WEBVTT - The History of Bread Riot, Part 2 0:00:04.920 --> 0:00:08.000 I love how often the Holocaust has been trending over 0:00:08.039 --> 0:00:12.480 the last year. Um, that's good. That's the thing you 0:00:12.520 --> 0:00:17.800 want to see trending in. Um, it's it could happen here, 0:00:19.239 --> 0:00:23.280 all right, Chris, continue with your bread riots. Yeah, we're back. 0:00:23.400 --> 0:00:26.759 There's more riots. Uh. Now, last episode we talked about 0:00:26.880 --> 0:00:28.880 historians declaring the end of the bread death of the 0:00:28.880 --> 0:00:31.440 bread riot, and like in the sixties and early seventies, Like, 0:00:32.000 --> 0:00:33.680 I think that this is this is one of the 0:00:33.680 --> 0:00:36.000 ways you can tell that period people genuinely thought the 0:00:36.000 --> 0:00:37.239 bull was going to get better. It was that like 0:00:37.280 --> 0:00:41.519 they genuinely believed that like the centralized state and like 0:00:41.600 --> 0:00:44.600 capitalism can always provide foods you want up bread riots anymore? 0:00:44.640 --> 0:00:48.240 You get mark. You if you were born in that period, 0:00:48.400 --> 0:00:51.760 you like grew up and people were fleeing from dynonic 0:00:51.840 --> 0:00:54.800 ass in the street and like getting getting eaten by 0:00:54.800 --> 0:00:58.080 woolly mammoth's and then by the time you're forty, you've 0:00:58.080 --> 0:01:00.319 got the telegraph. So I get it, right. I get 0:01:00.360 --> 0:01:03.880 why people think that that progress was really back in 0:01:03.920 --> 0:01:06.119 those because they got they wiped out the dynamic as 0:01:06.160 --> 0:01:09.679 this is. Yeah, you have seen Howard Taff building the 0:01:09.720 --> 0:01:14.840 pyramids exactly exactly exactly you have you have you have 0:01:14.880 --> 0:01:17.400 seen the future rise up literally in front of you, 0:01:17.520 --> 0:01:21.679 and he went from eating mud to Hershey's chocolate. It's 0:01:21.680 --> 0:01:26.000 it's an incredibly impressive sort of period of modern historical evolution. 0:01:27.720 --> 0:01:29.360 And you know, and one of the things you see, 0:01:29.440 --> 0:01:32.560 like like you'll see like Marxists calling bread rice primitive 0:01:32.640 --> 0:01:36.200 rebels doing like populist mob politics that's been like displaced 0:01:36.240 --> 0:01:39.000 by proper Marxist class politics. And then like every single 0:01:39.040 --> 0:01:41.559 one of these people was like the most wrong anyone, 0:01:41.840 --> 0:01:47.039 like basically from that period until until the moment the 0:01:47.240 --> 0:01:49.240 end of history. Guy starts writing, they are the most 0:01:49.280 --> 0:01:53.480 wrong people like on the planet. Well, it's also funny 0:01:53.520 --> 0:01:56.560 to hear that idea that like there was something primitive 0:01:56.600 --> 0:02:00.360 about these people's class analysis, because like the Brothers Racky 0:02:00.560 --> 0:02:04.440 and Ancient Republican Rome, a lot of this ship they're saying, 0:02:04.480 --> 0:02:06.920 it is not at all primitive class analysis like this, 0:02:07.160 --> 0:02:10.040 it's it's pretty developed. Yeah, And I mean, like the 0:02:10.600 --> 0:02:12.880 Marxist will do some long argument about how like oh 0:02:12.960 --> 0:02:15.200 they have they have false consciousness, they're not trying to 0:02:15.240 --> 0:02:17.160 abolish the class system or whatever, and it's like, well, 0:02:17.200 --> 0:02:19.040 I mean like I look at the Martin, the Marxist 0:02:19.120 --> 0:02:24.200 in the demolish the classystem either so like yeah, like yeah, 0:02:24.200 --> 0:02:26.000 like that these are these are very Andre's something we're 0:02:26.000 --> 0:02:28.440 gonna be coming back to a lot this episode is 0:02:28.440 --> 0:02:31.360 that the people doing this are incredibly sophisticated political actors. 