TRIGGERnometry - Economic Disaster is Already Here - Peter Zeihan

00:00:00.960 Globalization obviously has a bad name nowadays because of the disruption it's caused particularly

00:00:06.960 to our countries, the loss of manufacturing jobs, all sorts of other things. The fact that

00:00:12.160 suddenly in the middle of a pandemic we realized we get a lot of our drugs from China and China may

00:00:16.960 not be sending them quite as willingly as it has done etc. But isn't it fair to say as well that

00:00:22.720 the period you're describing since the 1950s through to about 2015, we've all benefited

00:00:28.400 massively from this process. So the end of globalization is not all good. Oh, the end of

00:00:34.500 globalization is going to be a disaster for most of the world. Most of the world cannot feed and

00:00:40.200 fuel itself without either direct imports or the inputs that's necessary to allow them to feed and

00:00:46.200 fuel themselves from another continent. You break that down, you're talking about food shortages

00:00:51.180 that are global in scale that affect billions of people. You're talking about an end to

00:00:55.000 manufacturers trade in the way that we know it, which basically strangles tech in the cradle.

00:00:59.860 And you're talking about a collapse of the ability of energy from one region to reach

00:01:03.320 another region, which Europe is discovering right now means the lights go out. These are not

00:01:09.600 positive things. It doesn't mean that there won't be winners. Just as in any system, there will be

00:01:13.940 winners and losers. But we've had a lot of winning in the last 75 years that's about to go away.

00:01:25.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kisson.

00:01:49.740 And this is the show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:01:55.800 Our terrific guest today is a geopolitical analyst whose latest book is positively titled.

00:02:01.100 It's called The End of the World is Just the Beginning.

00:02:03.560 Peter Zeyhan, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:02:05.500 Thank you very much.

00:02:06.840 It's great to have you on the show, man.

00:02:08.460 Before we get into it, and you're a fascinating person to talk to about geopolitics, economics, and all of that.

00:02:15.200 Tell everybody a little bit about who are you, how are you, where you are,

00:02:18.600 What has been the journey through life that leads you to be sitting here talking to us?

00:02:22.300 I've always been interested in how things work.

00:02:24.660 So whether it's geography or demography or politics or economics, I need to understand how the pieces fit together, which means I absorb information voraciously.

00:02:33.880 And I've worked in D.C. for some think tanks.

00:02:36.080 I worked for a private intelligence company.

00:02:37.620 And now I take my insight and I spell it out for companies who are trying to figure out what's coming down the pipe.

00:02:44.640 It means that I'm always absorbing from everywhere and I get a lot of migraines.

00:02:48.960 And when I go on vacation, I have to go someplace my phone doesn't work.

00:02:52.160 So in 21 days, I'm going backpacking in Yosemite and I will not come out for a month.

00:02:59.600 I don't blame you, given everything that's going on.

00:03:02.080 And speaking of looking forward, one of the things we wanted to talk to you about a few

00:03:06.560 months ago was the conflict in Ukraine, Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

00:03:10.880 But actually, since then, I think a lot of people, particularly people in our audience in the UK and America,

00:03:16.480 are waking up to the fact that it's very likely that we're all going to be a lot poorer than we have been.

00:03:21.740 And everybody's sort of scratching their heads and going, why is that?

00:03:25.200 Why is that, Peter?

00:03:26.720 Well, the world before globalization was a mosaic.

00:03:31.400 Tiny little local economies.

00:03:32.820 And if you didn't have what you needed locally, you just did without.

00:03:36.380 So if you didn't have oil, you didn't industrialize.

00:03:37.820 industrialized. If you didn't have food, you had a very small population. And the companies,

00:03:43.100 excuse me, the economies, the countries that had more would be able to use that power and leverage

00:03:49.280 themselves into becoming empires. Those empires clashed, that brought us World War II, whole

00:03:53.860 system collapsed. But with globalization in the late 40s and 1950s, the Americans created a

00:04:00.680 strategic rubric where the little guy could actually get by. And the little guy could access

00:04:05.500 the inputs and the outputs of other economic systems. And so instead of thousands of tiny

00:04:11.020 little systems, we eventually migrated into a single huge one where anyone could import or

00:04:16.460 export anything to anyone at any time. That gave us global agriculture. That gave us global energy

00:04:22.840 and finance. That gave us global manufacturing supply chains and ultimately created the world

00:04:27.160 that we know. But now we're deglobalizing for a mix of reasons. And we're going back in the

00:04:32.760 direction of thousands of little disconnected systems, which means that the strength of the

00:04:37.660 whole is now failing. And we're seeing that with the Ukraine war, and we're seeing that with the

00:04:42.380 Chinese disintegration, and we're seeing that with some of the problems that the Western world is

00:04:47.080 having as they try to unplug from Russia. This is where we're all headed. And Peter, globalization

00:04:52.920 obviously has a bad name nowadays because of the disruption it's caused, particularly to our

00:04:58.820 countries, the loss of manufacturing jobs, all sorts of other things. The fact that suddenly in

00:05:04.120 the middle of a pandemic, we realized we get a lot of our drugs from China and China may not be

00:05:08.800 sending them quite as willingly as it has done, et cetera, et cetera. But isn't it fair to say as

00:05:13.460 well that the period you're describing since the 1950s through to about 2015, we've all benefited

00:05:19.820 massively from this process. So the end of globalization is not all good. Oh, the end

00:05:25.820 of globalization is going to be a disaster for most of the world. Most of the world cannot feed

00:05:31.460 and fuel itself without either direct imports or the inputs that's necessary to allow them to feed

00:05:37.520 and fuel themselves from another continent. You break that down, you're talking about food

00:05:42.240 shortages that are global in scale that affect billions of people. You're talking about an end

00:05:46.340 to manufacturer's trade in the way that we know it, which basically strangles tech in the cradle.

00:05:51.320 And you're talking about a collapse of the ability of energy from one region to reach another region,

00:05:55.300 which Europe is discovering right now means the lights go out. These are not positive things.

00:06:02.240 It doesn't mean that there won't be winners. Just as in any system, there will be winners

00:06:05.680 and losers. But we've had a lot of winning in the last 75 years that's about to go away.

00:06:12.620 And what are the major reasons, Peter, behind this effect of deglobalization?

00:06:18.600 What are the things contributing to it? There are two big pieces. First,

00:06:23.280 globalization did not happen on accident when the post-world war ii system was being born

00:06:30.400 the americans proposed that we would use our navy the only one to survive the war

00:06:35.020 to patrol the global ocean so that anyone could gauge in any trade with anyone at any time

00:06:40.140 this is normally the sort of benefit that you would have only had if you were on the winning

00:06:44.100 side of the war and you were in imperial power already so we basically made the world open for

00:06:49.080 everyone. And that allowed everyone to take manufacturing and services jobs and diversify

00:06:54.600 and specialize and access anything from a world over. And once that became an option, people

00:07:00.500 started taking those jobs. But all of those jobs are in the cities. And that changed who we are.

