Speaker 1: Hello, odd Logs listeners.
Speaker 2: I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Allaway.
Speaker 1: Tracy, We're going to be doing another live show, this
Speaker 1: time once again in our hometown of New York City.
Speaker 2: That's right on the evening of May twenty eighth, from
Speaker 2: seven pm. We will be at Citywinery with a fantastic
Speaker 2: lineup of guests.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I really like our live show. There are a
Speaker 1: great chance to meet the listeners. There are chants for
Speaker 1: listeners to meet us and actually, more importantly, listeners to
Speaker 1: hang out with other listeners and you know, all that
Speaker 1: community stuff.
Speaker 2: But if you would like all that community stuff, and
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk a lot about the future of
Speaker 1: trading because of that is a very New York City topic.
Speaker 1: Still figuring out the exact schedule, but yes, if you'd
Speaker 1: like to come to our live odd Lauge show at
Speaker 1: City Winery in New York City on May twenty eighth,
Speaker 1: go find details at bloomberg dot com, slash odd loads
Speaker 1: or look on either one of our Twitter handles. There
Speaker 1: are plenty of spaces to find it, and we'd love
Speaker 1: to see you there.
Speaker 2: That's right, Get offline and interact with some actual human
Speaker 2: beings and do some of that commute stuff. We look
Speaker 2: forward to seeing you there.
Speaker 1: IRL is the new URL.
Speaker 3: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Audults podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 1: And I'm Joe Wisenthal.
Speaker 2: Joe, we're back in London.
Speaker 1: We're making a tradition back in London. We're here last spring.
Speaker 1: That last year is April. At this time it's May.
Speaker 1: But I like the idea, let's do a recurring spring
Speaker 1: trip to London.
Speaker 2: Now, when you're in London, do you feel the urge
Speaker 2: to sort of stroke your beard and think about geopolitics?
Speaker 1: Can I say, well, yes for sure. But as you
Speaker 1: can confirm anytime there's like some big you know, there's
Speaker 1: something feels pivotal or historical, geopolitical. I turned to you
Speaker 1: in the office, I say, you know what we really need.
Speaker 1: We really need like an episode with an old guy
Speaker 1: with a British accent, like some moments. That's just what
Speaker 1: it calls for.
Speaker 3: You gave the.
Speaker 2: Secret away, you gave the secret all blots of books.
Speaker 1: Who it is per save is like there's a certain
Speaker 1: type of guests that's like this is what this moment
Speaker 1: calls for some with wisdom, someone with perspective.
Speaker 2: All right, well you've given it away at this point,
Speaker 2: but we are back here for our yearly check in
Speaker 2: with Martin Wolf, who is, of course the chief economics
Speaker 2: commentator over at the Financial Times, one of the most
Speaker 2: famous geopolitics geoeconomics commentators of all time, and someone who
Speaker 2: is really good to talk to when we're living through
Speaker 2: these potentially historic capital h historic events on what seems
Speaker 2: to be more than a yearly basis at this point.
Speaker 2: So the last time we spoke to him was in
Speaker 2: April of twenty twenty five, and it was just after
Speaker 2: the Liberation Day tariff announcements. Now we're here in May
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six, and we have the Iran situation going on,
Speaker 2: we have headlines about further fracturing of US europe relations.
Speaker 2: I mean, all of these potential potentially pivotal moments seem
Speaker 2: to be happening on a sort of monthly, if not
Speaker 2: weekly basis at this point.
Speaker 1: Absolutely right. And as you mentioned, when we were here
Speaker 1: last year, it was in the immediate wake I mean,
Speaker 1: I think maybe even just a week after the or
Speaker 1: a few days after the Liberation Day tariff schedule had
Speaker 1: come out, it was still during that period of absolutely
Speaker 1: insane volatility, and there is a sense in which, I mean,
Speaker 1: the pure volatility currently is not actually like it was
Speaker 1: back then. But at the same time, perhaps probably because
Speaker 1: we're in the middle of a war ceasefire aside, April
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five feels a little quaint compared to where
Speaker 1: we are right now.
Speaker 2: Isn't that something? I mean, everything's relative, I guess. Okay, Well,
Speaker 2: on that note, why don't we bring in our perfect guest,
Speaker 2: older gentleman, older British gentleman with a British accent per
Speaker 2: Joe's description, Martin Wolf, thank you so much for coming
Speaker 2: back on odd lauds.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm very glad to fill a niche I didn't
Speaker 4: know you had.
Speaker 2: You truly are the perfect guest, though, because you know,
Speaker 2: I again, a lot of people have described you as
Speaker 2: one of the most important economics commentators of all time,
Speaker 2: and so I think it's great that we get you
Speaker 2: back to opine on some of these very big events
Speaker 2: that we're seeing. Speaking of large events, you have described
Speaker 2: the Iran situation as a nightmare scenario. Walk us through
Speaker 2: what you're thinking there, because when I look at some
Speaker 2: of the headlines around markets at the moment, S and
Speaker 2: P five hundred closed at a record on Friday, it
Speaker 2: doesn't seem like markets are aligned with that particular point
Speaker 2: of view. What's going on?
Speaker 4: Well, I suppose the so many different things aspects of this.
Speaker 4: I've been thinking of this wonderful Shakespearean line, life being
Speaker 4: a tale told by any an idiot, full of sound
Speaker 4: and fury, signified nothing. So one feels that when markets
Speaker 4: are looking at this, they feel this is full of
Speaker 4: sound and fury, but it doesn't signify anything. And I
Speaker 4: think two possible reasons for that. One is the famous
Speaker 4: taco line from my dear colleague Robert Armstrong that Trump
Speaker 4: all with chickens out. So in the end, he's not
Speaker 4: going to blow up the world. He's going to find
Speaker 4: a way out of this, which will have done some damage.
Speaker 5: It will make I think the.
Speaker 4: US look fairly ridiculous, but it can be forgotten, declare
Speaker 4: victory and stop, And I think that's still perfectly possible,
Speaker 4: a perfectly reasonable view, because he's already sort of stopped
Speaker 4: the fighting, and it feels like he's looking desperately for
Speaker 4: an endgame. The question is whether the other side will
Speaker 4: play ball, and that is still to be seen. And
Speaker 4: then there's the other possibility that in the end, if
Speaker 4: the oil were lost, as it were everever, the world will.
Speaker 5: Adjust to that.
Speaker 4: Yes, the output that goes through the straits is very large,
Speaker 4: but in the longer run a lot of it can
Speaker 4: go through pipelines. They can build these. It will take
Speaker 4: quite a while, and the world can compress this demand
Speaker 4: in time. It might take a few years. The world
Speaker 4: growth will be lower, but what we're losing is about
Speaker 4: a fifth world output. Oil is much less important than
Speaker 4: it used to be seventy years ago. Prices have risen,
Speaker 4: but actually, if you look at real terms of the
Speaker 4: long history of oil prices since the first oil shot,
Speaker 4: they're not sensationally high, and so we will adjust to it,
Speaker 4: and we're very good at adjusting to it. The Gulf
Speaker 4: will end up as a different place because it won't
Speaker 4: be exporting the same way, but it's not enough to
Speaker 4: derail the world economy. And incidentally, the country that is
Speaker 4: likely to be the least damage of the major ones
Speaker 4: is the US, which is not a coincidence. After all,
Speaker 4: they wouldn't have started it if that weren't at the
Speaker 4: back of their minds. China will be damaged. Russia is benefiting,
Speaker 4: but I don't think that's going to bother mister Trump.