0:02:31.520 --> 0:02:35.240 And one of the sort of modern version of this 0:02:35.520 --> 0:02:39.000 is in the nineteen seventies, not only did bread riots 0:02:39.040 --> 0:02:41.880 not and there's a new kind of bread riot and 0:02:41.960 --> 0:02:43.919 these riots are collectively known as the I M. F. 0:02:44.080 --> 0:02:47.120 Riots um. From from from January nine, seventy six to 0:02:47.160 --> 0:02:51.280 October nineteen nine two, there are riots in Peru, Egypt, Ghana, Jamaica, 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:58.480 like Beeria, the Philippines, a year, Turkey, Morocco, Sierra Leon, Sudan, Argentina, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Panama, Tunisia, 0:02:58.639 --> 0:03:06.400 the Dominican Republic, Haiti, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guadibala in Mexico, Yugoslavia, Zambia, Poland, Algeria, Romania, Nigeria, Hungary, Venezuela, 0:03:06.440 --> 0:03:10.360 La Jordan, the every Coast, Nigeria, ron Albania, India, and Nepal. 0:03:11.600 --> 0:03:15.560 Were you just do like the whackou the Whackow Warner's song. 0:03:15.880 --> 0:03:19.000 It's that's literally all the play I found the chart 0:03:19.080 --> 0:03:21.120 that has all of them. Is like, there's just so many. 0:03:21.360 --> 0:03:24.200 They just keep happening. And again that's only like they 0:03:24.280 --> 0:03:26.839 they're they're still happening. And the everything I should mention 0:03:26.919 --> 0:03:29.480 is those are just the ones that are called the 0:03:29.480 --> 0:03:31.600 I m F riots. There's a bunch of other riots, 0:03:31.600 --> 0:03:33.440 some of which are bred riots, that aren't called the 0:03:33.440 --> 0:03:35.400 I m F riots because they're not really sort of 0:03:35.440 --> 0:03:38.520 like directly involved with the I m F. And and 0:03:38.520 --> 0:03:41.000 that that this raises the question of what the fund 0:03:41.040 --> 0:03:46.440 is an IMF riot? Uh, And the answer is that, unfortunately, 0:03:46.480 --> 0:03:48.480 to to understand why people are throwing ball offous through 0:03:48.520 --> 0:03:52.200 bank windows, we have to talk about banking a little bit. Um. 0:03:52.280 --> 0:03:55.320 I I have talked, I guess at length. Yeah, I 0:03:55.320 --> 0:03:57.440 I apologize, but we will we will get back to 0:03:57.480 --> 0:03:59.240 the riots, damn, But I promise we just have do 0:03:59.320 --> 0:04:02.280 a little bit of bank a king. So yeah, I've 0:04:02.280 --> 0:04:05.160 talked extensively on the show about the crisis of the seventies, 0:04:05.520 --> 0:04:07.600 and you know, the short version is that in a 0:04:07.640 --> 0:04:10.480 thing that is completely unrecognizable today, the global economy collapses, 0:04:10.520 --> 0:04:14.280 inflation skyrockets. Countries across the global South start taking out 0:04:14.280 --> 0:04:16.680 these suggestable rate that they've been taking out, these suggestable 0:04:16.760 --> 0:04:18.880 rate loans, and then suddenly the interest rate spike and 0:04:18.880 --> 0:04:22.720 they start defaulting on these loans. Here's our free markets 0:04:22.720 --> 0:04:25.680 and food riots talking about it. Although the causes of 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:28.680 the crisis run deeper, by the nineteen seventies, many smaller 0:04:28.760 --> 0:04:31.159 nations began to feel the strains of insolvency as a 0:04:31.200 --> 0:04:35.000 result of a world wide recession, successive oil price shocks, 0:04:35.080 --> 0:04:40.120 declining world commodity prices, and accelerating debt service obligations. So basically, 0:04:40.160 --> 0:04:42.680 like if you're a small country, right, the price of 0:04:42.720 --> 0:04:45.440 everything you need to buy, like oil, is going up, 0:04:45.480 --> 0:04:46.960 and the price of what you can sell, which is 0:04:47.000 --> 0:04:51.640 like commodities like copper tin, is collapsing. And these lead 0:04:51.680 --> 0:04:54.240 to what are like these massive what are called balance 0:04:54.240 --> 0:04:56.880 of payments crises, And so we should we talk about 0:04:56.880 --> 0:04:59.000 what about what a balance of payments crisis is? And 0:04:59.160 --> 0:05:00.800 this one was up being really important. Here there's the 0:05:00.839 --> 0:05:04.200 story about che Guevara, like right after like literally right 0:05:04.240 --> 0:05:07.599 after the Cuban Revolution, is he so he goes to 0:05:07.640 --> 0:05:10.640 the US and he's in the he sits. He's in 0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:13.200 this meeting with a bunch of bankers and he's trying 0:05:13.240 --> 0:05:15.360 basically to get Cuba's gold reserves and cup us sort 0:05:15.360 --> 0:05:17.320 of like foreign exchange reserves out of the US. The 0:05:17.360 --> 0:05:20.440 US doesn't steal it. And it was funny about it 0:05:20.480 --> 0:05:22.440 is