now divided into some 25 separate nations.

00:04:55.020 All right, so this touches a little bit on something that you mentioned in our last episode,

00:04:59.180 which is the petrol dollar, this unified American empire being almost entirely commercial. Of course,

00:05:05.000 glub is writing this before we have seen many of the commercial consolidations of the american

00:05:09.860 empire so in a way he's kind of predicting uh what will come next and it's good to know that this is

00:05:15.280 a cycle you know again as he says we tend to think of this trade as something that is extremely

00:05:20.240 modern very unique to our time due to planes and e-commerce and all these things and don't get me

00:05:26.620 wrong that does have a very serious impact on the level of integration we have today but it's more

00:05:32.800 of a cycle that we go through. When we have empires, we have this freedom of markets. We

00:05:38.500 have this one unified market across society that allows all the different supply chains. It allows

00:05:44.800 the use of one currency, one language, these kind of things, all of which facilitate that trade.

00:05:50.540 That's why English has become the language of trade across the world. And so it's interesting,

00:05:54.840 most people think of our economic prosperity as being due to capitalism, that capitalism,

00:06:00.960 that the ideology of capitalism is what actually creates this but another way to look at it is

00:06:06.640 really what we call capitalism is the extension of the uh kind of pax americana across the world

00:06:13.400 and so the system we're operating under is the american system as much as it is as it is big c

00:06:20.520 capitalism and that's actually why we're seeing this explosive growth in wealth and uh the ability

00:06:27.420 the velocity of money all these different things because they are tied up with kind of this

00:06:32.340 homogenous economic existence rather than perhaps necessarily any one given economic theory

00:06:39.840 well this is generally sort of one of the bonuses of empire um you can you can have a shop and you

00:06:46.680 can go in and there's fruit from across the world and every season obviously they didn't have

00:06:50.660 refrigerated trade but okay let's let's say earlier empire so you've got silks from china

00:06:55.020 you've got ivory from india you've got all kinds of like great stuff um at least it's great if

00:07:00.880 you're in in the core if you ever you know study political science particularly in the modern world

00:07:05.820 they'll they'll talk about the the core versus the periphery always in this very very exploitative

00:07:10.760 state are the the core the first world they get all the the good stuff and they take from the

00:07:17.500 periphery but obviously you know this is an oversimplification because even if uh raw materials

00:07:22.080 taken from the periphery and assembled in the core and then finished goods are shipped back

00:07:26.540 out to the periphery, the periphery still gets goods and market access that they would not get

00:07:31.740 otherwise. The problem that you tend to get is that with this flattening of trade regulation

00:07:38.220 comes flattening of other kinds of governance. So the EU is a really, really good example of

00:07:43.560 this. It started out as this way to trade more freely in Europe and now it's gone completely

00:07:49.300 insane you know net zero has been attached to it and it's it's become far sort of beyond its remit

00:07:54.860 so you could probably make an argument that this ease of commerce this harmonizing of laws uh across

00:08:01.180 sort of different disparate territories uh leads sort of inevitably to an expansion of other kinds

00:08:08.080 of governance that then sort of you know and also of course the movement of population and stuff

00:08:12.620 like that but it just it starts to sort of flatten everything out and in you know in places like

00:08:17.560 europe or i guess anywhere else in the world sort of independent cultures then become oppressed or

00:08:23.500 suppressed you know in in sort of uh in favor of this large sort of all more globalized culture

00:08:29.000 and then inevitably at the end of the cycle as you were talking about you get a resurgence of

00:08:33.640 nationalism as those cultures are like listen you know it's great that we can buy silk from china

00:08:40.000 and ivory from from india uh but everything that makes our country our country has also disappeared

00:08:45.820 along with it. And sooner or later, you have to make the question, which do you want more? Do you

00:08:49.920 want a national identity or do you want cheap strawberries? Yeah, it really is. Deleuze and

00:08:58.180 Guattari called this the overcoat. And it's the way that the economic interaction inevitably leads

00:09:05.600 to the overriding of the cultures themselves. It breaks down. Everyone has to become good at

00:09:13.120 interacting with that hegemonic system as opposed to what you know the way their culture operated

00:09:19.100 previously and so your elites reorient from kind of their local culture their the ability to serve

00:09:24.800 that and you stop selecting for people who are best acting uh in the tradition of your people

00:09:29.840 and in the way that you have done things instead you start selecting for people who are good at

00:09:33.820 interacting with that hegemon interacting with those larger markets those systems those kind of

00:09:38.880 things and so those change your uh you know your your political styles that changes your leadership

00:09:44.620 the the uh makeup of your elites uh different different parts of your culture all of these

00:09:50.720 things are impacted by this so it has great benefits as you say uh but it tends to homogenize

00:09:56.840 and to be clear it's not just the homogenization of the subject peoples it also creates a

00:10:03.580 homogenization of the empire this is one of the things that we'll see uh glove talk about

00:10:08.360 But this, you know, everyone who interacts with the system becomes more like each other, including the people who made the system.

00:10:14.940 They get further away from their traditions and where that came from, and they become more of this global cosmopolitan people because they are constantly interacting with peoples and products and ideas and everything else that's flowing in from overseas.

00:10:29.400 And so this isn't something that's just visited upon the third world, as you say.

00:10:32.940 This also flows back into the first world. And I think that's a lot of what we're seeing today, not just the cultural response, but even the literal physical people of the empire are fleeing their nations and flowing back in to these original hegemons because they ultimately have just seen themselves as becoming this one thing, or at least the people who are running the empire see themselves as one thing. 0.51

00:10:56.100 even if the new people flowing in are seeing this more as their opportunity for revenge against the

00:11:00.620 hegemon rather than something they can integrate into you know this this makes me wonder whether

00:11:06.120 um you know the whole sort of spreading of the idea of the blank slate the truly preposterous

00:11:12.240 idea that everyone is the same everywhere was not sort of sort of foisted originally upon the back 0.96

00:11:18.020 of like homo economicus right like you know you oh you know there's those people in other countries 0.89

00:11:22.840 you know they want they want to wear a wear a grill they drink coca-cola just like us you know 0.73

00:11:26.940 they're like mcdonald's you know we like i mean if you take this from this this idea oh you know

00:11:32.980 well look people in sudan they'll buy our products they must be exactly the same as us um it sort of

00:11:40.280 leads i think maybe to this idea of just the complete flattening of all sort of humanity like

00:11:46.240 with this idea that well you know everyone wants to make money don't they right like you know and

00:11:51.420 And then you get the people in the core who are sort of their primary sort of motive is profit, beginning to delude themselves that everybody else's motive is to, you know, make profit above all things.

00:12:04.240 And then this tension eventually becomes untenable because there are, at the end of the day, more important things than money.