00:07:06.840 Because in the pre-industrial, pre-globalized world, most of us were farmers and small plot

00:07:12.000 farmers at that. But once we could move into the cities and take those more value-added jobs,

00:07:17.180 it changed how the way we thought of families. On the farm, kids are free labor. You have a bunch.

00:07:23.340 In the city, kids are really expensive habits. You have very few. You fast forward 75 years,

00:07:29.960 and it's not that we're running out of children. That happened 40 years ago in most of the world.

00:07:35.200 We're now running out of adults. And so we're in a ever-accelerating population crash. So even if

00:07:44.800 the Americans were willing to continue a 20th century strategic policy in a world where there's

00:07:52.200 no longer a Cold War. We no longer have the population structure for consumption that allows

00:07:57.760 globalization to work either. So whether it's the front end or the back end, this period in history

00:08:02.200 is now over. And it's just a question of how we segue into whatever's next. So I've always been

00:08:08.460 told, Peter, that we've got too many people, the world is overpopulated, that we need to have less

00:08:14.960 people. Yet here you are telling me that actually we don't have enough young people. The population

00:08:21.520 busts in the advanced world started in the 1950s and 60s, and that spread to the advanced

00:08:28.340 developing world in the 1980s to the 2000s, with Japan, I'm sorry, with China most aggressively 0.98

00:08:35.500 in the 1990s. So it's just that it takes a long time for you to realize that a population, I'm

00:08:42.500 sorry, a birth rate bust is leading to a population bust, that takes 30 to 50 years. Well, it's now

00:08:47.740 been that in spades. So in the entire advanced world, populations are aging at the same time

00:08:54.080 they are shrinking. And one other thing, when you industrialize for the first time, you don't just

00:08:59.200 get roads and rail and electricity. You also get antibiotics and medical care. So mortality rate

00:09:06.300 collapses. So China's probably the best example. They industrialized starting in the late 1980s. 0.95

00:09:12.120 Their mortality rate collapsed. Their birth rate did not increase. It dropped as well.

00:09:16.600 But because everyone was living longer, the population continued getting bigger.

00:09:21.140 Well, you play that forward 40, 50 years, and now you've got so many people who are so old, 0.99

00:09:28.540 they can no longer even have kids. So this population rubric belief looks at the core

00:09:33.320 numbers, just sheer numbers. And by that number for the last 40 years, yeah, the population's

00:09:38.140 been getting bigger and bigger and more, and it's sustainable. But if you look under the hood and

00:09:41.120 look at the younger generation, it has been steadily vanishing now for long enough that we

00:09:46.320 have run out of people of reproductive age to generate the next generation in much of the world,

00:09:52.140 China included. And so assuming nothing else goes wrong, assuming globalization holds,

00:09:57.620 we're still looking at a population crash so we'll probably hit what eight billion next year

00:10:03.540 we'll never hit nine and it's going to be an accelerating fall off from this point

00:10:08.120 and that is going to contribute to deglobalization as you've said what else is going to happen with

00:10:14.360 this population crash pick a topic we can go anywhere with that one let's start with the

00:10:21.700 really unsexy one, finance. If you're 55, 55, 60, 64, something like that, your kids have moved

00:10:30.580 home, your house has been paid down, your incomes are high, your expenses are low, you are the

00:10:35.100 richest you will ever be. And then you move into retirement and you liquidate all of your

00:10:39.880 investments and you go into very rote investments, things like treasury bills and cash. Because if

00:10:45.500 there's ever another currency or market crash, you're out of luck, you're destitute. Well, that

00:10:51.200 That is now happening to the baby boomers this year, at the end of this year, that happens 1.00

00:10:55.060 in most of the world.

00:10:56.880 And our richest generation ever, that is providing all the financial ballast that has allowed

00:11:01.800 everything to happen, is going to basically take their marbles and go home.

00:11:05.540 And in most of the world, there is not a generation coming up and behind them.

00:11:10.720 The next generation in the United States is very small, but it's even smaller relative 1.00

00:11:15.520 to the boomers in the advanced developing world, or sorry, in the advanced world.

00:11:20.240 So we know that the cost of capital is going to bear minimum quadruple in the United States.

00:11:25.220 It will probably increase by a factor of six to eight in most of the rest of the world,

00:11:30.120 and it won't get better.

00:11:32.820 Now, in the United States, 10 years from now, our millennial generation, which is a large

00:11:38.000 generation, will enter that capital-rich demographic.

00:11:41.000 But most of the rest of the world does not have a millennial generation of size.

00:11:44.360 So we're going to get this split in capital costs with the Americans going one way, the

00:11:49.180 advanced world going another way, and most of the developing world never having been able to become

00:11:54.100 rich enough to play their own role. So, we get to do all of this in a period of multi-decade

00:12:00.140 capital shortages. We don't even have an economic theory that describes what that is going to look

00:12:06.100 like. Exciting stuff, Peter. But, you know, you talk about the situation with demographics, and

00:12:15.360 You mentioned winners and losers. Who are going to be the winners of this situation?

00:12:23.040 Well, the United States is the first world country in the best position demographically.

00:12:27.460 And in terms of structurally, economically, it never invested its economy into globalization because it was a bribe.

00:12:32.920 We basically created this environment so that people would be on our side versus the Soviets. 0.89

00:12:37.700 So if we had invested our economy in it, we would have just been another empire and there probably wouldn't have been all that many takers.

00:12:44.660 So that means the United States can step away from this system and not suffer too much pain.

00:12:49.560 France had a very similar view of globalization because they saw it as an American strategic play.

00:12:55.580 They're like, oh, that's what we would have done.

00:12:57.260 So, of course, they didn't invest their economy into either the globalized world or even into the European Union.

00:13:05.560 They think of the EU as a strategic project, not an economic one.

00:13:08.760 And so they invested into the European system about the same way that the Brits did.

00:13:14.000 small, late, have some regrets, never went in whole hog. But then there are countries that can

00:13:20.440 attach themselves to one of those systems or maybe start up a little echo of their own.

00:13:25.320 Turkey looks pretty good. Japan clearly has the military force to go out and secure the things 0.59

00:13:30.140 that it needs, and it has offloaded a lot of manufacturing base into countries with better

00:13:34.520 demographic structures. Argentina, despite its creative policymaking, has all the inputs that

00:13:41.940 it needs to be successful should it so choose. And then other countries have already managed to

00:13:48.140 kind of get into the American inner circle, whether that's Mexico or Canada or Colombia or Chile.

