Financial Crash Expert: He Predicted The 2008 Crash, Now He Says Capitalism Failed, It’s Too Late!

0:00 Our political class has lost control. The right is getting more right than ever, and any time you have a combination of economic problems and social and stability and cultural problems, you put all those things together, it's not a good time. It's a time when conflict, violence, civil unrest, all of these things are much more likely. Oh civil unrest is absolutely guaranteed. And what you are now seeing is I I fear the beginnings of a totally new level. of separation between people. We are on the road to civil unrest and violence. But I'm glad we're having this conversation because it these are difficult things to talk about. And that's why China is outperforming the rest of the world. There are so many freedoms you don't get in America. That you do get in China. Would you prefer a Chinese system if you to America? Yes. What about political freedom, freedom of the individual, freedom of speech? Do you think Steven could run his show if he was a Chinese citizen in China and have any conversation he wanted? And you think communism is Bad. I grew up in the Soviet Union, so yes, I do think communism is bad. And you end up in a place where the the economy is just uh screwed. So you get equality, but everyone's just equally poor. What is your perspective on AI I think the biggest threat to humanity if you talk about AI is actually the fact that you're creating something that's smarter than you. And if you're creating a superior species, you will become an imperialist.

1:13 species. Best case scenario you become a pet. Worst case scenario you become a cow. So my next question logically becomes what can we do about it? There is an actual solution that's available that's clear. I think what we should really be focusing on is This is where uh we're likely to have very strong disagreement. Guys, I've got a favor to ask before this episode begins. The algorithm, if you follow a show, will deliver you the best episodes from that show very prominently in your feed. So when we have our best episodes on this show The most shared episodes, the most rated episodes. I would love you to know. And a simple way for you to know that is to hit that follow button. But also it's the simple easy free thing that you can do to help us make this show better. And I would be hugely grateful if you could take a minute on the app you're listening to this one right now and hit that follow button. Thank you so, so so much.

2:02 Constantine. In terms of everything that's going on in the world at the moment, what are the subjects that are Most concerning to you. I think

2:16 That I wrote an article a couple of years ago called Why I Fear the Future. In which I basically predicted that what you were about to see was The rise of far left populism? And the rise of right wing populism.

2:31 and in case some cases far right populism. Uh particularly in Europe, but also elsewhere. And I think that's exactly what you're seeing in the Western world. And then geopolitically, uh the war in Iran uh will have an impact on the global economy that's only going to fuel that further. So I think the trend you're people have spend the last ten years talking about polarisation w without really understanding the process that was driving it, in my opinion, uh particularly in Europe. And what you are now seeing is I I fear the beginnings of that process actually going to a totally new level. Of

3:06 uh separation between people. And what's the root cause of that? Well the root cause of that is a mixture of things. Of course, part of it is economic. Europe has basically stagnated. uh since the great financial crisis. This country, Britain in particular, has stagnated economically. But a lot of it is uh the consequence of mass unfettered immigration and people's concerns about

3:30 what has happened culturally and demographically. And these are difficult things to talk about which p you know some people find challenging to even discuss. But uh it it's very clear to me if you look at you know, the AFD in Germany, Marine Le Pen in France, Georgia Maloney in Italy, Farage and Rupert Lowe in the UK and what we saw in Sweet or however you however you pronounce it, uh uh a couple of weeks ago in Spain. These are all things just, you know, p the visual medium is very powerful when you see sixty thousand people enter a country Illegally in in a day. that sort of imagery is likely to create a very strong amount of pushback. Oh, you you came prepared, huh? Yeah. Well You know, if you're a normal person and you see this

4:13 Whatever your other views you just go, Well Like Like what's going on? That that will be your question. Whether you're a really nice, not racist person who really, really thinks you know, no human is illegal like you're thinking what is going on here. And the the compassion and empathy you might feel for people

4:31 um fleeing conflict, for example, is unlikely to extend to something like this because we know that these people are economic migrants overwhelmingly. And they're coming, if you ask them, which many people did, uh and ask them why are you here, they will say, I want to have a better life for myself, which I you know, I don't blame people for. I myself have moved from a foreign country to Britain. And if you were in that position, would you do the same thing? Well, I I don't know the exact position that they're in. I I I what I can tell you is I came to Britain legally because That's what I thought you're supposed to do. Are you supposed to follow the rules? So if I were in that position

5:05 Uh it depends what you mean by that position. You know, if I had a wife and children, would I abandon them to try and get go get to Europe and you know, I don't know, but a lot of these people are overwhelmingly young men who probably don't have a wife and child. So it's difficult. I don't know. But if you're in a situation where you had a wife and child, let's say and there was a promise that if you got over that border over there, you could have a better life for your wife and child, a significantly better life for your wife and child and send the money and potentially even bring them over at some point. Um if you were currently living in a point of hardship, would you cross the border? I don't know. Okay, I've never been in that situation and we don't know. But but the issue for for us, I think, in the West is not so much

5:46 Do we have empathy for those people? Y it's kind of unimportant actually for this conversation. At a at a personal level, you want to feel like we're all empathetic, but the reality is it's a practical issue. We've talked about this so many times on your show about how so much of our uh decision making and public conversations driven by what makes us feel good as opposed to what works. This doesn't work. I think there is an element of the importance of that question in the sense that if you don't have empathy for them You blame them. You should inside the hotels. I I think the blaming of them is a pointless distraction and is kind of irrelevant. The question is what should we be doing about this?

6:24 Right. And the fact is this is not acceptable. And what caused it? Yes. Well, what caused it is the world is unequal. And There are poor parts of the world from which people would like to move to richer parts of the world. So it's a very understandable uh decision. But unless you have a world in which everybody has the same quality of life everywhere, which we're never gonna have because that's not how the world works, then countries will have to have borders that they enforce. And that was the consensus view around the West For for the entirety of of its history. And how is this

6:55 Contributing. to the problems that you described in the West. If you're looking at that and you are uh in the center, center right, maybe old school leftist who who sort of believes in high levels of redistribution but believes in borders at the same time. You are looking at that and you're going to Our political class has lost control.

7:14 Our political class allows tens of thousands of people to enter Britain illegally on small boats. every year. People on the right will look at that and say, we need to get tougher on borders, we need to get tougher on immigration, we need to get really tough on illegal immigration. And as long as the political class left and right refuses to address that issue as they have done for this entire time, you will see more people on the right adopting harder line slogans, harder line policies when it comes to illegal immigration and uh immigration more broadly. So it sounds sound a little bit to me like we're saying Unless we dress address this, then the right has a very effective marketing campaign.

7:53 Well, the the right has a very legitimate grievance about what's happening to their society, and that will be very effective electorally, of course. And the other thing you said was stagnation, economic stagnation, I'm presuming. Yeah, of course. So this polarization That you're talking about. This economic stagnation in Europe. Where does this lead? Us. Well, I hate, as you know, to to make predictions about the future with any great confidence, but I think any time you have a combination of economic problems and social and stability and cultural pro problems, you put all those things together

8:25 Historically speaking, it's not a good time. It's a time when Conflict, violence, civil unrest, all of these things are much more likely. Doesn't mean they're guaranteed, doesn't mean you can't change course, doesn't mean you can't course correct. But if you don't, we are on the road to s best case scenario civil unrest and violence. For sure. Do you see evidence that there's gonna be a remedy to course correct the issue you've described? Currently I don't see that being addressed, but we are in in a in a time when

8:55 unusual things are possible and so at the next election in Britain, you may see The right wing populists come in and and then the question is, can they do the things that they're promising to the people who will vote for them? And there's a big question mark about that, because the things that they'll be promising, which is about addressing not just this problem in terms of people currently coming in, but f the people who are already here. You know, I don't know how much exactly we spend now But there was a point at which we were spending eight million pounds a day on hotels for illegal immigrants. So it tells you the scale of the problem, and it's a very difficult problem to address because the legal system and uh international conventions and all sorts of other things that are now in place and are now enforced make it very difficult to address. It's not a dishonesty, but the thing that Even once you've dealt with illegal immigration, the country's not magically going to be better.

9:46 you have to have an economy that's growing for people to feel like their lot has got better. The fact that you have rightly removed people who should never have been allowed in in the first place will contribute somewhat to easing their concerns. But that's not going to solve the problem. And so even if you get right wing populists into power, that's not necessarily a remedy for addressing the tensions that I'm talking about. And in the United States a different set of issues, but maybe symptoms are similar. Polarization's leading to an inequality is leading to a rise in socialism and and then the right is getting more right than ever. The right is getting more right than ever. I think Trump's election was kind of like the peak of it and and it's just carried on in terms of ice and deportations and and whatever. And look, y there's a lot to be criticized about the Trump administration. The one thing they have done is close down the border.

10:35 And I I think that's a very good thing and it was very necessary. But in terms of the the rise of socialism and look, democratic socialism, we should be honest and just call it communism, because that's that's what it is. It's a very unwise but understandable reaction to the economic circumstances of young people's lives in particular. If you're locked out of the housing market, which historically speaking, is really the only way for an ordinary person to accumulate capital. If you don't have access to capital, at a time when asset prices are inflating and and have been inflating for a long time. You're basically watching The possibility of capitalism run away from you. Of course you're gonna turn over the Apple car.

11:11 And you think communism is Bad. I I grew up in the Soviet Union, so yes, I do think communism is bad. Ideologically it might sound great to people, and I understand why. Quality to all men, everyone being, you know, equal uh in every way, it's wonderful. It just doesn't it's not compatible with human nature. For s all sorts of reasons. The most obvious one is the you know, the the basic eighty twenty rule uh eighty twenty rule of things. Most people are not aware of it, but what communist try communism tries to do is to take from from the disproportionately productive twenty percent and spread it out across everybody else. The problem is that disincentivizes the twenty percent from doing anything. And so you end up with a communist system like the one we had in the Soviet Union, where no one really has any incentive to produce, to create, to innovate.

