The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 271. How Black Lives Truly Matter

00:00:00.940 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.

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00:00:12.740 We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.

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00:00:57.420 Hello everyone. I'm pleased today to be talking to Ms. Magat Wade, who's known for advocating for a prosperous, innovative Africa through entrepreneurship and economic freedom.

00:01:21.320 She is the founder of SkinIsSkin.com, a skincare company that manufactures in Africa and sells products in the U.S.

00:01:31.120 And as a practicing and successful African entrepreneur, can bring her experience to the table when discussing obstacles to doing business in Africa as compared to the U.S.

00:01:42.940 Magat has concluded that those who purport to care about black Africans should support free markets and affordable and reliable energy, including fossil fuels.

00:01:56.140 Her forthcoming book, The Heart of a Cheetah, available soon through magatwade.com, will provide detailed suggestions for how to accelerate progress for Africans.

00:02:06.880 She is a blunt, she is a blunt, straight talker who has little patience for the anti-capitalist pieties favored by many so-called allies of black people.

00:02:18.820 Thank you very much for agreeing to talk to me today.

00:02:22.080 Thanks for having me, Jordan. It's a pleasure being here.

00:02:25.420 So let's start with a bit of your history.

00:02:28.320 Let's talk about your company and where it's founded and how you managed to establish it and what sort of obstacles you did face.

00:02:37.400 Sure. So whenever someone asks me, Magat, tell me about your story, I take you back to where I was born in Senegal, the west coast of Africa.

00:02:48.740 And there, I primarily, really, my story started with when my parents, right around age two, I was done with breastfeeding.

00:02:57.780 My mother decided that it was time for her and my father to go and seek better pastures, you know, to afford us a better life back home.

00:03:06.160 And that's when they made the journey that so many Africans make, you know, to provide for a better life for their families.

00:03:12.460 And it's at a time where they decided to migrate from Senegal to Europe.

00:03:19.120 Unfortunately, many people have made the same journey before them and after them.

00:03:24.440 Many, unfortunately, did not make it under as good circumstances as they did because they could do it in a legal way,

00:03:30.360 which means you can take legal pathways and routes that are not as dangerous as others.

00:03:34.400 So my parents become economic migrants, like many other Africans before them and after them, went to Europe.

00:03:40.700 And, of course, you know, managed to build a very good life for themselves.

00:03:44.440 And so they left me behind to be with my grandmother.

00:03:47.260 And right around age seven, it was time for me to be reunited with the family unit that my father and mother have, you know, constitute.

00:03:57.620 And so it was decided, now you're going to Germany.

00:04:01.920 And Jordan, I will never, ever forget when I first set foot on that continent, in that country, my first time ever leaving my village.

00:04:11.720 And I just remember being like, wait a second, how come they have that and we don't?

00:04:17.440 And that was, I was just looking around, you know, all of these paved streets.

00:04:23.140 Compare that to unpaved streets back home.

00:04:26.360 I'm walking, I'm walking around, my feet are always dusty, ashy, always have to wash them back when I go home.

00:04:32.720 How come they have that?

00:04:34.000 Meaning, you know, back home when it's, to get a shower, my grandma would have to heat a pot of hot water, put it, you know, on the stove.

00:04:41.700 And when I say stove, it's not, you know, you go into your kitchen and you turn the stove and, you know, the burner comes on.

00:04:47.380 No, no, no, it's like she's establishing like a little, a little stove, literally, that's off of the ground.

00:04:54.640 Just like when you go camping, you know, where you put the charcoal.

00:04:57.500 So put the charcoal in, has to get it going, and then she puts a pot of water on it.

00:05:01.580 Then it boils, and then we bring a bigger bucket, put that hot water, mix some cold water to it.

00:05:07.260 And then one of my cousins, stronger, would drag it to the shower area, and there, with a smaller pot, I would then go on to have my shower.

00:05:17.840 Compare that now to Germany.

00:05:19.100 My mom is like, my God, time to shower.

00:05:20.600 I'm like, so you mean I jump in there and I turn the knobs on, you know, this one, this one, and then the water comes down at the temperature I need it.

00:05:27.240 And all of that took a blink of an eye to happen?

00:05:30.680 Are you kidding me?

00:05:31.520 Even you walk into the stores, everything is AC'd in the summer, heated in the winter.

00:05:38.260 It's just like this ease of life.

00:05:40.880 I think that's what, as a little girl, I was seeing, this ease of life.

00:05:43.860 What are you talking about?

00:05:45.320 And so eventually that question of a little girl of how come they have this and we don't became with time,

00:05:52.580 how come some countries like mine, Senegal, and other many African nations are poor,

00:05:58.120 while nations like the United States, France, they're rich?

00:06:03.480 How come?

00:06:04.060 How come some nations are poor while others are rich?

00:06:06.800 And it's a question that never left me and it defined my life.

00:06:10.760 That question defined my life.

00:06:12.080 Well, so let's walk through that because that is a crucial question.

00:06:16.460 I read a book a while back by a Harvard professor, Emeritus, called The Wealth and Poverty of Nations,

00:06:25.200 and it addresses that very question.

00:06:26.920 And one of the surprising conclusions he comes to is that a huge part of what makes some countries rich

00:06:33.640 and other countries poor is the presence of an almost universal trust in matters of trading.

00:06:40.720 And so for him, I think his name was Landis, the most valuable natural resource is actually trust.

00:06:47.440 And I would say also a bit of lack of envy because with envy, it makes it impossible for anyone to have anything

00:06:54.520 because everyone else is jealous and angry about it.

00:06:57.720 And, well, that's one of the pathways, let's say, to wealth.

00:07:02.400 What have you concluded?

00:07:03.580 I mean, you've been thinking about this your whole life, ever since you went to Germany when you were seven.

00:07:08.120 Right, right. So I've been thinking about it my whole life and looking for answers my whole life.

00:07:13.960 And as I was growing up and moving around, you know, I, you know, I heard it from some very people who,

00:07:22.980 with a straight face, will invoke the IQ theory.

00:07:26.740 Oh, darling, it's not your fault, you see.

00:07:28.640 You know, because in a world where you being black, there is a fury out there that you're just not as smart as white people.

00:07:36.400 I've gone to conferences where there was panels and people talking and making that case.

00:07:44.180 I heard people say, oh, darling, it's just because, you know, malnutrition.

00:07:49.860 You know, you guys are just not well nourished.

00:07:52.460 And it's because, you know, others say, oh, if only if you had access to greater education.

00:07:57.560 And I'm like, you go say that to the countless young Africans in my country, Senegal.

00:08:03.480 You know, the joke is the first job of a graduate is to be a street seller.

00:08:08.760 How many of these people on the street, you see them hustling in between cars in a very dangerous way under the hot sun.

00:08:15.860 And you ask them, what did you study?

00:08:18.420 And they're telling you, I have I have an MBA in finance, in math.

00:08:24.380 And they're right there doing what they're doing.

00:08:26.100 I was just talking to a person in Swaziland, in Swatini.

00:08:30.820 It used to be called Swaziland.

00:08:32.700 I mean, beautiful math background.

00:08:34.540 And I said, what are you doing now?

00:08:35.720 Because I'm considering hiring her remotely.

00:08:38.260 And she said, well, I'm raising chickens.

00:08:41.960 All she can do right now is raising chickens.

00:08:44.140 So if you're going to make it about education, you go talk to those people first and you come back and talk to me about it.

00:08:49.060 And then other people just, oh, maybe if I give you some free shoes, if I give you some shoes, you'll be better off.

00:08:56.260 Tom's shoes.

00:08:56.860 Buy some shoes so that some other people have a better life.

00:08:59.280 All of this nonsense, Jordan, I've been hearing throughout times.

00:09:03.580 But guess what?

00:09:04.440 None of them made any sense to me.

00:09:06.120 Because if you're going to make it also about, let's say, even use the IQ, which I should not even give a minute to.

00:09:13.820 But then how come the same person, same background, same education, let's take even my parents.

00:09:20.060 All of a sudden, they make it to Europe and voila, they can manifest their greatest potential.

00:09:27.060 So I'm starting to think, maybe it's not about this person.

00:09:29.940 Maybe there's something else that's not about this person per se in this situation.

00:09:33.860 And then I'm like, maybe it has to do with a place they get to be in or not.

00:09:38.340 And so that was starting to brew in my head.

00:09:41.840 So as all of this is happening, I'm living my little life.

00:09:46.000 From Germany, a couple of years later, my family decided we're going to move to France if we're going to stay in Europe for many reasons.

00:09:51.260 Because, you know, France used to be the color.

00:09:54.040 Senegal is an ex-colony of France.

00:09:56.160 And then after my business school in France, I decided that France was going to be too small for my ambitions.

00:10:01.300 I got to get out of here.

00:10:02.480 I don't want to be in a country where you have to be.

00:10:05.180 If you make it to the right school, you get to the right behind for the right amount of time, then you can hope maybe for some type of promotion.

00:10:11.940 No, that was not for me.

00:10:13.240 I'm not saying that everybody does that, but it was just not a good option for me.

00:10:18.080 So I looked around and I could go anywhere, literally, as I wanted.

00:10:22.300 And I thought about the United States, this one country where anyone can become anything they want as long as they put in the work and if that's what they desire to do.

00:10:30.700 And so I came to the U.S.

00:10:32.780 And when I came to the U.S., I was first a headhunter in finance in Silicon Valley in the heydays of a dot com.

00:10:39.760 I used to go to Netflix when Netflix was this tiny office in San Jose.

00:10:43.740 Google, when most people didn't even know how to pronounce Google, it was one little building in the Silicon Valley.

00:10:48.960 And so there I got to see all of this entrepreneurship happening.

00:10:53.620 And so, Jordan, this is where at some point something happened.

00:10:55.740 And I'm taking a little detour here, but this detour is so important because I will get you to my answer because it's right there.

00:11:03.440 So, while I was in Silicon Valley, I was pretty much steeped into what they call the ecosystem of the entrepreneur.

00:11:11.120 And just this idea of two people getting together, they have an idea right in the back of a napkin.

00:11:16.760 This was, it sounds cliche, but I lived it.

00:11:18.780 I've seen it.

00:11:20.100 And then they go to a lawyer to start their business, to start, you know, the company legally, find some investors and this whole ecosystem that comes around them.

00:11:29.120 And then I start to be like, wow, this is rather amazing.

00:11:32.400 And I think it's in Silicon Valley that I discovered the magic of entrepreneurship is to create something out of nothing.

00:11:38.040 And that, to me, was so powerful, so powerful.

00:11:40.140 I was living it in my bones.

00:11:42.480 And from there...

00:11:43.220 Right, but as you pointed out, there are a lot of moving parts in that system, aren't there?

00:11:47.920 Absolutely.

00:11:48.620 Because you need people who have an entrepreneurial vision and who think of themselves that way.

00:11:55.080 And then you need a group of people around you like that to talk to.

00:11:58.240 And then you need early-stage financers who are often friends and family who are willing to contribute time, effort, money.

00:12:05.880 And then you need later-stage financing.