all the bankers who are talking to him, like 0:05:22.640 --> 0:05:24.680 all of them report afterwards like, woll wow, this guy 0:05:24.680 --> 0:05:27.880 talks like a banker, not a communist. And the specifically 0:05:27.920 --> 0:05:29.560 the reason they were like, oh hey, this guy talks 0:05:29.600 --> 0:05:31.000 like a banker is that he knew what balance of 0:05:31.040 --> 0:05:34.920 payments was. Um. The short answer is at a balance 0:05:34.920 --> 0:05:37.000 of payments crisis is when there's more money flowing out 0:05:37.040 --> 0:05:40.479 of the country than there is coming into it. And 0:05:40.760 --> 0:05:42.440 the result of this is that you run out of money, 0:05:42.720 --> 0:05:45.000 and particularly the thing you run out of his American dollars, 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:46.960 which is the thing that you need to like buy oil. 0:05:48.040 --> 0:05:49.840 So you get these countries that are massively in debt 0:05:49.880 --> 0:05:52.240 and they run out of money, and the only thing 0:05:52.279 --> 0:05:54.000 they could do is turn to like turn to the 0:05:54.000 --> 0:05:56.880 International Monetary Fund and the i m F, who like 0:05:56.960 --> 0:05:58.359 the only description of the i m F that I 0:05:58.400 --> 0:06:00.200 have is that like they're they're they're basically, you like 0:06:00.240 --> 0:06:02.599 if the cartoon Bank of Evil from Despicable Me like 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:06.800 ran the entire world economy. I they you know, so 0:06:06.880 --> 0:06:09.479 the I m F shows up to these countries and 0:06:09.600 --> 0:06:12.120 is like loll lmao eat ship, and they force these 0:06:12.120 --> 0:06:14.960 countries to implement, like in order to get loans, They 0:06:15.000 --> 0:06:18.559 force them to implet what are called stabilization programs because 0:06:18.560 --> 0:06:20.840 of the quote conditionality of the loans. They have all 0:06:20.880 --> 0:06:25.440 these like this really technical, boring like neoliberal like legal 0:06:25.520 --> 0:06:30.240 language for it, the like the this is this is 0:06:30.279 --> 0:06:32.200 all sort of banker speak for if you want another 0:06:32.320 --> 0:06:34.120 loans you can buy food, You're gonna have to rob 0:06:34.160 --> 0:06:35.880 every single person you know and hand them and hand 0:06:35.960 --> 0:06:38.560 us all your money. Uh. This eventually becomes now to 0:06:38.600 --> 0:06:41.960 structural adjustment programs. There's all of this sort of technical 0:06:42.040 --> 0:06:44.040 language disguise what's going on. But what's actually going on 0:06:44.200 --> 0:06:46.159 is that in order to pay off, in order to 0:06:46.160 --> 0:06:48.280 pay the bankers for these loans, they are taking food 0:06:48.279 --> 0:06:53.320 from the moles of children. Um. Yeah, here's a more technical, 0:06:53.520 --> 0:06:57.760 I guess explanation of what's happening here. Austerity programs include 0:06:57.839 --> 0:07:01.520 stern measures or shock treatments that trigger market mechanisms to 0:07:01.560 --> 0:07:06.240 stimulate export production and increased government for exchange reserves. So, 0:07:06.320 --> 0:07:10.200 according to the theory, currency devaluation makes three world exports 0:07:10.200 --> 0:07:14.360 more competitive in the international market. Reduced public spending curbs 0:07:14.360 --> 0:07:18.200 inflation and saves money for debt repayments. Privatization of state 0:07:18.240 --> 0:07:22.200 owned corporations generated more productive investment and reduce public payrolls. 0:07:22.640 --> 0:07:26.160 Elimination of protectionism and other restraints on foreign investment larns 0:07:26.240 --> 0:07:30.560 more more efficient export firms. Cuts in public subsidies for 0:07:30.600 --> 0:07:34.040 food and basic necessities helped to get prices right, benefiting 0:07:34.120 --> 0:07:37.760 domestic producers. Wage restraints and higher interest rates reduce inflation 0:07:37.840 --> 0:07:42.080 and enhanced competitiveness, and import restrictions can serve forum exchange 0:07:42.080 --> 0:07:46.920 for debt servicing. So this has winners and losers, and 0:07:47.040 --> 0:07:50.400 the losers are like everyone in the country that is 0:07:50.440 --> 0:07:54.200 happening to and this is and this is pretty cost 0:07:54.600 --> 0:07:57.280 cross