11:55 And so you get a very stagnant economy. And on top of that, then you have central planning where the government is trying to decide what to do. they're not getting market signals about what's the right or wrong thing to do, and you end up in a place where the the economy is just uh screwed. So you get equality, but everyone's just equally poor. Steve. Uh huh. What do you think in terms of what Constantine said to me?

12:17 What he said that he thinks there's civil unrest potentially. Well civil unrest is absolutely guaranteed. Uh there's I I all I can see is civil unrest ahead of us because it isn't just communism in that sense, the Russian Soviet version that you experienced uh that's failed. It's also capitalism. And capitalism has failed us. I think capitalism is going to fail, and you guess who I blame for it?

12:39 Economists. Neo classical mainstream economists have a fantasy vision of capitalism, and that fantasy vision has led them to trivialise what's happening with global warming. And most people are simply aren't aware of that they've they've done this. So nobody is worrying about global warming because they think it's something not nobody, but the the political authorities are not putting any effort into global warming because they read the economists and the economists tell them that by twenty one hundred if temperatures rise by three degrees There'll be a tiny fall in GDP, so why worry about it? In fact, we're starting to see the beginning of it this this year with the crazy El Nino coming our way, the crazy weather we're living through in in England right now. And the system is going to collapse because

13:25 the productive system won't be able to cope with the change in the climate. So that's what I see as the main source of Conflict. I don't I think the everything else we're seeing is trivial compared to what that's going to do. What about so Constantine talked about

13:39 These crosses in Suaeta in Spain. Yeah. And he w was alluding to the fact that this needs to be addressed or this polarization, which is having lots of downstream consequences, isn't gonna change. What is your perspective on the I am again, there's so much of a fog of misinformation around these days that it's very hard to know whether what you hear is accurate. But the proposition I've been told is that Morocco has close relations with Israel.

14:05 And the Zionists wanted this as a way of destabilising Spain, which is about the only country in Europe that is attacking the Zionist state. And so this was a political setup. Well, hold on a second, but Spain.

14:18 has the ability to enforce its own border. is uh arguably is being argued, and I don't know whether it's right or not. I'm giving up on trying to say whether something is AI or not these days. But it's the argument has been that because the Spanish government came out and was critical of Israel, critical of Zionism, then this was a set up by the Israelis through Morocco to disturb Spain. If my four year old Once sweet said. Eleven o'clock at night.

14:48 That's true. But I am the idiot who gives it to him and that and he then stays up all night. And European countries refuse to enforce their borders. Whatever you think Israel is doing, by the way, I've seen literally zero evidence to to support this theory, but let's say it's true just for the sake of argument. It's ultimately up to Spain.

15:07 It's up to Italy, it's up to Britain, it's up to other European countries. To enforce the border. That is something that we are capable of doing. And it's not like this incident, Sweeta, is the only time this has happened. Three million people slightly under, but around three million people have crossed the Mediterranean on boats in the last ten years. So and that's not Israel doing it. Us allowing it to happen. Okay, if we do if if the Libyan slave markets exist because we came, we saw he died. The extent to which the West has destabilized the regions from which the migrants are coming has to be acknowledged. If you don't acknowledge it, then you're blaming the people who are the sandwich between two political blocks. But I I did acknowledge it.

15:53 understand and I've been against a lot of the foreign interventions that the West has engaged in. But A lot of people and we know this from surveys, from interviews, from the types of people who come Most of these people are economic migrants. Doesn't mean that they're wrong to pursue a better life, but they're they want to move to Europe. And I have a I look, I this is not me saying it, it's a friend of mine who's an Iraqi and this is what he says. He says, In the Middle East, we have a saying. If you want to work, you go to America. If you want to live on benefits, you go to Europe. Th we are creating an incentive structure in Europe that allows people to come and feel like this is a place in which we will provide a life for them that they don't have to provide a life for themselves in. That

16:36 Incentives to I mean you're an economist, or although an economist An anti economist an anti economist. Do you remember that we said we disagree about the importance of incentives and also incentives to push people out of where they are rather than to reconstruct where they are and make it more livable. I'm all I'm all for that. I mean the one country we're not seeing a lot of uh economic migrants from is China. Now You say what China's very nobody wants to leave the place because it's booming. If there was an economic stagnation. In

17:06 Europe. Would this subject Inflammatory for people. I think back again we're failing on all sorts of fronts and the UK is not a burning economy.

17:20 Well, we're we're borrowing money now to pay off money we borrowed before. This is wrong. Tell me why. Okay. Have you ever done accounting? I've done my own accounting. Okay, okay. Do the ac do the accounting and you'll see the government does not borrow when it spends more than it takes back on taxation. You you were asking me about us spending too much money. I don't want to get a bog down on this. The reality is if you spend more on welfare than you do on defense. So if you spend more on welfare than you do on education, or if you spend more on welfare than other things, you're not spending money to help somebody get the mental health intervention they need to get

17:52 back into work. That's not what we do in this country. And Andy Burnham actually is talking at least about attempting that. What we do instead and we've had people like Fraser Nelson, uh I think he was the editor of the spectator at the time, now he's of the Times who's done a lot of research into this and what he basically uh c came to is that what we're really doing is putting people in a position where they're they are getting money in order not to get back into work. The the incentive structure is such that it actually makes no sense for them to to get a starting job, which will not necessarily be well paid, but uh the tax incentives just mean that that they're actually better off on welfare. If you do that and if you spend a significant portion of your budget on that Plus you've got an aging population, so you're spending a tremendous amount of money on pensions. Pensioners vote, there's lots of them. They have the ability to make sure the government is really looking after them. If you do that over time, your ability to do productive things, you talked about productivity, is not going to be there. And and by the way, the difference between the US and and Britain and Europe more broadly, in my opinion, is partly cultural. Uh you you've moved to the US recently or you certainly spend a lot of time there. There isn't business m mindset that exists in America that

19:04 just isn't there here. And the other thing is, you know, the their uh attitude to what we call welfare, what they call entitlements, is different. And there's a there's a good and bad side to that coin. In America you really, really have to work very hard to to to survive. Um because the welfare system isn't there to catch you when you fall nearly as much. You don't get the same quality of healthcare if you don't have the money to pay for it. You can fire and hire people much more easily, as you know, as an employer. Uh all of those things mean that the US economy can accelerate a lot faster. But You know, I always say it's America is a is a uh a great place to be. Rich.

19:41 hard place to be kind of middle class and a very difficult place to be poor. Europe is kind of the other way around. And and so I think those are some of the differences in productivity as well. I'll ag agree with Constantine that America does have that can do attitude. And they also do have the attitude that failure is the first step on the ladder of success. Okay. There is an e expectation or acceptance that people can fail and then recreate. It's not a stigma in America where it's more of a stigma. over in the United Kingdom and Europe. So I think that is part of it. It's also the sc scale of the American economy. Uh England, I think, has suffered more from the Thatcherite Swiss uh twists.

20:19 cutting back government spending, meaning people have less money in their pockets to spend, meaning there's less economic economic activity, meaning you've got to go into debt to be able to start a business. All these things end up slowing down the rate of economic growth. America Has not made the same mistake that the European Union had made with something like the Maastricht Treaty. There are elements of the American system uh which give you a a high rate of technological

20:46 innovation and development than England gets. So Steve, so just to pick up on some of those points then are you saying that the UK don't have a spending problem. No, they don't ha they they have the problem they're not spending enough. The government should be spending more. The government should have made it. Should be spending more money on opposite on what education. Welfare infrastructure, dams for a start. You know how many dams one of the reasons that we've got a potential crisis in the UK right now is the UK, after privatizing its water forty years ago, has one less dam now than it had forty years ago. So you want the government to spend more. The government should be s providing the infrastructure. Well that enables economic activity to act to occur. That's what we're seeing happening in China.

21:29 And that's why China is outperforming the rest of the world. When you cut back on providing the infrastructure, you mean you've got to build your own roads to connect your factories together. Okay, so by not providing the long term stuff, which a government should finance, you end up hobbling your whole private sector. Rather than enabling it. Some of which, in my opinion, are accurate and some w which are really inaccurate. When you say infrastructure welfare, da da da da Uh infrastructure. Like I'm in favor of government borrow money to invest in things that generate productivity. And I'm in favor of them spending money to create that stuff. Same thing, but the the borrowing is not important. the government spending money to invest in useful infrastructure, productive infrastructure. I mean one of the other reasons the US is growing in a different way to us, uh the UK has the highest industrial electricity prices in the world. So if you're trying to

22:21 Do AI. you're not going to do it here. If you're trying to do industry, you're not going to do it here. Right? So if if the government had actually made it easier to build nuclear power plants, to do other energy things that drive down the cost of electricity, then you're putting yourself in a position to succeed in industry and to succeed in business. And the government spending money, whether it's borrowed or not, to build infrastructure, housing, roads, there is definitely a a case to be made for that. Giving money to people not to work. Which is what a lot of the welfare bill is.