00:12:08.160 And there is a whole...

00:12:09.620 And the ability to work with customers and the willingness to market and sell.

00:12:13.760 And so all of these pieces have to fall into place before anything like prosperity can beckon.

00:12:19.740 Can beckon.

00:12:20.280 So, okay, so you encountered this in Silicon Valley.

00:12:23.420 And what did that do to you?

00:12:24.580 Yeah, so I encountered it in Silicon Valley.

00:12:26.040 But just before you go, when you were talking about early investment in your family and your friends,

00:12:30.400 we like to talk about the three Fs, family, friends, and fools.

00:12:33.380 So the fools are very useful there.

00:12:35.800 So in any case, so here I am in Silicon Valley.

00:12:38.640 And, you know, and I was doing extremely well for myself.

00:12:41.460 At age 25, I was making six figures, boat, my home with a pool in one of the most expensive zip codes in America.

00:12:50.000 And I say it more for what can happen in this country.

00:12:54.880 I could never, ever have dreamed of such a life at such a young age being who I am back home in France.

00:13:02.160 So right there, you know, the American dream does exist.

00:13:06.980 It was real for me, an immigrant from Africa.

00:13:09.380 So, but, you know, Jordan, with all of that success, one day I lost it.

00:13:18.140 One day I was driving down Big Sur, one of the most beautiful roads, if you ask me, in the world.

00:13:25.240 Highway 1.

00:13:26.080 Highway 1.

00:13:27.100 Man, it's something, eh?

00:13:28.660 It's so beautiful.

00:13:30.020 You cannot not believe in God when you're on that path, okay?

00:13:33.680 That's how beautiful it is.

00:13:35.480 Especially if you're taking hairpin corners in a convertible.

00:13:38.760 Yes, yes, absolutely.

00:13:41.140 And, you know, Jordan, it was one of those moments.

00:13:42.860 That day was one of those days when the sun was, as usual, shining.

00:13:47.120 The ocean was beautiful.

00:13:49.060 I was, you know, listening to some youth and doer in my car, great English musician.

00:13:54.520 And just feeling so much gratitude and also so much pride in myself for what I was able to accomplish.

00:14:00.620 And so much gratitude for everyone and everything that helped me get there.

00:14:05.240 And just as many times, just like it happens, every time I got to that moment of bliss, right away my mood turned.

00:14:15.300 Everything became dark, as it usually does.

00:14:18.320 Because why?

00:14:18.800 Because right at that moment, I started thinking about the people that I had left back home.

00:14:25.980 And it happened oftentimes through my life.

00:14:31.280 You know, because how else do you feel when you're growing up and you hear your parents or you read the news, you hear the news,

00:14:40.260 and it's saying that a body dropped from a plane somewhere above England because someone decided to migrate, right, to Europe for a better life,

00:14:51.220 just like my parents did, but they did it, again, under better conditions.

00:14:54.420 And they thought it would be a good idea to hide into the landing gear.

00:14:59.060 But somewhere above, you know, above England, the body falls.

00:15:04.220 Or they opened the plane and they found the cargo section of the plane, a frozen body.

00:15:08.280 Somebody thought it would be a good idea to hide in the cargo section of the plane.

00:15:12.160 No one told them.

00:15:13.000 It gets so cold up there.

00:15:14.960 Or, you know, this boat just tipped.

00:15:17.820 This little fisherman's boat just tipped, you know, somewhere along between the coast of Senegal and Spain,

00:15:26.440 which is the first entry into Europe for these people.

00:15:29.520 But the boat tipped over.

00:15:30.900 It is not equipped to make this journey.

00:15:33.180 And in the boat, you have babies.

00:15:34.920 You have young people, primarily young people.

00:15:38.280 And these are some of our most entrepreneurial people, the people that we need to build the prosperity back home.

00:15:44.120 And where are they now?

00:15:45.640 Lying at the bottom of the ocean, serving as fish food.

00:15:48.520 How else would you feel if, for years, growing up, these are the stories that you have, you're hearing?

00:15:57.320 And yet you...

00:15:57.820 Why do you think your conscience bothered you at that point?

00:16:01.180 I mean, you had been...

00:16:02.700 Yeah.

00:16:02.980 You had been...

00:16:03.540 You'd come to the States.

00:16:04.560 You'd become successful.

00:16:05.880 You had this beautiful day.

00:16:07.040 And so why, all of a sudden, do you suppose your thoughts turned to the people that had been left behind, so to speak?

00:16:13.020 I mean, it wasn't your fault that they were in the state they were in.

00:16:16.200 Yeah.

00:16:16.680 I know.

00:16:17.260 It wasn't my fault, for sure.

00:16:18.940 It took me a long time to accept that it wasn't my fault.

00:16:21.300 So what happened that day is I no longer was able to play the schizophrenia game that I played my whole life.

00:16:29.160 I was no able...

00:16:30.460 No longer able to...

00:16:32.500 The coping mechanism that I had developed up till then no longer was holding.

00:16:38.320 The coping mechanism that I had developed back for all of these years was, as soon as I started thinking about it,

00:16:44.180 I would actually tell myself, this is not your fault.

00:16:47.600 You have a life to live.

00:16:49.600 It is not fair.

00:16:50.420 I would tell myself all of these stories, and then I would just shrug it under the rug.

00:16:54.740 Act as if it...

00:16:57.420 But that day, for some bizarre reason, it just no longer worked.

00:17:03.120 And I lost it.

00:17:04.280 I lost it.

00:17:05.380 My body...

00:17:06.060 The feeling was so violent that my body jerked, literally.

00:17:10.980 And it's a miracle that I'm talking to you because my body jerks so much that we hit the steering wheel.

00:17:16.960 And I was going to end up down below in that ocean.

00:17:19.240 But for some reason, it didn't.

00:17:21.420 And as soon as I found a spot to stop, I stopped.

00:17:24.260 And I got out of the car.

00:17:26.000 Something major had happened.

00:17:27.580 I still don't explain what it was.

00:17:29.260 But at that time, Jordan, I surrendered.

00:17:32.060 I surrendered.

00:17:33.280 I said, God, from here on, I'm showing up.

00:17:37.600 And I promise you, and I want you to help me make sure that every breath I take from here on is going to go towards the bettering of my continent.

00:17:49.080 Right?

00:17:49.520 I just made that deal with God.

00:17:51.640 I said, this is what I'm showing up for this.

00:17:54.420 I present and I offer myself.

00:17:56.860 Why did you think this was between you and God, so to speak?

00:18:02.120 Because it was so big.

00:18:05.300 It was so big.

00:18:07.400 And it was so big.

00:18:11.420 And he's the only one that I trusted to help me with that.

00:18:14.720 The only one.

00:18:16.180 And most importantly, I had no idea what to do about it.

00:18:19.400 But I knew that faith would be my best ally in this until I could figure it out.

00:18:25.480 Yeah, well, faith sometimes is the courage to do difficult things.

00:18:30.120 You know what?

00:18:31.220 It's a very good way to look at it.

00:18:33.060 And maybe that's what happened that day.

00:18:35.220 Because that day, I was definitely not willing, or let I say not capable, at least, of being a coward about it anymore.

00:18:41.680 Because my whole life, I was pretty cowardish about it, if you think about it.

00:18:45.320 Why cowardly?

00:18:47.100 Why would you say that about yourself?

00:18:49.260 I don't know.

00:18:49.840 No, it's just because the idea that in order to no longer feel the pain, I would have to push it under the rug, I don't find that very courageous.

00:19:03.300 But I didn't know what else to do, because otherwise the pain was just going to drag me into places.

00:19:07.940 But at least I had the sanity to know we're not safe or healthy for me until I knew how to get into those dark spaces, right?

00:19:14.520 Which, by the way, I learned afterwards.

00:19:16.520 Because afterwards, I used knowledge to my rescue.

00:19:21.580 Understanding really helped settle everything.

00:19:24.700 Yeah, well, it is a terrible thing.

00:19:26.260 It is a terrible thing to look on the poverty and the corruption, let's say, of an entire continent, and in some sense, the entire world.

00:19:35.200 And to contrast that with your own prosperity.

00:19:38.000 And then to realize, at least in principle, that you have a moral duty to do something about it.

00:19:42.920 That's exactly.

00:19:43.380 That's no trivial undertaking.

00:19:45.140 That's exactly.

00:19:46.020 So, okay, so you're on the side of the road and you've pulled over and you've had this realization.

00:19:51.020 So, continue.

00:19:52.360 Yeah, so I pulled on the side of the road.

00:19:54.460 I had this realization.

00:19:56.500 And eventually, I said, from here on, this is the path I'm taking.

00:20:01.780 And I want you to help me.

00:20:03.440 So, show me the way.

00:20:04.580 I will be a good disciple.

00:20:07.740 And so, and things started to change.

00:20:10.120 And it started to change.

00:20:12.440 A few months later, my husband, who was French, and I talk about him in the past tense, because poor soul, he passed away.

00:20:21.920 Shortly after, you know, after all of this, like, we barely, we had maybe a year together.

00:20:28.980 I didn't know that then.

00:20:29.760 But I took him home to Senegal to see the place I came from.

00:20:34.440 And there, he was asking me about this hibiscus beverage I've been telling him about forever.

00:20:39.340 You know, you know how it is when you're not from the same culture, that the first thing you teach one another is what you love about your respective cultures.

00:20:45.840 And that's how a better culture is born out of that mixing.

00:20:49.160 In any case, we're there, and it's like, where?

00:20:51.060 I want to try the hibiscus you're talking about.

00:20:53.080 So, you know, everywhere we go, at the restaurant, or within my friend's fam or friend and family homes, you go there, and they often bring you to this plate.

00:21:02.240 Coke, Fanta, Pepsi.

00:21:04.620 I'm like, where is the hibiscus?

00:21:06.640 Girl, where have you been?

00:21:08.700 So basically what happens is, what has happened, anybody who feels like is a somebody drinks the Western soda pop brands, the ones I just talked about.

00:21:19.980 And the bottom of the pyramid, which is the bulk of the people, they drink knockout brands, those knockout brands.

00:21:27.860 And in between, the traditional indigenous drink that we used to have is squeezed out.

00:21:33.320 And with them, the livelihood of the women, who are primarily the ones who used to grow the raw material, which is the hibiscus.

00:21:40.660 So now these women are leaving the countryside, going and packing themselves in the cities, and they're, you know, begging on streets, prostitution, maybe working in people's homes where they're being treated horribly.

00:21:51.720 So anyway, this cycle of poverty is just keeping going.

00:21:54.260 And there, I thought I was done with being depressed sometimes about the situation back home.

00:21:59.660 I fell in a literal depression.

00:22:03.880 For three days, my body was not willing to obey me anymore.

00:22:08.060 It was just like, I'm done.

00:22:09.500 I was so disappointed with the world because now here I am.

00:22:13.320 Not only do I have my people now dying, but now I also have my culture dying.

00:22:17.200 Because my hibiscus drink, which is called bisap, bisap is called, it's the juice of teranga.

00:22:23.920 Teranga means hospitality.