00:12:12.220 These things always exist in this sort of like weird tension.

00:12:15.660 Okay, sure, people wish to make money.

00:12:17.780 They wish to raise their development index.

00:12:20.640 But at what cost?

00:12:21.420 do you want to jump in and read the next one here pros and cons of empires sure uh 11 the pros and

00:12:28.000 cons of empires in discussing the life story of the typical empire we have digressed into a

00:12:34.240 discussion of whether empires are useful or injurious to mankind we seem to have discovered

00:12:39.240 that empires have certain advantages particularly in the field of commerce and in the establishment

00:12:43.780 of peace and security in vast areas of the globe perhaps we should also include the spread of

00:12:48.740 varied cultures to many races the present infatuation for independence for ever smaller

00:12:54.000 and smaller units will eventually doubtless be seceded by new international empires i think

00:12:59.200 glob is right here it's a cycle right the present attempts to create a european community may be

00:13:04.260 regarded as a practical endeavor to constitute a new superpower in spite of the fragmentation

00:13:09.580 resulting from the craze for independence if it succeeds some of the local independencies will

00:13:15.020 have to be sacrificed if it fails the same result may be attained by military conquest

00:13:19.980 or by the partition of europe between rival superpowers the inescapable conclusion seems

00:13:25.540 however to be that larger territorial units are a benefit to commerce and to public stability

00:13:30.660 whether the broader territory be achieved by voluntary association or by military action

00:13:35.940 so as you're saying yeah this is very accurate predictions right he's he's predicting the

00:13:42.680 european union uh more or less here as it's trying to forge a single economic zone uh we're seeing

00:13:49.220 that the uh kind of post-world war one uh nationalism uh kind of rush is reconstituting

00:13:57.140 itself back into uh kind of these zones of control now that we've freed ourselves from kind of the

00:14:02.960 bipolar u.s versus soviet union distinction i was interesting i was just on the charlie kirk show 0.99

00:14:08.580 talking to them about alexander dugan uh who gets a lot of things wrong it says a lot of stupid

00:14:12.880 things but is right about the fact that empires are actually the more natural kind of stable blocks

00:14:21.400 of civilization and taking that kind of samuel huntington clash of civilizations thesis it's

00:14:27.300 it's really empire or civilizational blocks that are able to push back against each other

00:14:33.380 The idea of truly small and independent nations that are completely sovereign, that idea has always waxing and waning, but we're currently seeing that that is not functioning well in the real world at the moment.

00:14:49.040 And this is why everyone is kind of falling back into these spheres of influence that they can create around not just their country, but their civilization or their empire in general. 0.67

00:14:59.700 i don't think the the eu quite frankly has the balls if you'll pardon my french to be a proper

00:15:07.860 empire say what you want about the american empire it has two crucial things that make for 0.94

00:15:13.960 a good empire a very very well no a very very strong national identity that other people can

00:15:21.200 join right and military power where the as the eu has really sort of neither right like what is

00:15:28.040 the eu identity if if eu if the eu had a you know their equivalent of the 4th of july what would

00:15:34.460 they be celebrating like we're so happy about gay rights like there's there's no unlike the

00:15:41.340 americans the europeans don't really have a sort of cohesive identity and they also i don't know

00:15:47.840 they they seem to be allergic to using military force probably because they were disarmed after

00:15:52.560 world war ii i think without those two sort of crucial things you can't even really have an

00:15:56.660 empire which i think is one big reason why the eu is making such a hacky job of it um well it's

00:16:04.320 kind of interesting because trump has been encouraging of course nato members to start

00:16:08.800 rearming right to start uh to start militarizing hey we want you to pull your weight we're tired

00:16:13.720 of being a deadbeat and i think a lot of people myself included you know recognize that as as true

00:16:18.760 and healthy but at the same time that's also a mission of we're going to stop being an empire

00:16:23.440 that more or less you know makes you a satrapy of our uh defense network right like you you guys

00:16:29.560 actually have to have some sovereignty you're not just going to be able to rely entirely on us

00:16:33.980 having a military umbrella that stretches over europe uh which you know given what's happening

00:16:38.540 with iran and the gulf states right now people are questioning the wisdom of relying entirely

00:16:43.040 on the military umbrella of america uh to be your your kind of defense mechanism anyway but

00:16:47.920 You know, it's weird to consider that from a certain angle, the EU is like a suzerain that got its own aspirations of empire.

00:16:58.220 They're like, you know, not really willing to sort of acknowledge, despite the fact that it's true, that all of their sort of security provision came from the United States.

00:17:05.960 Because I guess from the EU perspective, we are so much better than the Americans, don't you know?

00:17:11.240 We have banned guns, you know, all that like stuff.

00:17:13.640 they it's it's like they started having their own pretensions of empire whilst still a suzerain

00:17:19.000 of america very very weird situation i'm not sure i wonder if that's happened before in history

00:17:23.300 it's a good question and you know i think it's because once again america does not formalize

00:17:28.940 these relationships right and in previous empires it was very clear oh no that military dominates

00:17:34.800 us and tells us what to do and dictates all these things about us because america's uh empire is at

00:17:40.360 some level one of soft power we never call ourselves an empire we never go out there and

00:17:45.300 make explicit imperial demands even though we're very often making very implicit imperial demands

00:17:51.560 well what i mean by that is oh no no one in you know no president comes and says we are increasing

00:17:58.840 the the tax on uh all of our foreign satrapies by 20 for the glory of the american empire uh but

00:18:06.020 obviously uh but uh they you know we do we do say things like uh you know if you don't trade

00:18:11.940 in exactly this way you're going to get sanctioned until you're basically bankrupt so again that's

00:18:17.440 why i'm saying there's there are there are somewhat explicit demands but they're always

00:18:21.300 couched in kind of this neutral economic state actor uh you know well we're all rational actors

00:18:27.780 here and we're just acting you to play by the international rules rather than saying well we

00:18:32.420 dictate the international rules because you know we own you yeah like they're they don't they don't

00:18:37.000 use that kind of language yeah it's it's the the americans uh love to use this this idea of freedom

00:18:43.260 of association and a moral high ground all this kind of other stuff which kind of language which

00:18:47.400 the the eu has has tried to to copy but you know when the rubber hits the when the rubber hits the

00:18:52.500 road when the pointy stick meets the the soft flesh there is always like a an actual demand

00:18:58.260 in there makes it makes you kind of like wonder whether um it would actually just be better for

00:19:05.200 the u.s to just come out and say uh actually we're an empire now uh we're just we're gonna do what we

00:19:10.780 want uh you better you're a satrapy uh you're gonna like it and if you complain i i honestly