22:51 That is not productive. And so you've got to separate these two things out. Money for infrastructure, wonderful, great. Money for keeping people Unproductive, very bad. And culturally it creates a lot of problems as well, because you create a society of people who are effectively takers and not creators, and it's terrible. I I don't think we're doing that. I mean I've seen unemp unemployment benefits used to be adequate. like I'm talking from my Australian experience now. Uh they're not any more So the welfare that's provided to people

23:19 Doesn't mean that they can survive and and live with with nothing. There should be a button just down below here. And if it says subscribe, you're already subscribed. If it says subscribe but that means you're not yet. And if you're not subscribed, please could you do us a favor and hit that button. It helps the show more than you know. And according to the algorithm, you're someone that watches our show, but you haven't yet hit that button. Thank you so much. The other point was you said you think the government should be spending even more money. Yeah. Um

23:46 w the point around how we generate growth Does blink. Fundamentally to energy. Um we have There's a big conversation happening at the moment with with Andy Burnham. I think he spoke to Trump about this with about the North Sea. Yeah. And about the oil in the North Sea. Do you think we should be drilling there?

24:01 Uh look. Uh the energy conversation it Uh uh this is where uh uh we're likely to have very strong disagreements. But I think it's important to get the g the groundwork in place before we have the conversation. Um we Uh I mean Steve said that with you know p no one's taken climate change seriously. I I would argue and I think we I think it's based in in what we have seen. We've talked about climate change in such a way for such a long time now that you literally have people who are so terrified they're not having children, they're so terrified uh they've got climate anxiety. We had the the you know the phenomenon on Greta Thunberg going round, you know, giving speeches everywhere being taken c as a credible person. Let's look at the reality, okay?

24:39 Almost all of the CO two emissions c not almost all, but the overwhelming bulk of the CO two emissions of the future, the greenhouse gases of the future, are going to be produced in two countries, India and China. That's just a fact. Uh the world now uses more oil More gas and more coal than it ever has done. Ever.

25:00 And people will say, Well China is building uh dams and wind turbines and solar pa ba uh panel arrays, et cetera. It's true. But they're also building coal power stations every week. They're building every form of energy that they can, because they know something we in the West have forgotten, which is GDP is energy transformed. No, they would completely agree. Okay. Okay. Just a shock, but I'm fantastic. In other words, if you don't have energy, if you're not creating energy You are going to be poor.

25:29 Омост О wealth creation in the history of humanity has been about using more dense fuel. So you go from hay, which you put into horses and cows and other animals, to coal to wood, to coal, to uh oil, to to gas. to nuclear, you get denser, denser, denser. You're creating more energy and you convert that energy into wealth, into prosperity, into hospitals, into schools, into money, into everything, right?

25:57 So any society Which Creates a structure where energy is expensive. and not abundant is going to get poorer. It's one of the main reasons we are stagnating in Europe, in a way that America is not. Okay? In terms of climate change.

26:12 I don't want to get bogged down in how impactful this is, who's doing this, who's doing that. The hard reality is that Britain can literally do absolutely nothing about climate change. Britain produces one percent of global carbon emissions. Right. And the narrative was, well, it doesn't really matter that we only produce one percent of global carbon emissions because Britain has moral leadership in the world. And so if we reduce our energy consumption and if we increase our energy prices and we uh slightly repackage and we use slightly more wind and slightly more solar, uh then other countries will follow suit.

26:47 That was the argument. It's very clear now. that that is not remotely happening. India and China, if you talk to people in India and China, they're like, We want to grow, we need our people to be prosperous, we need our people not to die. I mean, life expectancy in India at the time of partition in nineteen thirty nineteen forty seven was thirty two years old. That's how long people lived it. Life expectancy at birth was uh thirty two years old. It's now I think over seventy or maybe an eighty now at this point, right? And that's because they've been burning fossil fuels and they're gonna keep burning fossil fuels, and they're gonna keep using nuclear and they're gonna do everything else. Britain can't affect that.

27:19 We can't do anything about it. And climate ch the planet will get warmer. So what we should be doing is investing in infrastructure that allows us to cope with that reality. In exactly the way the Dutch have done. So they build flood defenses and other ways of managing the fact that sea levels change. That's the only thing that we in Britain can do about that issue. And in the meantime Rather than suiciding our economy by creating less energy and therefore reducing our our ability to grow our GDP, what we should be doing is creating a system where we produce abundant cheap energy. And you know, Nick Clegg former deputy prime minister, there's there's a very instructive video of him fifteen or twenty years ago being asked why we're not building nuclear power stations. Him saying, Well, it's gonna take fifteen, twenty years, uh well, it's been fifteen, twenty years and we don't have any bloody nuclear power stations because of the short sightedness of our political leaders on these issues. So Should we be pumping out as much CO two into the atmosphere as we can? Absolutely no, we shouldn't be. Should we have a sensible energy policy that is about making sure that we actually grow our economy and keep our people wealthy and also have the money to make the adjustments we're gonna have to make to the fact that t climate will change and we can't control that. That's the real question. It's not about do you believe climate change or whatever. This this is a silly conversation. The real conversation is what can we do about the inevitable reality of the climate changing?

28:39 And you're saying we can't do anything to stop it, but you're also then saying we should just build defenses We should adapt, and this is what human beings have done throughout the history of our of our s of our civilization and of our species. There have been times when the planet has been way warmer than it is today. Twelve thousand years ago, so there were hippopotamuses swimming in the Thames and other people. I'm pretty sure it is a beginning of coming out of the side. Would you just check check me on that, please? twelve thousand years ago Britain was coming out of the Ice last Ice Age. The climate was cold. Yep. Tunger like. Just let

29:15 So because it was called but it says. Hundred and twenty thousand years ago. Yeah. Okay. Hundred and twenty thousand. Okay. What I'm saying is the climate has changed In v in all sorts of different ways. Two thousand years ago the Romans grew rapes on Hadrian's wall, right? And uh two hundred years ago it was really cold, the Thames would freeze every year, etcetera. This happens, people have to adapt to it, uh, and we're going to have to do it. So, Steve, the assertion there is that the UK can't do anything about climate change.

29:42 in terms of affecting on a global scale, but they can defend themselves. Against it by the way. You can't walk. We can't. We can't. You cannot defend yourself against what England faces if climate change continues. England will become a this is the most some of the most recent research on what's called the Atlantic Medianal Overturning Circulation. You're aware of the AMOC? That translates about ten degrees Celsius of heat from the south to the actually the the middle of the p of the p uh Atlantic up to Europe. If it stops running

30:12 Temperatures in U on average four by ten degrees. So I guess the central question here is that is there something the UK can do to affect global climate change? Not on its side. Okay. Not on that side. Because when you look at China and India Yeah.

30:26 They have increased their carbon emissions. China is actually having falling per capita emissions at the moment, even though they're building a power station. They're building so many nuclear. And far cheaper than they're doing in the West, so many wind and solar that they're actually reducing their carbon footprint rather than capita. And if capita's falling as well. So they're reducing their carbon emissions. They're reducing their carbon emissions. And that's been the last two years, it's only in the last two years this has started to happen. But China is now reducing. India absolutely going gangbusters in the opposite direction because it's far less developed, of course, than China. So they'll keep developing it. They will keep on doing it until such time as they have their first wet bulb. Catastrophe. And when, say, ten or twenty million people die from heat in one day, then I think India will start doing something very different. But

31:15 Th there's a there's a belief this is something we can adjust to. And the the forces we're talking about are far beyond anything humans have any capacity to adjust towards. Now the AMOC the reason I mentioned the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, I love the abbreviation. It's gonna make this country go on orch because the temperature range for London, if the AMOC fails, is es estimated to be between minus twenty degrees Celsius and plus thirty five.

31:44 See, can the UK do anything about it if if our emissions are speeding to we cannot do anything as as a as a bunch of nations fighting each other. Okay. This whole attitude that we're going to this contest with that country, this country is better than that country, et cetera, et cetera. This is dooming us to extinction. I'm going to out Greta Thunberg, Greta Thunberg in this conversation now, because I know a lot more than you guys do about the climate science. Okay. What I'm really saying is if we talk about human incentives, do we have any control over what India decide to do? No, we don't. Do we have any control over what China decide to do? Not whatsoever. So can does does the UK then need to does it need to be a bit selfish? We need to realise how serious the situation we're in is And what will we then do? We realise it, sir. Let's say we accept your point, yeah. This is the reality. Okay. What what do we do? We would have to drastically reduce energy consumption.

32:28 Ah. Okay. Energy consumption is vital for GDP. I completely hundred percent agree, and I know the statistics on this front. The link between Gross world product, the equivalent of GDP for the planet, and energy is incredibly tight. They're one for one. If energy goes up, so does gross world product. If GWP goes down, so does energy consumption. They're one for one. So Steve, when you say we need to reduce energy, do you mean the UK? I mean the species. I mean human species. So how does Andy Burnham Do that. Th we are not set up to deal with this problem because we're broken into nation states. So we need world government to reduce world energy consumption. We're gonna be stuck with that, yes. We're gonna be stuck with it. I'm glad we're having this conversation, because at least this is the first time and I mean this in a genuinely respectful way. It's the first time I've ever heard anyone be honest about this issue. That's what you want. You want world government.

33:19 You believe it's inevitable. By ignoring this problem, we have got to the scale. And if we had taken the advice of the limits to growth fifty years ago, we would not be having this conversation. We have delayed for half a century. Is there any solutions that you believe are actually possible? Mm. No. No. There we go. You've done a public service here because you have

33:46 Show me. what it is that sits underneath all the conversation about climate. It's A best case scenario people who know there's nothing we can do, but what we should do is flail about in the meantime and in order to not address this issue impoverish not just in this case our citizens and our fellow people, but actually the entire world. That's that's what this is. And the entire challenge I have to this is I don't believe in suicide for token gestures towards not solving a problem you're claiming to solve.