00:22:25.460 That is what the people of Senegal are known for.

00:22:28.020 So this is a part of our cultural identity.

00:22:30.740 Yet it is not on that plate that they brought me.

00:22:34.140 So when I think of a plate, I think of a world stage.

00:22:37.080 And when I think of the drinks on it, I think of the cultures of the world that matter.

00:22:41.040 So much that they're on that plate.

00:22:42.920 Well, what am I seeing?

00:22:43.940 I'm not there.

00:22:44.940 And that's a big problem.

00:22:46.040 Because if you're not there, it means your culture is disappearing.

00:22:49.420 And if your culture disappears, the only time people might remember me in the future is going to be in museums.

00:22:54.780 Why do you use the metaphor of the table?

00:22:58.480 You know what?

00:22:59.360 I never thought about it.

00:23:01.000 I don't know.

00:23:02.000 It's just something that came to my mind when I saw that.

00:23:05.480 It was just like I saw that plate.

00:23:07.040 I saw the drinks on it.

00:23:08.700 And it was just, our world was right there.

00:23:11.700 The plate was the world.

00:23:12.180 Well, it's a divine symbol, right?

00:23:13.920 That's an ancient divine symbol that, in some sense, the collective table, the table of the gods,

00:23:20.680 to have a seat at the table is to be part of the conversation and to be part of the elect in some real sense, you know,

00:23:27.060 to be welcomed in with hospitality and to share and to distribute and to mutually enjoy.

00:23:33.460 That's a very, very old idea.

00:23:35.100 So it's very striking to me that that was the metaphor that sprung to mind.

00:23:39.880 Because we want everyone to come to the table, don't we?

00:23:42.320 That's the plan.

00:23:43.320 We do.

00:23:43.800 And that's the plan.

00:23:44.500 Absolutely.

00:23:45.400 That's a very good point.

00:23:46.420 I never made the connection.

00:23:47.900 But now that you're bringing it up, it does make perfect sense, actually.

00:23:52.660 Hmm.

00:23:53.180 Interesting.

00:23:54.320 Okay.

00:23:54.540 Yeah, that's for sure.

00:23:55.500 That's for sure interesting.

00:23:56.760 Well, you started that part of our conversation with a bit of an introduction to a religious experience that you had while you were driving.

00:24:03.820 And the fact that that table metaphor popped up there makes perfect sense from a symbolic perspective.

00:24:10.840 You know, you also want the table to be laden with the finest of produce, right?

00:24:16.520 And you want it to be a place of plenty and generosity as well as hospitality and an invitation to everyone to enjoy.

00:24:23.640 That's all part of life more abundant.

00:24:26.020 That's right.

00:24:26.500 Bringing everyone to the economic table is a way of moving forward towards that goal, right?

00:24:31.380 That's right.

00:24:31.780 Okay, so the hibiscus drink, that really bothered you.

00:24:34.460 Yes.

00:24:34.680 So I got ill for three days.

00:24:39.020 I was just shut down.

00:24:40.480 I could not move anymore.

00:24:41.660 I was pissed off.

00:24:42.700 I was disappointed.

00:24:43.700 I was sad.

00:24:45.300 I was depressed.

00:24:47.000 And my husband's like, my God, this anger of yours, it's energy, but it's negative energy.

00:24:52.140 You've got to find a way to turn it around into positive energy when it becomes inspiration.

00:24:55.780 And then you use it to fuel yourself.

00:24:57.300 And with that and this old concept I grew up with of criticize by creating, it's Michelangelo's, but that's very much the rules under which I was raised.

00:25:09.540 I don't need you to have a right answer, you know, my grandma or my father would say, but I need to know that you have thought of alternatives.

00:25:17.660 They don't have to be the right ones, but I want to know that you have thought of the right of solutions.

00:25:21.560 Because when you're in solutions mode, you no longer are a victim.

00:25:25.600 It's a completely different mindset.

00:25:27.380 And I think that's more what they were going for.

00:25:28.480 Yeah, well, you know, the other thing that's interesting about that too, I think, is that, first of all, I think that's a good rule of thumb.

00:25:34.520 But also, people have problems and they're often annoyed and oppressed by the fact they have problems.

00:25:40.980 But first of all, you don't have all the problems in the world.

00:25:44.400 You have your problems and the problems that bother you.

00:25:48.300 And you might ask yourself, well, why do those problems bother you and not other problems?

00:25:52.220 And I would say maybe it's because in those problems you actually find your destiny.

00:25:57.640 And those are often things you don't want to look at, like you didn't want to look at the poverty of your continent.

00:26:03.160 And no bloody wonder, who wants to look at that?

00:26:05.400 But it was something that bothered you.

00:26:07.340 It turned out that was your problem.

00:26:08.900 And if you faced it, well, then you figured out on that road that that was your destiny, properly thinking, properly speaking.

00:26:16.380 Yes, and it was not always easy for me to recognize that or to see it as clearly as I do today.

00:26:22.600 But yes, if I did not follow that, if I did not pursue that question, I would not be sitting here talking to you right now because there would be no reason for it.

00:26:31.720 So there, we've criticized by creating, turned this anger energy into positive energy, into inspiration.

00:26:41.900 Then I'm starting to come back to life.

00:26:43.340 I'm like, you know what?

00:26:44.120 Yeah, if I've got a problem with this situation, I've got to fix it myself.

00:26:47.220 So I'm going to start a company.

00:26:48.320 I'm going to start a brand.

00:26:49.660 And we're going to sell it first in the U.S.

00:26:51.820 because I'm going to do reverse colonialism on my people.

00:26:54.740 If the only time they can respect something is if the West has said, oh, now we welcome it, then I'm going to trick you the same way.

00:27:03.160 Hoping that the second generation, the next generation that comes after you, luckily for them, they won't need that type of validation because they were born in a world in which they were just fine, in a world in which they were the it people, right?

00:27:16.080 So, but this isn't the tour I need to take.

00:27:17.840 Let's take it.

00:27:18.880 So with that, I just became very galvanized.

00:27:22.560 And so we started this business and my whole thing was I'm going to start a brand.

00:27:26.640 I don't want to start an NGO telling people, you should respect Africans or you should respect this ingredient or these poor women are losing.

00:27:33.900 No, build a brand because brands have such a power to influence culture.

00:27:37.980 And I was dealing here with a cultural issue first and foremost.

00:27:40.800 And so build a company, hire people back home and make the brand pop in the U.S.

00:27:47.220 And then you have your virtual circle where the jobs are created back home and your culture also takes its rightful place at the table.

00:27:54.380 And that's exactly what we did.

00:27:57.120 I started this company in my kitchen.

00:27:58.940 And eventually, by the time you look around, you have on my board Roger Enrico, the ex-german of PepsiCo.

00:28:04.980 You have a gentleman who started, you know, Sobe that was sold to us, to Pepsi.

00:28:10.140 And then also Odwalla, which was sold to Coca-Cola.

00:28:13.760 So all of these who's who of the business of the beverage world were sitting at my table helping me run this company.

00:28:22.120 Again, something like this, I could never have done this if I was not in this country.

00:28:28.080 So this is where we are now.

00:28:29.600 But you know what, Jordan, then what happened there?

00:28:31.720 I was starting to get my answers.

00:28:33.480 Because as we built this company, the sister company was based in Senegal.

00:28:39.960 And it was mostly for the supply chain side.

00:28:43.400 And then another sister company was built in the U.S. for more marketing, R&D, sales and sales, the sales channels.

00:28:53.260 That's what the sister company was doing.

00:28:55.100 And would you know that as I was building this company, at least back then, it took, it would take you a quick 20 minutes, maybe faster, depending on how fast you type, to establish an LLC online.

00:29:09.180 Compare that to the almost two years it took me to legally register the sister company in Senegal.

00:29:17.900 Right.

00:29:18.380 So let's just focus on that for a minute.

00:29:21.580 Mm-hmm.

00:29:22.100 Okay, so you're comparing 20 minutes to two years.

00:29:28.380 Mm-hmm.

00:29:29.220 Right, so then you have to ask yourself, and I'm sure you have, is how much time and energy do people have?

00:29:34.940 Like, it's not an easy thing to set up a business.

00:29:37.080 It's a daring thing.

00:29:38.200 And there's a tremendous amount of risk involved.

00:29:40.220 And you'll probably fail.

00:29:42.060 That's the risk side of it.

00:29:43.060 That's the risk side.

00:29:43.380 Now, you might succeed beyond your wildest dreams.

00:29:45.760 But if you exhaust all your hardworking and entrepreneurial people by forcing them to jump through idiot hoops nonstop, all that you do is keep people absolutely impoverished.

00:29:57.040 And so we've got a key issue with regard to poverty right here, which is the presence of a stunning amount of unnecessary red tape.

00:30:04.480 So how is it, do you think, that the U.S. has managed to make it so that you can register a company in 20 minutes, whereas in Senegal, it takes two years?

00:30:15.040 And, you know, I read a great book called The Mystery of Capital, Hernando de Soto.

00:30:19.420 De Soto.

00:30:19.960 I was going to bring him up.

00:30:21.100 Yeah, yeah.

00:30:21.900 De Soto's great, man.

00:30:22.960 That's a great book.

00:30:23.660 And he points out that in some of the so-called developing countries, especially the more corrupt ones, not only does it take multiple years to do anything at all legally, but by the time you jump through all the hoops to do it legally, the laws have been changed so that what you do is no longer valid.

00:30:40.480 That is absolutely the case.

00:30:42.980 So you're asking me a very good question.

00:30:44.600 And the way I will go about that is there I'm going to try to take this opportunity to debunk a myth, because this whole conversation with you, I take it as my opportunity to debunk so many myths about African poverty.

00:30:57.740 Hence, what would it take for African to build African prosperity?

00:31:03.020 Because I'm not interested in alleviating poverty.

00:31:05.860 I'm not interested in just like, oh, can I be a little bit less poor?

00:31:09.080 No, I want to be prosperous.

00:31:11.080 I think my people, like anybody else, should be prosperous.

00:31:14.600 Yes, and we should also point out, let's point out very clearly, since we're debunking myths, that that's actually a high ethical aim, is that we want life more abundant for everyone.

00:31:24.240 We don't want to limp along, lowering our carbon footprint, barely scraping the surface.

00:31:29.460 We want people to be prosperous and free and life to be abundant and everyone to have enough educational resources and to thrive.

00:31:36.580 And to thrive.

00:31:36.860 And that's the ethical aim.

00:31:38.240 That's right, to thrive.

00:31:39.500 To thrive.

00:31:40.240 Human flourishing.

00:31:41.360 To me, it starts and it ends with it.

00:31:44.600 Human flourishing.

00:31:45.880 Now, what it means for somebody to flourish, it's going to be up to them to decide.

00:31:50.440 But should everybody have access to human flourishing?

00:31:54.860 You betcha.

00:31:55.460 So here, going back to the question and why the U.S. and in Africa not, and in Hernado de Soto making the case that oftentimes corrupt countries make it so hard.

00:32:07.900 So there, the myth that I debunk is so often, you know, I talk to people and they're like, oh, Africa, these countries, this region is so corrupt.

