WEBVTT - The Company that Poisoned 300,000 Babies 0:00:02.800 --> 0:00:08.480 Jesus Christ. I'm Robert Evans, hosted Behind the Bastards UM. 0:00:08.520 --> 0:00:14.239 Opening this podcast poorly, I'm distracted right now because there 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:16.520 are two kittens in my house. There's two of them 0:00:16.560 --> 0:00:20.560 in their kittens and they're playing. And I'm also horribly 0:00:20.560 --> 0:00:23.200 allergic to cats, but I refuse to not have them 0:00:23.200 --> 0:00:25.600 in my house. So this is going to be quite 0:00:25.600 --> 0:00:29.440 an episode. Are e me being allergic and then being 0:00:29.480 --> 0:00:32.240 distracted by kittens anyway, when I don't have a house 0:00:32.280 --> 0:00:34.879 full of kittens. This is a podcast about the very 0:00:34.880 --> 0:00:38.520 worst people in all of history. UM. And today we're 0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:42.479 doing one of our now classic reverse episodes where somebody 0:00:42.520 --> 0:00:46.199 reads me a terrible story about a bastard and to 0:00:46.200 --> 0:00:49.120 to to do that, to tell us another tale of 0:00:49.240 --> 0:00:53.159 woe and whimsy is our old friend Christopher. Christopher, how 0:00:53.159 --> 0:00:55.800 are you doing today? Doing? Doing pretty good? We are. 0:00:56.640 --> 0:00:59.880 It's cherry season. We're doing the cherries or picking cherries. 0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:03.360 It's hell yeah, Well, you live in in the frigid 0:01:03.440 --> 0:01:05.640 Midwest and I live in the Pacific Northwest, and we 0:01:05.680 --> 0:01:10.160 both have cherry. We're just dripping with cherries, which is 0:01:10.280 --> 0:01:13.280 a sign of the perfection of the cherry plants. It's 0:01:13.280 --> 0:01:17.080 a really powerful it's a really powerful organism. The amazing 0:01:17.120 --> 0:01:18.880 thing about cherries is I feel like a lot of 0:01:18.920 --> 0:01:21.240 different fruit plants you get like you get some fruit 0:01:21.319 --> 0:01:22.800 and you're like, oh, is that it is that all 0:01:22.840 --> 0:01:24.560 the work that I put in this year for for 0:01:24.600 --> 0:01:28.959 this fruit, Like, but fucking cherry trees you get like 0:01:29.080 --> 0:01:32.360 you're dripping with cherries. You get too many cherries off 0:01:32.360 --> 0:01:34.839 of any given cherry tree. And I think that's beautiful. 0:01:35.520 --> 0:01:37.560 You know what else I think is beautiful? Christopher? What 0:01:37.880 --> 0:01:39.480 do you do? What do you think is beautiful? Robert? 0:01:39.840 --> 0:01:42.520 I think naming kittens is beautiful. And Sophie and I 0:01:42.560 --> 0:01:44.760 have a little bit of a disagreement here. See, I 0:01:44.800 --> 0:01:48.040 want to call them Saddam Hussein and Saddam Hussein's best friend, 0:01:48.440 --> 0:01:53.360 and Sophie says, no, that's a horrible name for two kittens. Uh. So, 0:01:54.040 --> 0:01:56.120 you know, listeners, I guess what I'm asking you to 0:01:56.200 --> 0:01:59.200 do is find Sophie online and tell her that I'm right, 0:01:59.400 --> 0:02:02.480 tell her that I picked the proper name to name them. 0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:06.720 Sophie and Sophie, that's a ridiculous name for a cat. 0:02:07.080 --> 0:02:10.840 So both are Hussein and Hussein's best friend. Good cat 0:02:11.000 --> 0:02:14.359 names both options are dictators. Yeah, that is true. We'll 0:02:14.400 --> 0:02:16.880 see the double Sophie has the advantage of the fact 0:02:16.919 --> 0:02:20.000 that the cats are indistinguishable. So they are distinguishable. You 0:02:20.040 --> 0:02:22.480 cannot tell the difference between them. They both look exactly 0:02:22.520 --> 0:02:25.200 the same. Little black cats, little baby black cat the 0:02:25.320 --> 0:02:27.919 right to be Uh, you know, I've put in the time, 0:02:28.040 --> 0:02:31.040 like I feel like at least one should be named Sophie. Well, 0:02:31.280 --> 0:02:33.760 we'll think about this. I like the idea of a 0:02:33.840 --> 0:02:36.120 stranger comes over to my house and the cat does 0:02:36.120 --> 0:02:37.960 something bad and I shout, so down, who say it's 0:02:38.000 --> 0:02:41.720 