Speaker 4: So in the end, the losers are Europe and China,
Speaker 4: not favorite, if favorite countries. I think that on the whole,
Speaker 4: mister Trump prefers China to the Europe. But the and
Speaker 4: the world economy will continue, and there's this huge technological
Speaker 4: upheaval going on, which is very much what the markets
Speaker 4: they're talking about, which looks transformative. So I think the
Speaker 4: market's assumption that the profitability of companies is going to
Speaker 4: be fine. The world will have possibly a recession, but
Speaker 4: that's not the end of the world. World as recessions
Speaker 4: probably not even zero growth, and life goes off.
Speaker 1: When you I'm glad that when you Shakespeare and sounded
Speaker 1: furious signifying nothing, you were not referring to our conversations,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Always something though that I'm anxious about with
Speaker 1: respect to our business, because we type and talk and
Speaker 1: it's like, what doesn't really matter all.
Speaker 5: That big said.
Speaker 1: You mentioned the profitability of companies and if profits stay high,
Speaker 1: let stock stay high, and it's all very explicable. One
Speaker 1: has to admit, or you have to admit, like sitting
Speaker 1: here today recording this may forth, you have to admit.
Speaker 1: It's pretty surprising, isn't it, Like if you knew all
Speaker 1: the headlines over the last year and a half between
Speaker 1: Liberation Day and a subpoena for Chairman Powell and this
Speaker 1: war the early existence is pretty surprising.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is what I don't get. So I think
Speaker 2: I mentioned this the last time we spoke, but both
Speaker 2: Joe and I did international relations at university and we
Speaker 2: were told over and over again that the global economy
Speaker 2: does not like instability, it doesn't like chaos, and yet
Speaker 2: here we are in the midst of a lot of chaos,
Speaker 2: and things are more or less chugging along.
Speaker 4: Yes, I think that's right, and there's been a greater
Speaker 4: disconnect that I would have expected. And so I have
Speaker 4: more than once used another famous quote from a British author.
Speaker 4: Of course, it has to be given the intro Adam Smith.
Speaker 5: Adam Smith, there's.
Speaker 4: A great deal of ruin in a country, which was,
Speaker 4: if I remember correctly, actually said in response to somebody
Speaker 4: saying that the loss of the American colonies was a tragedy,
Speaker 4: a catastrophe for this country, and I think that's the context.
Speaker 4: I believe that's the context in which you said there's
Speaker 4: a great deal of ruin in a country, so there's
Speaker 4: a great deal of ruining the world economy. I have
Speaker 4: a favorite statistic which I use in many of my
Speaker 4: presentations because it surprised me so much when I looked
Speaker 4: at it. So since nineteen fifty on the data, Angus Madison.
Speaker 5: Must be right.
Speaker 4: There have only been two years in which the world
Speaker 4: economy shrank two and they're both perfectly obvious. One was
Speaker 4: two thousand and nine, and even then he crank barely.
Speaker 4: It was close to zero because China was still growing,
Speaker 4: lots of countries were still growing. And the other was
Speaker 4: the pandemic twenty twenty. Otherwise, the world economy grows and
Speaker 4: nearly always between two and four percent. It's changed over time.
Speaker 4: Why well, because everybody, everybody matters is in a growth mode.
Speaker 4: I could go through what's driving it. I looked at
Speaker 4: this actually after the pandemic, I thought, how often is
Speaker 4: it that we've had a genuine recession a decline in GDP.
Speaker 4: Now this isn't GDB behead. There will be more often
Speaker 4: times when GDB per head shrank. But basically, the world
Speaker 4: economy is unbelievably robust, and that's because lots of people
Speaker 4: are providing stuff people want. There are markets they produce
Speaker 4: for the markets, they invest to produce for the markets.
Speaker 4: Investment is very important as a driver in demand, as
Speaker 4: Kine said, and so it takes something really enormous to
Speaker 4: stop it. I went through the two oil shops of
Speaker 4: the seventies. I was already working economists, and they were
Speaker 4: big shops, and we got terrible inflation and all the
Speaker 4: rest of it. Volka came along, and yes he did
Speaker 4: cause a recession in the US, but it wasn't global.
Speaker 4: So I think we have to start off by saying
Speaker 4: the world economy is incredibly resilient. The second thing is
Speaker 4: that and that's why I use the full of sound
Speaker 4: and fury. If you look at the actual policies that
Speaker 4: we've ended up with, they're sort of designed that I'm
Speaker 4: sure they're not intent, not really to hurt, so the
Speaker 4: protection is very uneven. This was part of I wrote
Speaker 4: about this before he Trump got into office, and that
Speaker 4: creates the opportunity is designed in the system for trade diversion.
Speaker 4: Right now, if he just put up an average tariff
Speaker 4: of forty percent or thirty five percent, a lot of
Speaker 4: trade would disappear, but that's not what he did.
Speaker 5: He ended up with.
Speaker 4: Imposing very high tariffs on some some.
Speaker 5: Origins.
Speaker 4: China still has very high terriffs, but it's the trade
Speaker 4: diversion has been phenomenal. So trade goes through Vietnam, it
Speaker 4: goes through Mexico, and the IMF had a very nice
Speaker 4: chant on that in the latest World Economic Outlook, which
Speaker 4: basically showed that yes, direct trade between the US and
Speaker 4: China's shrunk. Direct trade, but the US Canada's shrunk, but
Speaker 4: other people have played taking its place, and in some
Speaker 4: sense it was designed to be porous. Then there are
Speaker 4: all sorts of exceptions that he's negotiated in return for
Speaker 4: who knows what with sundry companies like Apple. Apple would
Speaker 4: have been very bad.
Speaker 5: So it's all very porous and it's all negotiable, so
Speaker 5: it's not as serious as all that.
Speaker 4: And then the shock in the Gulf is significant, but
Speaker 4: oil isn't as important as it used to be. As
Speaker 4: we discussed, the energy system has changed across much of
Speaker 4: the world, and this will be accelerated, of course, but
Speaker 4: that's for the future, and prices have gone up, there
Speaker 4: will be a slowdown. I'm absolutely sure we might get
Speaker 4: close really.
Speaker 5: Bad, really bad.
Speaker 4: Maybe the world economy grows at one one and a
Speaker 4: half percent, but it's not a catastrophe. And finally, profits
Speaker 4: are robust because, let's face it, worldwide labor is weak,
Speaker 4: so companies can manage their affairs in a way to
Speaker 4: ensure that they survive.
Speaker 5: I'm sure lots I've looked at this.
Speaker 4: I'm sure lots of small and medium sized businesses are
Speaker 4: very badly affected. But the colossi that are generating most
Speaker 4: of the profits, particularly the tech colossy, not affected by this.
Speaker 5: This is at least expose.
Speaker 4: Perhaps not as surprising as one might have thought. There's
Speaker 4: a great deliver ruin in the world economy.
Speaker 2: We should see if we can do this entire episode
Speaker 2: only referencing British historians and economic thinkers direct for.
Speaker 1: You know, you know one other thing you mentioned those
Speaker 1: exceptions that you know little Last week i think Trump
Speaker 1: announced that they made a little carve out for UK
Speaker 1: whiskey or something like that on the question of the King.
Speaker 1: So therefore, much like us, Trump is a sucker for
Speaker 1: the British accent clearly it was the king and everything.