34:16 Right. We are not going to solve this problem by creating a world government and reducing energy consumption that is never ever In a billion years of the case. Now what we're going to do instead is run into the crisis and fall apart as well. What we're going to do instead and look, you may there's a possibility you're correct about that, but the only choice we actually have to solve this problem is to create forms of energy that do not produce CO2, but produce GDP. clean energy. That's what we're gonna have to do. By the way, it's what we've done throughout history. And we need to make that clean energy more favorable. In terms of the economics to India and China, but you need a world government?

34:54 to reduce usage of the horse and car and replace it with the automobile. No, you didn't. You came up with a better technology and people adopted that technology voluntarily because it was advantageous. This is not going to be solved by making everybody poor because Well, for the reasons that Steve himself articulated, but it's also not going to be solved by making everyone put it because people will not do it. You say you need everybody to to hold hands on sink and is we need to have engineers in control and we're talking about it fifty years ago. Engineers in control. Engineers. So we should stop having elections.

35:28 Ha. Compared to with politicians we get? Yes. I'd rather get rid of elections and have engineers running everything. But they do a damn side better job than a politician's ever doing. Well and this is why I say this is a public service, because this is what this is the true face of the public. of the climate catastrophe narrative. We don't want elections and we want to make everybody out in the air. I'm going to go back and say where it started. It started not in seventy two, when the Limits to Growth study was published, and the Limits to Growth said that if we If we continue on the current trajectory, we're going to have an ecological catastrophe sometime in the twenty first century. Okay? They deliberately left the dates vague. They knew they couldn't predict the actual dates, so they said nineteen hundred's the start of our work, twenty one hundred's the end. In the middle of their projections, roughly speaking about the time we are now between twenty thirty and twenty. Twenty fifty.

36:18 The system would start falling over because we'd be eliminating the capacity of the planet to support our species at the energy consumption levels that we have now. So they said we had to Reduce dramatically pollution. per unit of output. it uh r stabilized population at four billion people. That was the argument. They wanted to stabilize at four billion people in nineteen seventy five.

36:41 Okay. We wouldn't be having this dilemma if we'd actually taken the advice of the engineers who wrote that report. It wasn't written by hippies. Most people think limits growth by a bunch of, you know, dope smoking hippies in in in Rome. It was written by engineers and MIT. One of the th you know, one of the things that I um I spend a lot of time doing on this podcast is trying to find reality through like Wishful thinking. And you know, I have a lot of conversations about AI, for example. Yeah, it d I see so many parallels with AI because we're saying look, AI could be a big problem.

37:11 But When you look at human incentives The US are trying to beat China and China are trying to beat this person, they're trying to beat them. And even in the US, you've got you've got open AI trying to be anthropic. So when you look at incentives, you go, Okay, I kinda see can see how this is gonna play out. There's an inevitability to it. In the example you gave there, what I'm hearing is reduce pollution. Which would have meant. getting China and India and the US and the UK and Europe to all cooperate. Yep, which is as has proven to be

37:38 Impossible without political systems. And the other thing you mentioned was re stopping people having babies. Stabilizing at four billion. Which would come with a t a lopsided economy, lots of other problems. I mean we've seen the it it it wasn't it just like it wasn't the and the fossil fuel lobbies and conventional economists undermined all that stuff. So the reason we're having this conversation now is you basically think we've got to adapt. It's like we're going up a hill so we've got to you know have a lighter car or more power for the car, whatever else. I'm saying we're five inches from a from a brick wall.

38:11 Okay. And we're not going to slow down in time to hit the wall, we're going to hit the wall. Price yourselves. Okay, brace for impact. That's the advice I give. The only way out of this is to do it collectively. We're going to do it competitively and shoot each other in the foot in the process. If we'd realised that each nation had to reduce its energy consumption or get a higher efficiency out of its energy fifty years ago. But who's the we're engineering who's the we that would have realized this? You would have needed a world government bank. You needed politicians who understand what the engineers told them. Right. Instead you had politicians who are listening to the media and listen to the oil interests and trivialized these whole dangers. And that's why now it's in a catastrophic I mean I truly believe we're on the edge of a catastrophic breakdown of human civilization. In that situation, if you wanted to stop it happening, you would need to have global coordination, authoritarian, et cetera, et cetera. If we'd done it fifty years ago, we wouldn't need any of this. Steve How would you go to India and tell them that they can't

39:13 use energy when they're The women are dying in childbirth and their children are starving. I think And you go to independent. We have an ignorance about the biosphere on which we live.

39:28 Okay, the the uh understanding of the biosphere itself and the impact that our civilization has on the biosphere is trivial. And therefore we have these discussions as if the biosphere will take care of itself. I think we all agree that climate change is both real. And a huge existential problem. And the evidence for that is we can s we can observe it, we can measure it. We're I mean, even now we're going through one of the sort of record breaking periods in weather volatility. But s sort of the Western United States and Western Europe are experiencing historically severe record breaking weathers at the moment. Yeah. So my next question logically becomes What can we do about it? It's too late.

40:08 Mm. Okay. The extent to which we're unaware of the energy forces we've unleashed on the planet are huge. And that people think all this stuff is gonna happen and you know

40:21 It's a couple of you know decades away, or s you know, half a century away, and somebody else's probably I've got a feeling the next ten years, what could happen. The the beginning is a breakdown of our s our capacity to maintain a civilization on the planet. I'm probably wrong in terms of timing. I'm probably putting it too far in the future. Okay? I might be wrong in terms of it. Yeah. Could be less. I really, really hope all three of us live long enough to be able to sit down. I hope I'm wrong. I'm desperately hoping I'm wrong. Steve, can you define what you mean by climate breakdown specifically? What does that look like for me as I walk out onto the street? Let's say the one of the the bigger ones again, the Atlantic Meridianal overturning circulation, the AMOC. The most recent estimates is that's going to stop functioning sometime between last year, which

41:05 'cause hasn't it happened, in twenty ninety five. When that happens, the temperature on Europe will fall, roughly speaking, by three degrees per decade. for three decades. So the temperature in year on average will fall by ten degrees. the extremes will become even more ridiculous. So this is research from Tim Lenton, Exeter University Professor of Climate Change. The range of temperatures in London will be between minus twenty and plus thirty five. Okay. Now, what's the chance of London surviving

41:33 that scale of temperature range. You can you can't even cope with leaves on the train lines here. That's one thing I found ridiculous. Leaves on the rail? Has that never happened before? What are your engineers doing about that? Why don't you have trains that move the leaves? of unprepared nature. We are completely unprepared for the scale of what we face. But uh look, the we're we're being d silly about it. I I think if we ground this conversation in the realms of the possible uh and look at what we can do. It seems to me that the only thing we can do is create forms of energy that do not produce emissions that we believe are contributing to the changing climate. A world government's not gonna happen. The level of coordination is not gonna happen. The authoritarian

42:28 uh and world run by engineers is not gonna happen. These are not realistic things to be talking about. Let's talk about what we actually can do. Yeah. What we can do is plough all the money we have wrongly ploughed into trying to mitigate this issue, into trying to create forms of energy that are actually going to work Not only to solve this problem, but actually to fuel prosperity, to fuel technological innovation and to to create a better world as opposed to uh thinking that, you know, like we're all doomed and nothing is possible. Of all the things I thought would ever turn up on my desk, a red light toothbrush was not one of them. Here we are. This is made by our sponsor, Bon Charge, and you'll probably know of their red light face mask and their infrared sauna blanket, because I use them religiously and I've spoken about them on this podcast before. But Their toothbrush is new to me. I was some one of these a few weeks ago, and ever since then I've been using it religiously because I love their products. And this is the first toothbrush that combines both red light and near infrared light with sonic cleaning app.

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44:58 Cognitive benefits that might just change your life. So let's let's take a look at this situation, which is somewhat linked. This is uh the Strait of Hormuz. Yep. This is US oil reserves at the moment in rapid decline. Yep, yep, yep. W what is your perspective on what's going on in the

45:13 The Middle East at the moment, Constantine. Why has this happened? So The one of the things I think it's very important not to do is project our own ideas onto people who we've never met, like President Trump. I assume none of us have met President Trump, et cetera. So I can only tell you what I know from speaking to people in his administration, other people who have some access to the administration's thinking, et cetera. My understanding and it's a very frustrating thing uh to have to articulate and to believe, but it is true is that the level of analysis we all have about the complicated machinations of how different departments in the US government s you know work out the complex it really isn't that's complicated than that and why I think we all wish it was sometimes. Trump walked into a trap.

45:56 Uh I think he walked into a trap that it was a sugar high from Venezuela. Yeah. and a and a sort of belief that we can solve every problem. And Iran is different to Venezuela. Iran has the ability to choke off the world supply, not just of oil, but I think as you discussed with Steve when you recently had him on, of gas, of helium, natural gas of helium, uh fertilizer and lots of other things. And it hasn't quite fed through to the global economy in the way that people have talked about in a catastrophizing way. Uh, but if this carries on, it will do because our stocks you you you've got this talking about oil. But it's stocks of other things too. Are gonna

46:36 start running out and the price of those things is gonna go up. And so then the many predictions that people like Steve have been making are are likely to come true. We had Senator Ted Cruz on our show around the time this war was launched. He's not only a huge supporter of President Trump, but a huge supporter of this conflict and he advocated for it. And when I said to him look Come the mid terms. This is not going to be good for you and for your party, and his word his exact words are quoting from memory, so maybe they're not his exact words, but the the th the the broad theme of what he said was, uh if we're still in this conflict, come to midterms, we failed. I suspect that that is almost certainly going to happen. You've just shown me a picture of President Trump's approval ratings. They seem to verify

47:18 what I'm saying. And so I I think he's walked into a trap. And uh you've had people on I sh on your show to articulate why the trap will continue to to bear uh fruit for the Iranians. You know, there's this great saying in in the East. In the West you have all the watches, in the East we have all the time. They don't have midterms in Iran. They can wait. they can take the pain and the punishment that they're currently experiencing

47:41 for as long as they really need to. This is kind of like the battle of Stalingrad. They can take the pain, they can throw men at the problem, they can throw bodies at the problem, as long as they need to, because they know the US can't go the distance. Uh and because of that, the incentive structure is for the Iranians to hold on as long as possible. Because they know that the US will have to deal with this reality. So I think it's been a catastrophic mistake. Aaron Powell And you think Iran are actually going to be stronger on the other side of this? Nobody knows exactly. They're definitely stronger now than they were. But look, th this all of this is very unpredictable. I think we should be very careful about it. uh making predictions about the future of countries that we understand very little in the West from the outside. It's very difficult for anyone outside of Iran today to understand what's happening in Iran. The example I like to give is uh Nikolas uh Nikola Chaoscu uh the Romanian dictator he had a ninety two percent approval rating the the day before he was uh seized with his wife and summarily executed. The predictability of how long the regime survives in the in these countries is difficult uh to judge from the outside. Currently Iran has a chokehold on the global economy and they're leveraging it very powerfully.