00:32:18.420 And I'm like, yes, my country might be corrupt almost as bad as Chicago.

00:32:25.120 So, you know what I mean by that.

00:32:26.900 So, corruption is, if you will, everywhere.

00:32:30.300 But the way it manifests itself is different from place to place.

00:32:33.980 And so I would like to argue on the order and the relationship between corruption and these laws that Hernado de Soto was talking about, the more they corrupt and the more you have to jump through hoops and everything.

00:32:49.080 I like to argue that corruption is a cause of senseless laws, is a cause, too many laws, and also senseless laws.

00:32:59.580 When you have those together, then you breed corruption.

00:33:04.440 Give you an example.

00:33:05.540 This is another example that we had to go through.

00:33:08.120 My current company is a skincare company, Skin is Skin.

00:33:11.200 So for that, we have to import some ingredients because if you don't have them, you need the inputs that you need at the standard of quality that you need them in order to remain competitive in your marketplace.

00:33:25.400 My marketplace is the United States.

00:33:27.320 That's where the people have the money to spend all of this, to spend on our products.

00:33:30.660 They understand our products.

00:33:32.360 This is just, it's one of the best markets for us for many different reasons.

00:33:36.300 We sell at companies, we sell at places like Whole Foods Market.

00:33:39.460 I don't have to tell you, it's one of the most beautiful chains of grocery stores in the U.S.

00:33:42.940 You can imagine that the buyers are super sophisticated, and they don't just bring any product in that chain, but they bring us, which tells you the level of standard we're playing at with world class, world class.

00:33:55.600 So it means that everything behind the scene has to be world class.

00:33:59.180 The whole chain up and down has to be world class.

00:34:01.780 And so ingredients, no different.

00:34:03.880 So we had to bring in some ingredients.

00:34:05.360 Well, guess what, Jordan?

00:34:07.680 For some of my ingredients, the tariff is 45% to enter the country, 45%.

00:34:14.620 Others, almost 70%.

00:34:17.340 How do you expect me to be competitive if you're slapping such tariff on some of my inputs?

00:34:25.160 How?

00:34:25.900 Because for every 50 cents you add on tariffs, I have to sell my products $2 more than I would have in order for me to actually make it.

00:34:33.820 I become very uncompetitive very quickly, quality for quality, product for product.

00:34:39.640 So there we had to, so now, if instead of making it a 45%, how about maybe it's a 0% like it is in the U.S.?

00:34:47.740 When I have, if I had to bring the same product here in the U.S., 0% tariff on it.

00:34:51.920 Or make it 5%, or 2%, 3%, something that makes sense.

00:34:56.540 So then do you really think that I'm going to try to jump through the hoops of avoiding that 45% or that 70%?

00:35:02.800 There's no need.

00:35:03.500 Pay it and move on, because you've got better things to do.

00:35:07.860 See how bad laws and senseless laws breed corruption, because people will then, it is cheaper and faster for people to pay the bribe and move on than to adhere to the law.

00:35:22.620 You see?

00:35:23.300 So that's what we have inherited in most African nations.

00:35:27.920 And as I noticed the discrepancy and the difference between doing business back home and doing business in the United States.

00:35:38.380 At first, I was like, well, of course, it's like this.

00:35:41.400 It's just because, you know, we're a poor nation.

00:35:42.920 We're messed up.

00:35:43.500 And that's why.

00:35:44.020 That's why everything else is messed up.

00:35:45.320 And then eventually, I started to really think about it, to think it through.

00:35:51.880 And it's around the same time that God, again, brought some interesting people in my life.

00:35:58.000 Because at that time, my company, my first company at least, was, you know, now I had moved into the nonprofit.

00:36:06.520 We had started a nonprofit because my goal was, how can I help replicate whatever success I was able to have?

00:36:13.880 How can I help many other Magats or my male counterparts from Africa do exactly what I did with whatever product they deem to do it with?

00:36:22.420 How could I help with that?

00:36:24.360 And it is during that journey that I eventually even learned about the work of Hernando de Soto.

00:36:30.080 And when I heard about his work, he was right there telling me, Magat, what you went through, what you're going through, experientially speaking, is not an anecdote.

00:36:40.920 This is something very systemic about this.

00:36:43.120 And it is called economic freedom.

00:36:46.160 How easy or hard it is to do a business, you have indexes that measure this.

00:36:51.140 The most known of them being the Doing Business Index ranking of the World Bank.

00:36:54.560 And then you have a Fraser Institute Economic Freedom Index as well, and others and others.

00:36:59.600 Well, what do they all have in common?

00:37:01.380 They all show you, one after the other, that it is harder to do business anywhere in Sub-Saharan Africa than it is anywhere in Scandinavia.

00:37:10.840 And I state Scandinavia purposely because people who are anti-business, you know, they need to know that Scandinavia is more business friendly, is more pro-capitalist, I'll use a dirty word, than almost any Sub-Saharan African nation.

00:37:26.680 Right, and so the Scandinavian choice is a very interesting one, because the rabid and idiot anti-capitalists of the West often point to Scandinavia as socialist countries.

00:37:37.820 Yeah, but they're not...

00:37:38.340 Well, as you point out, well, they're socialist on the edges and capitalist at the core, and in a very, very effective and efficient manner.

00:37:45.380 And so they are business friendly in precisely the manner that you described.

00:37:49.420 And those principles that you elucidated, minimum necessary laws, that's part of the English common law tradition.

00:37:58.140 Minimum necessary force of enforcement, that's another good one.

00:38:02.980 Yeah.

00:38:03.480 And, well, and what is it?

00:38:07.900 I think this was Montaigne.

00:38:09.480 And you also have clear and transferable property rights.

00:38:13.780 And you also have the concept of a rule of law as well.

00:38:17.140 Right, right, right.

00:38:18.220 So those are some of the metaphysical and legislative substrates that make a free enterprise system possible.

00:38:25.480 Because people often also think about only the market working, but you need a set of regulations and also customs that the free market can run on top of, like an operating system.

00:38:37.080 Exactly.

00:38:37.640 And I love that you're using the word operating system, because this is going to take us to something else.

00:38:40.540 So then, but before we go any further, there I want to point that as I was learning from the work of people like Hernando de Soto, as I was learning from people like the man who became my husband, I like to joke and say, he brought me the answer to my little girl's question.

00:38:58.400 I rewarded him with love.

00:39:00.860 So I married him.

00:39:03.320 As I was looking at the work of people like him, Michael Strong, you know, people like John Mackey of Whole Foods Market.

00:39:09.580 They're friends, so that's how I got to know John.

00:39:12.080 But they made me really get into a whole nother world of people who truly care.

00:39:17.180 But what was different about these people is that they cared not on their own terms.

00:39:22.560 They cared, but on the terms of the truth.

00:39:25.460 And we might go into that at some point, but let me just keep it there.

00:39:29.020 So what happened in that time of my life, as I was trying to see how can I multiply my whatever success, I found out the answer.

00:39:39.340 I started to connect the dots.

00:39:41.080 And I learned that eventually, wow, yeah, wow.

00:39:44.920 So you're poor because you have no money.

00:39:48.600 No money because no source of income.

00:39:52.520 A source of income for most of us is a job.

00:39:55.860 Where do jobs come from?

00:39:57.640 The private sector, businesses, especially small and medium-sized enterprises.

00:40:02.760 Then shouldn't we think about the environment of those businesses in which they get to thrive on us?

00:40:11.160 I think we do.

00:40:12.540 But then when I look there and I look at these indexes, they're all telling me one thing and one thing only is,

00:40:18.560 your region is the poorest in the world because it happens to be the most over-regulated in the world.

00:40:23.380 Meaning that as many people fight for freedom and supposedly fight for Africa's rights,

00:40:29.840 no one thought about one of the most important of rights and freedoms after you have managed human rights in its global way,

00:40:40.920 economic freedom.

00:40:41.880 Well, you list here in one of your articles where you make reference to these rating systems,

00:40:48.460 the bottom 10 countries for doing business in the world.

00:40:52.400 Chad, Haiti, Central African Republic, Congo, Democratic Republic, South Sudan, Libya, Yemen, Venezuela.

00:41:00.260 There's a lovely example.

00:41:01.560 Eritrea and Somalia.

00:41:02.860 And so there are three exceptions in the African ecosystem.

00:41:08.660 Mauritius, Rwanda, Kenya, South Africa, Botswana and Zambia.

00:41:12.560 You pointed out in your prospectus.

00:41:14.820 Is it prospectus article?

00:41:16.120 Yeah, prospectus article of Art Bridge Institute.

00:41:18.960 Right.

00:41:19.460 That Mauritius is a rising star and Rwanda is in some ways comparable to Georgia.

00:41:24.940 So some of these countries have started to get this right.

00:41:27.760 Yes.

00:41:28.040 And so what's the consequence of that?

00:41:29.720 And what does right mean?

00:41:30.960 What they have understood, what these countries have understood is that economic freedom is

00:41:37.260 at the center for prosperity building.

00:41:40.680 Rwanda, for example, Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda, is explicit about it.

00:41:46.640 He said he wants to be the Lee Kwan-woo of, he wants to be the Singapore of Africa.

00:41:52.240 And Lee Kwan-woo is his model.

00:41:54.580 Now, the dirty mouths are going to start shouting, oh, yes, see, authoritarian, blah, blah, blah.

00:42:00.960 Whatever.

00:42:01.680 Me, I want to talk only about the, on the economic side.

00:42:05.780 If you take Lee Kwan-woo and Singapore as your example, then it means that like him, you're

00:42:12.180 going to have to be serious about economic freedom.

00:42:15.300 And that's exactly what he did.

00:42:17.360 That's what Singapore did.

00:42:18.360 When Singapore figured that out, they went on to put in the right reforms to make their

00:42:24.120 environment the most, some of the most business friendly environments in the world, one of

00:42:28.840 the most free markets environment in the world.

00:42:31.320 And you saw the magic of Singapore.

00:42:33.760 Today, Singapore is richer than its ex-colonizer, Great Britain.

00:42:39.140 So when I hear people telling me today, oh, Africa is poor because of colonization, I'm

00:42:45.480 like, please, let's move on from that.

00:42:48.220 Does it have maybe a tiny percentage in where we are today?

00:42:51.160 Maybe, maybe.

00:42:52.260 And I don't know.

00:42:53.180 But I know it's not the cause.

00:42:55.140 Because if it were many countless countries have been colonized before.

00:42:59.160 And by the way, colonizing one another is humanity's history.

00:43:03.220 It just happened that maybe Africa has been one of the last, you know, colonized region

00:43:09.780 in the world.

00:43:10.740 So in our psyche, it is there.

00:43:13.380 And it acts like nothing happened before to others.

00:43:16.400 But flash news, it's the history of the world.

00:43:19.720 We've been capturing each other back and forth, all of that.

00:43:22.380 So anyway, but the truth is, Singapore, richer than Great Britain today.

00:43:27.500 And then Hong Kong happened.

00:43:29.600 And then because Hong Kong happened, China even today happened.