Speaker 1: He's like, all right, okay, yeah.
Speaker 5: I think that's something.
Speaker 4: He yes that He's also a sack of people have
Speaker 4: grand positions, didn't he didn't they have some sort of
Speaker 4: maybe it was true social or something else.
Speaker 5: When he referred to.
Speaker 4: There being two kings together, that was I'm sure not
Speaker 4: a joke. I think he would like to be king.
Speaker 4: But when I think about the king he would most
Speaker 4: like to be, I immediately come to Henry the Eighth, who
Speaker 4: was our real king, who made probably the single most
Speaker 4: important decision made by any English monarch, namely to leave
Speaker 4: the Catholic Church and make himself the head of the church.
Speaker 5: I think Donald Trump would quite like that, don't you think.
Speaker 4: And he was an absolute modock who chopped the heads
Speaker 4: of one advisor after another. I think quite like that.
Speaker 4: So yeah, he likes the idea of being a king. Now,
Speaker 4: our porking Charles isn't like that, but at least he's
Speaker 4: sort of connected to that, so I can see the glamour.
Speaker 5: And he lives in palaces.
Speaker 4: I mean, don't you think he'd rather like to Mister
Speaker 4: Trump would like to move Buckingham Palace to Washington put
Speaker 4: it in the middle.
Speaker 2: I think the Oval Office makeover is very reminiscent of
Speaker 2: a classic European style palace. I'm thinking of a particular
Speaker 2: French one setting aside interior decorating. And Joe knows that
Speaker 2: I could certainly talk about this for much longer. But
Speaker 2: you know, you mentioned this idea of Trump as king,
Speaker 2: and you also mentioned this idea of trade adaptations. And
Speaker 2: one of the things that's happened since the Iran situation
Speaker 2: is Trump has come out and said, well, if you
Speaker 2: can't get oil from the Gulf and your Europe, why
Speaker 2: don't you can come to the US and get oil
Speaker 2: from the US. And I'm very curious how statements like
Speaker 2: that play on the ground in Europe, given that, on
Speaker 2: the one hand, this is a situation caused by the US.
Speaker 2: I think it's fair to say that Europeans regard Trump
Speaker 2: as somewhat unpredictable, somewhat somewhat doing an impersonation of British
Speaker 2: understatedness here, and then his message to Europe is basically, well,
Speaker 2: you know, trust US for your energy security.
Speaker 4: Yes, well, I think the trust US has definitively gone.
Speaker 4: That's hardly news. I think that's true worldwide. I'm just
Speaker 4: trying to think, does anyone actually trust this guy? Because
Speaker 4: being untrust untrustworthy seems to me the core of his
Speaker 4: modus operandi. I mean, he wants to surprise people, and
Speaker 4: he does in both directions. So nobody in Europe believes
Speaker 4: now that there's any promise that will come for this
Speaker 4: administration that is to be believed. And I think that's
Speaker 4: true pretty well for everybody. That's understandable because it's consistent
Speaker 4: with the evidence and the behavior and even what he says. However,
Speaker 4: Europe is in a very very unfortunate position, which is
Speaker 4: that it grew so dependent on America for so long
Speaker 4: that pretty well all its structures, its defense system, very obviously,
Speaker 4: but also the things it didn't bother to produce itself,
Speaker 4: for instance, the whole tech array, the trade relations, the
Speaker 4: investment relations, and of course the underlying ideologic ideology, the
Speaker 4: sort of liberal democracy they imported.
Speaker 5: This all came from America.
Speaker 4: I mean, we were wrong to say that it wasn't there.
Speaker 4: A lot of this wasn't there before in different ways.
Speaker 4: But after the war, the first and second together, it
Speaker 4: was so shatteringly demoralized as a continent and so damaged.
Speaker 4: I can go through with the damage done to all
Speaker 4: the different major countries that the US became the core
Speaker 4: of every aspect of security, believe trust. They were very
Speaker 4: very content with this. So whether they were naive or
Speaker 4: not very interesting question. It's all come as a colossal shock.
Speaker 4: Now Trump one was when they the first administration of
Speaker 4: Trump was a wake up call. But in the end
Speaker 4: it wasn't so bad. They felt oh well, full of
Speaker 4: sound and fury, but didn't signify that much. In the end,
Speaker 4: he didn't do much so as he didn't change great policy,
Speaker 4: didn't withdraw fromim NATO. He filled his administration with the
Speaker 4: sort of people we're familiar with, we like and trust,
Speaker 4: those sorts of Americans. This is a shock. I don't
Speaker 4: think it should have been a shock, but this is
Speaker 4: a shock.
Speaker 5: And in the.
Speaker 4: First year, when suddenly you know your trusted spouse, as
Speaker 4: it were, that very much, the relationship turns around and
Speaker 4: becomes a violent bully. You're sort of shock, but worse,
Speaker 4: you don't know where to go and live. Who do
Speaker 4: you get to, who's your alternative? Do you want to
Speaker 4: become friendly with China?
Speaker 5: Not really?
Speaker 4: Do you want to become friendly with absolutely not. And
Speaker 4: are we strong enough to survive.
Speaker 5: On our own in all these different.
Speaker 4: Dimensions, of course not. The vulnerability of Europe is staggering.
Speaker 4: Do just think what would happen if the American administration
Speaker 4: has decided if he could decide that to just close
Speaker 4: off our access to the American digital stack, as it were,
Speaker 4: cloud computing, all the rest of it. So then the
Speaker 4: question is, well, what do you do? And I think
Speaker 4: they're still really and truly the Europeans that at the
Speaker 4: early stage of deciding what they want to do, and
Speaker 4: they find it difficult to agree, very difficult. There are
Speaker 4: so many of them with different attitudes, values, historical relations.
Speaker 4: They don't trust one another. Very important point, by the way,
Speaker 4: you know, the European history is not so far beneath
Speaker 4: the art the surface. So I think we are there
Speaker 4: at the stage of absolute intellectual, moral confusion.
Speaker 5: But they don't trust Trump.
Speaker 1: I mean, you sort of anticipated where I was going
Speaker 1: to go with my next question, because you know, you've
Speaker 1: written about the threat to democracy that both in Europe
Speaker 1: and the US that you perceived the Trump administration as posing,
Speaker 1: and you mentioned that perhaps Trump actually prefers China to
Speaker 1: Europe at this point, And it seems like, as you've written,
Speaker 1: the administration seems to have two specific big critiques of Europe.
Speaker 1: One is a particular conception of free speech, which the
Speaker 1: administration does not perceive Europe as upholding. And then of
Speaker 1: course immigration, which they would associate with civilizational decline and
Speaker 1: so forth. Interestingly, in your writing you acknowledge that both
Speaker 1: of those they are stranger their kernels to both critiques,
Speaker 1: that the Europea government has to take seriously border control
Speaker 1: maintaining those liberal values around speech. How much harder does
Speaker 1: it or like, you know, how does your charter path
Speaker 1: while also taking into account those factors which may have
Speaker 1: some grain of reality to them.
Speaker 4: Well, one of the problems we have is we don't feel,
Speaker 4: looking at the whole range of what's going on in
Speaker 4: the United States, that this administration really does believe in
Speaker 4: free speech conception. The mildly quite a bit of hypocrisy
Speaker 4: going on. I don't think I need to lay that
Speaker 4: out for your audience, but there I suppose a number
Speaker 4: of different elements in this story. The I think that
Speaker 4: the administration is right, but I don't think it's a
Speaker 4: I don't think they're honest in their critique, but that
Speaker 4: some government it's my own included, have gone too far
Speaker 4: in protecting people from what is called hate speech, and
Speaker 4: that there is a perfectly good argument that both in
Speaker 4: private institutions, universities and so forth, and in public you
Speaker 4: don't have a right not to be offended.