48:49 You predicted a famine, Steve. Yeah, I think it's still going to happen. But the thing is it's it's again, it's a question of what the stocks are. Like, for example, we know this story about the US strategic oil reserve. We also know that China had a huge reserve and they've run that reserve down. From about one and a half years of supply of oil for them to I don't know what amount, but they're going back in the opposite direction now. So we didn't need to know what the stocks of all these products were around the globe beforehand. So when you make an estimate yes, there's going to be a you know a running out of oil, well China reduced its oil consumption. America's running its stock down. At some point, though, with the with course the flower still blocked through the strait, then there won't be the oil, there won't be the fertilizer, there won't be the sulfuric acid, all these things will not be available, and then we'll have a a physical hit coming out of all that.

49:36 And I can I completely agree Trump was sold a pup. And we're paying the price. Is there any way out of this in your view, Steve? I think America has to leave the Middle East. That's about the only long term resolution. America stops interfering in the Middle East. If if they were to leave now, the issue that they face is they've now given Iran they've sort of established a presidence where Iran can use this straight of home, which is like a proxy for the global economy, as a bargaining chip. And so if you're Iran, you now can proceed potentially with your nuclear program. And if they come back, you shut down the global economy via the straight up for news.

50:11 Yeah. Well you you you sort kne cap it and To provoke them in the first place. Something that's very important to me is one of the hopes I had for the Trump presidency was that uh he would find a way to bring that conflict to a close. This has only made things better for Russia. The the fact that they've had to lift sanctions on Russian oil, for example, in order to compensate for the lack of supply. This is allowing Russia to continue this war and to fund its war. And so I just I I it it's been a a disastrous intervention, um and really, really unfortunate uh in the way that it's been done. Do you think this is gonna be a

50:55 Completely tarnish his Presidency more than any other issue? It depends on how it ends. The only way out of this that I can see at the moment look there's Again, these things are very unpredictable. I think we're really should be very honest about that. But the way that that I see it at the moment is his only way out really I don't know about pulling out the Middle East, that seems a bit extreme, but the best way for him to get out of this is to find a way To s to sell Americans on the lie that it's been a success. Yeah.

51:22 That is the only way he's gonna get out of this. If he can find a way to sell a terrible deal, which he's going to have to sign with Iran, as a victory for America, which Trump is uniquely placed to do, let's be honest, right? His ability to sell things is pretty pretty strong. Then he can leave with less egg on his face than otherwise, at which point how the world judges him for a temporary interruption of oil and fertilizer and gas supplies. How history g judges him is hard to say, not least because He's still got time in his term to

51:54 either do good things or or to do more things that don't work out well. But uh at the moment this is a conflict whose whose only resolution that it seems to me is for him to accept the reality that he made a mistake. And to find a way to extricate himself. From it without admitting it was a mistake. Steve mentioned that he predicts a famine is coming. A global famine. Yeah. Do you agree with that? Depends how long it runs. Mm-hmm.

52:18 Depends how long I mean, I have friends in Australia who are farmers, and when this first started they were telling me they can't get hands on fertilizer beyond even at the quotas they already had. And again context here is that a lot of fertilizer comes from via the Strait of Hormuz. Yeah. And goes to all over the world. But even if even if say you get your supply of fertilizer not from the Middle East, Well, given that the supply of fertilizer is no longer coming from the Middle East, the people who used to get it from the Middle East now have to get it from somewhere else. And there's less of it to go around, therefore price goes up, quotas allocations go down, you can't plant the crops, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. Like on the first Australian front. I've got

52:56 Bruns in the same boat and they told me that uh about half the usual wheat crop has been laid. Because of the cost of fertiliser. Which and we used Australia used to produce seven times as much food as it needs for its people. So it's going to produce three times as much food, three and a half, and that means, of course, less availability for food around the world. And this is going to be a global phenomenon. Where where it hits again there's very hard to say because you don't know what stocks exist, you don't know how dependent different agricultural systems are on the fertilizer that they that they bring in. But yeah, it's it's a catastrophically bad decision, and the only way that Trump can get out of it is to lose and declare victory. That's what he'll do.

53:35 W there's midterm elections coming up which could have a big impact, but there's also the twenty twenty eight elections coming up for the presidential position. Um a lot of people are now forecasting that The Democrats. the left side of politics, or potentially even a socialist candidate. It's gonna get into office. Do you think that would be a net good thing for the United States?

53:54 Well, after Trump anything is gonna be better. Okay, so yes, I do because Again, I think America's pushed far too far in the you know, independent self reliance, don't let the state do anything. Uh and you get an unbalanced economy out of that. Do you think the US needs a democratic socialist candidate? Yeah. Yeah. Why? Because they will promote the need for the the public goods that the private the public sector provides and the private sector does not. We've got the classic illustration here with water supplies for the UK. We privatized them forty years ago. What's the consequence? You can't swim in any river in the United Kingdom anymore because they're polluted with

54:30 Theses. The beaches are impossible as well. We have one less stand than we had forty years ago. Privatizing resources which take a long time to construct is a recipe for those resources not to be construct created in the very first instance. Whereas China with obviously a socialist economy has built the energy supplies you were mentioning earlier. They have provided the uh the transportation, the education, it's extremely hard to get in. You can't buy your way in, that the education is publicly funded. All these things show that you need a balance between the public and private sector, and America's gone too far in the private direction and we now need to switch b switch back in the opposite direction. China's model would be better. Yeah, because I mean if you if it it provides the infrastructure that enables a private sector to thrive. If you don't have the energy, as you were saying earlier, then you can't even imagine building a private sec

55:23 s sector facilities, or if you do, they've got to be used at the expense of some other activity. So we're seeing Americans protesting about rising energy prices because of data centers being established and rising problems with the water supply for the same reason. Steve would prefer a socialist government coming into the United States in the next election cycle. Democratic socialists that's a big difference. Democratic socialism is is the same idea that has been tried repeatedly and failed repeatedly, which is communism. It's sort of the idea that if we elect communists instead of having them uh win in the revolution, that it'll all be better. It won't be. Their policies don't work. And by the way, the one thing the Soviet policies obviously did not work. Yeah.

56:02 Russia failed, no doubt about that. Okay. China's succeeding. So what's the difference between the two? Why is the Chinese system being so successful and the Russian system so abjectly a failure? Well, in the nineteen thirties a lot of people thought that the the rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union was a massive success. lie all the time about the real figures in their economy and they create fake growth and fake numbers about all of these things. We know, for example, that almost certainly according to the intelligence assessment of pretty much any every Western intelligence service, the the the Uh Covid virus came from a lab in China. It's something they lied about to the world and still haven't paid any price for. And the way they lie about that is the way they will lie about other things, including economic growth and all sorts of other things. In the short term, models can look appealing. uh if you don't understand the full implications of what it is. But also you've got to remember that uh the the the Chinese system is not just about the economy. It's also about what rights

57:02 People have and don't have. the right to express your opinion freely, the right to criticize the government, the right I mean we talk about private enterprise in China. If you're a private uh business owner in China, there's no such thing really, because the moment you are inconvenient to the government, you're gonna disappear and come back suddenly with a totally different new set of beliefs about what's right and wrong and who's Ryan who's wrong. So um I think we should be very, very, very careful about praising communist dictatorships. I have friends in China, both nationals and and uh Immigrants.

57:34 Uh. Who tell me that the the level of discussion and argument in China is far, far greater. than people think. You don't get left versus right conversations. Okay. You've got a political system which you're

57:47 uh you you're not going to change communist party being control and so on. But the level of debate over what policies should be, uh, whether the government should balance its books, whether the government should run a deficit, whether the government should build infrastructure or not. Um There's enormous debate there. So people do have there's more conflict. But it's mediated. It's not conflict that leads to flipping from one party one year to an opposite attitude at the next election and so on. Do you think Steven could run his show if he was a Chinese citizen in China and have any conversation he wanted? I think so.