00:43:32.840 Because China's like, wait a minute, what went on over there?

00:43:35.740 And then China went on to do the exact same thing with its SEZs, the special economic

00:43:39.680 zones, some of the most free market zones in the world.

00:43:44.320 And then look at it happen in communist China, who, when it comes to economics, decided that

00:43:49.720 we're going to do the free market, we're going to be capitalists, because that's the

00:43:52.680 only way.

00:43:53.160 We tried everything else.

00:43:54.340 We killed hundreds of millions of people.

00:43:56.400 And we have nothing to show for it.

00:43:58.640 But now that we're tired of being disrespected members of society, because guess what?

00:44:01.920 That's the other thing, too.

00:44:03.600 You want to be respected in this world?

00:44:05.720 You're going to have to be among the prosperous ones for other reasons.

00:44:10.420 Would it be nice, G, that we respect people just because?

00:44:13.720 Absolutely.

00:44:14.660 But that's really not the world we live in.

00:44:16.420 So when China got tired of being disrespected, they're like, maybe we've got to build also

00:44:19.680 some prosperity here, because then they're going to hear us.

00:44:21.680 And today, China, being where it is at, even Hollywood, Hollywood, who tries to tell the

00:44:29.040 world how to think, is being told by China what movies to make and how to tweak stories

00:44:35.320 and history in order to be palatable for them.

00:44:38.640 You see the power that comes with being prosperous.

00:44:43.400 What would you recommend concretely to countries like Senegal to get the hell out of the way,

00:44:48.800 let's say, of the people who, like you, would do everything they could to try to make it better?

00:44:53.360 I mean, one of the things that happened with India is India established the Indian Institute

00:44:58.900 of Technology, which is a deadly engineering school.

00:45:01.620 And a huge number of its graduates went to Silicon Valley, as you well know.

00:45:06.120 And many of the successful Indian graduates of IAT started to dump money back into India

00:45:11.560 and build a capitalist infrastructure there or help build a capitalist infrastructure there.

00:45:17.120 So this sort of thing can really take hold.

00:45:18.880 If you were making recommendations to governments who wanted to get on board and stop being like

00:45:24.360 Chad, Haiti, Central African Republic, Congo, South Sudan, Libya, Yemen, and Venezuela, etc.,

00:45:31.300 what concrete steps should they take from the bottom up to get the hell out of the way?

00:45:37.440 Exactly.

00:45:37.980 So two things we've been doing, because I'm a practitioner, that's my entrepreneurial journey.

00:45:43.600 I'm an entrepreneur, so I practice what I preach.

00:45:45.960 But I also preach.

00:45:47.080 I preach for free markets.

00:45:47.980 And so when it comes to that, one of the hats that I wear is as the director for the

00:45:55.280 African Center for Prosperity of the Atlas Network, the largest organization in the world

00:46:00.260 of free market think tanks around the world.

00:46:03.080 And so what we do there is we work on reforms around the world to take down barriers of entry

00:46:09.280 for local entrepreneurs.

00:46:10.440 So that's one thing.

00:46:11.600 But as we all know, that's a great initiative to take.

00:46:14.360 And we've been making some really good advances in many countries, especially in Ghana.

00:46:21.100 We've been making a lot of progress with our partners, Vare Imani.

00:46:24.540 But that is piecemeal legislation.

00:46:28.460 It takes forever.

00:46:30.100 It is hard as heck.

00:46:31.560 And by the time you made a gain here, you made 20 losses over there.

00:46:35.160 And it's a continuous problem.

00:46:37.360 But until we get better, we've got to continue at it.

00:46:39.900 So that's one thing we've been doing.

00:46:41.500 And so that's a hat I wear, working with free market think tanks to try to make it easier

00:46:46.520 for local entrepreneurs to join in the party.

00:46:50.360 Additionally, I'm going bold.

00:46:53.000 I'm going radical.

00:46:54.640 For the past few years, we've been advocating an idea for Africa that found some of its roots

00:47:02.400 in Latin America, and again, I'm related to the people who are involved in this.

00:47:07.180 My husband has been one of the key figures in this movement, a movement called the Charter Cities.

00:47:12.500 Paul Romer calls it like that.

00:47:13.820 He's a Nobel laureate in economics.

00:47:16.220 Others call it the Free Cities.

00:47:17.980 I like to call it the Startup Cities.

00:47:19.960 So the best way to think about it, Jordan, and it goes back to what you were talking about

00:47:22.940 earlier when you said, when you used the word operating software, most of the poor developing,

00:47:28.500 most of the low-income nations, so meaning back in the days, the way we used to call it

00:47:33.040 is poor nations, they have regulations for poverty.

00:47:37.020 They're basically regulated for poverty, meaning the laws, the set of law, poverty.

00:47:40.820 It only calls poverty.

00:47:42.700 And so what some of these folks have thought about, looking at the Dubai example, Dubai just

00:47:48.800 recently entered the top 10 of international financial centers of the world.

00:47:52.480 And what Dubai did at some point is think about it and be like, on this bare, you know,

00:47:57.940 sand, plot of sand that's technically worth nothing right now, as is, this 110 acres of

00:48:05.320 land, sand everywhere, they're like, well, maybe Sharia law is not the best for business.

00:48:11.940 We got to think about better set of laws for business.

00:48:15.800 We're talking about only about business, not family law, not anything else, but business.

00:48:19.740 And they decided there's got to be something better.

00:48:23.540 And so they looked around, and that's actually when, to take one of the terms you used earlier,

00:48:27.780 they're starting to realize, hmm, common law is actually a better way for business,

00:48:33.760 specifically British common law.

00:48:36.180 So at that point, and I'm oversimplifying here, because otherwise we can totally geek out

00:48:40.520 on it.

00:48:40.780 Remember, this is like one of my latest things that I've been involved in, but latest has

00:48:45.160 been the past 10 years, and I'm going to share with you a win.

00:48:48.440 And so Dubai is like, we have to adopt British, you know, common law, primarily British common

00:48:55.660 law.

00:48:55.980 We're going to hire retired British common law judges to come and educate the law here,

00:48:59.440 train our own people.

00:49:00.700 And that, along with many other reforms, to also become a top center when it comes to the,

00:49:08.200 and a free market when it comes to the finances.

00:49:10.820 Dubai...

00:49:11.060 Well, that British common law, that British common law system, so it's very, very interesting

00:49:16.040 theologically and metaphysically.

00:49:18.780 So it's predicated on the idea that people have, every individual has all the rights that

00:49:24.200 there are, except for those that are specifically regulated and limited by legal necessity.

00:49:30.360 And then generally that realm of necessity has emerged only as a consequence of disputes

00:49:37.360 between people.

00:49:38.580 So you're free to do whatever you want, unless you have a dispute with someone else.

00:49:43.100 Then the dispute is adjudicated according, essentially, to constitutional and theological

00:49:47.920 principles.

00:49:48.960 And then a precedent is established.

00:49:51.140 And then the whole body of law built up that body of precedence.

00:49:54.380 Yes.

00:49:54.540 Yeah, and it's bottom up, not top down.

00:49:56.680 It's totally that.

00:49:57.200 And English common law is a gift from God, man.

00:49:59.720 It's something else.

00:50:00.780 Absolutely.

00:50:01.360 And that's the key word there when you said bottom up.

00:50:04.200 So common law is so much better for bottom up approaches.

00:50:07.160 And we all know that markets work better in a bottom up approach.

00:50:10.360 And also, when they have to educate the law and resolve a dispute, they're going to be

00:50:15.780 much more respectful to the contract that was passed between the two parties than, say,

00:50:20.240 civil law would be, right?

00:50:22.020 And so anyway, so from this standpoint here, you have Dubai who is now trying to put all

00:50:26.840 of this together.

00:50:27.540 And eventually, they put a set of laws together that would now be conducive to being a top

00:50:33.600 international financial center in the world.

00:50:35.520 And voila, in less than a generation, in less than 25 years, Dubai, completely unrecognizable.

00:50:42.460 Completely.

00:50:43.440 But they did not invent it.

00:50:44.340 In that short period of time.

00:50:45.680 Well, I know, you know, the Chinese, the purchasing power of the average Chinese citizen is doubling

00:50:53.400 every seven years.

00:50:54.860 Yes, every seven years.

00:50:55.720 Right, right.

00:50:56.040 It's insane.

00:50:56.940 It's insane.

00:50:57.660 Yeah.

00:50:57.940 So we know it can be done.

00:50:59.560 And at the root of that is the same thing.

00:51:01.620 It's economic freedom.

00:51:03.300 It's allow people the freedom to enterprise.

00:51:06.500 And Dubai did it.

00:51:07.320 So Dubai was one of the most recent ones to do it.

00:51:09.280 Now, the UAE and Abu Dhabi is going the same way.

00:51:13.500 And they're even trying to outbid each other in terms of who is going to be even more free

00:51:18.420 market.

00:51:19.360 So that's something beautiful going on there.

00:51:21.320 So people, some folks have looked at that model and then be like, wow.

00:51:25.520 So maybe let's think about a plot of land, ideally a rather unoccupied plot of land.

00:51:31.480 So you're not being accused of displacing people or, you know, confiscation, any of that.

00:51:40.980 So English is only my fourth language, Jordan.

00:51:43.340 So sometimes if I stumble upon words, please be patient with me.

00:51:46.880 So anyway, so they thought about it.

00:51:48.200 And I said, OK, so the plot of land, think about it as your computer.

00:51:51.960 And think about the laws that rule that plot of land as your operating software.

00:51:57.580 And to start to think about governance as a new frontier.

00:52:02.900 And so now what you have is these governance entrepreneurs.

00:52:06.700 And that's definitely where I have gone into.

00:52:09.260 I'm like, forget piecemeal legislation.

00:52:11.300 We're going to keep doing that until we have better.

00:52:13.500 But in the meantime, I'm working on this radical idea.

00:52:15.200 So for the past decade, I've been working on convincing African governments to do this.

00:52:24.100 And finally, I can't disclose the name today here, but we've signed an MOU a month ago with one of the Western African nations who said, yeah.

00:52:37.880 And it's funny because when we approached them, Jordan.

00:52:40.020 Congratulations.

00:52:40.880 Thank you.

00:52:41.240 That's a major achievement.

00:52:42.420 Thank you.

00:52:42.740 That's like a world-shaking achievement.

00:52:44.160 Thank you.

00:52:44.680 And we have a top team to work on this.

00:52:46.340 And so, but it's so funny because when we first met them, the gentleman said, he said, my God, what do you mean by common law?

00:52:56.040 Because, you know, they belong to a civil law, like many French, ex-French colonies, by the way.

00:53:01.100 Because see, that's another difference.

00:53:02.500 When France supposedly, you know, at the end of colonizations of many African nations, the British, the British, you know, colonizers said, you can do whatever you want.

00:53:13.700 Keep coming, do whatever you want, whatever.

00:53:15.540 Turns out most of us countries kept the common law.

00:53:18.460 And it's actually easier when you are, it's actually easier for an African nation or any other nation or culture to actually build on top of common law than it is to build on top of civil law.