Speaker 5: That's clear.
Speaker 4: However, my view also is that there are some forms
Speaker 4: of speech that European history will see where it goes
Speaker 4: with American history suggests are profoundly dangerous. And the one
Speaker 4: I used in my example of this is that if
Speaker 4: you're lecturing Germans on the import which is started in
Speaker 4: the most notorious start of this was Dvance's speech in
Speaker 4: Munich last year in twenty twenty five. Well, the Germans
Speaker 4: feel that it really would have been a pretty good
Speaker 4: thing if they'd stopped Hitler saying some of the things
Speaker 4: he said. Indeed, if they'd removed him and put him
Speaker 4: in prison for a very long time and not instead
Speaker 4: of just letting him out when he was put in prison.
Speaker 4: So there are questions of what how far you allow
Speaker 4: speech to be free. It's a fine doctrine, but it
Speaker 4: seems actually the administration to believe there are lots of
Speaker 4: things we really don't want people to say so that's
Speaker 4: an issue there. But I think there's a critique there
Speaker 4: on the civilizational thing. I think, and I wrote this
Speaker 4: in my book, that one of the things that define
Speaker 4: a state, and certainly a democratic state, is the possession
Speaker 4: of borders a state and a citizenship which is associated
Speaker 4: with a state in a democratic context is exclusive by definition.
Speaker 4: It is the values universal, but citizenship is not by definition,
Speaker 4: and that we get that or going all the way
Speaker 4: back to the beginning of these ideas for our in
Speaker 4: our ancient world, the Greeks and Roman view of what
Speaker 4: a republic or a democracy was. So I think that
Speaker 4: not controlling your borders and making sure that the people
Speaker 4: who come to live in it, particularly the people who
Speaker 4: come to live in it permanently, are people you've chosen.
Speaker 4: It's been a political process in which you've chosen them,
Speaker 4: is essentially in violation of the citizenship compact. And I
Speaker 4: wrote that at length, and I think it's perfectly understandable
Speaker 4: how many citizens would feel, we don't want everybody in
Speaker 4: the world to come here. It would create some very
Speaker 4: very big problems. And I think the view on the
Speaker 4: parts of the left, quote unquote progressive left that borders
Speaker 4: should basically be abolished is not compatible with the survivor
Speaker 4: of any form of democratic notion grounded a citizenship. So
Speaker 4: I'm very clear that was a big mistake. What worries
Speaker 4: me more about the concept of democracy that is emerging,
Speaker 4: which you see in the Trump camp and you saw
Speaker 4: in some of the people admired, like Victor Uban, is
Speaker 4: the idea that if you are elected, anything you do
Speaker 4: by definition is democratic, and that is absolutely incompatible, inconsistent
Speaker 4: with obviously the core premises of the Constitution, particularly what
Speaker 4: we would think of as the Madisonian principles, that there
Speaker 4: is such a thing as the tyranny of the majority.
Speaker 4: So even if somebody has a majority very rare that
Speaker 4: they do, that doesn't entitle them to do whatever they want.
Speaker 4: Constraining institutions are the core of a republic, the republican idea,
Speaker 4: and we are I am concerned that ideologies that reject
Speaker 4: that on the left and the right are being have
Speaker 4: been reborn over the last twenty or thirty years, perhaps
Speaker 4: a bit longer, and that's what the Second World War
Speaker 4: was fought against in a very extreme form. So I'm
Speaker 4: not comparing them with that, and So while I agree
Speaker 4: that there are important elements of the critique which are
Speaker 4: serious and we should take seriously, which I've mentioned, that
Speaker 4: the critique doesn't seem to me to be coming from
Speaker 4: an honorable place. If the aim is to prefer preserve republics,
Speaker 4: if the aim is to preserve ethno national dictatorships, which
Speaker 4: mister Putin would certainly agree with, then that's something else.
Speaker 4: But that's not my side.
Speaker 2: I feel like it's become a cliche at this point
Speaker 2: to you know, no matter what happens in the world,
Speaker 2: people always seem to say, you're is like the loser. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's good for Europe? Right? Is there a sliver of
Speaker 2: hope down the line if we think that one of
Speaker 2: the things that Europe has struggled with is you know,
Speaker 2: strategic autonomy and managing all these different national interests. And
Speaker 2: if we think that, you know, maybe the US emerges
Speaker 2: as a force for Europe to you know, unite against
Speaker 2: or maybe encourage it, motivate it to develop some form
Speaker 2: of like centralized strategy or autonomy. Couldn't we see like
Speaker 2: a more united Europe out of the situation.
Speaker 4: Well that's one possibility, and it's a possibility that pretty
Speaker 4: much everyone who's a friend of mine who's European, and
Speaker 4: I suppose I one would want to see. I think
Speaker 4: it's important to understand why it's so difficult, And this
Speaker 4: gets back to the sort of like the historical tragedy
Speaker 4: of Europe. How do you get to be where it is?
Speaker 4: I wrote one column on this which I'm particularly proud
Speaker 4: of it, so I will repeat some of the argument.
Speaker 4: The essentially that Europe transformed the world. It's absolutely nambiguously
Speaker 4: the case. This, this peripheral you can call it, the continent,
Speaker 4: is really just a promontory of Eurasia six or seven
Speaker 4: hundred years ago, was pretty irrelevant, and it ended up
Speaker 4: conquering motion of the world and completely transforming the world intellectually, culturally, scientifically,
Speaker 4: and politically by creating these vast empires and one product
Speaker 4: in which was the United States. And how did this happen? Well,
Speaker 4: there are many argiments about this. There was a shared
Speaker 4: civilization and profound political rivalry.
Speaker 5: That the one core element.
Speaker 4: Of European history since the fall for the Roman Empire
Speaker 4: is that it was Christian and divided. And so the
Speaker 4: European states evolved in conflict and they became very very
Speaker 4: very good at it, extraordinarily good at it, so good
Speaker 4: at it that once they really got going, they ended
Speaker 4: up I conquered so much of the world. It's still
Speaker 4: very shocking that they did, you know. I still think
Speaker 4: think of how few thousands of English people succeeded in
Speaker 4: conquering India in the middle of the eighteenth centuries, completely freakish.
Speaker 4: So this fragmentation was a core of it, and the
Speaker 4: cultural development, the scientific was also the core of that.
Speaker 4: Because when there was a problem with one state trying
Speaker 4: to suppress certain sorts of thinking, people moved everywhere somewhere else,
Speaker 4: or the ideas moved somewhere else. So there is this
Speaker 4: idea which I think is right, that the.
Speaker 5: Division of Europe actually made it.
Speaker 4: I think this is very very powerful idea and correct,
Speaker 4: and China's unity held it back because it didn't allow
Speaker 4: for this competition. The Europe was built around competition among
Speaker 4: the states, among the rulers and within them. As a result,
Speaker 4: partly because of this, I won't go through all that
Speaker 4: because it takes too long. So then at the end
Speaker 4: of this magnificent process, not surprisingly, when the modern states
Speaker 4: were emerging after the Industrial Revolution, nationalism became the way
Speaker 4: of mobilizing the people for the first time, you really
Speaker 4: created mobilized societies. Before that, the armies were predominantly professional
Speaker 4: or class based armies. The French really invented the universal
Speaker 4: conscription state. And this came culminated in the two World Wars,
Speaker 4: which completely shattered Europe. Shattered that its idea of itself,
Speaker 4: its confidence in itself, and its values. Because look what
Speaker 4: happened in the the death camps. So europe triumph.