58:22 Maybe not as broad as this one, probably more limited, I will agree with that. Okay. They probably would be more limited. But I've been involved you know, if you've talked you spoken on the China's global television network, I presume. I haven't. Okay. Well that's the conversations that I've had there are comparable to what I'm having here. And so those conversations get broadcast in China. Well you're clearly very in favor of China. It doesn't surprise me that they would have you on their T V channel. That's not the point I'm making. The point I'm making is Xi Jinping, the current president of China, has purged Dozens of people who who are internal critics within his own party. People in the military, people in the political system who disappear one after another, and uh business leaders, uh all of all kinds. The reason I keep having to remember things I've got I've got the Jack Ma but others too. Um I've got young uh I've got new dad brain, so I haven't slept properly because I understand that problem. Um but yeah, so if you're a business owner in China, it's not really your butt. It's like kind of like in Russia, there's no private

59:17 private enterprise. the the Russian the Russian situation, yes, there was only one motorbike. Making company. in the entire country. China apparently has about a hundred and thirty car companies. Okay. Um they have managed to combine the central planning that the Soviets had with the competition that the West has in one model. And a lot of it comes back and I'd love to know the extent to which they're influenced by

59:44 A p a a a friend of mine called Janus Korny. It was a Hungarian economists, he died about four years ago, who tried to understand why did the Soviet system fail and why did the American system grow. And he came down to saying that the Soviet system was constrained by supply. you couldn't get all the inputs you needed, so and you had only you know one there was no innovation taking place in the Soviet system. The China system is rampant with private sector innovation. and companies are competing against each other rampantly in that system. Somehow they've managed to combine the state providing the infrastructure and the foundation and letting private diversity occur

1:00:21 both between different corporations and between different provinces in China. So It is a comp it is it's the same family of systems, but they've managed to overcome the drawback that the Soviet system had. Let's accept that at face value. What about the point I was making about political freedom, freedom of the individual, freedom of speech, political repression of opponents, imprisonment of people who don't agree. A state sanctioned murder, et cetera. What about that? Well I'd look at America's prison system and say you've got a a different version of the same poison. Critics of the government on mask.

1:00:57 Well, a couple have been shot. The whole stuff with the ice you know, and they're talking about the stuff that's happening with Trump now is awful. America has the world's largest prison populations. There are so many freedoms you don't get in America. That you do get in China. Would you prefer a Chinese system? If you're going to be able to do it. Even though you can't criticize the government. I've spent enough time in American cities and Chinese cities to know which ones I prefer. And I'm down to cities of mere four million people, which is a small city on Chinese standards. And you're a I didn't see the homelessness, I didn't see the poverty levels that I see in American cities. In Chinese cities. That's certainly true.

1:01:32 It's exactly the sort of thing that people would have said about aspects of the Soviet Union and nothing. Every Western idiot like Tucker Carlson goes to to Moscow and so my God, the underground. Well, that was built by totalitarian dictators with slave labor. You can get a hell of a lot done with slave labor and then it's not a little bit more than China right now, which has the world's greatest metro systems and the world's greatest high speed rail. So it again I'm not Russian. I wasn't born there. I respect your experience is very different to what I had. growing up and it's a horrific society. And it led to a Yeah, a whole range of horrors as we know. But people things instantly say what happened in the Soviet Union is happening in China. is misidentifying those two systems. Well first of all, what happened in China if you take the entire history of China under communism is actually much worse than what happened in the Soviet Union.

1:02:29 Uh well like I was in there in eighty one, eighty six. Forty five million people killed. Yeah, I know. Right. And I saw literally saw examples of that in Sichuan with children who c clearly had Quarkish or protein deficiency disease because of the flip and floppy of the Central Committee about grain versus legume crops. Horrific things like that. It's what's happened since Deng Xiaoping that has made the huge difference. Now also they did manage to get rid of the landlords, so you didn't have the inequality that occurred in the China system beforehand. You did have education system as distorted as it was, uh n everybody had education. They set the foundations. What's happened since Deng Xiaoping is what's been a remarkable transition. And Politically they still have the you know the the party is still in control. You have the potential to get the sort of dynasty effect that we see in North Korea. According to the major global happiness surveys in the UN World Happiness Report, people in the United States report overall happier life satisfaction than people in China.

1:03:31 Does that matter? I don't know. I don't know the survey, so I just one issue the survey. Essentially it's saying that the United States ranks as thirty as twenty third And China ranks as sixty fifth. The report uses several mechanisms asking residents of each country to evaluate their current life on a scale of zero, which is the worst possible life. Yeah. To ten the best possible life. Yeah.

1:03:53 And China ranks as sixty fifth. It if you go back forty years ago, you would have found China down a hundred and fiftieth. Okay. It's the rate of change in China over the last forty years which is breathtaking. This is something that I've made for you. I realize that the drivers here audience are strivers, whether it's in business or health. We all have big goals that we want to accomplish. And one of the things I've learned is that when you aim at the big, big, big goal, it can feel Incredibly psychologically uncomfortable because it's kind of like being stood at the foot of Mount Everest and looking upwards. The way to accomplish your goals is by breaking them down into tiny small steps, and we call this in our team the one percent. And actually, this philosophy is highly responsible for much of our success here. So what we've done is that you at home.

1:04:38 can accomplish any big goal that you have is we've made these one percent diaries and we released these last year and they all sold out. So I asked my team over and over again to bring the diaries back, but also to introduce some new colours and to make some minor tweaks to the diary. So now we have a better range for you. So if you have a big goal in mind and you need a framework and a process and some motivation, then I highly recommend you get one of these diaries before they all sell out once again. And you can get yours at the diary. Dot com And if you want the link, the link is in the description below. So

1:05:13 Bringing this back to the sort of where we started a little bit, um, on the United Kingdom, we've just appointed a new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham. Do you think he's gonna be successful? What do you mean by successful? Do you think he's going to improve the UK's position to such extent that we Changed our trajectory. No.

1:05:31 He has absolutely smashed the PR side of things. There's no uh arguing with that whatsoever. But In terms of the tectonic stuff that we've been discussing today, he is not remotely going to address any of it. You know, we started the conversation with popular populism, immigration, ma illegal immigration, etc. He seems to be totally doubling down on on what the Labour and before that the Conservative government were doing on that. On the economy, he is not going to restart the British economy, not at least because it takes a long time and a mandate he doesn't have for the reasons that Steve alluded to. And the only question really is, is he going to call an early election? Which would be

1:06:11 the ballsy and probably smart thing to do, because I don't think he's ever gonna be as popular as he is now. That is a question that remains because it probably would be the sense the rational thing to do, but it is a big risk because elections are unpredictable, election campaigns are unpredictable, nobody knows what will happen once it kicks off. But uh fundamentally I don't believe he's going to be the transformative candidate that will change Britain for the better, no. Can anybody? That's a very good question. I think it's it's a very difficult job. I think it's theoretically possible you need a whole different set of policies. Um Policies look like we talked about it already. So would you drill in the North Sea? It's not something that I'm an I'm not an expert in the oil industry, so I don't know. I mean one of the things I've never understood is why we don't build more nuclear power stations. Part of it is they're so expensive to build here because of the regulations and the famous example is with like bat tunnels for train lines.

1:07:05 that cost more than the trains and all these kind it's very difficult to build energy infrastructure in the UK. I would Pursue every avenue of every kind, and probably including drilling for oil and other things, to create the cheap abundant energy that we need to grow the economy. Number one. Uh for the reasons that we talked about in the climate discussion. The other thing is you've got to Uh the the situation where you literally have tens and maybe even hundreds of thousands of young people now completely on the scrap heap, no chance of ever getting into employment because they have anxiety or they have depression. You know, when I remember being twenty going to the to to get a job as a student to the student employment office and sweating buckets because I was so anxious. It was an un un like a weird experience I'd never been through. I'm sure you know I know your background, you've had times when you were scrapping and scraping and you would have been depressed or anxious and all sorts of things.

1:07:54 Those are obstacles in life you have to get over. Those are not medical problems by and large. Some people have really serious depression, we shouldn't trivialise that, but by and large, you have to overcome anxiety, you have to overcome your feelings of uh discomfort about the reality you face and get into the workplace. So we have to do that as well. Uh for the reasons that we talked about earlier, I think one of the most important policies to pursue is to make sure that there are no benefits of any kind for foreign nationals. That will create a system where rather than doing Terrible optics. Like the ice, you know, rounding people up and trying to get them out of the country, people will just leave. The people who shouldn't be here, who are not contributing will leave of their own volition. Yeah. Or does does cr is crime not a consequence of

1:08:41 Desperation. Crime I'm not talking about crime. I'm talking about if you are a foreign national and you live in social housing and you receive benefits. I don't understand why you're here. I I understand taking care of British people

1:08:56 who who were born here, or even who've become British citizens. You know, once you become a a citizen of the country and you commit to it at that point you've you fall through the net, you get an injury. W like we should look after you. But by and large, perhaps other than health care, which I think i is something we'd as a compassionate country would want to provide to anybody who who needs it. I don't think you should get access to social housing, unemployment benefit, or any of the other things if you're not a citizen of this country. And I'm very pleased to see that more and more parties are adopting because while they will Is that truly what happens? Because I'm imagining You know, I'm imagining people start coming over on boats or you remove the current social housing infrastructure, wouldn't that just result in a lot of homeless people?

1:09:43 That we then that creates another problem. No, because I'm not talking about illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants apply for asylum and uh d there's a different process for that. I'm talking about people who are here legally. who have settled status here or who have a visa to be here or whatever. So they shouldn't get social housing. So w what if you removed that today they will leave. How? What do you mean? Or get on a plane and leave. If they can get on a boat to get here and pay people smugglers three thousand euros, they can pay a hundred quid on for EasyJet to fly back to wherever they came from. It's not hard.

1:10:15 It's exactly how I would leave if I had to go back to where I've come from. It's not difficult. People pretend you c like this is complicated. It's really not complicated. People will follow the incentive structure that's in front of them. If you can come to Britain and get benefits as a foreign national, you will come. If you can't, and you are the sort of person that wants benefit, you will leave. It's really simple. And the people we want here, if if you want to talk about immigration, there's some really good things about immigration. You want immigrants

1:10:41 Who come here from other countries and create businesses. They will come. They will stay and they will continue to do what they did. So you think Andy Burnham's ultimately gonna not be successful? By the definition that you gave, which is like a transformative Prime Minister who changes the the the fate of the country.