00:53:31.160 So, see, Anglophones—

00:53:32.020 We should shout that from the rooftops.

00:53:34.060 I agree.

00:53:34.860 That's absolutely right, man.

00:53:36.260 Common law is deadly.

00:53:37.820 Civil law is deadly.

00:53:39.780 Yeah, civil law is deadly.

00:53:41.980 That's okay.

00:53:42.400 Anyway, so basically what happened there is, so all of these Francophone countries are still operating, Francophone African countries are still operating on civil law for most of them, for most of them.

00:53:54.000 And that world doesn't know about that either.

00:53:56.060 Just like when we started talking to this country, they're like, what do you mean common law?

00:54:00.700 Isn't there only civil law that exists?

00:54:03.180 I was like, I almost fell, I almost fell over.

00:54:06.820 And then even that, you see, because you live in your world, you take so many of these understandings for granted.

00:54:12.360 Because remember, I've been spending my life asking about these questions and drilling and drilling and really, you know, learning.

00:54:18.780 And then even the work of someone like George Ayite, a Ghanaian economist who just passed away, but he's my intellectual father on all of this.

00:54:26.400 And I will bring him up in a minute.

00:54:28.100 So anyway, so here they're like, whoa.

00:54:30.700 So when they discovered about, oh, there's common law, there's civil law, civil law happens not to be so good for business, blah, blah, blah, and all of this.

00:54:36.920 And so now that's, so that's what we're working on.

00:54:39.580 And I'm telling you, Jordan, I don't know where this project is going to go.

00:54:44.360 But even if we only make five steps with it, the floodgates have been opened.

00:54:49.740 I believe that with all my heart.

00:54:51.000 Because all you need is for a door in here to open up.

00:54:55.920 Yeah.

00:54:56.320 And then.

00:54:56.780 Yeah, that's all you need.

00:54:57.680 That's a major door, the one in there.

00:54:59.340 So these countries who are at the bottom of the Economic Freedom Index, what sort of ideas do you think possess them to constantly run interference in relationship to people who are trying to be entrepreneurial?

00:55:16.100 So I know one of the things that's happened, you know, since the Berlin Wall fell and the collapse of capitalism is that because the people who were pushing communist ideas are not quite as noisy and horrible as they once were,

00:55:27.680 although they're certainly making a comeback, that many countries around the world have been freed up to try to have not the worst economic policies they could possibly design.

00:55:37.240 But there's still this lingering resentment and hostility towards entrepreneurial free market capitalism, especially at the local level that you're describing.

00:55:46.280 That's unbelievably toxic.

00:55:47.620 So what is it that's possessing these countries that are at the bottom of the Economic Freedom Index?

00:55:53.520 Venezuela is a good example.

00:55:55.280 No, you're giving me goosebumps by asking me this question because you're, by asking it, you're going to allow me to share something that, once again, is also part of a myth busting and something that is totally unknown to people.

00:56:05.660 And I'm going to talk only for the case of Africa, because I'm sure for Latin America, the situation might be similar.

00:56:12.560 But let me just talk about the case of Africa, because it is a big continent enough that it should matter.

00:56:20.440 So, and this is where the work of George Ayute takes all of its power and importance.

00:56:28.040 George Ayute is a Ghanaian economist, like I said, passed away recently.

00:56:31.200 But George gave me the last piece to the queue of my answer.

00:56:36.800 Because once I discovered that we're poor because of our lack of economic freedom, that's the reason why we're poor.

00:56:42.880 Then my next question was like, but why?

00:56:45.360 Why is it that Americans get to enjoy this economic freedom and we don't?

00:56:49.840 What happened?

00:56:50.420 Where did it happen?

00:56:51.260 Have we always been this way?

00:56:52.760 There's the mystery.

00:56:53.300 Well, you know, the thing, it really is a mystery too, because it doesn't require much of an explanation to explain poverty and corruption, right?

00:57:02.400 Because we're born poor because we don't come with food.

00:57:05.380 Natural state of man.

00:57:06.200 And corruption is corrupt.

00:57:07.980 That's right.

00:57:08.400 That's the natural state of man.

00:57:09.640 And so the real mystery, and this is a bloody mystery, that's for sure, is how any country ever managed to escape that.

00:57:16.200 And the common law tradition is definitely a piece of that.

00:57:19.020 And, of course, America was fortunate enough to be founded on those principles.

00:57:23.540 And so, okay, so continue if you would.

00:57:25.860 Yes, yes.

00:57:26.300 So, yes, so my question was just like yours.

00:57:29.060 Once I discovered it, I'm like, and still, why is it that these people have it and we don't?

00:57:33.560 What happened to us?

00:57:34.300 What's going on?

00:57:35.400 And most importantly, so then now I'm understanding also this battle between socialism and capitalism, the ideologies and how they're fighting each other.

00:57:43.980 And for some bizarre, strange reason, the world, including Africans, developed this idea, this understanding that we are more socialists than we're capitalists naturally, culturally.

00:57:55.920 And I'm like, I call BS on that because I call BS on that because, again, the same Africans, you bring them to a country where there's economic freedom and voila, let them manifest.

00:58:05.140 I mean, did you know that most black doctors in the U.S. are from Nigeria?

00:58:11.320 Did you know that?

00:58:12.580 Right?

00:58:13.380 And that—

00:58:14.180 Yeah, well, I know that immigrants, I know that black immigrants to the U.S. do much better, proportionally speaking, than black people who are born in the U.S.

00:58:21.500 Right.

00:58:22.080 So there is that.

00:58:23.760 But then when I ask that question, it's when Joe Tahiti and his work brought me my answer, and that was the last piece of the puzzle, and then everything made sense.

00:58:33.620 Okay, our region is the poorest in the world because it's the most over-regulated region in the world.

00:58:40.400 Hmm.

00:58:41.000 How did we get there?

00:58:42.540 George takes me back.

00:58:44.140 George takes me back to a time that most people don't think about, including myself at first.

00:58:49.500 Because when most people think about the story of Africa, Africans, and black people in Africa in general, we go no further down than slavery.

00:58:56.600 It seems like our collective history starts with slavery.

00:58:59.940 And George is reminding us, no, no, no, they were—they were—before the white man ever set foot on the continent, black people were there.

00:59:11.440 They had different types of, you know, like many different cultures, many different society groups, name it.

00:59:18.220 And yet—and then George made the case with his research that actually pre-colonial Africans were actually practicing the free markets.

00:59:29.980 They were practicing free enterprise.

00:59:31.980 And it makes sense.

00:59:33.420 But so what we were doing back then, in Africa, you could find some of the most sophisticated trade routes in the world.

00:59:39.940 You would go to places like Great Zimbabwe, where basically you would see these homes, these buildings built in a round shape with stone.

00:59:52.500 Whoever built that in those times was at the top of their craftsmanship, at the top of engineering skill sets, something quite unbelievable.

01:00:02.060 So unbelievable, so unbelievable in advance that when the white people came, they said, there's no way a black person, black people could have built this.

01:00:09.640 You see, so this is who we were.

01:00:12.040 And the chief, the chief could never say, oh, my God, you made your bread.

01:00:16.600 Now you come to the market and you're at the market here.

01:00:18.600 You cannot sell it for $1 more profit than I allow you to to Jordan.

01:00:23.560 Again, no such rubbish didn't exist with us.

01:00:28.860 You had basically also this idea that we have to wait every four years or five years to vote.

01:00:34.120 No, we voted with our power of exit.

01:00:36.560 And you could exit every second that you wanted.

01:00:38.900 If you don't like this chief and what he or she is practicing, vote with your feet.

01:00:42.580 Get out.

01:00:43.160 You go join another group or you go start another group.

01:00:47.480 You name it.

01:00:48.080 But you're not going to sit and fight with other people there just so that things can go your way.

01:00:51.700 You go and make it happen your way or you go join others who are doing it your way.

01:00:55.080 And so for the longest time, what we had was tribes maintaining the peace.

01:00:59.580 Did we have battles among us?

01:01:01.060 You betcha.

01:01:01.880 That's, again, human nature.

01:01:03.660 But what was happening?

01:01:05.420 We were tribes working with each other and keeping the peace, even knowing sometimes when to try to intermarry so that we even keep the peace more.

01:01:13.660 And then they came and they said, oh, gee, aren't you guys savages?

01:01:19.060 And we're going to civilize you.

01:01:20.440 And to civilize you is we're going to bring this top-down governance approach to all of us.

01:01:24.760 See, we were practicing decentralized governance before.

01:01:28.720 And they showed up and they said to be educated is to have centralized governance.

01:01:34.020 What did you do when you do that?

01:01:35.400 Now the tribes are fighting among each other to take control of that centralized government governance.

01:01:42.440 Well, there's a real tension there, because it's very difficult.

01:01:47.680 It's very advantageous, obviously, for people to be enmeshed together in large-scale groups like the United States.

01:01:55.760 It's 320 million people.

01:01:57.940 But then the question is, how do you put in all the subsidiary levels of organization so that just doesn't become a monolithic state?

01:02:05.640 Right.

01:02:05.920 And then the question, too, is, well, how do you introduce that large-scale integrated governance without absolutely demolishing the micro-societies that make a part of it and bring people together without undue bloodshed?

01:02:19.880 Right.

01:02:20.160 It's a real catastrophic problem from a historical perspective.

01:02:23.340 It really is.

01:02:24.360 It really is.

01:02:25.040 So then we went, to go back to the story, we go from having tribes to now tribalism because of this introduction.

01:02:38.140 So anyway, so when they started, when they came, they said to us, so all of that was going on.

01:02:45.660 And then eventually we were living our lives, minding our own business, doing fine.

01:02:50.260 And I would argue that if we had been left alone, we probably would be the richest continent in the world today if we had continued.

01:02:59.680 But we didn't continue.

01:03:01.360 Slavery happened.

01:03:02.600 After slavery, colonialism happened.

01:03:08.000 At the end of colonialism, this is where I would like to bring the attention of people because that's what George is so well, so beautiful in pointing.

01:03:16.440 Just around the time when most African nations were getting their independences, starting with Ghana, we're talking about the late 50s, early 60s.

01:03:28.040 Remember also what was happening back then.

01:03:30.280 We were at the height of the battle between these two ideologies.

01:03:35.780 Right.

01:03:36.000 On one end, represented by the freedom, and their economic practice was capitalism.

01:03:43.320 And on the other, facing off with various forms of statism, socialism, communism, and primarily their practice was, you know, they were socialism or communism.

01:03:55.680 And they were like this with each other.

01:03:59.380 Around that time, we're getting our independence.

01:04:02.560 And do you know what they said?

01:04:03.500 And at that point, remember, try to put yourself back in those times because it's so important.

01:04:10.060 You have these great liberators of Africa who have fought for liberation.

01:04:16.240 We're talking about Rollins of Ghana.

01:04:19.420 We're talking about Julius Nyerere.

01:04:22.020 We're talking about people like Thomas Sankara later down the road.

01:04:26.020 We're talking about these people, right?

01:04:28.380 And they have fought, they have fought for the liberation of this continent.