class. Like these policies they hit workers, they hit peasants, 0:07:57.320 --> 0:08:00.920 that hir small shopkeepers, the middle classes annihilated odd just 0:08:00.960 --> 0:08:03.760 like people who are consumers you buy goods, and even 0:08:03.800 --> 0:08:06.560 the sort of like the local capitalists just get screwed 0:08:06.600 --> 0:08:09.400 by this. Because what the I m F is doing 0:08:09.640 --> 0:08:12.720 is forcing every wonder have lower wages, taking massive benefit cuts, 0:08:12.720 --> 0:08:16.680 and massively spiking the price of food. And you know, 0:08:16.840 --> 0:08:20.480 I I want to get remind everyone that this this 0:08:20.560 --> 0:08:22.480 is explicitly what the Federal Reserve is trying to do 0:08:22.520 --> 0:08:24.840 to us right now, Like this is this is the 0:08:24.880 --> 0:08:26.440 kind of stuff that they're talking about in order to 0:08:26.400 --> 0:08:29.760 curb inflation, is to just make the pay everyone less, 0:08:29.880 --> 0:08:32.000 make everyone take benefits cuts, and then increase the price 0:08:32.040 --> 0:08:36.719 of ship. So the winners of this are like six bureaucrats, 0:08:37.040 --> 0:08:41.319 international investors, and like a class of like absolutely horrific 0:08:41.400 --> 0:08:48.600 large agricultural landowners. And this this has about the effect 0:08:48.640 --> 0:08:51.679 that you would expect it to. Um. Between nineteen seventy 0:08:51.720 --> 0:08:54.400 six and late Nino, some a hundred and forty six 0:08:54.440 --> 0:08:57.200 incidents of protests occurred, reaching a peak from nineteen eight 0:08:57.320 --> 0:09:01.640 three to nine five, continuing to the present without attenney suation. Now, 0:09:01.800 --> 0:09:04.160 the authors who are writing this right, they're writing this 0:09:04.200 --> 0:09:06.360 in nine So when they say they continue to the 0:09:06.360 --> 0:09:10.680 present without tentiation, they before the thing is the last 0:09:10.720 --> 0:09:17.040 one of those riots ended like a week ago. Oh yeah, yeah, 0:09:17.120 --> 0:09:22.440 they're still they're still going um so and you know, 0:09:22.720 --> 0:09:25.719 and these these riots are slightly different than the sort 0:09:25.760 --> 0:09:28.280 of like classical bread riots, right, because they are about 0:09:28.280 --> 0:09:30.160 the increasing price of food. It's also about the increasing 0:09:30.160 --> 0:09:33.319 price of fuel or sort of broader austerity measures or 0:09:33.360 --> 0:09:36.680 cuts to services and stuff like that. Um here, here's 0:09:36.679 --> 0:09:40.120 here's a quote about like what these things actually look like. Um. 0:09:40.280 --> 0:09:44.400 Demonstrations and riots typically target specific institutions perceived as responsible 0:09:44.480 --> 0:09:48.800 for the depredations. Marches and protesting crowds converge on major 0:09:48.840 --> 0:09:51.240 thoroughfares and government buildings, such as the treasury or the 0:09:51.320 --> 0:09:55.160 national bank or the legislature, the presidential palace. Looters attack 0:09:55.240 --> 0:09:59.200 supermarkets and clothing stores where fuel and transportation subsidies are 0:09:59.200 --> 0:10:03.200 part of the austerity package. Busses and gasoline stations are burned. 0:10:03.520 --> 0:10:07.320 The international dimension of austerity are recognized symbolically in attacks 0:10:07.360 --> 0:10:11.280 on travel agencies for an automobile's luxury hotels and international 0:10:12.040 --> 0:10:15.760 travel agencies or all that too, but also international agency offices. 0:10:16.640 --> 0:10:18.360 And you know this is going to sound familiar from 0:10:18.440 --> 0:10:20.480 last episode. It turns out that just like the eight 0:10:20.559 --> 0:10:23.120 such people, that the attacks of these things are are 0:10:23.440 --> 0:10:36.440 very targeted. The sort of like forms of resistance have 0:10:36.640 --> 0:10:39.120 changed over time, because you know, this is now. We 0:10:39.120 --> 0:10:42.480 we do have modern political organizations, right, Like we get 0:10:42.480 --> 0:10:45.320 general strikes, you get sometimes you get just noble bread riots. 