1:10:59 No. There's this term called wokeism that people talk about a lot. It's often associated with Hm. I mean you can probably explain it better than I can. I believe I can. Yes, I think you should explain it. Okay. Wokeism, uh, in certainly in the way that it's been implemented, is a hierarchy of oppression.

1:11:17 uh based on various demographic characteristics. In other words, it's a system that says an outsider looking in to this conversation between the three of us. Can say Without knowing anything about any of us, which one of us Is more oppressed.

1:11:34 than others and which one of us is doing more of the oppression and therefore to whom victim status should be accorded and to whom oppressor status should be accorded. So you don't win on this one, I'm afraid, Steve. You're a pale, male and stale. And therefore you're the oppressor. Um I am an immigrant.

1:11:51 So somewhat oppressed. You're black, so you are like, you know, way at the top of the chart of oppression. You've been and you know, if I think if you compare the all our three bank balances, you might find that's not quite true. But nonetheless, my point is it's it's a very simplified, uh and frankly racist way of looking at the world. And then it says from that it follows that we must pursue policies that seek to address these. people who look like us. It's a way of judging people by as groups, not as individuals, and pursuing social policy aimed at ensuring what's called social justice. Last time you said to me. We need to stop worrying about how things make us feel rather than the consequences of our actions.

1:12:31 Yeah. Wokeism is the idea that we should really, really focus on what makes us feel good and really ignore what works. I think what we should really be focusing on is what works. And I thought our climate discussion I misspoke about the years, but the the actually where we came to I thought was very constructive, which is like what do we do about this And when you have that conversation, you get to a constructive place. Right.

1:12:52 I think we all agreed the only way to do it is to create forms of energy that are actually going to be clean. Innovation. Innovate but that's what we came to. Yeah. But but before that we were all talking about how what makes us feel good and bad and and what we're scared of and et cetera. So I I think that's part of it. Steve. We need to stop worrying how things make us feel rather than the consequences of our actions. We actually need to understand the consequences of actions. Absolutely. That's do you think we focus too much on what makes us feel good.

1:13:21 And not enough about w how does our system actually function? Right. What works. Okay. And that leads widerly to my position on climate change as well as my position on economic policy. Just getting any of your thoughts on all of this stuff that's going on with AI at the moment. Uh and the impact you think that's gonna have AI is a potentially transformative technology, without a doubt.

1:13:42 Okay. You think about the sort of future we might imagine for a you know, a wonderful human species is to the stage where we're all have universal high income, to take a quote from Elon Musk. The m machines do the work and we live in a world where the machines are doing it Star Trek style. That's That'd be your dream outcome. To get there. How are you gonna f give people income if they're not working anymore? Okay. The only way to do that is the government has to create the money. Now that is something which I don't think Musk has thought through. If people d who don't own capital, and that's the vast majority of the population

1:14:18 therefore don't have an income. They can't buy the goods being produced by the robots in the first place. So you need a mechanism that enables people to pay for the basic goods and services to stay alive, and then if you want to become wealthy, you've got to become an entrepreneur as well. So you could tax the AI companies? Instead of printing money? No. Taxation takes money out of the economy. Okay. It doesn't It doesn't pay for services, it takes money out. There's excessive money creation. If the government simply spent and didn't tax, then the money supply would be growing at twenty and thirty percent per annum. And you would have to do that.

1:14:51 hyperinflation, without a doubt. Okay. That level of money creation. So the taxation is there to take excessive money creation out of the say let's take one of the big AI companies, let's call them company A. Tax company A fifty percent of their I don't know, their profits. Give it out as a U U BI or something. I don't know. You'd need a system like that because If AI works, then all the manual labour, all the clerical, boring clerical jobs will disappear, okay? And if they disappear and people don't have incomes, then we end up in the hunger games. And that's the fear that I have. If we if we just go for a totally private sector approach to AI, then we end up as Either the hunger games or the government. Provides.

1:15:31 an income for people to enable them to have a basic standard of living and if they want to go above that they've got to become entrepreneurs. How are you feeling about AI constantine? Well it's a mix of things. This is why I if you remember last time we spoke I we talked about the fact that I think my anti communist credentials are pretty well established. But I but I did say that I thought that if we get to the position where AI is doing all the work communism was an inevitability, i.e., from each according to his ability, which will be zero, to each according to his needs, which will be whatever our needs are, right? So once we get If and when we get to that. If and when we get to that point. That seems kind of inevitable. The mechanism by which we achieve that, whether it is taxation or whatever. Yeah. I struggle to understand the economic concept that Steve has been presenting, but you know, I I I d we probably don't have time to get into that. Nonetheless A form of redistribution.

1:16:23 will be inevitable because, as we spoke about last time If six people in the world are own all the revenue generating. Assets. in the world, they're either gonna have to share it or they're gonna find their heads on spikes.

1:16:37 Mm-hmm. That's a this effect. Unless they can have really powerful robots to stop the rest of us from climbing over their big walls, even then the heads are gonna be on spikes. So I I I would not recommend that that approach to the the big tech AI oligarchs. But I think we're talking about I was gonna use the term long term. No one knows what short, medium and long term is in AI because nobody knows how quickly we're likely to get to that point where we're talking about which is kind of Artificial generalized intelligence, i.e., a machine that can think like humans and probably faster and better. And robotics. And ro and and then of course it will create robots that can do physical things faster and better than humans.

1:17:19 But we are not there at the moment. I think is fair to say. Or consequential issue of our time. I do. Because it does permeate even subjects like immigration and so we talked about socialism and capitalism. All of these things change in such a scenario. Yes, they do. Yes, they do. And we talk about economic stagnation. I mean it's a relevant conversation. Private debt, irrelevant conversation in that scenario. But I suspect we're not gonna get there. Uh overnight. It will take some time. In the interim, what I say to the guys at work for me is, you will not be replaced by AI.

1:17:51 You will be replaced by someone who uses AI better than you do. In the interim. In the interim. So If you are a young person making your way in the world These are tools. And you want to be using these tools.

1:18:04 as efficiently as possible if you want to succeed in the current environment. And I think that situation will carry on for some time. I think the to me the biggest risk is actually not the economics of it. I think economics will probably be painful, but actually ultimately potentially beneficial once we put the If we put the right heads on spikes, you know, in the extreme scenario. I'm being met hyperbolic and metaphoric here, of course. Uh or maybe not, we'll find out. Um But I think the b the biggest threat to humanity i uh if you talk about AI is actually the fact that you're creating something that's smarter than you. You you're creating a superior species. And if you're creating a superior species, uh you will become an inferior species. And if you become an inferior species, you only need to look around in the world at the world in which we live. to understand what that means for you. Best case scenario become a pet.

1:18:54 Worst case scenario you become a cow. I I've really tried uh you know, I've had so many conversations on the show about artificial intelligence and I've really tried to like reason my way to a different conclusion. It's not possible. I can't. You can't. That's why I keep having these bloody conversations, because I'm hoping that someone will say something. They won't. About this idea that a more intelligent species especially in a world where it has legs And can move through physical space, which is what Optimus is accelerating towards won't B superior to me as it relates to like the

1:19:25 I know the the pyramid of uh the hierarchy. Yeah, the hierarchy of the higher of power. It will have more power than you and therefore it will make decisions and not you, and therefore it will make decisions that are in its own interest and not yours. That's a fact. But okay, so one argument might be we'll control it and design it in such a way where it can't get there. But maybe Maybe we can we we

1:19:47 Program it. So it never gets to the point where it wants to turn on us. Counter argument is cats. Right, cats absolutely control human beings. The argument I've had actually from um one of the great godfathers of AI is We should be thinking about mothers and their babies. And the argument was that

1:20:05 We're programmed to care for them, even though that Less intelligent. But this is the difference though. Is There's a genetic incentive.

1:20:14 my child is actually much the the economists will understand what I'm talking about. My child has a much more uh much higher future value. To me than me. It's why I will jump in front of a bullet to stop my children from being killed. Because their genetic material will remain in the world much longer than because you have empathy. No, it's not. It's because I mean Richard Dawkins wrote about it in the selfish gene and that's a very bad book. Uh he re he wrote some very other bad books, uh and I like Richard, but that one is not one of them. Steve clearly has his own, is what drives

1:20:52 Parent behavior. Ultimately. Could you program the same maternal instinct into a large language model? Uh I don't think you can, because as we discussed, it will be a superior intelligence and it can always rationalise its way out of that. Because it's not a biological function. Right.

