WEBVTT - Dividing the World, Pt. 2: Externalization ft. Andrew 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:03.920 All the media. 0:00:05.200 --> 0:00:07.520 Hey, and welcome to take it up. And here I'm 0:00:07.560 --> 0:00:10.080 Andrew Sage and I'm back with James. 0:00:10.080 --> 0:00:10.680 It's me again. 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:12.000 Welcome back. 0:00:12.480 --> 0:00:13.760 Yeah, good to be here. 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:17.040 Great to have you once again, offer you to have me. 0:00:17.400 --> 0:00:19.000 I'm not sure the dynamic is here. 0:00:20.000 --> 0:00:22.360 Yeah, yeah, I mean there were. It's nice to be together. 0:00:22.680 --> 0:00:25.280 It's an egalitarian dynamic. You know, we're both having each 0:00:25.320 --> 0:00:26.280 other in a sense. 0:00:27.640 --> 0:00:29.600 Yeah, we're sharing this podcast. 0:00:30.080 --> 0:00:33.320 Yeah. I think there are a lot of concepts that 0:00:33.400 --> 0:00:35.279 it's good to grasp to get a sense of how 0:00:35.320 --> 0:00:38.320 this world works. Kind of continuing from the previous episode 0:00:38.360 --> 0:00:40.839 where we spoke about all the different ways that we 0:00:40.880 --> 0:00:45.599 can divide up the world and understanding the world and 0:00:45.640 --> 0:00:50.159 so on. Today's sort of pursuit of that endeavor. I 0:00:50.200 --> 0:00:52.839 wanted to get into a particular concept that is so 0:00:53.000 --> 0:00:57.600 benign yet supervsive in this system, and it's the idea 0:00:57.760 --> 0:01:00.840 of externalization. Do you get what I mean by that? 0:01:01.440 --> 0:01:04.600 Yeah, like making people of things other. 0:01:05.280 --> 0:01:08.280 Yes, But specifically, I think I want to address how 0:01:08.400 --> 0:01:13.280 capitalism persists by pushing harm onto the other, yeah, onto 0:01:13.319 --> 0:01:18.200 the someone or something else, shifting the costs of particular actions, 0:01:18.280 --> 0:01:22.959 either environmentally socially or economically. I think the easiest example 0:01:22.959 --> 0:01:24.760 I could point too is how a company may choose 0:01:24.760 --> 0:01:27.920 to save on disposal costs by dumping their waste into 0:01:27.920 --> 0:01:31.600 a river, which can thus poison the water supply, the ecosystem, 0:01:31.720 --> 0:01:34.320 and the health of all those human and non human 0:01:34.360 --> 0:01:37.840 lives who rely upon or live near that river. Do 0:01:37.840 --> 0:01:39.560 you have another example you could probably point to? 0:01:40.760 --> 0:01:42.080 Yeah, I mean there are lots of them. One of 0:01:42.080 --> 0:01:44.039 them that I think of a lot is like how 0:01:44.360 --> 0:01:48.520 in the US, rightly, products that we can't recycle or 0:01:48.520 --> 0:01:51.160 that we can't landfill, we will literally ship to somewhere 0:01:51.160 --> 0:01:55.200 else to be dumped. Like, our consumption creates so much 0:01:55.240 --> 0:01:58.320 excess and so much waste, and we can't be confronted 0:01:58.400 --> 0:02:00.080 with that waste, so we tip it to play. This 0:02:00.120 --> 0:02:01.400 is where people consume less. 0:02:02.240 --> 0:02:04.720 Yeah, it's uh, I mean you see, I don't know 0:02:04.720 --> 0:02:06.200 if you've seen any of the footage of some of 0:02:06.240 --> 0:02:12.200 these places, their whole costs of fast fashion waste for 0:02:12.240 --> 0:02:17.600 example in Africa, or just eweiste leaching into the soil. 0:02:17.919 --> 0:02:20.320 It's really quite tragic. Yeah. 0:02:20.480 --> 0:02:23.440 I remember someone on net once was telling me that 0:02:23.560 --> 0:02:26.800 like one of the things that children did where they 0:02:26.960 --> 0:02:30.560 had come from, was they would pick through e waste, 0:02:31.160 --> 0:02:34.480 specifically charging cables to get the copper out. 0:02:34.960 --> 0:02:35.359 Mm hmm. 0:02:35.960 --> 0:02:38.360 This would result in them having these terrible injuries to 0:02:38.400 --> 0:02:41.280 their fingers because they were like prying the cables apart, 0:02:41.320 --> 0:02:43.360 and you know, over time they would get little pieces 0:02:43.360 --> 0:02:45.799 of both shards of metal embedded their fingertips. 0:02:46.000 --> 0:02:47.560 Town. Yeah, that's terrible. 0:02:48.240 --> 0:02:51.760 Yeah, it's a pretty pretty grim condemnation of a way 0:02:51.800 --> 0:02:52.480 of consuming. 0:02:52.919 --> 0:02:55.480 Yeah, it's messed up. It's messed up, and I think 0:02:56.840 --> 0:02:58.800 when you see that sort of stuff, it's hard to 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:02.960 unsee it. When you see that impact onto the world, 0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:05.440 it's hard to unsee it. But that's part of how 0:03:05.520 --> 0:03:10.320 this concept thrives, this externalization thrives. It's by obscure in itself. Yeah, 0:03:10.800 --> 0:03:12.040 So that's what we kind of want to do with 0:03:12.040 --> 0:03:14.840 this episode, get up a full breadth of its history, 0:03:14.880 --> 0:03:17.959 it's present, and its apparent future, so that we can 0:03:18.320 --> 0:03:25.040 not see all the different ways that this occurs. Now, 0:03:25.160 --> 0:03:27.320 this pass and on of costs may have always been 0:03:27.320 --> 0:03:29.840 an option on the table, but we can see that 0:03:29.880 --> 0:03:32.800 a lot of traditional