00:19:17.640 i don't know it would certainly be a change no i actually if you know if we're going to do the

00:19:24.580 empire thing i am 100 behind the formalism right like let's just formalize it make it clear what

00:19:29.660 the relationship is that way americans aren't because because we lie to ourselves as americans

00:19:34.200 as much about this as we lie to other nations about it right like america is in a deep deep

00:19:39.860 denial the average american is in deep deep denial about the the possession of of an empire and it

00:19:45.720 would just be healthier if we could operate it explicitly for our interests rather than the

00:19:50.540 the thing that happens right now is because we're not required to operate the american empire

00:19:54.760 directly for our interests a lot of times it just ends up benefiting our elites they just end up

00:19:59.360 you know manipulating it only for their benefit because the people don't expect any benefit from

00:20:05.420 it uh not that we don't receive benefits but you understand what i'm saying like because we don't

00:20:10.080 have that explicit relationship uh we don't we don't expect you know at least when caesar went

00:20:14.420 on campaign people expected him to come back with you know with gold with you know with money with

00:20:20.720 with wealth opulence like they they expected something to happen after the conquest that

00:20:25.200 benefited them the empire was for them and not just uh for the elites alone i i think it's

00:20:31.900 actually core to the american experience the whole idea of democracy and ruling by consent and all

00:20:36.360 this kind of other stuff it gives americans like a bad taste to sort of think that they just

00:20:40.240 go into places and you know and break stuff up for resource extraction but it's it's nonetheless

00:20:45.380 true sorry i mean we we are a we are a country that's literally founded on the idea that we

00:20:51.960 were breaking away from a global empire so it's a little hard to square that circle it really is

00:20:57.140 with the american identity um but yeah i think that's that's a lot of that's why we end up being

00:21:02.700 so schizophrenic in our approach i think to global governance uh which is unhealthy looking for more

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00:21:38.080 so sea power number 12 one of the more benevolent ways in which a superpower can promote both

00:21:43.500 peace and commerce is by command of the sea from waterloo to 1914 the british navy commanded the

00:21:50.480 seas of the world britain grew rich but she also made the seas safe for commerce of all nations

00:21:55.360 and prevented major wars for a thousand years curiously enough the question of sea power has

00:22:00.420 never uh clearly uh was never clearly distinguished in british politics during the last 50 years from

00:22:06.620 the question of imperial rule over other countries in fact the two subjects were entirely distinct

00:22:11.900 sea power does not offend small countries as does military occupation if britain had maintained her

00:22:18.160 navy with a few naval bases overseas in isolated islands and she'd had independence and had given

00:22:24.200 independence to colonies which had asked for it the world might well be more stable place today

00:22:29.520 In fact, however, the Navy has swept away, was swept away in popular, in the popular outcry against imperialism.

00:22:38.400 So this is obviously true, or at least the first part is obviously true about the control of the seas and empire.

00:22:46.600 Obviously, you have states like Portugal, which created trading empires more than they created these kind of colonies.

00:22:54.420 And there's vast wealth that can be harnessed by controlling the seas.

00:22:58.120 It's of great benefit. Obviously, now air travel also a very important node in this kind of understanding of these networks.

00:23:06.860 But clearly what we're seeing in the Strait of Hormuz obviously shows us how important having dominance of your Navy is to maintain trade.

00:23:15.660 if you've built your empire as the americans have on kind of this just-in-time delivery system this

00:23:21.220 extraction of resources system these global markets uh then even uh nations that would

00:23:27.160 otherwise never have uh the ability to impose their will militarily on you can instead attack

00:23:33.400 your economy you know the the target of iran's attacks is not the american military it's the

00:23:39.260 american economy and that's the only way that they can win and they know it and in many ways it's

00:23:44.200 working uh so we can see that the truth of that the the second part is interesting uh the idea

00:23:49.560 that the domination of the seas is not as offensive to people as a direct colonization

00:23:54.780 direct occupation so you can project a lot of power without uh gaining the ire of average people

00:24:00.560 you can even be seen as a peacemaker who facilitates trade at some level as long as you

00:24:06.560 don't move in and dominate these areas i think there's some truth to that um uh but uh you know

00:24:12.180 This is certainly the idea that many of the American founding fathers talked about.

00:24:15.940 This is the Hamilton's kind of mercantile seagoing empire was certainly, I think, the first iteration of this.

00:24:23.460 They were not looking to dominate and control land at that time.

00:24:27.120 But obviously, I think these are outgrowths of each other.

00:24:30.120 So I don't know if they can be as neatly separated as he wants them to be.

00:24:33.680 The question really is how fair is the international rules-based order that winds up sort of being instantiated.

00:24:41.960 So the idea of a hegemon imposing freedom of navigation on the world so that trade can pursue is fundamentally a good idea.

00:24:54.620 The problem is that the temptation is for the hegemon to begin slanting that system in their favor.

00:25:01.740 And, you know, and we wind up with this situation that we have today, you know, Bretton Woods and the United Nations and all of these institutions that were established, you know, under the idea that the rules would apply to every country equally.

00:25:18.200 That's how they got everyone to sign on.

00:25:20.100 But in fact, of course, that's not that's not how it works.

00:25:22.880 so i don't know i mean you you could probably say something about uh the temptation of uh any empire

00:25:30.140 that starts with you know um humanitarian goals to have those goals begin to like you know stretch

00:25:38.920 to be more and more and more and more and more self-serving until uh you know it's it's basically

00:25:43.000 our way or the highway where the or to put another way we're the only rules-based order uh in the

00:25:49.020 house where else are you gonna go huh yeah that's exactly right yeah and this is always the the

00:25:55.540 problem with neutrality right is that it never really exists the temptation as you say to slowly

00:26:00.700 but surely uh kind of warp yourself uh warp the order around your advantages is always going to

00:26:05.900 be there and so why people might initially be very grateful for the peace that you bring and

00:26:10.560 the prosperity and the ability of free markets and commerce that you provide uh as the as the

00:26:16.060 thumb on the scale gets heavier and heavier they're less and less willing to pay that price

00:26:20.160 and that's why we're seeing places you know bricks and these other efforts to kind of leverage away

00:26:24.720 from the american economic uh hegemon uh because there's too too many advantages i i said this many

00:26:31.520 times especially when when biden did it with ukraine uh you know when he attempted to defeat

00:26:36.760 russia through sanctions thinking that he just was going to win the ukrainian war through

00:26:40.560 economic means uh you you immediately created an incentive where all of these countries said oh

00:26:45.680 well if you're just going to freeze every russian asset there's no reason to be connected to the

00:26:49.960 american uh financial system because the cost of that is far too high like the fact that you can