Speaker 5: Ended up in a catastrophe.
Speaker 4: And that's what europeans. I'm old enough to remember all this.
Speaker 4: I was born in just after the war.
Speaker 2: Not the colonies, not the colonies.
Speaker 4: It was actually Europe itself that destroyed itself in the end,
Speaker 4: by the way, that led to the direct liberation of
Speaker 4: all the empires, because they didn't have the power anymore
Speaker 4: to do it. And America was very keen on it's
Speaker 4: breaking it absolutely right by the way. So anyway, Europe
Speaker 4: said after that, we have to be something completely different.
Speaker 5: This is really important.
Speaker 4: We have to be something completely different. But the most
Speaker 4: important we need to unite. But we're still state member states.
Speaker 4: We have different histories, languages, cultures, and so forth. We
Speaker 4: can't get rid of that, so we must cooperate. We
Speaker 4: want someone to look after us.
Speaker 5: That was the us.
Speaker 4: We don't trust ourselves. We've lost trust in ourselves. Very
Speaker 4: important British least, which covered this because they got through it,
Speaker 4: so they decided that they would. They feel we can
Speaker 4: be outside it. We're an island, but the others, with
Speaker 4: the enemies to just across the border everywhere. Go back
Speaker 4: to that at the end of the world. So we
Speaker 4: left everything to Uncle Sam because he was a kind,
Speaker 4: generous uncle. We've made a few odd stake but maybe
Speaker 4: we trust it.
Speaker 5: That's how we.
Speaker 4: Got to where we are. This is my ten minute
Speaker 4: history of Europe. Now suddenly you're saying you want us
Speaker 4: to become a superpower. You want us to be a
Speaker 4: great power with an army and a will, and we
Speaker 4: don't trust any of that stuff. The last time we
Speaker 4: tried to do that, we blew up the world. This
Speaker 4: is not this is not nothing. It's still there, the desired,
Speaker 4: the will to power, the famous isn't really there. So
Speaker 4: that gets to the answer to your question, what do
Speaker 4: I think will happen? And I think that's exactly the
Speaker 4: struggle now because you could see in a sense, there
Speaker 4: are two forces in Europe today.
Speaker 5: One is a centrist liberal.
Speaker 4: Rather mild desire to create an effective Europe, which isn't
Speaker 4: really a state, but is more of one than now.
Speaker 4: That's the center and the other side of the right
Speaker 4: wing nationalists. But the right wing nationalists are nationalists.
Speaker 5: They're not European.
Speaker 4: Because when you start going back to who the nation is,
Speaker 4: you go back so France less Germany, but it's going
Speaker 4: to happen. Italy is Italy is a peculiar story. I
Speaker 4: won't go into that. But in France, the French right
Speaker 4: is nationalist, protectionist.
Speaker 5: It doesn't see itself as Europe.
Speaker 4: There aren't any nationalists in the sense that Dvance is
Speaker 4: a nationalist or Trump is a nationalist.
Speaker 5: Who are European nationalists? It doesn't.
Speaker 4: That's an excitement. There are, but there aren't many. And
Speaker 4: in political will terms, then you have this either mild
Speaker 4: centralizing desire to pull together be a more effective club
Speaker 4: I would like to see, or it's yes, we would
Speaker 4: like to be a great part, but it's the nation.
Speaker 4: And as one famous European politician once said, in Europe
Speaker 4: there are small countries and small countries that don't realize
Speaker 4: they're small.
Speaker 5: And so if you honestly.
Speaker 4: Ask me how this will play out, I have no idea,
Speaker 4: and I don't think anyone does. I know what I
Speaker 4: would like to see, I've indicated it, but that may
Speaker 4: not be what is possible. What you really need is
Speaker 4: a European Charlemn or Napoleon, and that doesn't come out
Speaker 4: of this because there isn't a European with that will.
Speaker 4: The last European will to make Europe was that's what
Speaker 4: he wanted to do. It would have been a German right,
Speaker 4: and before that was a Napoleon. Before that, Luis Cator's
Speaker 4: briefly mentioned. So I think the question of what Europe's
Speaker 4: future is what it can be given its history of
Speaker 4: fragmentation and the extraordinary life that came out at this fragmentation.
Speaker 4: I think it's just not a toll clear. But there's
Speaker 4: no doubt that America is helping if it does develop
Speaker 4: an independent sense of itself with its own institution's sense
Speaker 4: of destiny, sense of identity, very difficult in a multinational
Speaker 4: state like this, enteredy like this, then it will be
Speaker 4: because the Americans of saying you can't trust us, We're
Speaker 4: going to beat you around the head. If you don't
Speaker 4: sort yourself, maybe that will count.
Speaker 1: Had a fantastic sort of overview of the history and
Speaker 1: the core challenge. I'm curious. Look, predicting the future is impossible,
Speaker 1: so we will just stick to the present. In the past,
Speaker 1: the UK left Europe. So the UK left this sort
Speaker 1: of structure that was put in place to sort of
Speaker 1: denationalize the content continent. So join accidentally, but also like, okay,
Speaker 1: so the UK and theory has more sovereignty now than
Speaker 1: it had when it was part of the EU. What's
Speaker 1: it doing with that sovereignty? Because it doesn't look like
Speaker 1: it's been able to put it. You know, it looks
Speaker 1: like more or less the struggles of continental Europe and
Speaker 1: you care more.
Speaker 5: Or less shared.
Speaker 1: Well, what's holding the UK.
Speaker 4: It's a perfect example of a small country that didn't
Speaker 4: realize it was a small country.
Speaker 5: They thought.
Speaker 4: The people who sold this sold this in part because
Speaker 4: they said this will stop all these immigrants. It turned
Speaker 4: out actually we could do an stupendous job of accepting
Speaker 4: immigrants from everywhere else in the world as soon as
Speaker 4: we stopped the Europeans. So that was sort of they
Speaker 4: were sold a Bill of Goods on that was pretty obvious.
Speaker 4: They were told we would be able to do all
Speaker 4: sorts of wonderful deals on our own, and we've done
Speaker 4: a few minor deals. One of the deals we were
Speaker 4: promised was a free trade deal with America that certainly
Speaker 4: didn't happen. The point is Britain on its own is
Speaker 4: a minor power. So the idea that the liberating ourselves
Speaker 4: from the EU will mean that we would suddenly have
Speaker 4: huge choices to trans form ourselves and our relations to
Speaker 4: the world was a fantasy. Now that's one side. The
Speaker 4: other side of it is, of course that a very
Speaker 4: large part of what we had in common with Europe,
Speaker 4: the welfare state, we had a relatively undeveloped one, but
Speaker 4: we have it in common. The problems of our economy,
Speaker 4: de industrialization, the difficulty of coping with Chinese competition, for example,
Speaker 4: become more obvious. Are weakness in technology well we share
Speaker 4: with Europe. Britain wasn't different from and therefore didn't have
Speaker 4: completely different options from European countries.
Speaker 5: We're very similar in the.