0:10:46.040 --> 0:10:48.600 Sometimes you get these just things that are like large 0:10:48.600 --> 0:10:53.120 protests and then they turn into riots. And what's interesting 0:10:53.160 --> 0:10:56.559 about them is that these are very sort of these 0:10:56.800 --> 0:10:58.800 are very sort of cross class movements. Right. You have 0:10:58.840 --> 0:11:01.040 your sort of classical sectors that are poor. You have 0:11:01.800 --> 0:11:04.440 like particularly in the global South, you can you have 0:11:04.440 --> 0:11:07.240 your shanty dwellers, you have unemployed youth, you have small 0:11:07.240 --> 0:11:10.120 street vendors or like a crucial sort of element of 0:11:10.160 --> 0:11:12.200 these things you have like just your guy selling cigarettes 0:11:12.240 --> 0:11:15.000 on the street. Um, you get you also get like 0:11:15.200 --> 0:11:17.480 parts of the industrial working class. You get sometimes you 0:11:17.480 --> 0:11:21.520 get unions. A lot of times you get students, you 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:24.040 get public employee sometimes you get professional groups. One of 0:11:24.080 --> 0:11:25.760 one of the interesting things that's reading about this, I've 0:11:25.800 --> 0:11:27.840 read like a few books in this Eric who were 0:11:27.880 --> 0:11:30.520 talking specifically and this this isn't like the nineties, right, 0:11:31.040 --> 0:11:35.160 We're specifically talking about professional groups since Sudan. And it's 0:11:35.200 --> 0:11:37.920 like it's like, okay, it's it's nine. People are talking too. 0:11:38.000 --> 0:11:41.199 Professional groups and Sudan backing rioters against the government. It's 0:11:41.240 --> 0:11:44.079 two thousand and nineteen. People are talking about professional groups 0:11:44.080 --> 0:11:47.560 backing protests against the government. It's like, it's I don't know, 0:11:47.600 --> 0:11:51.520 Like there's this extent to which all of these things, 0:11:52.480 --> 0:11:54.439 like that the I m F riots have just been 0:11:54.440 --> 0:11:56.880 happening over and over and over again for about fifty years, 0:11:57.040 --> 0:12:00.959 and a lot, a lot of the elements are incredibly similar. 0:12:01.200 --> 0:12:02.880 One of the other things that's going on here is 0:12:02.920 --> 0:12:08.360 that these protests are driven are driven by mass organization. Typically, 0:12:08.400 --> 0:12:12.280 austerity protests were precipitated by dramatic overnight price heights resulting 0:12:12.320 --> 0:12:15.400 from the termination of public subsidies on basic goods and services, 0:12:15.400 --> 0:12:18.720 proclaimed by the government as a regrettably necessary reform, urged 0:12:18.760 --> 0:12:21.720 by the I m F and international lenders as conditions 0:12:21.720 --> 0:12:25.120 for new and renegotiated loans. Five deaths in the first 0:12:25.120 --> 0:12:28.480 Peruvian protests to get a pattern of violence. Peru remained 0:12:28.480 --> 0:12:31.640 a hotbed of austerity protests, with students and workers demonstrating 0:12:31.640 --> 0:12:36.319 against increased food prices in followed by followed in eight 0:12:36.480 --> 0:12:40.080 by a march of public employees over state layoffs. This protest, 0:12:40.160 --> 0:12:42.760 so cheered by other public workers watching from surrounding the 0:12:42.880 --> 0:12:46.720 office buildings, was dispersed by police tear gas. So like that, 0:12:46.840 --> 0:12:50.840 that's that's a very sort of yeah, yeah, like we did. 0:12:51.040 --> 0:12:53.200 I mean, this is this was happening. This is happening 0:12:53.240 --> 0:12:56.000 in Peru like last year, right, actually it was it 0:12:56.080 --> 0:12:59.560 last year was earlier this year, I don't know. Time 0:12:59.600 --> 0:13:03.360 is fake. And that's actually like the other thing that 0:13:03.440 --> 0:13:05.720 sort of startling about this is like the places that 0:13:05.840 --> 0:13:08.160 riot are still the places that are rioting in like 0:13:08.400 --> 0:13:10.800 an enormous number of cases. It's it's the same places 0:13:10.920 --> 0:13:15.160 sometimes it's the same people. Um. I think probably the 0:13:15.400 --> 0:13:21.000 most famous protests of the sort of era is it's 0:13:21.000 --> 0:13:24.160 called the Caracazo I'm pronounced nice really badly by my 0:13:24.200 --> 0:13:29.920 apologies in Venezuela, which is a reaction to nine increase 0:13:30.000 --> 0:13:33.679 in training and bus fairs. And there are these are 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:36.920 like these are massive riots. Um at least a hundred 