00:13:53.300 They already have the legal structure and the trade deals in place. Australia looks good because

00:13:58.900 even though they're going to suffer a horrific recession as they adapt to some of the excesses

00:14:05.240 of the last 30 years, they've got a stable population, they've got resources, they've got

00:14:09.800 the raw materials, they've got an agricultural system that's hugely export-oriented, and they're

00:14:14.820 America's best friends. So you can see countries latching on to some of the more successful systems

00:14:21.200 and others trying to go their own way with various degrees of success.

00:14:26.240 Well, Peter, we're sitting here in Britain, which I take it would be on the list of winners by being

00:14:31.220 sort of under the umbrella of the U.S. That is entirely up to you. One of the problems that

00:14:37.000 Britain has right now is it still hasn't figured out what the hell it wants to do about Brexit.

00:14:41.240 I mean, come on, guys. It's been five years. Tell me about it.

00:14:45.680 The smart play would be to go to Washington and ask for a deep free trade deal and maybe

00:14:52.240 inclusion in the NAFTA. The problem with that strategy is that we will treat you,

00:14:58.600 we have treated you exactly the same in these talks as we treated you during Lend-Lease.

00:15:04.680 So we gave you in Lend-Lease 40-odd outdated, badly constructed mothballed destroyers in

00:15:11.280 exchange for every military facility you had in the Western Hemisphere.

00:15:14.180 That's the scale of the capitulation that Washington is going to demand.

00:15:18.680 That means all your deals with Ireland on Northern Ireland have to stick because we

00:15:23.040 like those.

00:15:24.140 That means you have to surrender to American agricultural norms, which means most of your

00:15:28.320 farms will go out of business.

00:15:30.260 And that means that the financial hub needs to move from London to New York.

00:15:37.400 I mean, these are non-negotiable from the American point of view.

00:15:39.940 And that's one of the reasons why the trade deal has not happened.

00:15:42.480 The rhetoric of the brecasseters that they would just be able to go to Washington and get a better deal, not true.

00:15:48.640 But what the Americans are demanding is the best you are going to get.

00:15:53.460 And until and unless the UK comes to that conclusion on itself, then it is trapped at the edge of the European system.

00:16:02.000 Now, the European system is facing its own mortal problems, but you can no longer be part of whatever the planning is for the next stage.

00:16:10.840 And that does leave you kind of out on your own.

00:16:13.260 And long range manufacturing supply chains are no longer viable anyway.

00:16:16.860 So you do need to partner with someone.

00:16:19.900 And that either means going crawling back to the EU, which I don't think is a viable option anymore, or crawling to Washington, which is at best distasteful.

00:16:30.800 Right. Well, we're going to be crawling, is your point. We're sort of on our knees already, to be fair.

00:16:35.360 But Peter, one of the things that a lot of you're clearly someone with a lot of expertise, a lot of the people who watch our show are not as educated on these issues.

00:16:44.180 But what they're trying to do is understand what's happening in the world and what's happening in their lives right now.

00:16:49.140 And we talk a lot about the cost of living, we talk a lot about the rising price of fuel, all of these things.

00:16:56.360 How have government policies played into this?

00:16:58.660 Because a lot of people will say, well, look, the pursuit of net zero is one of the reasons that all our prices are going up.

00:17:04.900 Someone else will say it's the war in Ukraine, and people come up with all of these different explanations.

00:17:09.740 What do you make of all of that?

00:17:11.560 Well, let's start with kind of the conventional wisdom, because it's not all wrong.

00:17:15.240 I'm usually the guy who pokes that, but not this time.

00:17:19.140 Net zero, with today's technology, until we have figured out a low-cost mass storage electricity

00:17:25.800 system, and that means storing electricity not for four hours, but for four months, so you can

00:17:30.920 make it through the winter, until we have that technology, net zero is really dumb from an

00:17:36.680 environmental point of view. Forget from an economic point of view. It's suicidal from an

00:17:41.400 economic point of view, but from an environmental point of view, there isn't enough lithium on the

00:17:44.840 planet to make that work. Now, in the UK, you do have advantages over almost everyone else in your

00:17:51.320 hemisphere, because the UK has some of the best wind resources of the world. And if you put a

00:17:58.040 wind turbine high enough, you can tap stronger currents that are more reliable that can actually

00:18:03.320 generate baseload. We're seeing that in the North Sea. In the United States, we're seeing that in

00:18:08.000 Texas, and we're seeing that in Iowa. It's not foolproof, but wow, is it better than what we had

00:18:12.920 five or ten years ago. So I don't mean to suggest you can't green your system. I'm just saying that

00:18:18.660 getting to zero today is not possible. And if you try and if you do it by decommissioning more

00:18:25.800 reliable energy producing systems, which almost by default means nuclear or fossil fuel, you are

00:18:30.660 going to have high prices and rolling brown and blackouts. We are seeing that across Central

00:18:34.820 Europe right now. The technology just isn't there. So it's real. That doesn't mean you should give up.

00:18:42.920 But Peter, just to interrupt, right, if that's the case, then why is everybody insisting that

00:18:47.180 we do it? Because it's a great catchphrase. I mean, people have bought the ideology,

00:18:53.300 unfortunately, without looking under the hood. We're just not there yet.

00:18:57.020 And Europe is now giving us an excellent example of 40 years of policy of what exactly not to do.

00:19:04.180 So because it sounds good, and it's a great catchphrase, and politicians get to look all

00:19:09.280 virtuous and moral we embark on this policy which is fundamentally unworkable hey hey you guys are

00:19:15.420 the ones who basically said you wanted a cheese submarine in the shape of brexit and you went

00:19:19.120 along with it so this is not an isolated incident okay people have ideas people have bad ideas and

00:19:28.220 politicians of all flavors strap onto them we've certainly seen that in my country in the last five

00:19:33.620 years you are not unique in that so whether that makes you feel better or worse i do not know

00:19:38.720 But I certainly agree that net zero in its current form with today's technology is economically and ecologically suicidal.

00:19:47.840 But that's only one piece.

00:19:49.680 So we've got the Ukraine war then.

00:19:52.060 The Russians have recently shut off Nord Stream.

00:19:54.700 And we know that all the pipelines that are crossing Ukraine to Europe are going to get blown up one way or another this calendar year.

00:19:59.640 So you can count on roughly four to six million barrels a day of crude and roughly, oh geez, I got to translate this one. Sorry, I'm thinking BCF.