Speaker 4: Germans, and they're all different in a certain ways, have
Speaker 4: different strength. But actually in the big picture, Britain is
Speaker 4: just another European country. How else what else could it be?
Speaker 4: Look at its history. The only difference has got this
Speaker 4: tiny little water weight between us, and that's preserved independence.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying it's nothing, but essentially the opportunities and
Speaker 4: the challenges for the British economy essentially those of Europe,
Speaker 4: and leaving the U hasn't suddenly given us an enormous
Speaker 4: number of new opportunities which allow Britain to transform itself.
Speaker 4: And certainly, no British political leader, and I can say
Speaker 4: this with some confidence looking at the whole lot, have
Speaker 4: any fundamentally new ways of operating here which are going
Speaker 4: to transform the performance of the country.
Speaker 5: And that's become more and more.
Speaker 4: Obvious, and it will be even more obvious if Niger
Speaker 4: Faraj orzach Polanski becomes the next prime minister. Nobody offers
Speaker 4: a coherence strategy for solving the problems of Britain as
Speaker 4: they are now, and it's partly because they've actually genuinely
Speaker 4: become very very difficult.
Speaker 2: Since we've been talking sort of broad strokes history throughout
Speaker 2: this Yes, can you give us your thoughts on what
Speaker 2: is the world that the US is ultimately working towards,
Speaker 2: inasmuch as you can try to eke out a coherent
Speaker 2: strategy from the Trump administration, like what is it that
Speaker 2: they are working towards.
Speaker 4: I'm almost speechless in response to that very very good question,
Speaker 4: because it's very difficult. Part of the problem, I think
Speaker 4: is I see a separation between Donald Trump as a person,
Speaker 4: very him, obviously charismatic and exciting, and his views of
Speaker 4: the world from that of the various different elements of
Speaker 4: the coalition that he's put together, which is a pretty
Speaker 4: strange coalition pretty intellectually, culturally, it includes obviously a very
Speaker 4: large number of spectacularly wealthy and powerful business people, some
Speaker 4: of whom have a religious belief in the future, and
Speaker 4: at the other hand, it includes intellectual elements and people
Speaker 4: who have a religious belief in the past.
Speaker 5: Pretty obvious they want to.
Speaker 4: Go back to a theocratic state or theocratic state structures.
Speaker 4: They want to establish, re establish patterns of behavior and
Speaker 4: relations between men and women, between racism so well, which
Speaker 4: sort of old fashion. So there's a blistering new and
Speaker 4: a crusted old as it were, trying to work together
Speaker 4: here there are intellectual elements and then relatively small numbers
Speaker 4: I presume and a huge mass are very dissatisfied people,
Speaker 4: particularly as far as I can see men and old people.
Speaker 4: What do these people have in common? So you answer
Speaker 4: the question, And what do I think America is about?
Speaker 4: I don't know, because I don't think this the Mega
Speaker 4: movement broadly defined, if I can use that word, knows
Speaker 4: what it wants, because I'm not saying that individuals people don't, but.
Speaker 5: They don't share anything that is completely Trump Trump.
Speaker 4: So if I understand this view, what they might share
Speaker 4: and as long as somebody like Trump is there, Trump
Speaker 4: wants to be Okay, I think that's pretty clear. He
Speaker 4: wants to be a man who says my word is law.
Speaker 4: That's pretty obvious. He wants to rule a state which
Speaker 4: is free to do anything, which is anything he wants,
Speaker 4: and is bound by no constraint or law or rules
Speaker 4: external or internal. And look, Ataus would have understood this.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's perfectly understandable. This is how much of
Speaker 4: point of much of humanity was rules since the agrarian age.
Speaker 4: Any Egyptian pharaoh would have understood this. So he wants that.
Speaker 4: He has no ideology really beyond that, except it is
Speaker 4: very very important to make clear in every bilateral relations
Speaker 4: he thinks bilaterally that he's the boss and the others aren't,
Speaker 4: and so he will throw his weight around, particularly against
Speaker 4: anybody who thinks is essentially not showing improper respect in
Speaker 4: various different ways. So Maduro, so the mullets, and that's important.
Speaker 4: It might be only constrained is my own sense of morality.
Speaker 5: Well you will work out what that be.
Speaker 4: So that is what he wants, what he wants to be,
Speaker 4: and he will naturally respect people who are like him.
Speaker 4: The movement, I think, has multiple different objectives. Some of
Speaker 4: them would like the United States, which are coincidence with Trump,
Speaker 4: to the United States to be a nineteenth century great
Speaker 4: power like Britain in eighteen fifty Palmerstonian and Britain. You know,
Speaker 4: we have no friends, that no permanent enemies, we have
Speaker 4: permanent interests. That would be a more intellectual version of this.
Speaker 4: And obviously lots of them think that, but some of
Speaker 4: them pretty well. Obviously hexath Is is a Christian crusaders,
Speaker 4: a completely different set of ideological aims. Vance seems to
Speaker 4: be an isolationist. So there's nothing coherent there. And so
Speaker 4: in the end, when I look at this I think
Speaker 4: this is Trump's party, and with Trump, what you will
Speaker 4: get is action, but not intellectually grounded, pretty ignorant.
Speaker 5: He will use a lot of power.
Speaker 4: If he doesn't work, he will withdraw, Thank heavens, That's
Speaker 4: what I see. It doesn't seem to me that we're
Speaker 4: looking at the US under this regime and looking at
Speaker 4: the people around that has a coherent sense as a
Speaker 4: whole of what it wants to be and what it
Speaker 4: wants to do. That's terrifying because it is the most
Speaker 4: important country in the world. It is the guaranteur of
Speaker 4: the system, which I'd like to point out works sensationally
Speaker 4: well for the US. So one of the most astonishing
Speaker 4: thing to me is that if you look at it
Speaker 4: from outside the US, I mean, I think it makes
Speaker 4: incredible mess of its own policy and politics. It could
Speaker 4: do much better, But the US is a spectacular success.
Speaker 4: Whereas everybody want to change everything, it seems very difficult
Speaker 4: to understand, you know, if you compare it with the
Speaker 4: Roman Empire, the United States is sort of in the
Speaker 4: second century, so what's the problem. But this US is
Speaker 4: what I see now. It could change, presumably, though I
Speaker 4: have no idea whether it could change durably. And this
Speaker 4: is my last point was very much a part of
Speaker 4: my new PostScript for my book. You won't restore confidence
Speaker 4: in the rest of the world that the US sort
Speaker 4: of knows what it's doing and what it's about, has
Speaker 4: a coherent sense of itself just by a defeat in
Speaker 4: one election, because that's not it. That's not over. You
Speaker 4: have to think that this has become unthinkable and that doesn't
Speaker 4: seem to me likely looking at it. So the honest truth.
Speaker 4: And someone lived in America for ten years a foreigner,
Speaker 4: but I lived there follow it closely. The place has
Speaker 4: become completely bewildering, and a completely bewildering superpower is absolutely terrifying.
Speaker 4: Nobody likes China, nobody really, but they know what it's about.
Speaker 5: It's predictable.