best friend? Get down from there. You have to set 0:02:41.720 --> 0:02:44.520 yourself up for success, is the point I'm making. Um 0:02:45.040 --> 0:02:48.120 And and speaking of setting ourselves up for to success, 0:02:48.200 --> 0:02:52.520 I've set myself up for success today by having Chris 0:02:52.639 --> 0:02:58.120 research the episode. So the subject of today's episode is 0:02:58.480 --> 0:03:01.919 the two thousand eight tainted milk scandal. And this is 0:03:01.919 --> 0:03:04.200 gonna be a fun hell yeah, yeah, this is this 0:03:04.240 --> 0:03:07.359 is I love a good tainted milk scandal. Yeah, oh 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:09.400 my god, her a lot of babies gonna die? Are 0:03:09.440 --> 0:03:13.160 we are we talking like serious dead baby territory here? Okay, 0:03:13.200 --> 0:03:15.200 So we'll we'll put this in the beginning shouldn't have 0:03:15.200 --> 0:03:16.840 asked that way. That's a horrible way to ask if 0:03:16.840 --> 0:03:19.080 a bunch of babies die. Yeah, so the number of 0:03:19.160 --> 0:03:22.520 babies who are poisoned is extremely high. The death toll 0:03:22.720 --> 0:03:25.160 is not as high as you would think from the 0:03:25.240 --> 0:03:27.600 number of the sheer number of babies who are poisons, 0:03:27.919 --> 0:03:30.480 but it is a it is a very large it's 0:03:30.520 --> 0:03:32.960 a very large number of poisoned babies. I mean that 0:03:33.000 --> 0:03:37.080 action sounds like the best case scenario is horrible thing happens, 0:03:37.160 --> 0:03:39.120 not a lot of babies die. But we have a 0:03:39.120 --> 0:03:41.920 horrible thing to discuss. This job has broken my brain. 0:03:42.000 --> 0:03:45.920 Chris Um just just just fundamentally destroyed me as a 0:03:45.920 --> 0:03:49.360 as an empathetic human being. Let's let's let's let's start 0:03:49.400 --> 0:03:52.640 the show. I'm I'm excited to learn about the spoiled 0:03:52.640 --> 0:03:56.320 milk scandal Um and I'm sure that it was caused 0:03:56.360 --> 0:04:00.240 by people acting responsibly and just a freak accident that 0:04:00.280 --> 0:04:04.960 could never have been predicted or or prevented. We yeah, 0:04:05.040 --> 0:04:09.520 we we will. We will see about that. So in 0:04:09.640 --> 0:04:12.440 in nineteen fifty six, the Chinese communist parties Caudre and 0:04:12.480 --> 0:04:16.560 whu Abe founded a dairy company called the Three Deer company. Well, okay, 0:04:16.600 --> 0:04:21.919 and where's like huibe hibeh whobe is um who abe Okay, 0:04:22.000 --> 0:04:24.080 don't don't worry. Gonna be real basic with me because 0:04:24.120 --> 0:04:25.719 I don't know, I don't know much at all about 0:04:25.760 --> 0:04:28.000 about Chinese geograpy. So this is this is this is 0:04:28.000 --> 0:04:31.480 the province that Wuhan is in, Okay, So like south right, 0:04:32.520 --> 0:04:34.880 it's like kind of in the middle. Okay that Wuhan 0:04:35.080 --> 0:04:40.320 was see again, not a Chinese geography nowhere. This is Okay, 0:04:40.400 --> 0:04:42.080 it's like it's like kind of it's I mean, it's 0:04:42.120 --> 0:04:44.719 in the like middle sort of. This isn't like the 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:49.400 middle of the east of the country, the middle middle 0:04:49.440 --> 0:04:51.480 of the Okay. So Chinese St. Louis is kind of 0:04:51.480 --> 0:04:55.159 what you're telling me right now? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Geographically, 0:04:55.520 --> 0:04:58.320 I assume there's an arch all right, so the the 0:04:58.080 --> 0:05:00.719 they make this milk company. Yeah, And you know, for 0:05:00.720 --> 0:05:03.280 for for most of what's either called sort of the 0:05:03.320 --> 0:05:06.719 socialist period of the Mao periods lasting from CCP taking 0:05:06.760 --> 0:05:09.680 power and forty nine to dangel Paying taking power in 0:05:10.040 --> 0:05:14.440 nineteen seventy nine, three years is a it's relatively sleepy 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:17.000 and sort of minor, like dairy farm and like what 0:05:17.080 --> 0:05:19.360 it's really a minor area culture industry China. China does 0:05:19.400 --> 0:05:21.720 not have a lot of milk like people, people don't 