In Episode 1303 of The Lotus Eaters, we talk about how the old are becoming cash cows, and how the young are being used as collateral to pay back their debts. We also discuss the growing tensions between China and Japan, and why we should be worried about it.
00:00:00.160Hello, and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters, episode 1303 for Tuesday, the 25th of November, 2025.
00:00:10.040I'm your host, Luke Cook, joined today by Firas and Nate.
00:00:13.560And today we're going to be talking to you all about how the youth are drowning in debt.
00:00:18.800We're then going to talk about the growing tensions between China and Japan.
00:00:23.680And then Nate is going to explain to us how he single-handedly created the master plan for saving British democracy, which we're very much looking forward to.
00:00:36.600Before we go into the segment, though, I just want to alert you to the Daily Channel.
00:00:40.800Now, this is, of course, not new, but as you can see there, it's ticking up over 90,000 subscribers now.
00:00:47.340And so if you weren't aware of it, I just wanted to let you know it's where we go on and do just have some off-the-cuff remarks and some musings,
00:00:56.640some meditations on things in the news that have grabbed our attention.
00:01:00.800And so there's lots of interesting stuff on there.
00:01:03.500If you're not subscribed to it yet, please go do so because it's a good channel.
00:01:10.200So, everything that we seem to see today involves placing more and more burdens on the youth with the old essentially using them as cash cows.
00:01:23.940Usury is responsible for a big chunk of this.
00:01:26.660And today I'm going to talk about a specific aspect of usury, the buy now, pay later business model.
00:01:32.960And here we have Paris Hilton promoting this through a company called Klarna, which is one of the biggest providers in this field.
00:01:42.980And she will inform you how to buy a nice suit for your very ugly dog.
00:01:50.420I don't know why you'd have a famous hound.
00:06:36.540And even the colors that they use, you will notice that this is noted in this piece here.
00:06:43.660You will notice that if you're dealing with an established bank, their cards will be dark gray, black, navy, colors that convey seriousness and responsibility.
00:06:53.480Whereas with these things, they're using Paris Hilton to promote their stuff and they're using pink and lime green and other colors.
00:07:08.880They want to make you feel as you did as a kid without any responsibility and you can sort of escape it with a little luxury.
00:07:16.600And they rely on people using this kind of thing in a downturn, using a psychological, if you're into behavioral economics, thing called the lipstick effect.
00:07:30.920The lipstick effect is basically that in a recession when times are hard, women will still buy a lot of lipstick because it's seen as a small luxury, as something that, okay, it's expensive, but I'm going to enjoy myself.
00:07:45.500And that's the same exact kind of appeal.
00:07:47.520It very much relies on a good understanding of human psychology and of our vulnerabilities to sort of lure you into just, why don't you just borrow some money?
00:08:01.820But it's not really like that because the consequences, when you actually look at them, are quite bad and they're happening at a time where the economy is terrible.
00:08:12.320So 20% of adults in Britain are using these kinds of buy now, pay later schemes.
00:08:23.960And the rate of increase is 25% from 2002.
00:08:30.980So these guys are making record levels of growth.
00:08:34.940And so you will see them, you will see the users saying, the typical user in this case is a woman, and this one is used here as an example who says, I'd like being able to split the cost of something over a few months, helps to build my credit score.
00:08:50.820But some months definitely cost more than others.
00:08:53.780I mean, they are right in saying that you have to use credit to have a good credit score, which is also part of the whole system, the whole sort of financial and monetary system is designed in a way.
00:09:05.580It's designed in a way to be predatory, to be fair.
00:09:08.540Like, you can't get a mortgage unless you have accessed high amounts of credit.
00:09:34.440We've avoided risk and now we're punishing you.
00:09:36.340So the objective of the system is to get you addicted to usury and to get you dependent so that the most vulnerable can have their assets stripped.
00:09:49.380It's one of those things that, like, when you grow up and you learn this, you're like, that actually doesn't make any sense.
00:09:54.780Like, that is, I mean, it makes sense from a sort of a villainous, evil perspective.
00:10:01.140But it doesn't make sense from like a, well, this is just critical thought.
00:10:03.880Like, I should be able to do this because I've had this many years of rent.
00:10:08.700And this is, again, one of my sort of tinfoil hat theories of why they're dumbing people down and not teaching them critical thinking skills.
00:13:18.580They're not from here, so they're not going to sort of buy houses and so on.
00:13:21.880They're going to live five people in a room and just have a completely different structure of consumption.
00:13:32.080The Guardian here says, and we have to agree on the left when they're right.
00:13:36.000Even if we don't agree with the solutions, you know, their solution here in The Guardian, because they're a bunch of communists, is that we should tax the rich so that we give everybody free money when they become an adult.
00:13:48.500No, you should encourage saving and financial responsibility and ban usury preying on the young and the weak.