Speaker 4: You know how the regime works, you know how the
Speaker 4: system works. Do you know what she's trying to do
Speaker 4: that one can with. It's very difficult to live with
Speaker 4: a country with this power which is as completely bewildering
Speaker 4: as this one has become. And I've tried to give
Speaker 4: you some sense of how I think about it, and
Speaker 4: in the end, what I do is see an incoherent
Speaker 4: movement of people full of resentments and hatreds, including amongst
Speaker 4: one another. But also I'm against other Americans, the rest
Speaker 4: of the world, and Trump, who is sort of You
Speaker 4: can make sense of him as long as you accept
Speaker 4: he doesn't operate in a way that one would normally
Speaker 4: think of as rational. So when I think of a ruler,
Speaker 4: I mean like him, I think of Nero.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a million ways we could have things
Speaker 1: I could ask you.
Speaker 2: Isn't that you're cute to ask about Roman Empire history?
Speaker 2: Isn't that we could go You're a middle aged guy,
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker 1: You know what I yet I have one you know,
Speaker 1: said I.
Speaker 5: Studied Roman history.
Speaker 3: You did.
Speaker 5: I studied classics, so.
Speaker 4: I read a lot of Ancient Greek and Latin.
Speaker 2: So you are always, in fact thinking about the Roman Empire.
Speaker 4: The first and best column by Fire wrote about Donald Trump,
Speaker 4: it was in March twenty sixteen when I said Donald
Speaker 4: Trump is how great republics to meet their end? That
Speaker 4: was the headline, and it compared him with the Caesars
Speaker 4: Julius and Augustus, who Tavian who basically ended the Roman Empire.
Speaker 5: But they were far cleverer.
Speaker 1: You know, you mentioned that Europe excelled during a period
Speaker 1: in which there was competition among the states but also
Speaker 1: the shared and you used the Christian civilization when I figured,
Speaker 1: you know, you mentioned that.
Speaker 4: They did have two hundred and fifty years of religious
Speaker 4: war along with that period.
Speaker 1: But I'm curious you mentioned the sort of like the
Speaker 1: mild liberal you know, not quite a European nationalism, but
Speaker 1: this like sort of mild liberal desire for some sort
Speaker 1: of Europe that exists. You know, one thing I think
Speaker 1: about like should there be maybe philosophically maybe in practice,
Speaker 1: like does it would it go along well with the
Speaker 1: revived Christianity in Europe? Because when I think about secular
Speaker 1: liberal Europeans, I one thing is like nobody goes to church,
Speaker 1: but historically a lot of liberal ideas were you know,
Speaker 1: co located, so to speak, with Christian ideas, particularly around
Speaker 1: sort of like equal rights, And there's a lot of framing.
Speaker 1: Does that could that underpin or could that be a
Speaker 1: tailwind for a sort of reinvigorated Europe if it found
Speaker 1: that sort of spiritual vector. Again, one of.
Speaker 4: The things that I think is very important in which
Speaker 4: I didn't stress in the the history of the last
Speaker 4: one two hundred years, particularly the twentieth century, is Europe
Speaker 4: spawned a lot of ideologies, spawned all of them. So
Speaker 4: obviously every variety of Christianity you can imagine, which they
Speaker 4: happily fought over from much to their history, Orthodoxy, Catholicism,
Speaker 4: Protestantism and so forth, and of course socialism, communism, fascism,
Speaker 4: the dominant ideologies of the world. And one of the
Speaker 4: things that happened as a result of the religious wars,
Speaker 4: which were devastating. Arguably the most destructive single war in
Speaker 4: European history, though it's very into a particular place, based
Speaker 4: in Germany, was the Thirty Years War of the early
Speaker 4: seventeenth century. I believe something like thirty percent of the
Speaker 4: population was killed, and it was many other things, but
Speaker 4: it was also a religious war. So that was the
Speaker 4: seventeenth century. Everybody believed that. The probably is when everybody
Speaker 4: really believes in something, they often find an excuse for
Speaker 4: killing people who don't. And I won't didn't talk about
Speaker 4: what happened to Jews. And then of course the same
Speaker 4: thing happened with nationalism, which led to some pretty spectacular wars,
Speaker 4: and communism that was more mass murder internally, so Europeans
Speaker 4: became and this is part of I think European culture,
Speaker 4: civilization after the Second World War became exhausted with ideology.
Speaker 4: We wanted to stop that because when we I think
Speaker 4: it was very widely shared. Whenever we got one of these,
Speaker 4: we ended up with mass murder. And the truth is,
Speaker 4: nothing bad has ever happened to the US except your
Speaker 4: idiotic Civil War, which should never have been fought because
Speaker 4: of the civil because slavery should have just been abolished
Speaker 4: by then. It wasn't justifiable. So the point is, but
Speaker 4: one of my favorite statistics, and I can't remember the
Speaker 4: exact figures, but if you compare the number of Americans
Speaker 4: who've died in war, I think it's a somewhere over
Speaker 4: a million, including the Civil War million and a half.
Speaker 4: You can probably give me the exact figures. In Europe,
Speaker 4: it's many tens of millions. So the idea of really
Speaker 4: believing in things, really really believing things to the point
Speaker 4: that you actually want to go and kill people who
Speaker 4: don't share those beliefs, which is where it seems to go,
Speaker 4: is very very frightening. Now, the younger generation now may
Speaker 4: now have forgotten enough history to start it again so
Speaker 4: it might, it might happen, but that was a dominant part. Yes,
Speaker 4: we wanted to defend ourselves against communists because it was
Speaker 4: one of those ideologies, European ideologies that had gone pretty obviously.
Speaker 4: We had realized most of us Stalin's death camps meant
Speaker 4: in terms of deaths.
Speaker 5: So Europeans didn't want that.
Speaker 4: And we look at when I say, I look at
Speaker 4: these europe Americans now with the enthusiasm for ideology and
Speaker 4: for passionate belief and also all I see is people
Speaker 4: who want to come and kill their neighbors because they
Speaker 4: have the wrong views, or they're the wrong color, or
Speaker 4: they're the wrong whatever. And that's Europe, that's European history.
Speaker 5: Hecatombs.
Speaker 4: Now, the problem with that is, if you carefully, it's
Speaker 4: toleration is your dominant mode. You can accept everybody except
Speaker 4: the intolerant, and you crowd them out. That doesn't last.
Speaker 4: As you rightly say, sooner orly can people start getting
Speaker 4: passionate beliefs again. And we may be moving in that direction.
Speaker 4: But I'm one of those people who thinks once you're
Speaker 4: in that mode, it's very difficult to find the off switch,
Speaker 4: because sooner or later everyone around you starts thinking looking
Speaker 4: like an enemy, and so I don't want to go that.
Speaker 4: And most Europeans of my generation or even somewhat younger
Speaker 4: don't want to go that because we bear the scars.
Speaker 4: And I think in a different way, why do the
Speaker 4: Chinese in the end accept the current regime because it
Speaker 4: works and it doesn't kill them all, and they don't
Speaker 4: want to lunatic again. So we're not going to become
Speaker 4: go where you are, because we tend to think where
Speaker 4: you're going could ultimately lead you to some very very
Speaker 4: dark places.
Speaker 2: I wasn't expecting this conversation to be so sort of
Speaker 2: state centric in many ways. But since we've gone in
Speaker 2: this direction, and since again we're talking about the long
Speaker 2: arc history here and society, can you talk a little
Speaker 2: bit about the impact of AI on you know, if
Speaker 2: we think about the social contract between a state's population
Speaker 2: and its political authority, what does it mean when work
Speaker 2: starts to be automated, when maybe culture becomes more automated.
Speaker 2: I realize this is a very general, big picture question,
Speaker 2: but if anyone can respond to this, you can well.