00:20:14.120 it's 9 to 12 bcf so what's that 90 to 120 million billion cubic meters of natural gas a year going

00:20:21.920 offline before the end of the year and that will obviously sucker punch everyone in europe repeatedly

00:20:26.720 again uk has a little bit different system you're further from the russians you hardly use any of

00:20:32.600 their stuff you have the option of taking stuff from the north sea first you have closer access

00:20:37.160 to lng from the united states so you're going to be able to watch europe and when you're not

00:20:42.600 giggling because that would be rude. You're hopefully going to learn a few things on

00:20:46.360 what not to do as you're adjusting your own energy plans. But all of that is going to be

00:20:51.100 inflationary no matter who you are. We're losing potash fertilizer that used to come from Russian

00:20:57.700 Belarus. We're losing phosphate fertilizer, which used to come from China. And we are losing nitrogen

00:21:03.620 fertilizer, which is made from natural gas globally. So we know food prices have to go up.

00:21:09.180 Again, I don't see the U.K. starving, but that contributes to inflation.

00:21:14.020 But what's really going on, in my opinion, is a labor story.

00:21:18.040 In the U.K., in the U.S., our largest generation has been our baby boomers.

00:21:22.120 They're all retiring right now.

00:21:24.640 And the kids who are 0 to 20 who are now moving into the workforce,

00:21:27.960 they are the lowest, the smallest generation that either of our countries has ever seen. 1.00

00:21:32.260 In the United States, that is already an annual shortage of 400,000 workers.

00:21:37.320 In my country, that's going to go up for the next 12 years until we hit 900,000.

00:21:42.540 So we are looking at labor inflation here being higher than inflation in energy and food and manufactured goods combined for a decade.

00:21:55.360 So, Peter, again, that being the case, how come politicians haven't looked at this and thought, right, there is a problem coming down the pipe.

00:22:05.180 Let's give people incentives.

00:22:06.780 Let's give people incentives to produce kids. 1.00

00:22:09.480 Let's make it better for families and make it more sustainable and less expensive.

00:22:15.360 That's a lot more difficult than it sounds.

00:22:18.440 Now, the advantage we've had in the United States is we've got the elbow room.

00:22:22.780 We're the world's largest producer and exporter of food.

00:22:25.660 We're the world's largest producer of energy products.

00:22:28.240 And we have more arable land per person than any other country in the world.

00:22:32.660 and that has kept the costs for all of the inputs for families low without a government policy.

00:22:40.720 The UK is lower productivity in its agriculture.

00:22:43.360 Its energy reserves aren't tapped out, but they're well past their peak.

00:22:46.600 And most of you live in a relatively dense urban environment.

00:22:50.200 That's just by nature is going to be more expensive.

00:22:52.900 So if you do decide you want to fix this with policy, the country to have a conversation with is Sweden.

00:22:58.420 and not so much about what to do but about what not to do. Sweden has maintained a higher birth

00:23:06.020 rate than most countries, certainly most countries in Europe, and they do have a cradle-to-grave

00:23:10.520 social support network. But it's come with some of the highest tax rates in the world,

00:23:18.960 which actually makes Sweden a very expensive place to live. If it wasn't for the support,

00:23:23.460 no one would be able to have a family. In addition, there are a lot of societal negatives

00:23:27.420 that come from it. So for example, they've got this great program where a young mother with her

00:23:34.160 first kid gets so many months off work with pay. If she has a second kid, it adds on an additional 0.86

00:23:41.140 time plus some, same for a third, same for a fourth. What that means is that if you're under

00:23:46.240 age 35 in Sweden and you're a woman, it's impossible to get hired because you could go in 1.00

00:23:51.200 for your first day of work, say you're pregnant, and then not work a day for eight years.

00:23:57.420 So, yes, higher birth rate, but it comes at the cost of just screaming economic inequality

00:24:04.500 between the sexes. This is hard. Social engineering is incredibly difficult. It will 0.93

00:24:09.580 always have side effects. The United States has been fortunate in that geography takes care of

00:24:17.580 most of it for us. Very interesting. That is very, very interesting, Peter, because

00:24:23.540 you would think that somebody must have been able to crack this puzzle by now because as you've

00:24:30.380 explained and we're starting to see now the labor shortages are having a huge effect we're going to

00:24:36.360 be you know well by the time this comes out we would have we would have flown to the U.S. and

00:24:41.280 there's part of me thinking are we actually going to be able to make the flight no no we're going

00:24:45.420 to make it the suitcase not so much because I've got two in the wind right now I feel your pain

00:24:52.740 Because it seems every industry is crippled by these shortages.

00:24:57.640 And they're not going away.

00:24:59.340 I mean, the baby boomers, the largest generation the West has ever had, and they're going away 1.00

00:25:03.740 and they are never coming back.

00:25:05.280 In the United States, we have to wait 10 years for the millennials to kind of fill this out. 0.90

00:25:10.020 Most of the advanced world doesn't have a millennial generation.

00:25:13.160 So we're not going back to where we were pre-COVID or pre-Trump.

00:25:19.040 That is not possible.

00:25:20.320 We don't have the numbers.

00:25:21.400 We have to find a new way to function.

00:25:24.000 And if you want to get a little optimistic slash depressed, it all depends upon your point of view.

00:25:29.080 I'm going to get depressed. Crack on.

00:25:31.000 Yeah. If I'm right about China and we're looking at the disintegration of the Chinese system,

00:25:35.300 and if I'm right about Germany and we're looking at the end of the German system this year,

00:25:39.700 that's a lot of manufacturing that is going away.

00:25:43.140 Now, your country and my country are excellent at manufacturing.

00:25:46.140 In terms of value added, we're actually better than the Germans. 1.00

00:25:48.860 but to rebuild those supply chains somewhere else especially in short order especially during

00:25:57.680 a time of protracted labor shortages that is also inflationary and pizza there's always been the

00:26:04.960 traditional solution certainly in this country in recent years which is well yeah we've got

00:26:10.260 labor shortages but what we're going to do is we're going to get a bunch of people we're going

00:26:14.440 cream off the best people from Bulgaria and Romania and Poland and maybe Ukraine now and

00:26:21.080 also from North Africa and maybe sub-Saharan. And we'll just get a bunch of people in from

00:26:25.720 everywhere and solve the labor shortage. Isn't that the way? By the numbers, that has a possibility

00:26:32.480 of working. Now, in the European Union, that is exactly what you did for the last 15 years. And

00:26:38.200 it's one of the reasons why the central European economies are now facing demographic collapse.

00:26:42.220 Everyone who's under 30 left for the West or the Western European countries.

00:26:47.420 You can only do that once.

00:26:49.400 So you're talking about now going further afield in that the United Kingdom absolutely has an advantage over the rest of the EU because the UK has always had a more open definition of self.

00:27:02.040 Because by definition, the UK is a merger of multiple ethnicities without necessarily erasing them in the way that the French did or the Germans did.