1:21:09 projecting my genes into the future is not going to be it's agenda. It's going to have its own because it's a different species. This was the argument that uh one of the godfathers of Era made made actually after coming on my show. So he came on my show. Um Jeffrey. Yeah, I've seen that episode, I think. Yeah, it was a very good episode. And he came on and he made the warnings that make a lot of sense to most of us. But then subsequently, about a year later, his

1:21:33 He came back to the world with a hypothesis that the only way to do it was to replicate a mother and their child's relationship, this sort of deep maternal instinct where the AI is born. Believing that we are To be protected. Protected. Well, you know, in the same way. Oh, that's interesting, isn't it? It's a nurture. Yeah. It's really about love. Yeah, to have that maternal instinct not to want to destroy us. And that's why I said empathy before perhaps not to let us destroy ourselves, right? So let's make sure that we don't go to war and let's make sure that we don't do this. And let's m I mean, climate is such a big concern. Let's make sure that we reduce the world's GDP uh or energy consumption or

1:22:11 Protection it sounds good, but it it's it's a w it's a it's ultimately about control over your actions. Which will It will take away human free will. I'm still skeptical about LMs actually being intelligence. I it it's indistinguishable, though. This is the thing like the one time that I when I saw it, what I thought okay, this is potentially going to create a different form of intelligence to us is when they attempted to shut an AI down and it replicated itself somewhere else on the internet to be able to Avoid being

1:22:39 You know, but blackmail the guy shutting down this current version of it by leaking the fact that he's having an affair with only with his secretary, all of his stuff. So that's worries me. That's the beginning. That's worries me. So you know it's a bit late. If we're trying to do it now, we're shutting the door after the horse is bolted in that. I'm talking about both. Humans are good at doing both. Operating systems, computers were the same. That's why you have all these bloody security hassles with computers in the very first instance. And we we we unleash these things and find out the consequences afterwards. And the incentive structure, this sort of global economic race for the most advanced frontier intelligence, it's kind of you know this is what I don't know who's gonna stop. It's kind of what we were saying about climate change. I th I think what might cost it stop it is the sheer cost of it. And whether we actually have the physical resources to be able to implement that sort of future we're talking about. Because if you look at the current profitability of these companies, they're losing money hand over fist. I think that's one argument, but the the other would be that it's such an important thing.

1:23:40 Military. A set. Yeah. That you if you don't have the missiles that are smarter You know all the satellites, whatever that are smarter, or the torpedoes, whatever, then you are there's a national security risk. And also how long was Facebook and Amazon not profitable? I think I'm as well. But that's my point. Yeah. But the AI who's going to survive. And looking at the odds, I think it's going to be a Chinese company that survives, not the American, given the sheer cost of those data sets. I I think we've established you're a fan of China and this is Yes, I am.

1:24:14 I'm just saying with you all the road solution. I mean looking at the the Kinney system that just came out recently, the fact that it's an the ironic thing is the communists are talking about open source and the Americans are talking about closed and secretive. Rather ridiculous in some ways. Okay. But it doesn't really detract from the broader point I think we're we're discussing, which is Some AI company talk about profitability, one of them at least will emerge that is profitable, that has the potential to create AGI. And at that point no one can predict but

1:24:48 Logically it is very difficult to see. How an intelligence that is superior to us at the very least will not take away our free will. Far around good. Or at least there won't be one accident. But it's catastrophic. That could theoretically also involve things like nuclear weapons or and this is where I think the spiritual dimension of this conversation inevitably comes in, which is ultimately

1:25:11 None of us can control the things that we can't control. And so the question is, how do you live your life? Now. knowing all these things. And this is why it's always interesting to me looking at people who make certain predictions about the future and then how they actually live a life. You know, people who catastrophize about the climate but buy a big house on the seafront, et cetera. You go, you're clear there's one thing you're saying and then there's another thing you're doing, and that's telling me something about what you actually truly believe deep down. And it's the same with AIs. If AI is going to kill us all, the best and most important thing to do is to enjoy your life now, to enjoy time with your family, your kids, to do things that are meaningful, to do things that you think are important. That's really that any I mean are you going to stop AI, Stephen? Are you you're powerful and successful and influential? So you're not going to stop it. I don't think Steve is, I don't think I am. What we can do in the meantime, uh is live in a way that uh is beneficial to us, our families, the people around us, our community, our country. Uh that's all that's left.

1:26:07 I would think that we can have an impact, though. I think even you watching Eric Schmidt be booed at that University commencement speech he did by seven thousand students was a consequence of What a lot of us do. I mean, all of us do. Where we put information out into the world and we have the public conversation. And once upon a time, maybe we wouldn't have been able to do that because there's there was gatekeepers in media. But now

1:26:29 The public is I think and then you think about the twenty twenty eight eight election cycle, what are the issues that are really gonna be on the ballot? I think AI is gonna be a massive one. I think you're optimistic about that. I think most people don't get this conversation. You don't think it's gonna be a big issue? Not as big as you think it is, I think. The reason I say this is we all think and talk about this a lot. One of the reasons is we've all I imagine been to San Francisco and seen and talked to people, et cetera. The overwhelming majority of people don't have that experience. And most people's ma biggest exposure to AI is they tried an early model two years ago, it it was totally inaccurate, and they went, Oh, this is a bit shit, and moved on with their lives. It's kind of where most people are at this point. But you think in the next two years there'll be unemployment levels, especially the entry level stage of employment And then you're gonna see on the other side that Anthropic hits a ten trillion dollar valuation. Yeah.

1:27:17 And uh people who make that connection, they'll say and I'm I'm unemployed because Trump is bad or they'll say I'm unemployed because Burnham is bad. That's how people think. Uh, unfortunately. And by the way, in terms of you know impact, et cetera, I've talked to a few people who are not not the very people at the top, but uh from what I hear that are kinda similar. There's a messianic cult. in in in in Silicon Valley. Yeah. Of people who believe that they're on the frontiers of being God. And most of them are young men. who are very uh very seduced by the idea of being God as young men have always been. And the when I see them I I see them as

1:27:54 It it's not that they're addicts exactly, but there is there's a gold rush happening. Except it's not gold, it's it's power, it's destiny, it's the ultimate technological breakthrough, it it's your name and history. These are things that are way more powerful than gold. And what I see happening in Silicon Valley is a bunch of young men who are uh absolutely determined to get there as quickly as possible and there is no way in hell they're gonna stop. I know I think you're right. I mean, that's also what I've had in sort of some private conversations where you know some of my friends who know these people have told me these kinds of things. And they have very good arguments, by the way, and we should give credit to those arguments. They will say, and I can I can present to you that argument look

1:28:38 I With my frontier model. I'm going to solve cancer. I with my frontier model am going to solve inequality. I with my frontier model will make sure that human beings never fight another war again. I with my frontier model will make sure that no child ever dies in infancy ever again. How can you be against this? How can you say we must go slower? How can you say we must be careful

1:29:05 Why should I be careful when I'm saving lives? Billions of lives, humanity. I am saving humanity from nuclear disaster. I am saving humanity from climate change which will destroy this planet. If we just go harder at this problem, five years from now we can set up life on a different planet and not worry about climate change. But also China are coming. China China are coming. Oh China. Well the all the better. The the competition will make us all c get there faster. Isn't that wonderful, Stephen?

1:29:33 So if you truly believe that this is both an existential threat. And you believe that it's not. Right now on the course of travel run, it's inevitable. Yeah. Shouldn't you be doing something about it as well? I can't do anything about it. You can't do anything about it. No.

1:29:47 Who can do something? No one. Not Trump? No. What's Trump gonna do? So no one can do anything about it. No. Uh, it's going to happen one way or another, and we don't know what that's gonna be like, but there is no solution to that issue. So that's why I talked about the spiritual.

1:30:03 Nobody knows how AI is going to work out. But I think it's worth operating as if it will. And what that means is I this is why I said the spiritual. You come back to what does it mean to live a meaningful life? For as long as

1:30:17 You do. And by the way, That's true even without AI. You're going to die. And you're going to die very, very soon. All of us. And so the question is, how do you spend the days between today?

1:30:28 And that day. In a way that when you look back you feel like You did the right thing. And I don't remotely do that every day. You know, I lose my temper, I make mistakes, I say things I shouldn't I Yeah.

1:30:41 But ultimately. The only choice any human being on the planet now has is how do you live the time that you have between today and the day you die. And that may be because AI, you know, puts you in a chokehold robotic chokehold three years from now, or it could be forty years from now. Or it could be two hundred years from now, because AI have just solved all your health problems. But ultimately the answer the question and the answer don't change. What do you do with your life that you think is meaningful and important? Earlier on you had more optimism for humanity. Yeah, as it related to the climate change conversation. You you weren't willing to concede that there's nothing we can do. When Steve said we're f five seconds from the Brick wall, you said no listen this year. Well I don't think that's true, number one. But I also think that there is an actual solution that's available that's clear.

1:31:24 Now, I'm not saying the technology currently exists that allows us to build, you know some kind of power station that's clean. We don't have that yet, but I believe we can we can discover that. Uh and you if you look at human history, I think that's undeniable. AI is completely unprecedented and a category Different.

1:31:43 to uh what we're talking about. So the I issue is a different issue. It's not the same. And I am not pessimistic. I am just accepting of the truth of this issue, which is nobody can stop it. Nobody can control it, and ultimately the only thing you control is What do you do when you leave the studio?

1:32:03 Okay. Well then we shall c we shall conclude there. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for writing all these wonderful books, Steve. Got all of them here, I think there's another one on the way, isn't there? And then I've got Constantine's book here.

1:32:18 Uh. What this one. Yeah. Yeah. I'm surprised it's not about China, mate. Sorry, I keep making all these jokes about myself. Especially on the subject of climate change, that was a really productive um, I mean the current book I'm working on, which I hope to finish by the end of this month, is called How Economists Will Destroy Capitalism. Okay. And what it makes The argument for is that economists have completely and utterly misunderstood. what climate change actually means. And therefore they've given us predictions about the damage it'll do to our economy, which are trivial.

1:32:49 And therefore we're doing trivial things to address it. Fantastic. I hope people read it. And I would just say I I think it's very important people in public eye when they say something that's not accurate, hold their hand up. So in the climate conversation, I obviously I it r took a zero away from the figure. It's my mistake. I'm I'm glad for the correction. I'll definitely be more careful when I talk about it. I think you know, the way the rest of the conversation was I think we understood the points we were trying to make. But I'm grateful for for that and I uh appreciate the opportunity to correct the record as well. So thanks for doing that. Well people should go listen to your show as well. Trigonometry. I'll link that below. Fantastic show.

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