Speaker 4: I think of this as the ultimate Faustian bargain. The
Speaker 4: devil promises infinite wealth and power to Faust in return
Speaker 4: for his immortal soul, which is in some sense he's meaning,
Speaker 4: and he makes the bargain and it doesn't end well.
Speaker 4: So we have been fantastically innovative and creative, and we
Speaker 4: have in the process made ourselves vastly wealthier and wiser
Speaker 4: in some obvious ways.
Speaker 5: But we're always the.
Speaker 4: Brink of catastrophes a result. And the last thing that
Speaker 4: really motivated people around those lines was nuclear weapons created.
Speaker 4: People like Einstein got terribly frightened about what they created. Well,
Speaker 4: I think of Ai that way. We have made a Faust, Embarkin,
Speaker 4: and we have created a servant quote unquote with the
Speaker 4: capacity to replace us or even in some way to
Speaker 4: dominate us. Where this will end up, I don't know,
Speaker 4: but it seems to me there are a number of
Speaker 4: absolutely terrifying dangers I think, And I thought for the
Speaker 4: first time I've read about it three or four years ago,
Speaker 4: that it was going to prove completely unregulatable. It would
Speaker 4: competitionive process and so forth, it would make institutions that
Speaker 4: used it unaccountable in some profound way because decisions were
Speaker 4: not being taken by anyone you can hold to account.
Speaker 4: It would create transformation in our society, in our economy,
Speaker 4: and in our sense of ourselves, which was in avoidably
Speaker 4: just of an ordered magnitude different from anything that it
Speaker 4: can't come before. And in the short to medium run,
Speaker 4: a lot of this would seem very helpful, very encouraging.
Speaker 4: We will we will enjoy it, we will be able
Speaker 4: to do things we couldn't do otherwise. But if we
Speaker 4: do get to artificial general intelligence, and it's absolutely clear
Speaker 4: that the machine dominates humanity in terms of what it
Speaker 4: can do intellectually in every possible way, then there is
Speaker 4: an existential question, obviously, is what is humanity for and
Speaker 4: what does human beings think there for? So when I
Speaker 4: thought about this, and I leave aside the of his dangers,
Speaker 4: the creation of pathogens, we can't possibly manage the creation
Speaker 4: of armies AI run armies, which are completely bought armies
Speaker 4: which could control human population is just flesh and blood
Speaker 4: with such all this is absolutely terrifying. And we're dancing
Speaker 4: into this and souciently under the direction of four or
Speaker 4: five geniuses and their companies, and that's what's happening. My instinct,
Speaker 4: probably those of an old man with grandchildren, is it
Speaker 4: should all be closed down, but of course it's not
Speaker 4: going to happen. I do think it's transformative. I think
Speaker 4: it's going to be transformative in business.
Speaker 5: Is pretty clear.
Speaker 4: They're going to be powerful business models. I can perfectly
Speaker 4: well understand that ten years from now there will be
Speaker 4: no Martin Wolves because the computer will do it so
Speaker 4: much better, though they'd be less fun. But the I
Speaker 4: think we just have to say we are stepping into
Speaker 4: the unknown. We should do our best to work out
Speaker 4: what their big dangers are and focus on them. With
Speaker 4: our current politics, that's impossible, clearly impossible. I think it
Speaker 4: is a huge moment in human history, possibly the single
Speaker 4: most important invention, and there have been some very very
Speaker 4: important ones, and human humanity will change profoundly. Humanity was
Speaker 4: changed by writing profoundly. It was transformed by publishing, by
Speaker 4: the ability to print. It was transformed by the Internet.
Speaker 4: I think this is probably more important than all of
Speaker 4: these put together, but I'm not sure. But my instinct
Speaker 4: is I'm a great fan of Frank Herbert, the June books,
Speaker 4: particularly June itself, and his idea that at some point
Speaker 4: in the past there was something called the but Leary
Speaker 4: and jihad in which at the end of which machines
Speaker 4: that think were banned. I wouldn't be terribly surprised of
Speaker 4: one hundred years from now people, if there are people
Speaker 4: still around, we'll say we should have done that.
Speaker 2: Dune references were also not where I was expecting this
Speaker 2: conversation to go.
Speaker 4: But science fiction is better on this sort of stuff
Speaker 4: than anything else. Yes, as a great science fiction writers.
Speaker 4: Asimov is another of my fans, my hero. Sorry, he
Speaker 4: wrote wonderfully the Laws of robotics, and nobody seemed to
Speaker 4: be thinking about those either.
Speaker 2: We should get a list of recommended sci fi books
Speaker 2: from Martin and put it in the news letter. We'll
Speaker 2: follow up with you afterwards. Martin Wolf, another amazing conversation.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for coming back on our thoughts.
Speaker 5: That's certainly not what I expected.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. We'll chat with you again next spring.
Speaker 2: Okay, Joe, that was fascinating. Indeed, I feel I feel
Speaker 2: a little bit like I was back at university getting
Speaker 2: a history lecture. I also just realized, since we've come
Speaker 2: to London from Madrid, we could hit maybe four I
Speaker 2: want to say, four more European cities and get a
Speaker 2: complete European colonial tour. So we just got to go
Speaker 2: to Lisbon, Paris, Brussels. That's three.
Speaker 1: We really need. We need to make a we need
Speaker 1: a European tour, we need we need to make this
Speaker 1: a recurring spring trip to London. There was so much
Speaker 1: in that conversation that was interesting.
Speaker 2: I do think so I do think Martin hit on something.
Speaker 2: And it's funny because this came up in our conversation
Speaker 2: from last year as well, where we were talking about
Speaker 2: the dollar reserve system and the idea that like, yes, okay,
Speaker 2: there are downsides to having the world's reserve currency, but
Speaker 2: there are also a lot of upsides, including being able
Speaker 2: to run a massive fiscal deficit. But like his point
Speaker 2: that it's difficult to understand why so many Americans in
Speaker 2: particular are so aggrieved as to want to blow up
Speaker 2: an existing structure that, compared to the rest of the world,
Speaker 2: seems to have benefited them enormously.
Speaker 1: I love his point about the sort of like and
Speaker 1: it raises some questions about the short term future, like
Speaker 1: just a few years from now, of what is the
Speaker 1: Trump coalition. For example, there's a really big difference between
Speaker 1: the AI focused Peter teelworld versus some of the people
Speaker 1: would like a world to go back to the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties and so forth.
Speaker 3: Another thing that.
Speaker 1: I hadn't really appreciated until you articulate it on the
Speaker 1: Europe question. You know, when we joke about the EU
Speaker 1: and they love their documents and their reports and their
Speaker 1: studies and regulations and stuff like that. But this sort
Speaker 1: of not just Okay, let's put in some mechanisms to
Speaker 1: avoid World War two again or something like that. With
Speaker 1: the sort of the complete.
Speaker 5: Exhaustion of ideology.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's such an interesting, such an interesting framing. It's
Speaker 1: like every time we've gotten into some new ideology, it
Speaker 1: like end terribly. So it's like, let's let's make the
Speaker 1: attempt of sort of creating a post ideological super state
Speaker 1: in somewhere. It's such an interesting framing and like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, like maybe it's that was Maybe that's an
Speaker 1: experiment with a finite, finite time span.
Speaker 2: I guess we'll find out. Shall we leave it there?
Speaker 1: Let's leave it there.
Speaker 2: This has been another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 1: And I'm Jill Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart,
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