00:27:11.480 and that makes you a little bit more culturally open but it will not happen by accident you're

00:27:16.400 a freaking island and you just need to build the system that allows them to come in either from 0.76

00:27:21.360 the former colonies or from countries that are closer there are ways to skin that cat all of 0.89

00:27:27.180 them generate a degree of political backlash and I think it's safe to say that everyone in the UK

00:27:31.920 right now has a fresh appreciation for just how touchy you can be when it comes to your politics

00:27:37.640 In the United States, we learned that lesson five years ago with Donald Trump.

00:27:42.420 And for people who thought that all it was going to take was the fall of Trump and the rise of Biden to change it, no.

00:27:47.740 Our immigration policy is, if anything, tighter now than it was two years ago.

00:27:53.500 This requires a significant cultural adaptation.

00:27:58.060 We go through phases, and right now, both countries, kind of like the door's shut.

00:28:04.000 and peter you mentioned something about german about the german system collapsing now i haven't

00:28:11.840 heard anything about this but it does sound exciting yeah it does you know he's got a jewish

00:28:17.240 background so he's thrilled but sure i'm glad you laughed at that otherwise that joke is very

00:28:23.280 problematic but anyway peter it's like there is no longer anything but bad humor in my life

00:28:29.800 okay so the um the german system has four pillars of support and without all four

00:28:38.520 it doesn't work number one inexpensive energy supplies from russia it's the only place that

00:28:45.600 the germans can get the stuff cheap and it forms the basis of their heavy industry which provides 0.99

00:28:50.600 the materials for their medium and their light industries so if something happens that in the

00:28:54.160 base level it's not just that they have a problem with electricity although they do it's that they

00:28:58.520 no longer have the materials that's necessary to make plastics or to forge steel or to do

00:29:04.120 anything downstream of that. The Nord Stream pipeline went offline yesterday. There's a

00:29:09.840 concern, a very real concern, that it's never going to come back on. What's going on right now

00:29:13.560 is that the Russians are trying to blackmail the Germans into backing out of NATO. It's that simple

00:29:17.640 because without German assistance, there are no logistical means of getting equipment from the

00:29:24.540 rest of NATO into Ukraine. End of story. So the Germans are being forced to decide between being

00:29:31.020 industrialized and neutral or unindustrialized and Western. Not a fun conversation to have.

00:29:40.520 The Germans are the fastest aging society in Europe. They're in the top five globally.

00:29:46.320 Germany is not a country where you can have an open, honest, national conversation about

00:29:51.060 population policy. And it shows. And so they now have more people in their 60s than their 50s than

00:29:56.220 their 40s than their 30s than their 20s. Until now, this has worked. Because when you have a lot

00:30:01.900 of people in your 40s, 50s, and early 60s without kids, they can work long, they can work hard,

00:30:06.860 they can get better educated, they're the most productive workers on the planet. But that group

00:30:12.560 that is in the 60s is now flipping into retirement this decade. And that changes things overnight,

00:30:17.620 going from an advanced worker base with lots of experience to a retired worker base where the

00:30:23.640 experience is irrelevant. That happens this decade. That was always going to happen this decade.

00:30:29.380 This was always going to be the last decade of the German manufacturing model. Third, it's not 0.71

00:30:35.100 just about the Germans. A successful manufacturing system requires different stages of production with 1.00

00:30:42.120 different workforces with different skill sets at different costs. The Americans do this with

00:30:46.980 Mexico. The Germans do this with Poland and the Czech Republic and Romania and Ukraine and it's 0.96

00:30:55.200 now over. And then finally you need globalization because when you have an advanced population

00:31:01.620 that's top heavy, you don't have enough people to consume. You have to export the stuff and the

00:31:07.940 Americans have lost interest. So it's not just Nord Stream. That's just the proximate cause of

00:31:13.700 the day, all four of these pillars were already breaking. The demographic ones were definitely

00:31:20.420 going to break completely this decade. And with the Americans, it all depends upon our mood.

00:31:24.900 And then, of course, the Russians are just forcing things into the light right now. 0.92

00:31:27.920 So the German manufacturing model cannot survive the 2020s. The Russians get to decide whether it 0.86

00:31:35.560 survives 2022. Wow. And so obviously that in the German economy, economy is such a powerhouse

00:31:43.400 If that goes down, then that is going to have shockwaves right across Europe.

00:31:48.420 It takes Belgium and Poland and the Netherlands and all of the Central European economies down with it, 0.82

00:31:53.820 and the French are left to inherit the earth. 0.99

00:31:57.000 That's a depressing thought.

00:31:58.520 There we go.

00:32:01.500 Peter, I wanted to talk about China because this is another area where you have ideas that are very different to most people.

00:32:12.220 A lot of people, including former guests of ours, we had Dr. John Lee on the show recently talking about what China is trying to do, the threat of China vis-a-vis Taiwan, etc.

00:32:22.480 You believe that, again, due to demographic issues particularly and also this end of globalization, China is on the verge of collapse.

00:32:30.340 Tell us about that.

00:32:31.600 Well, let's deal with the punchline first.

00:32:33.580 China doesn't survive the decade as an industrial power, probably not even as a unified country.

00:32:38.620 the demographic situation now there is so bad that and the aging is happening so quickly and

00:32:45.320 the birth rate dropped so low so long ago that by 2050 the population of china will be less than

00:32:51.680 half of what it is today and we're already in a situation in i'm gonna phrase that wrong well

00:32:58.960 remember germany has more in their 60s and their 50s and their 40s and so on their demographic does

00:33:04.760 this towards the children china's does this right their point of no return was 30 years ago

00:33:12.840 this is not a recent thing combination of the fastest urbanization humanity has ever experienced

00:33:18.460 with the one child policy at the same time that was national suicide and now they're dying

00:33:21.960 they no longer have a workforce that is competitive in any manufacturing sector

00:33:26.760 there is not a product that is made anywhere else in the world that i'm sorry there's not a product

00:33:30.960 made in China that can't be made cheaper elsewhere. And the only reason we still think

00:33:34.820 of China as a manufacturing power at all is because of the pre-existing sunk cost of the

00:33:40.380 industrial plant, but the COVID lockdowns are even removing that from the table. So there's no

00:33:44.960 reason to expect China to ever get better. Also, their energy comes from a continent away, 0.99

00:33:51.500 except for the part that comes from two continents away. Also, all of the inputs that they need for

00:33:56.360 the food with the exception of phosphate fertilizer, they're all imported. So anything

00:34:00.500 happens to globalization for any reason, and this is a country that just ceases to exist.