00:14:44.100Let me forget about having a family and a meaningful life and therefore become a debt slave into your 70s because now you can get a 50-year mortgage in America.
00:14:53.820And if it's coming to America, it's probably coming to Britain.
00:14:56.440So we know how this whole thing works, you know, 47% of the young in Wales have negative wealth.
00:15:52.240If you are, because, you know, back when I used to live in London for about five years, and most of that time I was just living month to month, you know, off of the salary that I had.
00:16:02.460And so even though I didn't obviously go down this route, you can see how it would be so enticing to just the ordinary worker.
00:16:10.000Yeah, I briefly did because I was just very ignorant about how these things worked and it was just destructive.
00:16:35.960Maybe because you're trapping them in eternal debt and you don't give them any outlets like a normal healthy family life that would make them functional members of society.
00:17:45.680Just 2% in auto finance because people are using their cars until they die.
00:17:51.140Because that's the sort of last priority in terms of lifestyles.
00:17:56.820But the fact that cards and personal loans are growing at such an atrocious rate that is so much larger than the growth in the economy shows you that what is happening is that you are handing over a bigger share of the economy to the usurers.
00:18:24.700So what's happening is a transfer of wealth.
00:18:28.280More of the GDP of this country, more of the national wealth that is created every year, national income, I should say, that is created every year, is being transferred to money lenders.
00:18:39.420And that is an inherently bad and evil thing that you do not want for your society.
00:18:45.120Now, Klarna is getting into a bit of trouble because consumer credit losses grew by 17% last year.
00:18:56.820Meaning that as of the first quarter of 2025, a lot less people are paying their debts.
00:19:04.360Now, this essentially means that the consumer is screaming.
00:19:10.200They're borrowing this money and they're not getting anything for it.
00:20:17.380They're not bothered by it in any shape, way or form because they don't care about you.
00:20:22.480And if you look at the rest of the Experian report, sorry, let's go to that Experian report.
00:20:30.280It just shows you how much the increase in borrowing is.
00:20:35.880And the result of this is predictable.
00:20:38.420So the Financial Times is saying that more young adults are leaving Britain because of low salaries, rising taxes, etc., etc.
00:20:47.300You're not getting anything except the debt cycle.
00:20:50.660And if you keep on allowing this, if you keep on allowing this kind of immigration, you're going to have to suffer the consequences of brain drain, which is a massive problem in the third world, where the best and brightest leave and the most indebted and the most burdened and the least productive remain.
00:21:11.140And so you get more radicalism of the left, but also of the right eventually, because it is obvious that the root cause of all of this is usury.
00:21:23.300So this is a very destructive and evil cycle.
00:21:29.020And because of the nature of how it makes money, it obviously has every incentive to keep that.
00:21:37.200It doesn't work without that small minority that ends up relying enormously on debt.
00:21:43.920And I think you see this in this page about the number of young adults who are being trapped in debt, who just barely graduated from school, from college, from university.
00:21:57.780They don't really understand finances as well as they should, because they're not taught about them.
00:22:47.360But when you get that big supply of labor competing with the young on starter jobs, you get this kind of indebtedness because they have nowhere else to go.
00:23:05.200And you trap them in low income, meaning that whatever money that they borrow is harder to repay in the future because wages aren't growing.
00:23:12.580We all know that real wages in this country have been declining since 2007 when essentially Britain stopped exporting energy and flung open the doors to immigration even more.
00:23:25.600And so you see this becoming a much bigger problem for the youth.
00:23:32.460And you understand its impact on family formation, mental health is a fashionable word, and obviously it's going to affect your mental health extremely negatively.
00:23:43.440And it's just a very, very destructive cycle.
00:23:45.960Now, with Klarina and WorldPay and Monzo and all of these others, when you don't actually pay your debts, first they start adding fees.
00:23:58.720And the fees are around 25% of the purchase value.
00:24:02.680So you do get charged interest if you don't repay.
00:24:08.200It's a trap, and it's deliberately intended to be a trap.
00:24:13.580And the most vulnerable obviously end up having the highest rate of interest, which goes to 25%.
00:24:19.640And if you're in that position in the first place where you're starting down the track of using these things, you're obviously not in a position, a strong place of strength, to actually be able to pay these debts back in the first place.
00:24:31.860So it's kind of guaranteeing that you're going to, even if it's not the first payment, the second might get you, or the third might get you, and so on.
00:24:41.320And you have this list of debt recovery companies who will then look at you and buy from Klarina or from WorldPay or whoever the debts that are owed to them, and then they will work on collecting.
00:24:58.740And this is a big moneymaker for them.
00:25:04.860First, they buy the debt at a huge discount.
00:25:08.100Second, they get to charge borrowers legal fees and agency fees and travel expenses.
00:25:14.980So everything that they do to collect the debt gets added onto you.
00:25:20.440The company takes a hit, maybe, on some of those debts.