01:04:34.940 They have given it everything they had.

01:04:37.840 And when, but what we don't remember, so what happened with these people is like, oh, so now these two, these two ideologies are fighting.

01:04:45.620 And it looks like we have to take a side because the two ideologies are fighting, we're looking for influence and we're looking for influence South, right?

01:04:54.000 So, and everybody's looking back.

01:04:55.940 And Africa was trying to, Africa was trying to free itself from domination by.

01:05:01.580 We were.

01:05:02.060 At least normally the capitalist West.

01:05:04.120 And there's always the idea that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, right?

01:05:07.720 That's exactly.

01:05:08.200 Yeah, and that didn't work out so well with the communists.

01:05:10.620 No, and this is where we made the fatal mistake.

01:05:12.860 Because at that point, as we were looking for influence, us Africans freshly liberated, and I put quotation marks because I'm not sure we have been liberated.

01:05:21.300 Freshly liberated is saying, look, you West is who enslaved me first, then colonized me.

01:05:29.460 I am certainly not going to party up with you.

01:05:31.860 So we're going to go in cahoot with the Eastern, you know, with the not so free side.

01:05:39.740 And this is when they have been spending all of their times with the Marxist socialists of their times.

01:05:46.840 And this is also times around which W.E.B. Dubois did the dirty work.

01:05:53.640 He didn't think it was dirty work.

01:05:54.840 But he is the one who helped all of these soon-to-be leaders of liberated African nations to really bite into these ideas.

01:06:04.320 Because by then, they had conflated slavery with capitalism, with imperialism, with colonialism.

01:06:11.160 With common law.

01:06:12.160 With everything.

01:06:13.060 For them, the whole darn thing was one big evil to throw out of the water.

01:06:18.340 And so they threw the baby out of the bath water.

01:06:21.560 And when they did that, they had totally forgotten their own indigenous roots.

01:06:28.080 Because pre-colonial Africans practiced the free markets.

01:06:32.520 Pre-colonial Africans would have looked at these Marxist socialists and said, this is heresy.

01:06:38.160 You guys are crazy.

01:06:39.460 This is not even part of our roots.

01:06:41.180 We are rejecting this with everything we've got.

01:06:44.280 But it did not happen that way, no.

01:06:46.160 So this is how liberated nations of Africa got started on the wrong foot, went to bed with the wrong people.

01:06:54.080 And six years later, we have nothing to show for it.

01:06:57.000 Because we all know what happens to people who follow the socialist route.

01:07:01.280 This does fit in nicely with our earlier comments about Venezuela.

01:07:05.440 Because Venezuela has taken exactly the same route and gone from a rich and post-colonial country to an absolute bloody nightmare in about 30 years.

01:07:16.540 And it's also a consequence of that entire country falling under the toxic dominion of these ideas.

01:07:23.420 But you can certainly understand why that would have been attractive to the emergent African countries of the 1960s, right?

01:07:31.620 I mean, it is a hard thing to think through the idea that the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend.

01:07:38.820 And a lot of these Marxist ideas, which purport to have the poor in mind, but which truly don't, are extremely attractive.

01:07:46.520 Even if you are heartfelt in your consideration for the poor, the problem is that the only systems that seem to lift people out of absolute poverty are free market capitalist systems.

01:07:58.620 And their equivalent, the kind of equivalent you described characterizing pre-colonial Africa.

01:08:04.780 That's right.

01:08:05.320 And that's why it's so important for me, whenever I bring up this part of the story, to always, that's why I was saying, please try to put yourself back in their shoes back in those days.

01:08:13.160 Because I believe that if I had lived in those times, A, I would have been part of the people who fight for African liberation.

01:08:19.180 And I probably would have made the same decision to side with a Marxist socialist.

01:08:24.960 I would have.

01:08:25.660 I think I would have.

01:08:26.300 Well, half the Western world made that decision.

01:08:28.880 Exactly.

01:08:29.020 And the Chinese made that decision.

01:08:30.400 Exactly.

01:08:30.720 And the North Koreans made that decision.

01:08:32.540 Exactly.

01:08:32.620 I mean, and now we're having a battle about the same damn ideas again.

01:08:36.920 That's the thing.

01:08:37.480 And have invaded the West again.

01:08:38.820 That's the thing.

01:08:39.400 But this is where I, as an African, will not have it.

01:08:43.620 And while I excuse, I think the mistake they made was fatal for us, but hopefully it's a mistake that would have had consequences for only the 60 or 62 plus years since we took those, we made those decisions.

01:08:57.940 But today I take it upon my responsibility as a contemporary African, you know, to know better.

01:09:05.780 And on top of that, I also know the ways of my pre-colonial fathers, which to me now are the only ones I want to look at, are pre-colonial fathers.

01:09:14.720 Of course, is it that everything they did was right?

01:09:17.120 No.

01:09:17.620 This is why, you know, we have progress in life, right?

01:09:20.120 There are some things we know now.

01:09:21.280 We're not so good.

01:09:22.240 But there are some things that have to pass the test of time and place.

01:09:26.180 So maybe those we should keep.

01:09:27.540 So anyway, so as an African living today, with everything that I know and is available to know everywhere, the research is very clear.

01:09:36.500 The evidence is rock solid.

01:09:39.220 I cannot in all consciousness and be a person of high morality, I cannot disregard what I have learned and what I have experienced and what by now we know to be true.

01:09:55.740 So people like me, the Marxist socialists need to know, for the longest time, they have used us, the black people, to make their dirty deeds.

01:10:04.700 So maybe the Black Lives Matter people, the founders who are self-called social Marxists, fine.

01:10:12.680 If they want to go, I say fine, I'm not fine.

01:10:15.100 I'm not fine.

01:10:15.960 But if they want to, I'm not willing to be the useful idiot of a social Marxist any longer.

01:10:23.200 They have used us black people for too long.

01:10:25.220 They have used us suffering for too long.

01:10:27.540 But today, I know better to dissociate myself.

01:10:31.440 And so they're going to have to go look for other peons to, you know, to mess their heads with.

01:10:38.420 But because people like me, I know the truth.

01:10:40.420 And what I love about the truth that I had learned is that my pre-colonial forefathers totally would have stood by my devotion to the free enterprise.

01:10:52.100 They would have said, great, great, great granddaughter, thank you.

01:10:58.300 Thank you for looking back to our times and seeing what we were doing.

01:11:02.820 We were no more, we were on the right track, girl.

01:11:05.460 We were.

01:11:06.160 So today, I think everybody has to make a decision for themselves.

01:11:09.140 But me, what I have learned, that's what I'm taking out.

01:11:10.920 And everything we talked about today, Jordan, is really not part of the mainstream.

01:11:16.140 Because you ask most people, African included, why are you poor?

01:11:20.600 They're going to say colonialism.

01:11:22.260 They're going to say racism.

01:11:24.060 They're going to say, because they're taking all of our natural resources and blah, blah, blah, and so on and so forth.

01:11:29.700 And guess what?

01:11:31.820 Those who claim to care in the West, they leave us in that misguided opinion of what the problem is.

01:11:44.020 Because it took me so long.

01:11:47.260 I was with these people who said that they cared about me.

01:11:50.800 They cared about Africa.

01:11:51.860 But I found that every time that they hear that the solution might be for free markets and capitalism, the look of disgust.

01:12:03.940 I think that's the right word.

01:12:05.120 The look of disgust that they have in their face.

01:12:09.000 If I was not stronger, I would feel disgusted by myself for having those opinions.

01:12:13.300 So, do you really care?

01:12:16.760 Or do you only care when the solution that you're peddling goes to support your own ideology?

01:12:25.320 Yeah, and your own moral claims.

01:12:28.340 Yes.

01:12:28.700 To care.

01:12:29.440 Yes.

01:12:29.800 Right?

01:12:30.040 Because that's the easy way out.

01:12:31.580 It's like, well, I care.

01:12:33.740 And there's some people who are well off.

01:12:35.720 And those people who are well off have stolen everything they have from the oppressed people.

01:12:40.060 And I'm on the side of the oppressed people.

01:12:42.440 And all I have to do is punish the oppressors.

01:12:45.080 And all of a sudden, I'm a moral agent.

01:12:47.200 Yeah.

01:12:47.380 And I can leverage the suffering of genuine poor people,

01:12:50.880 whom we know have actually been helped out of their absolute poverty by capitalist systems.

01:12:56.140 We absolutely know that to be the case.

01:12:58.580 I can leverage their suffering to bestow onto me an undeserved moral superiority.

01:13:04.820 That's right.

01:13:05.280 And then I can have my cake and eat it too, because I can still be a denizen of the wealthy West.

01:13:09.400 And I can feel sorry for poor people and be oppressed at the same time.

01:13:13.240 Absolutely.

01:13:13.820 And I feel like you're even being too generous for them in terms of the work they put in.

01:13:17.440 Because today, that I care, the only way it manifests itself in work, in little action,

01:13:24.700 I put a sign on my yard with Black Lives Matter.

01:13:29.220 Period.

01:13:29.760 Done.

01:13:31.060 If Black Lives Matter so much,

01:13:32.540 If Black Lives Matter so much,

01:13:35.700 then you cannot, with a straight face,

01:13:38.960 tell me in the same sentence

01:13:40.460 that you also are anti-capitalist.

01:13:45.880 And also, if Black Lives Matter so much,

01:13:49.180 what do you make of the fate of one billion black people?

01:13:53.320 Because Africa is home to one billion black people.

01:13:56.680 We're 1.3 billion, but one billion of those are black.

01:13:59.340 It is home to 90% of the representatives of a black race.

01:14:05.300 Yet, you tell me Black Lives Matter.

01:14:08.360 And you, in the same sentence, are going to be anti-capitalist?

01:14:11.720 The only thing we know to build prosperity?

01:14:15.140 And with that respect?

01:14:17.400 Huh?

01:14:18.320 You cannot be possibly serious here.

01:14:21.420 And guess what?

01:14:22.620 Flash news, newsflash.

01:14:23.780 People like me today are here to tell you how full of it you are

01:14:27.460 because you're full of it.

01:14:28.760 And I'm not going to allow you to no longer have your cake and eat it too.

01:14:33.200 It's just too easy when the stakes are so high.

01:14:36.800 And the same thing with your whole thing about the climate change.

01:14:40.660 Oh, gee, climate change.

01:14:42.000 I'm not even going to go and argue the scientific, you know, argument.

01:14:49.200 I'm not.

01:14:49.480 But let's say I even agree with you that the world is going to go to hell in 12 years,

01:14:55.380 as they claim.

01:14:56.520 If nothing is done, Earth is going to blow up in 12 years.

01:15:00.020 Let's go and freak out all the kids because you know what?

01:15:03.180 It's justified.

01:15:05.480 Let's say I even agree with you on that one.

01:15:07.420 And then I say, and then we do what?

01:15:09.900 Because your solution right now is to tell me we stop all carbon emission,

01:15:15.180 we stop all fossil fuels right now.

01:15:18.340 Right now.

01:15:19.640 But, Jordan, what does that mean if we did that?