00:26:55.060 just switch this off at any moment and so you're actually destroying your advantage by overreaching

00:27:00.440 uh and trying to leverage it to win a war as opposed to simply you know glean a little bit

00:27:06.000 off the top of uh you know any given uh commercial interaction well economic war is is seen as

00:27:11.600 a war sort of without cost for the the hegemon i think this is what drives like a lot of it right

00:27:18.040 if you're if you're talking like america with this massive gdp and say they want to screw over

00:27:24.240 oh i don't know south sudan or some small african country okay by simply blocking locking them out

00:27:30.140 of swift they have declared war on them but it's zero cost really to the the hegemon right like

00:27:36.780 you know you know what how much i mean if if raw resources have to be taken from that country

00:27:41.220 uh they can just have a narrow exception oh yes you know you can still export cobalt from you know

00:27:47.060 that one that one tiny territory but the the rest of the the you know trade is is cut off as opposed

00:27:53.900 to actual military intervention i think this is a temptation that leads um countries like america to

00:27:59.880 do this over and over and over because when it works they have essentially managed to find to

00:28:05.140 get to the goals that would normally be achieved with military action without putting boots on the

00:28:10.000 ground or really sort of much trouble at all uh do you want me to read the next bit or you want to

00:28:14.380 yes please okay um 13 the age of commerce let us now however return to the life story of our

00:28:21.560 typical empire we have already considered the age of outburst when a little regarded people

00:28:26.980 suddenly bursts onto the world stage with a wild courage and energy let us call it the age of the

00:28:33.120 pioneers then we saw that these new conquerors acquired the sophisticated weapons of the old

00:28:38.320 empires and adopted their regular systems of military organization and training a great period

00:28:44.040 of military expansion ensued which we may call the age of conquests the conquest resulted in

00:28:49.920 the acquisition of vast territories under one government thereby automatically giving rise to

00:28:55.060 commercial prosperity we may call this the age of commerce the age of conquests of course overlaps

00:29:01.640 with the age of commerce the proud military traditions still hold sway and the great armies

00:29:06.920 guard the frontiers but gradually the desire to make money seems to gain hold of the public

00:29:11.720 during the military period glory and honor were the principal objects of ambition to the merchant

00:29:17.520 such ideas are but empty words which add nothing to the bank balance so we can of course see this

00:29:25.360 in the roman empire the classic example right uh rome starts with a military that's voluntary

00:29:31.040 in fact being in the military is really your only way to obtain

00:29:34.880 honor and so many people have to spend their own money

00:29:39.160 to buy the equipment serving the military is the only

00:29:43.220 way to advance socially because that honor culture that idea

00:29:47.340 of physical prowess is the only way to gain glory it's what

00:29:51.160 you know people are fixated on that's where all the great stories are told

00:29:54.980 but then you get the Marian reforms you get the shift in creating

00:29:59.160 a permanent and professional military that's now being paid by the state that's being outfitted

00:30:04.340 by the state uh that desire of a professionalized force is to constantly be used and so you see it

00:30:10.740 out in the field all the time when you have professional troops they need to be deployed

00:30:14.280 they can't just be sitting around that causes problems so you're out there constantly trying

00:30:18.040 to expand territory win uh glory that way uh but you in the process uh kind of remove the average

00:30:24.420 person from military service it's no longer expected that every person will involve themselves

00:30:29.780 and this creates a large amount of money uh you know wealth as the territory expands you know

00:30:34.640 obviously uh the the first emperor of rome uh augustus octavian uh famously said that he found

00:30:42.820 rome a city of uh what was a city of clay and and turned into a city of marble or something

00:30:48.860 it's along those lines i forget the the first one the city of stone and turned into a city of marble

00:30:53.180 something like that uh but rome became far more opulent under uh his rule and of course there

00:30:58.880 are a lot of glorious times in the roman empire as well but you can definitely see the shift

00:31:03.700 of the average roman being this kind of yeoman farmer and warrior uh who is more about austerity

00:31:09.640 uh more about the the glory of uh of physical victory in the field and then they shift to a 0.58

00:31:15.920 moment where they're importing a bunch of slaves they're making a bunch of money uh the the the

00:31:20.140 military service is now professional and not something that every nobleman needs to volunteer

00:31:24.420 for. And of course, America is also seeing this. You see wide-scale efforts to have drafts in World

00:31:31.780 War II or World War I. Everyone went to war. You couldn't become elected if you didn't have some

00:31:36.700 kind of military service. Then you saw Vietnam, where trying to run a draft was incredibly

00:31:41.820 resisted. The average person didn't want to go into the military. They didn't see this as a

00:31:45.420 service and today america's military is almost entirely a tiny hereditary class very few people

00:31:52.740 serve in the military very few people even know someone who serves in the military uh and obviously

00:31:57.580 we have all of the uh kind of material benefits that have come from that expansion but it has

00:32:02.760 very much shifted us from a a nation that recognized the glory of military service and

00:32:08.080 acts of valor and now one that is almost entirely focused on financialization making money these

00:32:13.640 kind of things i think there might be a very seductive idea lurking at the heart of this

00:32:18.880 um that you to reference my earlier point that you can wage war or social terraforming through 0.59

00:32:26.300 economics right um i say uh you know it's a road bottom why are the natives like so up in arms 0.98

00:32:32.200 well you know they're very very poor are they mostly are dirt farmers uh you know well what 1.00

00:32:37.280 if we gave them all you know washing machines and mobile phones and no no no perhaps then they could

00:32:43.280 join civilization now i think there's something quite self-serving about this as well because

00:32:48.960 you you can reduce the power of the army you can increase the power of the bureaucracy

00:32:52.380 you can increase the power of the banks of the you know the merchants um and this this would be a

00:32:58.580 sort of a very very a very tantalizing idea because no no no one really enjoys like eternal

00:33:05.000 war i i know some people sort of say that they do but i think war fatigue is a a highly

00:33:10.700 underappreciated part of societies i think for example the us is going through a very very major

00:33:15.580 period of war fatigue at the moment you just cannot sustain war indefinitely and once it gets

00:33:22.620 to a certain point i think arguments like this well you know instead of going to war uh with 0.62

00:33:27.180 the natives you know why don't we air drop them you know washing machines and digital watches and 0.97

00:33:31.980 you know coca-cola um you know they seem to like that you know they like coca-cola everybody likes 1.00

00:33:36.780 coca-cola right like what's wrong with you you don't like coca-cola um but it's only really just

00:33:41.540 it's the whole social and economic circumstances argument uh unironically that you could just you

00:33:47.920 know um you see it a lot from the un that you could just uplift all of these countries uh around

00:33:53.040 the world and once they had the equivalent of western living standards everything would be