0:13:37.040 --> 0:13:39.920 and probably like a couple of thousand people are like 0:13:40.000 --> 0:13:43.360 gunned down by the army. And three years later, a 0:13:43.480 --> 0:13:46.800 relatively unknown colonel named Hugo Chavez tried to overthrow the 0:13:46.840 --> 0:13:52.199 government that had carried out the price increases. Travis, you know, 0:13:52.400 --> 0:13:57.200 Travis is better known for his other works, but he's 0:13:57.240 --> 0:13:59.560 the sort of tie between the I m F riots 0:13:59.800 --> 0:14:03.760 and the sort of next phase of political resistance to 0:14:03.800 --> 0:14:05.400 this stuff, which is called the antique, which is like 0:14:05.440 --> 0:14:08.199 known as the anti globalization movements in sort of the 0:14:08.280 --> 0:14:10.240 nineties and nearly two thousands. And the thing that's interesting 0:14:10.280 --> 0:14:14.520 about these things is that I don't know, the I 0:14:14.679 --> 0:14:17.600 m F rights don't go very well, like either they 0:14:17.800 --> 0:14:20.400 lose or at best, what they were able to get 0:14:20.480 --> 0:14:24.160 was like temporarily stall some of these reforms, and I 0:14:24.200 --> 0:14:25.880 say like reforms quote unquote like the serve of near 0:14:25.960 --> 0:14:28.760 level like slashing benefits, so they were able to pause 0:14:28.840 --> 0:14:30.120 them a bit and then they would sort of get 0:14:30.160 --> 0:14:33.800 restarted after people left the street. But in the late 0:14:33.920 --> 0:14:37.680 nineties and the two thousands people start winning um Argentina 0:14:37.840 --> 0:14:39.600 is sort of famously forced to like tell the I 0:14:39.680 --> 0:14:41.520 m F to funk off, and they default on their loans. 0:14:41.600 --> 0:14:44.360 After this like enormous autonomous uprising two thousand one that 0:14:44.480 --> 0:14:47.280 like very nearly overthrows the government and forces that like 0:14:47.360 --> 0:14:50.120 five heads of state. There's the whole sort of pink 0:14:50.160 --> 0:14:52.400 tide in Latin America. The I m F gets like 0:14:52.440 --> 0:14:54.040 driven out of a bunch of countries in East Asia, 0:14:54.120 --> 0:14:57.120 and then she doesn't eight, the entire world economy collapses, 0:14:58.360 --> 0:15:03.800 which it turns out is bad for everyone. And this 0:15:03.960 --> 0:15:06.800 does This does two things for our story. The first 0:15:06.920 --> 0:15:10.240 is that like countries are suddenly going broke again, and 0:15:10.320 --> 0:15:12.960 because they're like just completely broke, the I m F 0:15:13.240 --> 0:15:15.000 is just back and is able to sort of enforce 0:15:15.040 --> 0:15:19.360 programs on places like Greecent Spain. And the second thing 0:15:19.480 --> 0:15:22.120 it did was set off an enormous wave of bread 0:15:22.200 --> 0:15:25.920 riots and uprisings. And I think, like most people, if 0:15:26.160 --> 0:15:28.560 you tell them that two eight set off like an 0:15:28.640 --> 0:15:31.400 enormous wave of like protests, they're They're immediately going to go, oh, 0:15:31.440 --> 0:15:34.200 you mean the Arab spring And I am talking about that, 0:15:34.320 --> 0:15:37.240 But that's actually not specifically what I'm talking about here. 0:15:37.320 --> 0:15:41.000 There there's there were like immediately in two thousan Central 0:15:41.040 --> 0:15:43.360 and immediately after there was another massive wave of bread 0:15:43.480 --> 0:15:46.080 riots that every like just everyone is completely forgotten unless 0:15:46.160 --> 0:15:48.600 the thing that you do specifically is study bread riots. 0:15:49.880 --> 0:15:52.440 Um here here's from Here's from the piece called a 0:15:52.440 --> 0:15:55.760 Political Economy of the Food Riot. In two thousand and 0:15:55.840 --> 0:15:58.240 seven and two, the world witnessed a return of one 0:15:58.280 --> 0:16:01.800 of the oldest forms of collective action, food riot countries 0:16:01.840 --> 0:16:05.080 were protests occurred range from Italy, where pasta protests in 0:16:05.160 --> 0:16:08.120 September seven were directed at a failure at the failure 0:16:08.160 --> 0:16:10.360 of the Prodi government to prevent a thirty percent rise 0:16:10.400 --> 0:16:13.800 in the price of pasta, to Haiti, where protesters railed 0:16:13.800 --> 0:16:17.960 against presidents provolves impassive response to the doubling of the 0:16:18.000 --> 0:16:19.880 price of rice over the course of a single week. 0:16:21.080 --> 0:16:30.400 Other countries in which riots were reported including the Uzbekistan, Morocco, Guiana, Mauritania, Senegal, India, Indonesia, Zimbabwe, Burkina, Fosso, 0:16:30.680 --> 0:16:33.840 camera uined Yemen, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Mexico, and Argentina, 0:16:34.920 --> 0:16:37.840 and some commentators have estimated that thirty countries experienced some 0:16:37.880 --> 0:16:40.160 somewhere foods some sort of food protests over the period. 