0:05:21.760 --> 0:05:25.159 drink how milk a lot in in you know, most 0:05:25.200 --> 0:05:27.400 of this period, you know, and you know this is 0:05:27.400 --> 0:05:29.280 so this this is the state owned industry. And this 0:05:29.360 --> 0:05:31.640 means that you know, it's given production targets by the state, 0:05:31.800 --> 0:05:34.279 and it largely meets those targets. And in return, the 0:05:34.279 --> 0:05:36.719 workers who work there can assign these workpoints that you know, 0:05:36.760 --> 0:05:41.240 they get resources for them out of the allotment um. Now, 0:05:41.360 --> 0:05:45.120 as the social system starts to fall apart, the relative 0:05:45.160 --> 0:05:47.320 sort of status of the three year company starts to change. 0:05:47.640 --> 0:05:52.640 Now the social the social system, Okay, you're explaining this alright, good, well, 0:05:52.720 --> 0:05:55.320 I I can't go into a bit more so. So, yeah, 0:05:55.320 --> 0:05:57.680 the socialist system, it goes through a lot of changes, 0:05:57.760 --> 0:06:01.000 but the basic principle of it is that like there's 0:06:01.000 --> 0:06:03.159 there's no market, right, so there's no market they'll be 0:06:03.200 --> 0:06:08.039 selling anything. There's sometimes the national government, but mostly local 0:06:08.080 --> 0:06:10.760 government set these production targets, and the sert of state 0:06:10.760 --> 0:06:13.840 owned companies or the labor brigades in rural areas like 0:06:14.520 --> 0:06:17.400 work too. You know, so you inbreuction target you designed 0:06:17.400 --> 0:06:18.960 to do it, and you make as much as like 0:06:19.000 --> 0:06:21.480 you have to take the production target, and you get 0:06:21.480 --> 0:06:24.080 you get designed resources based on how much you can produce. 0:06:24.480 --> 0:06:29.280 And this this sort of works okay for like part 0:06:29.360 --> 0:06:32.880 of the nineteen fifties, and but then there's a great 0:06:32.920 --> 0:06:35.640 leap forward and you can get the cultural revolution and 0:06:35.800 --> 0:06:38.400 that just sort of knocks whoever legs are like left 0:06:38.400 --> 0:06:41.960 out of the system. And by the nineteen seventies, basically 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:44.320 the entire country and the entire economic system is just 0:06:44.440 --> 0:06:46.719 being held together the military. And you know that this 0:06:46.760 --> 0:06:48.640 is this is sort of a taxtrophe. Things are decaying. 0:06:48.720 --> 0:06:51.080 But what what's very what's very interesting about this is 0:06:51.120 --> 0:06:53.280 that it's not actually the famines or just like the 0:06:53.320 --> 0:06:57.000 massacres or any of the weird mango cults that like 0:06:57.040 --> 0:07:00.599 actually knock off the sort of social superiod economy. It 0:07:00.640 --> 0:07:03.560 turns out that what does it in is the class. 0:07:03.680 --> 0:07:06.320 Is that the social periods class structure now now so 0:07:06.320 --> 0:07:09.359 social superior economic policy basically dictates that. So you have 0:07:09.400 --> 0:07:12.680 these agricultural surpluses in the countryside, and you take all 0:07:12.720 --> 0:07:15.400 that grain and you plow into urban developments in you know, 0:07:15.440 --> 0:07:17.000 in the city so that China can build this like 0:07:17.080 --> 0:07:21.400 modern industrial economy. The consequence of this is that there's 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:25.280 basically very little or basically no investment in rural areas, 0:07:25.280 --> 0:07:28.080 which means you get this like you get this massive 0:07:28.120 --> 0:07:31.120 economic disparity between the underdeveloped and poor countryside that you know, 0:07:31.160 --> 0:07:34.280 the state's exact and grain from and the richer, recently 0:07:34.400 --> 0:07:36.960 rich cities that consume the grain. And this, this whole 0:07:36.960 --> 0:07:39.520 thing is made worse about what's called the Hukoh system, 0:07:39.520 --> 0:07:41.680 which is this like because system is this is this 0:07:41.720 --> 0:07:43.560 is still one place to this day, although it's it's 0:07:43.600 --> 0:07:47.840 been modified somewhat. Um it's this internal passport where basically 0:07:47.840 --> 0:07:49.320 like where you and your family is born, you get 0:07:49.320 --> 0:07:51.640 you get registered to that place, and you can only 0:07:51.680 --> 0:07:54.400 get services like from basically the town are from from 0:07:54.440 --> 0:07:57.000 the sort of local governments that like you're registered to. 0:07:57.360 --> 0:07:59.120 And I mean and this this goes everything from like 0:07:59.120 --> 0:08:03.440 housing benefits to like social security to medical care. And 0:08:03.640 --> 0:08:05.520 you know, it's also has a lot to do with 0:08:05.520 --> 0:08:07.080 what kind of jobs you can get. So you know, 0:08:07.200 --> 0:08:08.480 if you're if you have a who coo from a 0:08:08.600 --> 0:08:11.000 from an urban area, you get these very well funded 0:08:11.040 --> 0:08:13.400 sort of services and jobs in the city. But if 0:08:13.400 --> 0:08:14.960 you have a rural who coo, you're stuck with these 0:08:15.000 --> 0:08:19.280 absolute just third rate services, is no employment opportunities. And 0:08:19.400 --> 0:08:21.600 the other thing with this is that when the famine start, 0:08:22.080 --> 0:08:24.480 the grain goes to the cities and not the countryside. 0:08:24.800 --> 0:08:28.160 And so you know this this goes on for a bit, 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:30.680 but eventually we're like the Chinese world workers who who 0:08:30.680 --> 0:08:32.240 are doing the grand production just had enough of this 0:08:32.280 --> 0:08:37.360 ship and they basically bring capitalism back. They've sort of 0:08:37.400 --> 0:08:40.960 slowly start to introduce basically like so they started bringing 0:08:41.000 --> 0:08:44.080 wages back into their into the sort of labor brigades 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:45.640 have been working in and then they turned these labor 0:08:45.640 --> 0:08:47.960 brigades and the joy stock companies and this is this 0:08:48.040 --> 0:08:49.679 is the this is the actual beginning of sort of 0:08:49.720 --> 0:08:52.840 the return of China to capitalism. And how do they 0:08:53.640 --> 0:08:55.120 I mean, there's a couple of things that are interesting 0:08:55.200 --> 0:08:56.480 for this to me. One of them is that, like 0:08:56.600 --> 0:08:58.880 with the when the USSR was kind of in its 0:08:59.000 --> 0:09:02.720 its early stage, based on some long standing like Marxist theories, 0:09:02.720 --> 0:09:05.880 there was a lot of distrust towards like rural people 0:09:05.920 --> 0:09:08.880 towards farmers, Like you saw that a lot in Ukraine 0:09:08.880 --> 0:09:11.640 because they're not the proletariat, right, they're not like the 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:16.400 the industrial working class um. And they were seeing as 0:09:16.520 --> 0:09:20.160 kind of you know, inherently um kind of more capitalistic 0:09:20.160 --> 0:09:22.760 in a lot of ways. And it kind of seems 0:09:22.840 --> 0:09:25.840 like that's what's happening here, and that's like that's also 0:09:25.960 --> 0:09:31.120 what they're doing. Well. It's weird because so the big 0:09:31.160 --> 0:09:33.880 sort of difference between like Maoism and like the earlier 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:36.240 sort of forms of Marxism is that Maoism is like, 0:09:36.320 --> 0:09:37.960 I mean and this this, this is how Mao like 0:09:38.040 --> 0:09:39.719 becomes a leader of the Comunist party, is that he's 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:41.480 the guy who's like, we're going to organize the peasants 0:09:41.520 --> 0:09:43.679 and so you know, and yeah, and they have this 0:09:43.720 --> 0:09:45.720 whole thing about like the peasant work or alliance or whatever, 0:09:45.720 --> 0:09:47.360 but like they're the people who actually put the communists 0:09:47.360 --> 0:09:49.800 in power or the peasants. They're they're you know, untild 0:09:50.080 --> 0:09:52.800 before they're truly popularly there, but that you know, but 0:09:52.960 --> 0:09:56.439 they have this whole thing about how like they have 0:09:56.520 --> 0:09:58.320 this whole thing that need the industrial development part of 0:09:58.320 --> 0:09:59.920 it's like you know that they fight the Korean War 