00:33:57.620 fine you know they would they would champion lgbtq rights and they would you know be for democracy and

00:34:02.860 all this kind of other stuff um i think it's just seductive in its universe universality but it's

00:34:08.640 it's just not true yeah the the people of africa it's not that they can't maintain civilizations

00:34:13.520 it's just that they don't have laptop computers and once they have computers africa will be fixed

00:34:18.080 right precisely but from a commercial perspective if you keep sending them laptop computers and they

00:34:23.820 keep setting them on fire and dancing around them in funny headdresses or you know whatever okay um 0.98

00:34:29.720 if you have a stupid enough ngo you could always just sell them more laptops to send over to africa 1.00

00:34:34.960 to be destroyed and then again and again and again so from the point of view of the profit motive of 1.00

00:34:40.680 the people who are actually selling the laptop computers is a fabulous idea but it's not going to

00:34:44.580 get you any kind of like actual stability through um commercialization right there's uh this is the

00:34:52.100 gdp as a measure problem right like ultimately it does not reveal the actual production it just

00:34:56.960 shows you that the number goes up and if the line goes up then you know there there is always as you

00:35:01.380 say uh an infinite market at some level as long as things stay opulent uh for these ngos or other 0.99

00:35:07.500 organizations to to drive those numbers up doing the same uh thing even if it's absolutely a stupid 0.88

00:35:12.260 failure all right uh number 14 here art and luxury the wealth which seems almost without effort to 0.84

00:35:19.340 pour into the country enables the commercial class to grow immensely rich how to spend all this money

00:35:24.500 becomes a problem to the wealthy business

00:35:26.540 community. Art, architecture,

00:35:28.540 luxury find rich patrons.

00:35:30.600 Splendid municipal buildings and wide

00:35:32.420 streets lend dignity and beauty to

00:35:34.480 the wealthy areas of great

00:35:36.540 cities. The rich merchant builds

00:35:38.160 themselves palaces, and money

00:35:40.580 is invested in communications,

00:35:43.280 highways, bridges,

00:35:44.780 roads, railways, hotels,

00:35:46.660 according to the varied pattern

00:35:48.420 of the age. The first

00:35:50.360 half of the age of commerce appears to be

00:35:52.580 peculiarly

00:35:54.500 peculiarly splendid the ancient virtues of courage patriotism and devotion to duty

00:36:00.680 are still in evidence the nation is proud united and full of self-confidence boys are required

00:36:06.280 first of all to be manly to ride to shoot straight and tell the truth is remarkable

00:36:11.980 what emphasis placed on this stage about the manly virtues of truthfulness for lying as cowardice

00:36:17.720 the fear of facing up to the situation boy schools are intentionally rough frugal eating hard living

00:36:24.480 breaking the ice to have a bath and similar customs are aimed at producing a strong hard

00:36:29.340 hardy and fearless breed of men duty is the word consistently drummed into the heads of young men

00:36:35.500 the age of commerce is also marked by the great enterprise in the exploration for new forms of

00:36:42.760 wealth daring initiative is shown in the search for profitable enterprises in far corners of the

00:36:48.000 earth perpetuating to some the degrees of adventurous courage of the age of conquest

00:36:53.540 So again, this makes a lot of sense because the initial beginning of age of commerce is still coming out of that warrior society, right? You created this powerful, vigorous society. And even though you've moved into this moment where making money matters more, you're building this infrastructure, you're building these things, it's still about virtue.

00:37:13.720 You still have those warrior virtues. They are kind of transferred in to this new age of commerce, but you still have enough social momentum, the institutions, the beliefs, the traditions to make sure that young boys are still rigorous, hardy, going after things, seeking glory, strength, these kind of things.

00:37:31.620 over time obviously that spirit fades that the the you've gotten so far away from the warrior

00:37:38.440 culture that the tradition cannot carry those aspects to it but we can see this again in

00:37:44.040 america if you look as america's uh kind of economic futures expanded from world war one

00:37:51.400 to world war two uh you still had a very intense uh understanding of uh kind of honor uh the guys

00:37:58.500 going into world war ii the silent generation uh those coming back from the war were still people

00:38:04.520 who are focused very much on this idea that you need to have uh you know these virtues however

00:38:09.820 this the longer things went with that opulence the softer each succeeding generation got the less

00:38:16.600 these schools were allowed to be rigorous now in america if you in any way try to inculcate any

00:38:21.460 masculine virtue uh you're some kind of heretic who has to be destroyed by the civil rights act

00:38:26.200 uh but you you so you can see how over time that fades even though it is very strong at the

00:38:31.100 beginning of the age of commerce yes it's also interesting the point that glob makes about um

00:38:36.240 the value of of truth and the acceptance of of lies um in in modern society the the i the idea

00:38:44.260 that you should be truthful is is almost like anathema it has spread so far it's become

00:38:49.000 sort of the default form of governance uh in in many places it's not about being truthful to the

00:38:54.900 people at all the the basic sort of uh equation is you figure out what you want the people to do

00:39:00.260 and then you figure out the most effective way to lie to them to get them to do it um

00:39:05.040 yes it's it's not a good development in my opinion um but i think it's the age of affluence

00:39:12.380 that that really sort of does it in right this this is i think the part of empire that a lot

00:39:17.880 of people see uh 15 the age of affluence there does not appear to be any doubt that money is

00:39:24.340 the agent which causes the decline of this strong brave and self-confident people the decline in

00:39:30.220 courage enterprise and a sense of duty is however gradual the first direction in which wealth

00:39:35.720 injures the nation is a sorry is a moral one money replaces honor and adventure as the objective of

00:39:42.140 the best young men moreover men do not normally seek to make money for their country or their

00:39:47.380 community but for themselves gradually and almost imperceptibly the age of affluence silences

00:39:54.240 the voice of duty the object of the of the young and the ambitious is no longer fame honor or

00:39:59.760 service but cash education undergoes the same gradual transformation no longer do schools aim

00:40:06.260 at producing brave brave patriots ready to excuse me ready to serve their country parents and

00:40:12.560 students alike seek the educational qualifications which will command the highest salaries the arab

00:40:18.540 moralist uh ghazali complains in these very same words of the lowering of objectives in the

00:40:24.740 declining arab world of his time students he says no longer attend college to acquire learning and

00:40:30.200 virtue but to obtain those qualifications which will enable them to grow rich the same situation 0.67

00:40:35.600 is everywhere evident amongst us in the west today and man i mean we could not have a better

00:40:42.140 encapsulation of exactly the illness that has infected uh the united states and the wider

00:40:47.720 western world right like people don't even the idea of going to school to university to any of

00:40:53.960 these places to become patriots who would sacrifice on behalf of the country almost sounds insane