0:16:43.240 --> 0:16:47.160 Now we've been talking a lot about like food consumers 0:16:47.240 --> 0:16:49.440 in this because that's mostly the people who are involved 0:16:49.480 --> 0:16:53.040 in bread riots. But you know, as was happening in 0:16:53.120 --> 0:16:55.040 seventeen huntres with the sort of original stuff like this 0:16:55.120 --> 0:16:57.280 whole time this is going on, there's there's a sort 0:16:57.280 --> 0:17:00.400 of massive shift in the global food economy happening where 0:17:01.320 --> 0:17:03.520 and this has been happening for a long time now, 0:17:03.640 --> 0:17:05.520 but it's it's sort of it's been accelerating the last 0:17:05.520 --> 0:17:07.320 about half a century, which is that the number of 0:17:07.359 --> 0:17:09.240 people who are like peasants and who produced free for 0:17:09.280 --> 0:17:12.680 themselves has been massively declining, and people are getting forced 0:17:12.680 --> 0:17:18.640 into cities. And this means that there's you know, there's 0:17:18.640 --> 0:17:20.080 there's been a number of other things that have gone 0:17:20.119 --> 0:17:23.000 along with this. Uh, there's been this massive increase in 0:17:23.080 --> 0:17:26.359 like cattle production, for example, you get all these monocultures 0:17:27.520 --> 0:17:30.560 um And another thing I think I've mentioned before is 0:17:30.760 --> 0:17:34.000 the World Trade organizations like Agreement on Agriculture like outlaws 0:17:34.040 --> 0:17:36.879 agricultural subsidies for the global South, but you know, the 0:17:37.000 --> 0:17:39.280 US is still allowed to have like farm subsidies, which 0:17:39.320 --> 0:17:41.479 means that you know, if when you're when you enter 0:17:41.520 --> 0:17:43.960 these free trade agreements, you get all of this like 0:17:44.359 --> 0:17:46.960 enormously cheap food from the U s has dumped into 0:17:46.960 --> 0:17:49.320 all these other countries, and you know, if you're a 0:17:49.400 --> 0:17:51.800 Mexican farmer, suddenly you can't compete with all of this 0:17:51.920 --> 0:17:53.600 food from the US because the food from the US 0:17:53.680 --> 0:17:55.560 is cheap because the American government subsidizing it, but the 0:17:55.600 --> 0:17:59.920 Mexican government can and this just like absolutely and die 0:18:00.040 --> 0:18:02.440 lates any attempt by a country to maintain food security 0:18:02.520 --> 0:18:05.720 by like producing food for themselves. And this this sort 0:18:05.760 --> 0:18:08.119 of class of like self sufficient peasant farmers who had 0:18:08.200 --> 0:18:10.040 been you know, they support themselves by producing their own 0:18:10.040 --> 0:18:12.919 food and selling of the market. These people just can 0:18:13.000 --> 0:18:16.080 annihilated and they get forced into what's called sort of 0:18:16.119 --> 0:18:19.880 casualized labor that they you know that they the later 0:18:20.000 --> 0:18:21.960 versions is like uber, right, but that they're forcing the 0:18:22.040 --> 0:18:24.920 gig work. They're kicked out of sort of the normal economy. 0:18:26.240 --> 0:18:27.600 And you know, but because they don't have sort of 0:18:27.640 --> 0:18:30.760 fixed contracts or you know, it's a lot of people 0:18:30.800 --> 0:18:33.320 are working with for no contract, with no contracts at all, 0:18:34.000 --> 0:18:37.240 they're enormously insecure. And once the people are forced into 0:18:37.280 --> 0:18:39.760 the labor market, like changes in the global economy can 0:18:39.800 --> 0:18:45.040 make them like almost immediately unable to afford food because 0:18:45.080 --> 0:18:47.680 you know, like if the less sort of economic and 0:18:47.720 --> 0:18:51.040 security you are, the more the more you're affected by 0:18:51.040 --> 0:18:53.720 price increases. Which is obvious, but it's worth saying because 0:18:53.920 --> 0:18:56.240 it dictates a lot of like who does bread riots 0:18:57.280 --> 0:19:02.240 and yes, and so governments are not entirely like blind 0:19:02.320 --> 0:19:05.080 to this, and they're concerns that they're gonna get overthrown. 