0:10:00.400 --> 0:10:02.920 and like the Chinese soldiers you can sent to Korea, 0:10:03.040 --> 0:10:05.840 like like they don't have shoes and you know, and 0:10:06.640 --> 0:10:08.679 they're not doing great. Yeah yeah, I mean like it's 0:10:08.760 --> 0:10:10.040 they have like a pretty good army, but it's like 0:10:10.160 --> 0:10:12.040 they don't even need supplies. And so there's this whole thing, 0:10:12.080 --> 0:10:13.520 but we need to do industrial build up. We need 0:10:13.559 --> 0:10:16.440 to do industrial build up and that and the fact 0:10:16.480 --> 0:10:18.480 that there's, oh there's also this huge concern in the 0:10:18.520 --> 0:10:21.400 CCP that like they're going to get overthrown by raban workers, 0:10:21.800 --> 0:10:25.800 which like literally does happen in eight when like the 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:28.520 party gets right out of like gets ran out of 0:10:28.559 --> 0:10:30.559 Shanghai by like an uprising, and there's all this stuff, 0:10:30.559 --> 0:10:33.400 and so they're they're basically trying to like like they 0:10:33.440 --> 0:10:35.679 think the peasantry is like restive enough that they can 0:10:35.720 --> 0:10:37.680 extract grain from them and put it into the countryside 0:10:38.000 --> 0:10:39.679 and so to take the grain from countryside and put 0:10:39.679 --> 0:10:43.320 it into the cities. And yeah, the problem is that 0:10:44.679 --> 0:10:46.720 so they don't have enough. Okay, so if you if 0:10:46.720 --> 0:10:48.439 you need to improve that warning from agriculture, right, you 0:10:48.640 --> 0:10:50.880 need to like increase the amount of grain you can 0:10:50.960 --> 0:10:53.760 produce and the Okay, so partially you're doing with like 0:10:53.880 --> 0:10:56.280 lfe echanism and all of this bunk science. But the 0:10:56.320 --> 0:10:58.960 other problem is that they don't have like modern industrial 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:01.679 agricultural equipment, and so the problem is in order to 0:11:01.720 --> 0:11:04.199 do that, you need like an industrial base, but things 0:11:04.240 --> 0:11:05.920 in order to build the industrial BASI need more grain. 0:11:05.960 --> 0:11:08.199 And so they have this like trap they get caught in. 0:11:08.400 --> 0:11:10.640 And the way that they sort of get out of 0:11:10.640 --> 0:11:14.360 this is that the peasants start bringing capitalism back, and 0:11:14.520 --> 0:11:16.880 so in in in thete eighty four, like a few 0:11:16.960 --> 0:11:19.920 years after, the peasants start forming like join stock companies 0:11:19.960 --> 0:11:23.120 and start bringing wages back. De Ping is just like, Okay, 0:11:23.160 --> 0:11:25.160 all of this stuff that you guys are doing, I'm 0:11:25.200 --> 0:11:26.760 gonna put my seal of approval on it. I'm gonna 0:11:26.760 --> 0:11:28.640 put out this directive. It's like this is illegal, you 0:11:28.640 --> 0:11:31.679 should do more of it. And you know, and this 0:11:31.720 --> 0:11:34.040 is like why Ding gets all sort of the credit 0:11:34.080 --> 0:11:36.120 for it, because he just like puts his name on it. 0:11:36.120 --> 0:11:38.000 It was like, all these economic reforms are my idea, 0:11:38.640 --> 0:11:40.480 and yeah, I mean, and I assumed there was like 0:11:40.559 --> 0:11:43.920 there was like a fight over this pretty high level right, 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:45.960 because they could that you could you can't just say 0:11:46.040 --> 0:11:48.719 like hey, we're gonna we're gonna add some capitalism back 0:11:48.760 --> 0:11:51.480 into the mix and in the Central Party be like 0:11:51.520 --> 0:11:53.880 okay without like there was there was some ship that 0:11:53.920 --> 0:11:55.880 went down, right, Yeah, And I mean the you know, 0:11:55.920 --> 0:11:58.160 the thing that the thing about that's important even about 0:11:58.200 --> 0:12:00.640 into ping is that in the beginning of this, like 0:12:00.720 --> 0:12:02.880 they don't want to go back to capitalism. They what 0:12:02.920 --> 0:12:04.559 they're trying to do is reintroduce the market is just 0:12:04.600 --> 0:12:07.120 like a way to sort of stabilize the economy. And yeah, 0:12:07.120 --> 0:12:09.120 