00:41:00.140 right it sounds like something out of a captain america comic book from the 1940s uh the idea

00:41:05.660 that you go to university for anything other than gaining a credential that makes you the most money

00:41:11.560 is entirely bizarre no one goes to college to learn anything you don't even learn anything

00:41:16.860 in many colleges today they go because the piece of paper gives them access to career opportunities

00:41:22.720 they don't care that the idea that they're going to go fight in a war and gain glory is insane i

00:41:27.920 remember and of course a lot of tragedy around this ultimately due to what happened to pat tillman

00:41:33.560 but he left a affluent career in the national football league in the united states in order

00:41:40.140 to go fight in the war on terror uh and they that idea was considered so bizarre to people that you

00:41:46.360 would feel a duty to abandon making money and fame so you could go end up fighting and dying

00:41:53.400 sadly in his case in the middle east is ridiculous no no one will ever elevate him as much for his

00:42:03.840 death in the military as they would have if he had just continued to be a star football player 0.54

00:42:09.640 and that tells you something very dangerous about your society when whatever the endeavor is it's

00:42:15.480 always just making money at the end of the day as is seen as the highest goal why is donald trump

00:42:19.980 uh why is donald trump qualified to be president because he makes money why is elon musk one of

00:42:26.040 the most important people in the world because he's the richest guy in the world you know not

00:42:28.720 because they fought personal battles not because they were known for standing against 30 guys and

00:42:34.060 some kind of uh incredible military uh you know uh incursion but just because they have money

00:42:40.100 that's really it yeah well what what has basically happened is a re-engineering of status so in the

00:42:47.780 in the early part of the empire status is gained from martial strength uh i mean just just the

00:42:54.140 idea of of glory itself in the modern west has completely sort of passed by the idea you know

00:43:00.820 if you stood up and you're like yeah well i went into a wreck and i you know killed like a hundred 1.00

00:43:05.460 to them hadjis and right like many people would be like oh my god that's like horrible like how 1.00

00:43:10.640 could you whereas like you know back in the dawning of the empire this would be seen as as as

00:43:14.860 glory right like martial prowess so what has happened is that status has transitioned from

00:43:20.360 being about martial strength or any kind of like strength really simply to money and then later

00:43:27.040 credentialism and i mean you can you can kind of see how this happens right um once the periphery

00:43:33.820 of the empire stabilizes once there's enough you know i guess laban's realm or you know whatever

00:43:39.580 you want to like call it okay um and the empire begins sort of adopting a sort of defensive

00:43:44.740 posture the main things that uh generate status would be sort of you know greater scientific

00:43:50.680 discovery uh you know more doodads like you know a new way to like wash your curtains or

00:43:55.540 or whatever and the importance of constantly pushing the empire out uh and thus the glory

00:44:01.780 that would be gained by you know taking out of the province or whatever begins to decline because

00:44:06.880 it it sort of reaches its its natural limit i this is one of the things i've i've thought for

00:44:11.880 a while that uh and orwell made this point that you're never going to have a world-spanning empire

00:44:16.560 like it's just it's just impossible no matter how many doodads you invent no matter how many

00:44:20.880 force multipliers and ai and everything like that the world is just too large for one uh group to

00:44:28.040 manage and as as it gets larger and larger the the complications exponentially multiply and then

00:44:33.820 become its downfall i mean i i might be wrong i guess we're going to see aren't we

00:44:37.440 so uh number 16 here high noon that which we may call the high noon of the nation covers the period

00:44:45.960 of transition from the age of conquest to the age of affluence the age of augustus in rome the

00:44:51.280 uh haram uh rashid in baghdad or suleman the magnificent in the ottoman empire or queen

00:44:58.260 victoria in britain perhaps we might add the age of woodrow wilson in the united states

00:45:03.760 all these periods reveal the same characteristic the immense wealth accumulated in the nation

00:45:11.920 dazzles the onlookers enough of the ancient virtues of courage energy and patriotism survive

00:45:16.840 to enable the state successfully to defend its frontiers.

00:45:20.020 But beneath the surface, greed for money is gradually replacing duty and public service.

00:45:25.580 Indeed, the change might be summarized as being from service to selfishness.

00:45:31.840 So again, this is a really interesting transition because you think of the World War II generation,

00:45:37.400 you think of the silent generation in the United States, still had that martial prowess,

00:45:41.320 still had enough vigor to kind of keep the empire going.

00:45:45.140 but over time the baby boomers are kind of the first generation to not have as much of this they

00:45:50.880 do have the vietnam war but there's a large protest against it there's a large protest against

00:45:55.420 the idea of being drafted or serving your nation because of it and so this is the first uh kind of

00:45:59.880 crack in uh the armor uh when it comes to the american empire and its development here in the

00:46:05.340 age of commerce the age of affluence now interestingly the thing you hear the most from

00:46:10.060 boomers is well why don't you serve your country why are no uh you know why are none of these young 0.74

00:46:14.840 people civically minded why all they care about is money and the answer is well you train them

00:46:20.260 that way right like you created this opulent society where you worship money you put making

00:46:26.040 money before anything else um you're the generation that trained the subsequent generations to have

00:46:31.160 this and you're just seeing kind of the third or fourth generation who has been raised on this idea

00:46:36.380 that making money centering profit centering uh you know capital is the only thing that matters

00:46:42.460 there are no other values really and so those values fade over time that that adherence to

00:46:47.840 the old ways the traditions they were enough at the beginning to maintain the empire to drive it

00:46:51.980 forward to protect its boundaries but over time with the focus on money there's just a natural

00:46:57.160 spiritual decay that occurs and so it does beg the question here whether you know you should

00:47:04.700 have some avoidance of wealth if there is at some point a limitation to how much wealth you should

00:47:10.060 bring in the nation that's a very dangerous thing to go ahead and suggest in america you're going to

00:47:16.680 be called a socialist or communist or whatever uh the minute you suggest it but it's hard to argue

00:47:21.580 with gloves logic here ultimately we can see this pattern repeat over and over again now maybe it's

00:47:26.000 true that you simply can't stop it maybe this is just inevitable and so that you're going to go

00:47:30.620 through these cycles and trying to stop uh you know affluence because it will lead to decay

00:47:35.840 is foolish right unless you're like the spartans over there uh ensuring that no one's get gets to

00:47:40.520 own a nicer cup uh because it might put them ahead uh and create jealousy uh but unless you're 0.76

00:47:46.160 going to put that level of high communist style control maybe there simply is no way to stop this

00:47:51.220 and a very and evidently from what we see from communist empires that didn't stop it either so

00:47:56.320 perhaps there's there's that as well i mean glob doesn't uh mention this uh in this treatise but i

00:48:02.360 I would say that after high noon is probably the point

00:48:05.600 at which fiat money begins to enter into the picture.