00:34:06.260 There is no way with deglobalization that China emerges from this decade with more than 700 0.99

00:34:13.940 million people. It's going to be that bad and that catastrophic. That does sound obviously

00:34:20.020 hugely impactful on China. Would you say that that means China is not a threat? Because I'm 1.00

00:34:25.680 originally from Russia and people have been banging on about the demographic death spiral

00:34:30.640 of Russia since I was a child. And yet here is Russia invading Ukraine and upsetting the global 0.71

00:34:37.580 balance of power and causing all of these problems that we're now talking about. Is it really the

00:34:42.800 case that we shouldn't worry about what the Chinese are going to do? It's a fun little 1.00

00:34:47.740 compare and contrast. So the Russian demographic is awful. It will lead to a dissolution of the 1.00

00:34:53.880 Russian state this century, probably around mid-century, if I was a betting man. But it's

00:35:00.140 not so rapid because Russia, when it urbanized, it only urbanized in part. And when it industrialized,

00:35:06.220 it only industrialized in part. So until you get to the post-Soviet collapse, the demographics

00:35:11.580 really, I mean, they were ugly by many measures, but they weren't terminal. And there are some

00:35:17.500 strategic things that the Russians can do to buy themselves more time. The Ukraine war is part of

00:35:21.400 that. They're trying to get to a more defensible outer shell where they can put static forces in

00:35:26.880 a few geographic areas that will block forces from coming into their space in the future.

00:35:33.380 So I don't mean to suggest that the Russian situation is pretty. It is still terminal.

00:35:38.680 But there are some things that you can do with strategic policy that buy more time.

00:35:42.980 China doesn't have that option. Russia is an exporter of food and energy. China is an importer.

00:35:48.600 Russia can plug its periphery. 0.66

00:35:50.160 China's periphery is naval.

00:35:52.060 There is no country or combination of countries that the Chinese can invade and conquer in 0.97

00:35:57.340 order to solve any of their problems where there's a nice list for the Russians.

00:36:02.580 So the most likely outcome here is that China just kind of implodes into itself.

00:36:07.980 Does that mean there can't be a war? 0.97

00:36:09.800 Of course not.

00:36:10.880 When countries are dying, you never know what they're going to do.

00:36:14.580 The issue of the moment, of course, seems to be Taiwan.

00:36:18.740 But the Chinese government now knows that if they make a move on Taiwan, it's A, going

00:36:22.740 to be harder than they thought, B, they know there are going to be international sanctions,

00:36:27.820 and C, they know there are going to be international boycotts.

00:36:30.180 And any one of those is enough to destroy the Chinese system, much less all three at 1.00

00:36:34.080 once. 1.00

00:36:35.200 The Chinese have always thought of Russia as their dumb neighbor, and you let the dumb 1.00

00:36:39.140 neighbor try things. 1.00

00:36:40.780 They're the canary in the coal mine, if you will.

00:36:42.740 and they now know that everything they've prepared for for the last 40 years was based on faulty

00:36:49.080 assumptions this is normally the place where you would as a national leader send all of your smart

00:36:56.080 people into another room to kind of game out some replacement plannings but the cult of personality

00:37:01.360 in china is now so tight and xi has executed so many people at the top that he no longer has a

00:37:06.720 brain trust to send into the other room so china's just slamming its head into the wall over and over 1.00

00:37:11.300 and over and over until something cracks. And I don't think that's something that's going to be

00:37:14.160 Taiwan. Well, Peter, you mentioned the reason that you think Russia is doing what it's doing 0.74

00:37:20.860 in Ukraine, which is to secure a more defensible position. You mentioned that there are other

00:37:25.980 places where it needs to plug those gaps as well. What does the conflict and the future of Russian

00:37:33.380 aggressive behavior in Eastern Europe look like, in your opinion?

00:37:37.180 When the Russians did that first thunder run to Kharkiv and Kiev, and they realized that they were not going to be welcome into saviors, that no one had bought their propaganda but themselves, they had to reassess.

00:37:50.900 The problem with Ukraine from the Russian point of view is not that it's in one of those geographic gaps, it's that it's on the way to two of them.

00:37:57.600 So it's not that the Russians aren't going to stop until they have all Ukraine, it's that they won't stop when they have all of Ukraine. 0.93

00:38:03.980 and that meant they had to dust off an older playbook and that's why we're seeing all their

00:38:09.720 artillery now they're deliberately destroying every piece of civilian infrastructure they can

00:38:15.340 see specifically agricultural infrastructure to make sure that the land is uninhabitable for at

00:38:22.200 least several years because that forces the population to self-segregate either into

00:38:27.060 refugees which leave and you don't have to worry about them or anyone who just stays is clearly a 0.98

00:38:32.820 fighter and you can set the Wagner group or the Chechens on them just to wipe them out. And that's 0.99

00:38:36.420 what we've seen in southern Ukraine and eastern Ukraine for the most part. And we're seeing these

00:38:40.360 incremental gains by artillery. If the Russians succeed, that doesn't simply destroy the Ukrainian 0.68

00:38:49.660 nation and the Ukrainian state. It's just the next step in getting to those gaps. And that means

00:38:56.800 Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, excuse me, Moldova and Romania have to fall as well.

00:39:02.820 On the western periphery of the Russian space, those are the countries that the Russians feel

00:39:06.360 they have to, have to, have to hold. And if they pull that off, then the FSB is released to do

00:39:13.540 what the FSB was designed to do, and that's to suppress all national dissent, no matter what the

00:39:18.180 form, everywhere it goes. From the Russian point of view, that's the easy part. The hard part is

00:39:23.640 conquering the country in the first place. Well, Peter, sorry, Francis, let me just finish off on

00:39:29.000 this. As someone who's less of an expert in the economic side of this, but someone who is from

00:39:35.140 Russia who's been paying attention, I've been saying this to people for a long time. Like,

00:39:39.000 this is just the beginning. It's part of a much bigger plan. But I suppose that the most valid

00:39:45.120 counterargument to that would be, would it not be suicide for Russia to attack NATO countries like

00:39:49.840 Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Romania, etc.? Well, we found out in the first week of the war

00:39:56.160 that the Russians' military from a conventional point of view was not nearly as important as it

00:40:00.760 looked to be. We now know that the United States, NATO in general, is running out of a lot of the

00:40:06.200 equipment that the Ukrainians need to fight because that's not how our militaries are designed. 0.83

00:40:10.040 The U.S. does not do massed formations. We do precision from distance to destroy command and

00:40:14.760 control and logistic hubs. And then we go in and clean up. The Russians are going inch by inch by 1.00

00:40:19.560 inch destroying everything. And fighting that requires a different sort of military. And we

00:40:25.320 can't train Ukraine with the weapons that we use for the long-range stuff because that isn't 0.95

00:40:30.600 something you do in a few weeks. That's something that takes a few years. We don't have that kind

00:40:34.500 of time, even if we were willing to share our top-shelf technology, which I think is open to

00:40:40.180 debate. So we're running out of the sort of stuff that the Ukrainians can use, and we're probably 0.60

00:40:47.360 going to be largely tapped by October. So if Ukraine has not ripped the guts out of the Russian 1.00