which is something I think people mistake a lot, like 0:12:09.240 --> 0:12:13.640 markets aren't necessarily capitalism, although that is you know what 0:12:14.080 --> 0:12:16.600 happens at the end of this process. Yeah, and and 0:12:16.640 --> 0:12:18.360 you know, and there's i mean there's a bunch of 0:12:18.360 --> 0:12:21.400 really intense theoretical debates over like socialist markets, and I 0:12:21.400 --> 0:12:23.120 mean there's a very brief attemper like they're going to 0:12:23.160 --> 0:12:27.080 try the Yugoslavia thing where everyone has like democratic workers 0:12:27.080 --> 0:12:29.640 co ops and they just like that doesn't happen, you know. Yeah, 0:12:29.760 --> 0:12:32.800 there's this whole debate about this doesn't really happen in Yugoslavia. 0:12:32.840 --> 0:12:35.680 You could argue, Yeah, I mean, okay for a bit. 0:12:35.920 --> 0:12:38.600 But and we we should note because not everyone's listened. 0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:41.480 We have two episodes on lesinco is um um. That 0:12:41.600 --> 0:12:44.680 was this this Soviet theorist who believe that you could 0:12:44.880 --> 0:12:47.839 you like, free seeds to make them more cold tolerant 0:12:47.880 --> 0:12:50.080 and stuff. And he had a bunch of wacky theories 0:12:50.080 --> 0:12:53.760 about how you could apply like kind of socialist attitudes 0:12:53.840 --> 0:12:57.840 towards people to plants and it would improve crop yields. 0:12:58.080 --> 0:12:59.800 And it didn't. And a lot of people start and 0:12:59.880 --> 0:13:02.000 they did it in Russia and they did it in China. 0:13:02.080 --> 0:13:05.800 It was not not a great idea broadly speaking, yeah, 0:13:05.840 --> 0:13:08.720 it was. It was not good. Um. Now, one of 0:13:08.720 --> 0:13:12.360 the other very important thing about something that genuinely did 0:13:12.520 --> 0:13:15.280 change in this period is that that directive I was 0:13:15.280 --> 0:13:20.160 talking about Danjo Ping. Let's for the first time state 0:13:20.240 --> 0:13:22.080 owned firms like you know our friends are read three 0:13:22.120 --> 0:13:26.000 deer dairy company like actually make profits by selling their goods. 0:13:26.000 --> 0:13:27.599 And so you know, previously, like you're you're working to 0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:29.560 a production target, hit the production target and they give 0:13:29.600 --> 0:13:32.080 you stuff. But now if you have excess production, you 0:13:32.080 --> 0:13:35.160 can sell it. And this is this isn't enormous, I mean, 0:13:35.160 --> 0:13:37.560 this is this is this is this this hasn't you 0:13:37.600 --> 0:13:39.520 haven't been able to do this in China since like 0:13:40.320 --> 0:13:44.680 nineteen four, nineteen fifty three, it just hasn't happened. So 0:13:44.840 --> 0:13:48.240 this is this is the start of this whole thing 0:13:48.600 --> 0:13:52.040 where you know, they don't companies start to be instead 0:13:52.040 --> 0:13:53.839 of like producing goods in order to produce goods, they're 0:13:53.840 --> 0:13:56.600 producing goods in order to make money. Now, our friends 0:13:56.600 --> 0:13:59.920 at three Deer Company during this period come under new 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:03.040 girl boss management and under under this, under this new 0:14:03.080 --> 0:14:09.080 girl bus leadership, they they start becoming They become the 0:14:09.080 --> 0:14:11.800 first large scale powdered milk manufacturer in China. And this 0:14:11.840 --> 0:14:14.079 is important because powdered milk is how you make baby formula, 0:14:14.440 --> 0:14:16.000 and so you know, they go to the milk and 0:14:16.040 --> 0:14:18.760 they start making baby formula. But this was not enough 0:14:18.800 --> 0:14:21.880 for the ambitious new leadership at three Deers. And you know, 0:14:21.920 --> 0:14:24.160 with with with this new incentive structure that that has 0:14:24.240 --> 0:14:25.680 has been set up where you have you have an 0:14:25.680 --> 0:14:27.840 incenter to produce as much as possible and cut costs, 0:14:27.880 --> 0:14:30.280 you can make money, they start looking for ways to 0:14:30.320 --> 0:14:34.480 make production cheaper and the solution they land on is outsourcing. 