01:15:21.540 What does that mean if we did that?

01:15:23.640 It means poor people will freeze in the dark and bake in the sun while they starve.

01:15:28.960 Thank you.

01:15:29.440 You just signed a death warrant.

01:15:33.080 And I'm going to talk about Africa only for now.

01:15:35.400 You just signed a death warrant for 1.3 billion people.

01:15:39.660 Of them, 1 billion black people.

01:15:42.440 And you just told me that black lives matter.

01:15:44.540 So even when it comes to climate, you're full of it.

01:15:48.700 And I'm willing to say that you're just an idiot because you don't know what's going on.

01:15:52.840 But even there, and if you still, with a straight face, can say, yeah, well,

01:15:57.260 to sacrifice the rest of the world, I'm sorry, to sacrifice these 1.3 billion Africans

01:16:03.700 so that the Earth can stay.

01:16:06.880 Oh, really?

01:16:08.420 How different are you then from somebody who enslaved me a little while ago?

01:16:12.640 Really?

01:16:13.120 My life is worth that?

01:16:14.900 Black babies are going to have to die so your white babies can stay alive?

01:16:19.520 You know, sometimes when I hear of a prince, who is that guy's name?

01:16:23.160 You know, Princess Diana had two kids, I think, the older one.

01:16:27.180 He, with a straight face.

01:16:28.800 The guy popped, by the time he had popped child number four, had the nerve to tell us

01:16:33.200 that the problem with the world is overpopulation.

01:16:35.960 Earth cannot sustain overpopulation.

01:16:39.060 From the guy who has four kids.

01:16:40.700 So what are you telling me exactly?

01:16:42.380 Because I'm just trying to-

01:16:43.000 You know, Marion Tupi, Marion Tupi from humanprogress.org,

01:16:46.940 he's publishing a book in August called Super Abundance.

01:16:50.460 And he's redone a number of economic calculations showing, for example,

01:16:56.120 documenting the extremely positive relationship between increased population and general prosperity.

01:17:01.820 That's right.

01:17:02.500 And he calculated that every child born today will produce seven times as many resources

01:17:10.100 as he or she will consume.

01:17:12.360 C?

01:17:13.380 Right.

01:17:14.120 C is right.

01:17:14.960 And so all these people who are squawking about there being too many people on the planet,

01:17:19.720 and it's always other people who are too many, exactly as you're pointing out.

01:17:23.460 That's what I was going to say.

01:17:24.040 Absolutely.

01:17:24.320 So here's Prince, whatever his name is, telling me that the problem with the world is overpopulation

01:17:29.760 while just having popped his fourth child.

01:17:32.360 So are you telling me that your child can live, but the other ones cannot?

01:17:36.020 Because that's pretty much what you're saying.

01:17:37.460 Because you popped these kids.

01:17:39.640 And if that's what you're saying, if you're saying that the other ones cannot,

01:17:43.280 then go on.

01:17:44.360 Keep going with your thinking.

01:17:45.980 Yeah, right.

01:17:46.740 Why can't they?

01:17:47.060 Why can't they?

01:17:48.180 Why can't they?

01:17:49.140 Are you a closeted racist?

01:17:50.520 Maybe not that closeted.

01:17:51.280 We're going to see this play out in the fall.

01:17:55.180 This is coming just as certain as the sun's going to rise tomorrow.

01:17:59.960 You know, the fact these environmental policies that have emboldened Putin,

01:18:04.380 made Europe dependent on oil and gas from Russia.

01:18:08.260 That's right.

01:18:08.980 Now we have a shortage.

01:18:10.480 And we have a huge increase in fertilizer prices.

01:18:13.840 And we know perfectly well that about 150 million people,

01:18:16.920 most of them in Africa and in North Africa and in the Middle East and in Sub-Saharan Africa,

01:18:23.480 are going to be suffering dreadfully in the fall because of this.

01:18:26.920 And so we can see right away that what has happened when push came to shove

01:18:30.880 is that the radical utopian Marxist types who are beating the drum about the environment

01:18:34.980 were perfectly willing to sacrifice today's real poor

01:18:39.160 to the hypothetical well-being of some future poor in their utopian schemes.

01:18:43.700 Absolutely.

01:18:44.120 And that's coming right away.

01:18:45.380 No, it's coming right away.

01:18:46.880 And then what I, what I, what I, what the,

01:18:50.020 one of the things that the Ukrainian war has brought up to the surface,

01:18:52.740 because we've been talking about it forever, but, and then people are like,

01:18:55.520 oh, you're being too, you're not being, you know,

01:18:58.340 but it's the hypocrisy of these people, the hypocrisy.

01:19:01.980 When I have a Green Party of all parties, the Green Party of Germany,

01:19:06.500 I don't know if you heard it, a week or so ago,

01:19:09.180 they came out and they said, oh, we have to keep burning coal a little while longer.

01:19:12.640 Oh, really?

01:19:13.620 Yeah, a little while.

01:19:14.040 When your ass is on the line, we have to keep burning coal a little while longer.

01:19:17.360 Oh, but no, but the Africans, no, no, no.

01:19:20.180 So this hypocrisy is going to, the reckoning is coming.

01:19:23.460 The reckoning is coming because I, for one, I'm not willing to stand there

01:19:26.620 and let them get away with it.

01:19:28.300 All of this time, they made it sound like they have a moral high ground.

01:19:30.840 And I call not only BS.

01:19:32.180 That's enough of that.

01:19:33.120 I agree, man.

01:19:33.800 Enough of that.

01:19:34.760 That's such a lie.

01:19:35.940 I call BS.

01:19:36.920 I'm going to call them what they are.

01:19:38.760 These anti-fossil fuel zealots are the new racists of our times.

01:19:45.300 And we can see clear in their game.

01:19:48.100 And we will not stand for it.

01:19:50.500 Not.

01:19:51.380 So a war is coming.

01:19:53.960 But the war that's coming for me is not a cultural war.

01:19:55.960 I think the cultural war is too easy for them to win in a way.

01:20:00.660 But this one right here is going to bring them straight back to who they are.

01:20:05.300 When I see that Jeff Bezos' ex-wife gave a couple hundred million dollars to Planned Parenthood

01:20:12.600 and she specifically earmarked it for black women.

01:20:18.720 Lady, can you please tell me your further thinking?

01:20:22.040 And we didn't hear about it, by the way, in the bigger news.

01:20:24.220 So I'm just trying to understand, why does the world think that it needs less black babies?

01:20:29.440 It seems to me that's what it is.

01:20:31.520 So we want to talk about racism.

01:20:35.620 I think there is racism here that doesn't speak its name.

01:20:38.860 But we're going to have to call it what it is.

01:20:40.560 So it's going to be one thing or another, Jordan.

01:20:43.120 One is you're going to have to, I'm going to hold you, you're going to have to tell me that black lives matter.

01:20:48.000 If black lives matter, then African lives have to matter.

01:20:50.020 If African lives do matter, then capitalism matters.

01:20:55.940 And if you make that case, we're good.

01:20:58.980 Let's keep working.

01:21:00.160 And fossil fuels matter.

01:21:01.500 And fossil fuels matters.

01:21:03.040 And so people can burn clean burning fuels in their house instead of choking their children to death on indoor pollution.

01:21:10.700 With indoor pollution.

01:21:11.120 So you're going to have to tell me that all of that matters.

01:21:13.620 If black lives matter, then it means one billion African, black African lives do matter, which means capital matter, which means fossil fuels matters.

01:21:24.380 If not, you're telling me that it doesn't.

01:21:28.620 Because, and you don't have to tell me black lives don't matter for you to tell me it doesn't matter.

01:21:32.620 All you have to tell me is we can't have fossil fuels and we can't have capitalism.

01:21:38.600 If you tell me that, then I know that de facto black lives do not matter for you.

01:21:43.460 And if black lives do not matter for you, then you're a racist.

01:21:46.460 Done.

01:21:47.440 You want to go through this whole like white supremacy is this and blah, blah, blah.

01:21:50.260 Now, today, if you are not in favor of what is going to contribute to my human flourishing as a black person, forget white supremacy, whatever you want to call it.

01:22:03.300 That, to me, is the new definition of racism.

01:22:06.380 Let's go there.

01:22:06.840 That's a really good place to end, I would say, this part of the discussion.

01:22:11.480 I want to talk to you a little bit more.

01:22:13.000 We're going to do this on the Daily Wire Plus network.

01:22:16.060 And I want to talk to you a little bit more about your personal experiences.

01:22:19.740 But I really want to thank you for having this conversation with me today.

01:22:23.240 And I think it'll, I hope, as you said, it'll break up a lot of these.

01:22:26.880 They're not just myths.

01:22:27.920 They're toxic anti-truths.

01:22:30.360 And they're hurting people in a way that we're just beginning to become aware of.

01:22:34.140 And there's going to be all hell break loose this fall.

01:22:37.000 Yes, it's so.

01:22:37.640 And I'm really sad and sorry about that because it was completely unnecessary.

01:22:41.480 As you know, we know the pathway forward.

01:22:44.840 Common laws.

01:22:45.480 Because that's just, that's such a firm foundation to build a prosperous society upon a proper

01:22:53.440 free enterprise, localized economy, get the bureaucrats and the resentful people the hell

01:22:58.660 out of the way of people like you and see if we can get prosperity to grow everywhere in

01:23:02.460 the world.

01:23:03.260 And maybe, too, when people get rich enough, they'll be able to afford to care about the

01:23:06.740 environment a little bit instead of having to be forced into an anti-carbon environment

01:23:10.360 by these idiot environmentalist zealots.

01:23:13.080 That's what I call it also the disrespect of the poor.

01:23:16.100 It's total disrespect for the poor, thinking that you're superior to them.

01:23:20.980 Do you think you're superior to them just because you care about the air that you breathe?

01:23:24.960 Gee, I think you would be just like this poor person.

01:23:27.260 If you had no food in your belly, child is sick, you don't know how you're going to take

01:23:30.580 care of it.

01:23:31.600 You had all of these issues that come straight from your poverty.

01:23:35.480 I think that you two, the quality of the air you breathe or the quality of the water you

01:23:39.740 drink might be numbered 100 in the priority list because right now you have to survive.

01:23:45.720 So for you to think that something is wrong with them because they don't care about that,

01:23:49.820 well, maybe I'll put you in that position and we'll see when you're going to start to

01:23:52.400 think about that.

01:23:53.360 And so this is complete disrespect for the poor and it is unacceptable.

01:23:57.160 It is wrong.

01:23:58.260 Great.

01:23:59.880 I agree with you 100%.

01:24:01.800 All right.

01:24:02.880 That's great.

01:24:03.720 So thank you very much for talking to me.

01:24:06.240 Thank you for having me.

01:24:06.760 Much appreciated.

01:24:07.400 It was very good to see you again.

01:24:08.880 Thank you.

01:24:09.320 Hello, everyone.

01:24:11.740 I would encourage you to continue listening to my conversation with my guest on dailywireplus.com.

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The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - July 18, 2022

271. How Black Lives Truly Matter ｜ Magatte Wade

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