00:48:09.840 Financialization, usury becomes like commonplace,

00:48:13.500 the idea of making money from money.

00:48:16.400 There are advantages because you get things

00:48:18.200 like limited stock companies and stuff,

00:48:19.860 but then this financialization grows

00:48:22.100 and it begins to eat everything.

00:48:24.340 So if the empire is a meta-organism,

00:48:27.000 the first phase is expansion up until high noon

00:48:29.980 and now we are into the you know the contraction uh the decline which starts with 17 defensiveness

00:48:37.820 another outward change which invariably marks the transition from the age of conquests to the age

00:48:44.600 of affluence is the spread of defensiveness the nation immensely rich is no longer interested in

00:48:50.940 glory or duty but is only anxious to retain its wealth and its luxury it is a period of

00:48:57.400 defensiveness, from the Great Wall of China to Hadrian's Wall on the Scottish border

00:49:01.220 to the Maginot Line in France in 1939. Money being in better supply than courage,

00:49:08.520 subsidies instead of weapons are employed to buy off enemies. To justify this departure from

00:49:14.760 ancient tradition, the human mind easily devises its own justification. Military readiness or

00:49:21.100 aggressiveness is denounced as primitive and immoral. Civilized people are too proud to fight.

00:49:28.320 The conquest of one nation by another is declared to be immoral. Empires are wicked. This intellectual

00:49:34.520 device enables us to suppress our feeling of inferiority when we read of the heroism of our

00:49:40.180 ancestors and then ruefully contemplate our position today. It is not that we are afraid to

00:49:46.100 fight we say but we should consider it immoral this even enables us to assume an attitude of

00:49:52.320 moral superiority the weakness of pacifism is that there are still many peoples in the world

00:49:58.420 who are aggressive nations who proclaim themselves unwilling to fight are liable to be conquered by

00:50:04.300 people in the stage of militarism perhaps even to see themselves incorporated into some new empire

00:50:10.500 with the status of mere provinces or colonies i feel like the uk is in that position alone

00:50:15.940 when to be prepared to use force and when to give way is a perpetual human problem which can only

00:50:22.700 be solved as best we can in each successive situation as it arises in fact however history

00:50:29.680 seems to indicate that great nations do not normally disarm from motives of conscience

00:50:34.420 but owing to the weakening of a sense of duty in its citizens and the increase in self selfishness

00:50:41.060 and the desire for wealth and ease woof yeah so again we can see this echoed in sadly both

00:50:48.240 of our countries uh obviously england more or less lost the will to maintain its empire

00:50:54.080 after world war ii and yielded it to the americans saying well at least we can hand it off and

00:51:00.320 someone will maintain what we have built uh they'll keep us safe they'll do the duty we're tired we're

00:51:05.520 We're a tired people. We're a tired nation. We'll hand that off to our younger, more exuberant counterpart, and they'll kind of continue that forward. But in a very short time, America has also run this course. And we're seeing now, obviously, many people say that America needs to withdraw. America needs to pull back from its global commitments.

00:51:26.940 on in you know ironically despite what's happening right now this is much of what trump ran on 0.66

00:51:32.280 the idea that we need to go ahead and get rid of nato we need to pull back from uh forever wars

00:51:37.360 and constant military engagements and so this is a difficult moment because of course at some level

00:51:42.320 we know this is true like we know that the pointless wars that america has fought in many

00:51:47.500 situations the constant desire to kind of be the world police has uh exhausted us as we've lost the

00:51:53.820 blood we've lost the treasure we've gained very little at the same time the calls to end that

00:51:59.480 if you're familiar with history are also kind of calls to move into a very different age

00:52:03.980 one in which also often signals imperial decline and this is what james burnham said in his book

00:52:10.360 death of the west this is why he kind of still had those neocon tendencies because said look

00:52:15.180 either you're expanding your dime either you're conquering the world or you're going to or or

00:52:20.040 someone else is gonna be out there just because you decide to uh kind of recede from the world

00:52:24.740 doesn't mean that all these other countries just give up on wanting to make their fortunes and once

00:52:30.280 they realize you're weak once they realize that you don't have a hope of uh you know maintaining

00:52:34.940 this you know you think of the the ottoman empire the you know the sick man of europe and the fact 1.00

00:52:39.540 that so many of its constituent parts were looking uh you know for their opportunity to break out and 0.99

00:52:44.640 kind of forge their own way i mean this is just a constant reality so we're caught in this uh

00:52:49.980 dichotomy where we want

00:52:52.460 to pull back

00:52:54.500 from empire because we see the difficulty

00:52:56.100 and the danger but we also

00:52:58.320 even in pulling back are falling

00:53:00.260 into the historical cycle that usually

00:53:02.380 leads to the end of these empires

00:53:04.460 and I think it's really important that he says

00:53:06.180 empires almost never stop because of moral

00:53:08.540 reasons they do so because

00:53:10.200 of the weakness of their

00:53:12.520 own citizens and I think this is something

00:53:14.360 like you know again I talked

00:53:16.500 about Alexander Dugan here recently on

00:53:18.380 Charlie Kirk show. This is one of the things that Dugan is exploiting. He might be right about

00:53:22.600 multipolarity and what is emerging in the geopolitical situation, but he's also trying

00:53:28.400 to encourage kind of a weakness of the American empire saying, oh, well, you need to go into this

00:53:33.460 withdrawal phase. You need to go into this phase where you allow other powers to exert influence

00:53:39.900 because he wants to see the inevitable fall of this power. So it's a very difficult thing,

00:53:46.340 especially when you're inside that empire and you care about the people of that empire to know

00:53:50.240 which way to go because continuing forward might be disastrous but also withdrawing could be the

00:53:56.480 next step in imperial decline so you start with a downtrodden people who are selected by a harsh

00:54:04.780 climate to be highly martial and they have nothing to lose they then go out they break out

00:54:10.040 they gain territory they gain empire and all of a sudden they do have something to lose and

00:54:16.220 because they have something to lose they you know assume a defensive posture to keep what it is

00:54:21.560 that they have and then eventually they get you know attacked by another group of people who have

00:54:26.820 been grown in highly harsh climates who have absolutely nothing to lose and the cycle basically 0.58

00:54:31.960 repeats itself yeah if you've read dune you know this one right arrakis was god made arrakis to

00:54:38.120 train the faithful but as soon as water starts appearing on arrakis paul knows that the time of

00:54:43.380 empire could be coming to an end because the people become soft and decadent all right uh do

00:54:49.540 you want to do the age of intellect yeah sure uh 18 the age of intellect we have now perhaps