00:40:53.960 military by then, this war is going to take a very different term because you will have a large

00:41:00.000 manpower heavy Russian army that has low morale and poor equipment against a Ukrainian force that

00:41:08.280 doesn't have weapons. There's no math there. But the Russians know they can't face us in a 0.99

00:41:16.720 conventional war. And that's where the nukes come into play, especially, especially, especially

00:41:22.340 if the Germans have flipped. Because if the Germans have flipped, there's no defense of 0.76

00:41:26.540 Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania anyway. So the Russians are playing their cards 0.96

00:41:33.460 on the diplomatic and the economic side of this very, very well. And to be perfectly blunt,

00:41:38.600 it's not a hard hand to play. The Germans have pushed for 40 years against, depending upon 0.95

00:41:48.720 Russian energy and raw materials and we're seeing where it leads and before

00:41:52.800 you criticize the Germans overly because you know that's that's justified this is 1.00

00:41:57.360 not a new problem Germany and Russia are our neighbors and they try to get along 0.53

00:42:03.000 to prove so that they don't have to go to war and then it ultimately falls

00:42:05.880 apart and they go to war and they go try to get it again and afterwards to try

00:42:09.660 to try to prevent the next one that's all they can do it's just that we're

00:42:12.960 unlucky enough to be living in a time where we're in one of the zigs rather 1.00

00:42:16.920 than the zags. Peter, the picture you're painting is very bleak. It's very bleak. It's very bleak 0.98

00:42:27.320 with everything, really. But you describe yourself as an optimist. So what is there to be optimistic

00:42:32.940 about? Well, history is a series of cycles of an organizational structure forming and generating a

00:42:40.320 golden age and then breaking apart under its own inconsistencies and collapsing. And what we know

00:42:46.240 is history is highs and lows, highs and lows. Globalization has been the biggest high we have

00:42:52.780 ever had. And its break apart was always going to hurt a lot. The demographics are just faltering

00:43:00.540 in on top of that, making it worse. But we're now in a position where roughly half of the earth's

00:43:07.640 surface has industrialized and urbanized and is not subject to the collapse. Will it be inflation?

00:43:13.780 Yeah.

00:43:14.900 Will it be awkward?

00:43:16.080 Yeah.

00:43:16.620 But think of the level of awkwardness that the UK and the US has to do.

00:43:20.360 We have to double the size of our industrial plant.

00:43:22.600 Yeah, that's expensive.

00:43:23.480 Yeah, that's inflationary.

00:43:25.200 That's a wonderful opportunity.

00:43:27.060 It's going to generate some of the fastest growth in human history in the next five to

00:43:31.200 10 years.

00:43:32.760 We know that global agricultural supply chains are going away, but not ones in North America

00:43:38.480 or in the UK, most likely, which means we can incorporate some of the digital technologies

00:43:43.140 that are past the prototype stage into the next generation of farm equipment and double

00:43:47.040 yield.

00:43:47.520 This is a good thing.

00:43:48.480 It's inflationary in the short term, but it's a good thing.

00:43:51.820 Unlike the great collapses of the past, large portions of the world, large viable portions

00:43:59.000 of the world are not breaking.

00:44:00.960 So when we get to our next rise 20, 30 years from now, all of the building blocks of society

00:44:07.380 of today will not have been lost.

00:44:09.100 This is not the Bronze Age collapse.

00:44:10.740 This is not the fall of Rome. This isn't even the disintegration in the aftermath of World War II.

00:44:18.860 There's pain. There's going to be a lot of ugly.

00:44:23.120 But we're not looking at a civilizational break here like we have every other time.

00:44:31.440 That's a good thing.

00:44:33.960 It's so interesting that you say that because we talk to people,

00:44:37.320 and a lot of commentators not very intelligent people journalists political thinkers they they

00:44:44.380 make the point that what we're seeing are the final days of rome and you don't think that

00:44:49.420 i think we're seeing imagine if we could see the final days of the roman system without the final

00:44:54.020 days of rome some version of that is where we're going this is not like some this isn't like the

00:45:00.080 dark ages where the arabs held the knowledge but didn't touch it for a thousand years silicon valley 0.94

00:45:06.640 still there. London is still there. And it's going to keep being Silicon Valley and London.

00:45:12.400 What's happening is a contraction of what we consider to be the economic family of the world

00:45:17.020 and the parts of the world that are more viable. And we're going to be able to continue to tinker

00:45:21.840 with these technologies until the rest of the world is ready to rejoin. That could be a lot worse.

00:45:28.080 And Peter, in terms of some of the other things that are going on, obviously you focus on

00:45:32.660 the economics, the demographics, the geography, etc. How does the sort of modern informational

00:45:40.400 landscape play into this? Because the reason I ask this is, often when I hear you speaking,

00:45:46.660 I'm sort of hearing a lot of rationality. And I know, and as you've mentioned earlier,

00:45:53.020 that not all our decisions in politics and in the world in general are made by rational actors in

00:45:59.480 responding to a rational observation of the facts and the data.

00:46:05.240 So we now live in a world where there's an abundance of information, we're all connected

00:46:10.140 by ways of communicating that didn't exist before.

00:46:13.420 How does that affect the landscape and the way that our politics will develop over time?

00:46:18.420 Social media is definitely part of the problem rather than part of the solution because we've

00:46:21.980 given every yahoo a bullhorn.

00:46:24.560 And those yahoos sometimes get together, say the same thing and elect people to Congress 1.00

00:46:28.080 in Parliament. There's not a lot we can do about that at the moment, but I think a bit of a

00:46:33.240 historical comparison, it might be useful. In the 1800s, we had a new technology called the

00:46:40.220 telegraph, which, like social media today, revolutionized our relationship between geography

00:46:46.160 and information. Suddenly, you could send information across a continent in seconds,

00:46:50.580 and that generated yellow journalism. Because like with social media today, there were no

00:46:55.420 restrictions on who could share the information. And so people would just make stuff up. And among

00:47:00.280 other things that got the United States involved in the Spanish American war, because people

00:47:04.720 eventually bought the propaganda. Well, it wasn't propaganda. It was just flat out lies. And that

00:47:09.020 triggered a conflict that also, among other things, is shaping our political space in both of our

00:47:13.760 countries right now. We're seeing that with Trump. We're seeing that with Johnson. We're seeing that

00:47:16.980 with everyone who wants to challenge them. Now, social media will eventually be brought into

00:47:23.560 check, just like the Telegraph did. Eventually, we both passed slander and label laws. We need

00:47:29.940 something like that for social media. Do we do that in a year? Probably not. If so, the Americans

00:47:38.340 would have done it in the aftermath of the January 6th issue of last year. Or is it already the year

00:47:44.120 before? Sorry, time is flying by. But that is an issue for my Congress and for your Parliament.