0:19:06.520 --> 0:19:08.119 And so you see a bunch of governments trying to 0:19:08.160 --> 0:19:10.240 respond with sort of price stabilization stuff. I think the 0:19:10.280 --> 0:19:13.200 most famous example of this is that like the Egyptian 0:19:13.320 --> 0:19:17.159 army like literally controls like an enormous number of eagips 0:19:17.160 --> 0:19:20.960 bakeries and they like directly run them, and they directly 0:19:21.040 --> 0:19:22.480 run them so that he control the price of brand 0:19:22.560 --> 0:19:25.480 to try to like stop revolutions from happening. But in 0:19:25.560 --> 0:19:28.879 two thousand eight they just kind of stopped working. Um, 0:19:28.960 --> 0:19:31.640 here's the political economy of the food riot. Again. Over 0:19:31.720 --> 0:19:33.919 the year between two thousand and seven and two thousand eight, 0:19:34.520 --> 0:19:36.920 hundred and thirty percent increase in the global price of 0:19:37.000 --> 0:19:39.400 maize and the seventy percent increase in the price of rice, 0:19:39.840 --> 0:19:45.000 with similar price increases and soybeans and other major food commodities. Um, yes, 0:19:45.240 --> 0:19:48.280 there they are these massive food price increases, and this, 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:50.480 you know, this does the thing that massive food price 0:19:50.560 --> 0:19:53.840 increases does. Right, there's there's and there's immediately enormous riots, 0:19:53.880 --> 0:19:57.639 and there's the cycle that happens where the protesters, you know, 0:19:57.640 --> 0:20:00.200 the purchesses, immediately blamed the government for the crisis, and 0:20:00.240 --> 0:20:02.719 then the government is like, well, it's actually not our 0:20:02.800 --> 0:20:06.400 fault because you know that it's happening because the things 0:20:06.440 --> 0:20:09.000 outside of our control. And the protesters are like, oh, 0:20:09.000 --> 0:20:12.080 it doesn't matter who we elect, they do the same things, 0:20:12.160 --> 0:20:15.280 and like they're both kind of rights. Like the government 0:20:15.480 --> 0:20:18.120 is just like sucking these people. But it's also true 0:20:18.160 --> 0:20:19.920 that the sort of like the whole food system is 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:23.200 designed to take like the means of food production out 0:20:23.240 --> 0:20:25.399 of the hands of like the workers who need the 0:20:25.440 --> 0:20:28.320 food and putting them in the hands of like, you know, 0:20:28.400 --> 0:20:31.480 enormous corporations and as people in places like Sri Lanka, 0:20:31.480 --> 0:20:34.399 which you're gonna talk more about later, continually emphasized like this, 0:20:34.560 --> 0:20:37.200 this food sovereignty issue is as much as a political issue, 0:20:38.359 --> 0:20:40.920 Like it's an incredibly political issue, and it's it's it's 0:20:40.960 --> 0:20:43.280 as much like what's at stake in these bread riots 0:20:43.320 --> 0:20:46.200 as the sort of m finosterity stuff. Okay, this is 0:20:46.240 --> 0:20:47.680 probably good place for an ad break, but I can't 0:20:47.720 --> 0:20:54.120 think of a transition. Uh yeah, you know who isn't 0:20:54.160 --> 0:20:57.560 allowed to eat is the products and services that support 0:20:57.640 --> 0:21:01.520 this podcast, all actively star ring to death. So get 0:21:01.560 --> 0:21:15.760 these deals now while you still can, and we're back. 0:21:16.800 --> 0:21:19.560 So all right now, we're gonna talk a little bit 0:21:19.560 --> 0:21:21.240 about the Arabs Spring. We're not gonna talk an enormous 0:21:21.240 --> 0:21:25.000 amount about it, because that's the whole thing. Um. But 0:21:25.160 --> 0:21:29.080 if if, if you've been following like the stuff people 0:21:29.119 --> 0:21:32.720 have written about the Arabs spring, there's an enormous number 0:21:32.760 --> 0:21:35.560 of people who spend like a lot of their time 0:21:35.720 --> 0:21:37.679 arguing about whether or not it was actually sparked by 0:21:37.680 --> 0:21:40.760 food prices. And you know, you'll get a lot of 0:21:40.760 --> 0:21:44.240