0:14:35.680 --> 0:14:38.880 Now previously, yeah, this is this is gonna go great. 0:14:38.880 --> 0:14:42.840 We love. One of my favorite things is when because 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:46.320 I'm thinking, well at some point cover like Nestle's baby 0:14:46.360 --> 0:14:50.680 formulas aster too. But but the fact that they go right, yeah, 0:14:50.760 --> 0:14:53.520 they go right to out source. I love. I love 0:14:53.560 --> 0:14:55.760 when you have what are supposed to be radically different 0:14:55.800 --> 0:14:59.960 ideologies but they start making similar decisions that that they 0:15:00.120 --> 0:15:05.160 dissimilar problems. Like it's just yeah, it's very fun. Yeah 0:15:05.200 --> 0:15:06.880 we're going to see there. There's a lot of stuff 0:15:06.920 --> 0:15:09.920 that goes on here. Um, so you know, and and 0:15:09.960 --> 0:15:12.000 this this is this is also like a huge break 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:14.160 though with the previous sort of the way the socialists, 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:16.640 like agriculture works where you know, if you have a 0:15:16.720 --> 0:15:19.280 dairy farm, right you have there there's a state own enterprise. 0:15:19.320 --> 0:15:21.680 They own the cows, they own the farms, they employ 0:15:21.760 --> 0:15:23.320 all the workers, and they like run the whole system 0:15:23.400 --> 0:15:26.400 from you know, like farm distribution center. And three years 0:15:26.400 --> 0:15:28.240 looks at this in the nice and eight six they 0:15:28.600 --> 0:15:29.880 start making chase and they look at this and they 0:15:29.920 --> 0:15:31.680 go like, this is expensive. We have to actually like 0:15:32.200 --> 0:15:34.600 run the farms, and we have to pay for the cows, 0:15:34.640 --> 0:15:37.480 we have to pay wages. So instead of doing this, 0:15:37.880 --> 0:15:40.920 they go, what if we loan our cows to farmers 0:15:40.920 --> 0:15:43.120 in the countryside, And then you know, they have to 0:15:43.160 --> 0:15:49.320 take it gets yeah, so the cows, right, and then 0:15:49.400 --> 0:15:51.200 you know, so to pay off the debt they incur 0:15:51.720 --> 0:15:54.400 by buying the cow you have, you have they have, 0:15:54.440 --> 0:15:56.400 they have to like give they pay back the dead 0:15:56.440 --> 0:15:59.200 and milk. And then on top of that, they have 0:15:59.240 --> 0:16:01.880 to pay a yearly management fee in order so that 0:16:01.920 --> 0:16:05.400 they can continue to be like debt peons who sell 0:16:05.440 --> 0:16:08.280 milk to this company. Now, now the other great part 0:16:08.320 --> 0:16:10.880 of this is that they're not outsourcing to like actual farms. 0:16:10.920 --> 0:16:14.120 They're outsourcing to individual farmers. And so these people have 0:16:14.200 --> 0:16:17.800 like two maybe three cows. Most of them have one cow, 0:16:18.280 --> 0:16:21.000 which means that they're completely dependent on on three dair 0:16:21.040 --> 0:16:23.400 and their middlemen because they don't have enoughree sources to 0:16:23.440 --> 0:16:26.040 actually you know, run their own operation. They only have 0:16:26.080 --> 0:16:28.160 two cows. And you know, if you only have two cows, 0:16:28.720 --> 0:16:31.120 you can never make enough money that you can get 0:16:31.120 --> 0:16:33.800 even like a third or fourth cow. So you know, 0:16:34.360 --> 0:16:36.440 they're they're they're they're stuctory working for this company, and 0:16:36.480 --> 0:16:39.320 they are in effect the first modern Chinese gig workers. 