00:47:50.500 i would expect parliament to act on it quicker because your system is less clunky than ours

00:47:57.140 it's actually designed to government it's designed to govern as opposed to designed to debate

00:48:01.760 so we are in the u.s once again looking to our parents for a potential path out of this

00:48:09.140 please don't let us down

00:48:11.340 well we will do our best peter we'll do our best isn't part of the problem though peter is that

00:48:18.840 No one, we haven't, nobody has really got to grips with this technology.

00:48:23.120 No, and it's new.

00:48:25.780 I mean, remember, social media was only designed, what, 15 years ago,

00:48:29.720 and only kind of entered into the mass consciousness within the last six.

00:48:33.200 It's very, very new.

00:48:36.060 And one of the many reasons I'm looking to the UK rather than the US for the first steps in this,

00:48:41.740 you guys don't have a constitution.

00:48:44.260 Normally, that's a negative.

00:48:45.800 We're seeing that with Brexit.

00:48:46.800 but it means little things like free speech are not inviolable and that allows you to tinker with

00:48:53.440 the legal structure that's necessary to contain this technology without immediately threatening

00:48:58.360 the core precepts of your country this is a good thing because it allows you flexibility that we

00:49:03.920 don't have well it does unfortunately the people in charge instead of trying to find a sophisticated

00:49:10.540 solution to regulate social media instead they're getting the police to investigate comedians for

00:49:15.460 jokes they tell and asking people to check their thinking and all of this other nonsense.

00:49:19.020 That is one of the downsides of your system. I will give you that. There's no challenge there.

00:49:23.260 Not having it all written down sometimes is a negative. Usually is. Not for this. Now,

00:49:28.200 something else that's different about our systems, another reason I'm looking to the UK over the US

00:49:31.480 on this. When your leader does something monumentally stupid, even illegal, you can get 0.99

00:49:41.900 rid of him in a day because you can go through the party as well as through parliament we don't 0.99

00:49:45.660 have that option we're in locked term limits so if johnson was our president today we would have

00:49:50.780 to wait a minimum of two and a half years to ditch him you guys did it in an afternoon

00:49:55.520 speed matters right now and peter there's going to be a lot of people listening to this and what

00:50:03.800 you've painted is a very persuasive yet bleak image of the world and and its future if you're

00:50:10.880 an ordinary person who's listening to this what advice would you give them what would you say to

00:50:15.660 them in order to help negotiate what is coming down the pipe you need to understand where the

00:50:22.500 things that make your life possible come from if it's a secure system you're good if it's not a

00:50:27.860 secure system you need to personally invest in other means of sourcing otherwise when those

00:50:32.660 things go off you'll just be doing without there's it's it's not a simple process supply

00:50:39.200 chains are messy. But anything that ultimately links back to the Chinese or the Russian system

00:50:43.460 in particular, you know that's going away. You know that's going away very, very soon.

00:50:49.160 And so best to be forthright with what the nature of your problem is so you can actually start

00:50:55.940 solving it before it explodes in your face. Germany is a textbook case of what happens 0.99

00:51:00.940 when you do the opposite. Well, there we go. So if you're watching this rather than you're

00:51:06.780 ordinary person, start manufacturing everything that you've been buying from China up to everything.

00:51:12.160 Great. Fantastic, Peter. Well, you've given us some pointers there. Before we let you go,

00:51:17.140 the last question we always ask before we ask questions from our supporters, for our supporters,

00:51:22.360 of course, is what is the one thing that we're not talking about as a society that we really should be?

00:51:27.580 I think of all the economic sectors that are facing upheaval, the one that people are really

00:51:31.600 under estimating is agriculture. We've got a global disruption to the entire fertilizer

00:51:38.800 supply chain right now, and building new fertilizer capacity is a minimum of a three-year

00:51:43.780 investment. Roughly 80% of the calories we grow is grown with imported inputs, and we're going to

00:51:53.060 have a really good idea by September, October of this year of just how bad on a global scale

00:51:58.400 the harvest is going to be it will not improve until such time as we have rebuilt that fertilizer

00:52:05.080 capacity and that's you're talking 2020 2025 at the soonest uh we're not ready for that none of

00:52:12.780 us are ready for that all right pizza so listen uh thanks for coming on the show what i will say

00:52:18.680 is this you've made a lot of predictions i hope you're wrong about all of them uh right back at

00:52:23.920 you. However, if you're not, we'd love to have you back on the show in like a year or so. So

00:52:32.100 you can say, I told you so. That's why you don't have electricity anymore. That's not why I do

00:52:37.540 this. And if you don't have electricity, they're not going to be watching. Yeah, I know. I know.

00:52:43.020 But anyway, my point is, we appreciate your time. We appreciate your expertise. And we hope you're

00:52:49.200 wrong about everything. But if you're not, let's do this again sometime. Sounds great.

00:52:52.700 the book is called

00:52:54.060 The End of the World

00:52:55.320 is Just the Beginning

00:52:56.360 and there it is

00:52:58.420 if you were not enthused

00:53:00.780 and inspired

00:53:01.640 and motivated enough

00:53:02.760 by this interview

00:53:03.500 make sure you get the book as well

00:53:05.220 Peter we're going to ask you

00:53:06.380 a couple of questions

00:53:07.180 from our supporters

00:53:08.020 for our locals

00:53:08.640 but for now

00:53:09.220 thank you for coming on the show

00:53:10.520 and thank you guys

00:53:11.800 for watching and listening

00:53:13.000 we'll see you very soon

00:53:14.300 with another uplifting episode

00:53:16.080 just like this one

00:53:17.120 and for those of you

00:53:19.500 who like

00:53:19.960 it has been fun

00:53:21.280 and for those of you

00:53:21.840 you like your trigonometry on the go it's also available as a podcast take care and see you soon

00:53:27.560 guys how does peter see the almost total worldwide control by certain countries of certain key

00:53:34.980 minerals like antimony and lithium playing out in the next few years

00:53:38.960 We know you've been waiting

00:53:51.140 And your full Great Outdoors Comedy Festival lineup is here

00:53:55.020 On September 11th through 13th at Arendelle Park

00:53:58.200 Comedy superstars John Mulaney with Nick Kroll

00:54:01.200 Mike Berbiglia and Fred Armisen

00:54:03.340 Adam Ray as Dr. Phil Live with Miss Pat and TJ Miller

00:54:06.980 Hassan Minhaj and Ronnie Chang with Michael Costa and more hit the stage.

00:54:11.560 Three nights, five shows, huge laughs.

00:54:14.700 September 11th through 13th.

00:54:16.380 Buy tickets now at greatoutdoorscomedyfestival.com.

TRIGGERnometry - August 04, 2022

Economic Disaster is Already Here - Peter Zeihan

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