00:54:57.240 arbitrarily divided the life story of our great nation into four ages the age of the pioneers or

00:55:02.780 the outburst the age of conquests the age of commerce and the age of affluence the great

00:55:09.060 wealth of the nation is no longer needed to supply the mere necessities or even the luxuries of life

00:55:14.540 ample funds are available also for the pursuit of knowledge the merchant princes of the age of

00:55:21.180 commerce seek fame and praise not only by endowing works of art or patronizing music and literature

00:55:26.540 they also found and endow colleges and universities it is remarkable with what regularity this phase

00:55:33.140 follows on that of wealth in empire after empire divided by many centuries in the 11th century the

00:55:40.400 former arab empire then in complete political decline was ruled by the seljuk sultan malik

00:55:46.760 shah the arabs no longer soldiers were still the intellectual leaders of the world during the reign

00:55:52.620 of malik shah the building of universities and colleges became a passion whereas a small number

00:55:58.340 of universities in the great cities had sufficed the years of Arab glory, now a university sprang

00:56:03.880 up in every town. In our own lifetime we have witnessed the same phenomena in the USA and

00:56:09.560 Britain. When these nations were at the height of their glory, Harvard, Yale, Oxford and Cambridge

00:56:15.240 seemed to meet their needs. Now almost every city has its university. The ambition of the young,

00:56:23.220 once engaged in the pursuit of adventure and military glory and then in the desire for the

00:56:27.360 accumulation of wealth now turns to the acquisition of academic honors it is useful here to take note

00:56:33.920 that almost all the pursuits followed with such passion throughout the ages were in themselves

00:56:37.740 good the manly cult of hardyhood frankness and truthfulness which characterized the age of

00:56:42.460 conquests produced many really splendid heroes the opening up of natural resources and the peaceful

00:56:48.240 accumulation of wealth which marked the age of commercialism appeared to introduce new triumphs

00:56:53.780 in civilization in culture and in the arts in the same way the vast expansion of the field

00:56:58.980 of knowledge achieved by the age of intellect seemed to mark a new high watermark of human

00:57:03.300 progress we cannot say that any of these changes were good or bad the striking features in the

00:57:09.540 pageant of empire are a the extraordinary exactitude with which these stages have followed

00:57:15.140 one another in empire after empire over centuries or even millennia and b the fact that these

00:57:21.620 successive changes seem to represent mere changes in popular fashion new fads and fancies which

00:57:26.860 sweep away popular opinion without logical reason at first popular enthusiasm is devoted to military

00:57:33.240 glory then to the accumulation of wealth and later to the acquisition of academic fame

00:57:38.680 why could not all of these legitimate and indeed beneficent activities be carried on simultaneously

00:57:44.340 each of them in due moderation yet this never seemed to happen hmm yeah so very interesting

00:57:53.560 yet again you know we see the um you know the idea of a university in every town right and

00:57:58.580 that's so true in the united states at this point it's basically impossible to get a job without a

00:58:03.760 university degree and so we have what we call degree mills here where basically

00:58:08.420 these pieces of paper are worthless but they have to be churned out at a mass rate so everyone

00:58:13.560 needs to pursue them everybody needs to go into debt uh you know avoid forming families uh serving

00:58:19.440 the military starting businesses anything else uh you know the first priority is of course obtaining

00:58:25.060 that degree uh and this is the age that oswald spangle calls the age of civilization uh when all

00:58:31.400 of these things are kind of codified into institutions it's no longer the action it's

00:58:36.920 the you know kind of having that rote bureaucracy uh that that is supposed to produce the best

00:58:41.540 things of your culture. This is where managerialism really steps in. I talk about this in my book,

00:58:46.780 The Total State. And so I think this is, again, as he says, a very repeatable pattern. We see it

00:58:52.200 over and over again inside of civilizations. And it's something that we're absolutely watching

00:58:57.560 play out across the West today. I think maybe this proliferation of academia might be as the

00:59:07.460 elites realize that things are starting to decline and they say that well what is needed is more

00:59:13.860 learning perhaps we can develop a new theory that will catapult us to even greater heights but if

00:59:21.380 grub is correct if sorry if club is correct and this is sort of a a super organism super cycle

00:59:28.520 then really there is no way out at this point really like the you know the the cycle is set

00:59:35.760 and you cannot find an academic theory that will override human nature i mean there are many many

00:59:43.020 empires who have tried this the you know the soviets of course being the sort of greatest

00:59:47.620 modern example right if we just find the right academic theory the right kind of mind control

00:59:52.880 technology we can make the perfect socialist man and then we will have the the perfect society so

00:59:58.860 it's probably a combination of like um progressive teleology because not you know because no one

01:00:04.520 wants to countenance the idea of going back to being barbarians or you know going back to like

01:00:09.240 sending all their sons off to war or being sort of rough and uncouth so i think there's probably

01:00:15.020 this idea that what what we need is is more more learning you know more smart people and once all

01:00:21.560 of the you know the lower classes are as smart as the upper classes we will figure out like a magic

01:00:27.380 way to continue progressing absolutely well um we made it through three pages today so i think our

01:00:36.020 idea of of us making through this whole essay in three episodes is going to be pretty ambitious so

01:00:41.320 i imagine we've got a few more episodes in our future but it's been great speaking with you i

01:00:45.500 think this is a fascinating uh document and one that is incredibly important to our civilization

01:00:51.660 right now something we can learn a lot from and i really enjoy talking with you about it

01:00:57.260 before we head out today uh where can people find your work mr news fist uh you can find me on my

01:01:02.620 youtube channel just search for news fist uh do ignore the sri lankan news channel that is

01:01:07.140 conflicting with my search optimization um you can i've got uh i also do uh a live stream with

01:01:14.280 rhetorically defective on tuesdays and fridays uh there's interviews on there there's uh my sort of

01:01:19.480 weird comedy show um clown-based life forms what do we do this week oh yes we were laughing at the 0.98

01:01:25.140 nation of islam and uh their creation story which is if if you have not heard it it is like honestly 1.00

01:01:31.680 the most unhinged thing um so yes check that out uh news fist on youtube thanks for having yeah 0.97

01:01:37.900 they're really up there with the uh scientologists as like just kind of uh incredibly bizarre uh

01:01:43.600 origin stories did you know there's actually crossover between the scientologists and the

01:01:48.120 nation of islam i did not i did not wait yeah see that's going to be on my next live stream

01:01:52.060 okay well then i have to tune in there is there are no other options now must get that content

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01:02:21.280 Thank you everybody for watching and as always, I'll talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - July 13, 2026

How Commerce Shapes Empires ｜ Guest： NewsFist ｜ 7⧸13⧸26

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