0:16:40.200 --> 0:16:46.280 Jesus Christ yea, So you can see where this is going. Now, Now, 0:16:46.320 --> 0:16:49.360 this model, this this gig working model also spreads to 0:16:49.400 --> 0:16:51.880 the American dairy industry, where there's a bunch of farmers 0:16:52.200 --> 0:16:54.560 quote unquote who's take off these like enormous loans to 0:16:54.600 --> 0:16:56.360 buy cows, and you know, they also get caught in 0:16:56.360 --> 0:16:58.680 these debt traps. And you know, the read the way 0:16:58.720 --> 0:17:01.000 this works is that by by by convincing that these 0:17:01.000 --> 0:17:03.920 farmers that they're actually entrepreneurs, that their small business owners 0:17:04.280 --> 0:17:07.080 and not workers, the corporations can exploit them even more 0:17:07.119 --> 0:17:09.200 than they were able to earlier by you know when 0:17:09.200 --> 0:17:10.960 when they were just workers. And this is this is 0:17:11.040 --> 0:17:15.680 essentially just how capitalism works. Now. The celebrated anthropologist on 0:17:15.720 --> 0:17:18.679 A Sing wrote a very very good article called Supply 0:17:18.760 --> 0:17:21.000 Chains and the Human Condition that talks about a lot 0:17:21.040 --> 0:17:23.720 of how the supply chain and outsourcing stuff works. And 0:17:24.040 --> 0:17:25.880 here here's what she had to say about these these 0:17:25.920 --> 0:17:30.320 contract growers who are the new the new like debt 0:17:30.320 --> 0:17:35.600 peon cow farmers in the US. Watts another academic concludes, 0:17:36.119 --> 0:17:39.199 contract growers thus are not independent farmers at all. They 0:17:39.240 --> 0:17:42.320 are a little more than propertied laborers, employees of the 0:17:42.400 --> 0:17:46.680 corporate producers who also dominate the chicken processing industry. Yet 0:17:47.000 --> 0:17:50.080 this little more then makes a big difference. It is 0:17:50.119 --> 0:17:53.159 not hard to understand, not hard to imagine the cultural 0:17:53.160 --> 0:17:56.320 commitment of the grower to independent landholding and quote a 0:17:56.359 --> 0:17:59.920 business of his own contract farming flourishes, and the imagined 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:03.399 difference between an employee and an entrepreneur. The contract farmer 0:18:03.480 --> 0:18:06.280 works for five dollars and seventy cents an hour fift 0:18:06.760 --> 0:18:08.720 dollars a year, even though he is a white man, 0:18:08.800 --> 0:18:11.959 because he owns his own business. Self exploitation is essential 0:18:12.000 --> 0:18:14.560 to the cost cutting power of the supply chain. No, 0:18:14.680 --> 0:18:18.840 that sounds like some great communism to me, just like 0:18:18.960 --> 0:18:24.000 Mark submissions. Yeah, you know, this is this is the 0:18:24.000 --> 0:18:26.440 phone play about this. This is both in the US 0:18:26.520 --> 0:18:29.199 and in China at the same time. And you know, 0:18:29.240 --> 0:18:31.360 and there's a lot of stuff going on here, particularly 0:18:31.359 --> 0:18:33.720 with the American side, right, I mean you have you know, 0:18:33.920 --> 0:18:37.879 American agricultures run by just undocumented, huge numbers of undocumented 0:18:37.920 --> 0:18:42.480 workers fleeing the American atrocities in Latin America, and you know, yeah, yeah, 0:18:42.560 --> 0:18:44.560 and you know, the their ability to sort of you 0:18:44.640 --> 0:18:48.240 create situations of privation that make people desperate enough to 0:18:48.400 --> 0:18:53.400 labor incredibly basically for free in conditions that are harmful 0:18:53.440 --> 0:18:57.840 to them. Um, and they can't complain because they're not anyway. Yeah, 0:18:57.880 --> 0:18:59.639 I mean, here's one of the things that seems to 0:18:59.640 --> 0:19:01.119 be happy seating here. And this is the thing that 0:19:01.160 --> 0:19:02.800 I think people on the left get wrong a lot. 0:19:03.200 --> 0:19:07.119 Capitalism is an extremely efficient system for doing a specific 0:19:07.200 --> 0:19:09.200 set of things. Now, those specific set of things don't 0:19:09.240 --> 0:19:12.600 include keeping the world habitable. But it's very good at 0:19:12.640 --> 0:19:15.840 what it does, which is why people keep cribbing from it, 0:19:15.960 --> 0:19:19.480 like it's it's job is not to make the world habitable, 0:19:19.680 --> 0:19:21.800 but it's good at what its job is. It's very 0:19:21.840 --> 0:19:25.320 efficient at what it job at what its job is. Um, 0:19:25.359 --> 0:19:27.600 it's job just has nothing to do with taking care 0:19:27.680 --> 0:19:29.480 of you. Yea. And in fact, well, and this is 0:19:29.480 --> 0:19:31.360 not only is it not like it's not about taking 0:19:31.400 --> 0:19:33.400 care of you. I mean this whole thing, you know, this, 0:19:33.400 --> 0:19:34.560 this is like this is a big part of what 0:19:34.600 --> 0:19:37.960