00:25:25.460They make some money from fees with retailers.
00:25:28.460So every time you use Klarina on Deliveroo, they are paid 2% to 8% of the purchase value.
00:25:35.920So that's a guaranteed income, meaning that that's how the zero interest works.
00:25:40.220They're getting fees from the retailers themselves.
00:25:42.680But then when you are part of that 5%, 10%, 20% group that ends up with problem debt, well, you're screwed.
00:25:52.080Because it's sent to a debt collection agency and then the debt collection agency will not only try to collect the full amount, even though they bought it at a massive discount, they will then try to collect legal fees and their own fees and expenses and so on and so forth.
00:26:09.500So they will show up at your door and here is a brochure from one of them explaining to you what they will do.
00:26:17.460They will wipe the grin off the borrower's face and they will send this gentleman.
00:26:36.740And they will, this kind of gentleman, they will have this kind of gentleman knocking at your door and pursuing you through the courts.
00:26:45.740Or this friendly chap here going and pursuing you and knocking at your door any time that they want between the hours of 8am and 9pm and calling and harassing and threatening you with additional fees and saying that if you don't pay, you're going to have to pay additional legal expenses, which they will charge you for.
00:27:09.440And then the vicious debt cycle that you're in continues until you're actually bankrupted.
00:27:15.740So this is a fundamentally evil model.
00:27:24.760Now the Financial Conduct Authority is talking about better regulation and things like that and tinkering around the edges to make it more ethical.
00:29:19.000So there are some arguments about this.
00:29:21.800But if you're in this bad of a situation, you should be in a society where you and your mates can come up with 500 bucks and then you repay them without interest.
00:29:29.560Once interest is introduced into it, it turns predatory.
00:29:36.620So we're going to talk about Japan now.
00:29:39.280Now, normally when one of us hosts a Japanese segment, it's usually about immigration or cultural problems that Japan is facing.
00:29:47.680But this segment is of a more geopolitical nature because really what we're going to discuss is the rising tensions between Japan and China,
00:29:57.340chiefly over the sovereignty of Taiwan and obviously Japan being a key strategic ally of the United States against China.
00:30:08.720Before we do that, though, let me draw your attention to a play that I just covered for Chronicles, which is actually banding China.
00:30:21.820And it is a fantastic play all about how societies basically collapse when they hit the nature of where the truth within them,
00:30:32.580the internal truth that holds up society basically withers and dies.
00:30:36.880And this is an interesting one because actually it's all about public health and it's about they have these steam baths that all the tourists are going to come to and the baths have been poisoned.
00:30:48.780So this play also got a lot of attention in the past few years over the COVID pandemic and everything as well.
00:30:57.300But one of the things as well, and just to segue in, is that one of the points that is made that certain, when there's a convergence of circumstances that come together in society to create truth,
00:31:10.340well, slowly, year by year, decade after decade, those circumstances change.
00:31:16.000And with it, the truth changes as well.
00:31:18.940The old truth dies and new truth comes in.
00:31:21.420And this is really, he says in the play, truths have at best sort of a shelf life of about 70 years before something else comes through.
00:31:31.160And this is exactly what we're seeing now with Japan.
00:31:35.220The old truth that Japan existed in after the post-war consensus of basically military isolationism, not getting involved in foreign conflicts,
00:31:46.500basically having the military only for defensive purposes at the courtesy of the United States, allowing them to have it.
00:31:56.680We're entering a new paradigm now where the factors that existed in the 50s aren't the same now.
00:32:02.800And so we're seeing Japan having to sort of rear its head again, rearm itself.
00:32:08.680And so let's just begin here, shall we, by talking about this assessment from last year, talking about Taiwan and basically the era of Chinese dominance.
00:32:20.600Because it says that in addition to India and a slew of southeastern Asian nations, it is Japan that has the potential to support Taiwan's sovereignty through a multifaceted partnership.
00:32:31.300While Japan-Taiwan diplomatic engagements face a handful of challenges, Tokyo's gestures to Taiwan offer a silver lining for a nation under duress.
00:32:42.220And it goes to point out as well that the defense cooperation took a turn towards increased collaboration on the 25th of September last year,
00:32:52.400when the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force sent a naval vessel through the Taiwanese Strait between Taiwan and China, right?
00:33:47.860So they've been working with the Americans on building up the logistics to be able to supply the eastern ports of Taiwan in the event of a war,
00:33:56.720because these are the closest to Japan and they are Japanese islands, or at least contested islands, very close to Taiwan.
00:34:04.820And the assumption being that we can keep supplying Taiwan in order to maintain a ground fight using naval capabilities.
00:34:14.460Is that true? Isn't that true? A whole different and very long debate.
00:34:18.840But all of this has suddenly taken a very sharp escalation after the beginning of this month,
00:34:25.280where the new prime minister, Sano Takaichi, basically was at a parliamentary hearing.