economies did not go that route 0:03:33.280 --> 0:03:37.640 because traditional economies were often human economies. As David Greeber 0:03:37.800 --> 0:03:40.360 used the term in Debt. The first five thousand years, 0:03:40.680 --> 0:03:43.320 you know, these were economies focused on human relationships. They 0:03:43.360 --> 0:03:47.760 were embedded in kinship and land and customs and obligation 0:03:47.960 --> 0:03:51.640 and reciprocity. So what you owed was really financial. It 0:03:51.720 --> 0:03:56.400 was to enable your elder, your clan plan itself, and 0:03:56.520 --> 0:04:00.320 so you could not really avoid the costs of your 0:04:00.320 --> 0:04:03.280 actions on others, because that was at the center of 0:04:03.320 --> 0:04:07.200 it all others. But the transition to capitalism was a 0:04:07.200 --> 0:04:10.360 shift in what the economy was. It enforced the idea 0:04:10.400 --> 0:04:13.760 that everything is or should be up for sale. The 0:04:13.800 --> 0:04:19.960 economist called Polani called it the Great Transformation, when land, labor, 0:04:20.080 --> 0:04:24.840 and money were turned into fictitious commodities, treated as if 0:04:24.880 --> 0:04:28.480 they were products for sale. Plenty saw the modern state 0:04:28.560 --> 0:04:32.200 and the capitalist market economy as a package deal. Graybot 0:04:32.279 --> 0:04:35.520 also made this very clear in Debt as well. For 0:04:35.560 --> 0:04:37.920 this new kind of economy to take hold, people had 0:04:37.920 --> 0:04:40.400 to change how they thought about work and trade and 0:04:40.440 --> 0:04:43.000 relation with each other and see in the world, those 0:04:43.000 --> 0:04:46.400 conditions had to be created by the state. So you 0:04:46.400 --> 0:04:49.120 could look at how electritional economies and commons had to 0:04:49.120 --> 0:04:53.960 be disrupted to force the shift. In England, you had 0:04:53.960 --> 0:04:56.320 people pushed off of common land that they had use 0:04:56.360 --> 0:04:58.720 for centuries, and they had no choice but to sell 0:04:58.760 --> 0:05:00.880 their labor to survive and go in to the factories. 0:05:01.480 --> 0:05:03.880 We have to remember that it never started in the factories. 0:05:03.920 --> 0:05:07.800 That actually started in the colonies. This dispossession of people 0:05:08.240 --> 0:05:13.320 and from place started through that colonization process. Already amplified 0:05:13.400 --> 0:05:17.680 through that colonization process extracting the wealth of people or 0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:20.680 of labor, of land, of resources from one place to 0:05:20.760 --> 0:05:24.839 concentrate it in another, to displace people and land and 0:05:24.960 --> 0:05:29.400 costs and se Colonialism was capitalism sort of training ground 0:05:29.480 --> 0:05:32.760 for externalization. You plunder a little bit over here, you 0:05:32.880 --> 0:05:35.040 profit a little bit over there. And this is really 0:05:35.080 --> 0:05:38.320 where we get to the core of capitalist externalization. With 0:05:38.400 --> 0:05:41.000 the shifting of the costs on a small scale that 0:05:41.080 --> 0:05:44.560 looks like the river pollution example. From the global scale, 0:05:44.600 --> 0:05:46.960 it looks like what will steam is getting into with 0:05:47.040 --> 0:05:51.000 world systems theory. How the wealth and stability the coronations 0:05:51.400 --> 0:05:55.160 depends on the exploitation of the periphery. So slavery and 0:05:55.320 --> 0:05:59.120 genocide and ecological ruin all of these are costs that 0:05:59.480 --> 0:06:02.600 create the wealth that the core enjoys. But it's made 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:06.160 invisible to that core. Because when you're part of an 0:06:06.240 --> 0:06:10.560 ongoing relationship with community, with land, with ecology, with people, 0:06:11.200 --> 0:06:14.760 the actions have consequences that matter. They reverberate, you can 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:17.680 feel them, and that demands a level of responsibility on 0:06:17.720 --> 0:06:21.279 your part. But when you take the things that have 0:06:21.320 --> 0:06:26.240 been woven into relationship and turn them into plain old transactions, 0:06:27.120 --> 0:06:32.000 those transactions can then offload the costs, offload the consequences, 0:06:32.360 --> 0:06:36.240 make them someone else's problem. So, yeah, cloven is very 0:06:36.240 --> 0:06:40.480 affordable now, but it's affordable because somebody somewhere was underpaid 0:06:40.520 --> 0:06:46.479 and overworked. The smartphone. It's convenient, it's useful, successible, but 0:06:46.600 --> 0:06:49.880 it's parts of mind and the dangerous conditions. You know, 0:06:49.920 --> 0:06:56.719 your food delicious, nutritious, not exactly affordable these days, but 0:06:57.160 --> 0:07:00.920 it's picked by hands that cannot afford that same meal. 0:07:02.160 --> 0:07:05.320 So the harms of these systems, the harms of these actions, 0:07:05.360 --> 0:07:10.320 of this level of consumption doesn't cease to exist. It's 0:07:10.320 --> 0:07:13.400 just externalized. So it could be rendered invisible to one 0:07:13.560 --> 0:07:16.520 point of view. Yeah, and it's not something that can 0:07:16.560 --> 0:07:19.080 be set up without a fight. You know, people would 0:07:19.080 --> 0:07:23.680 resist enclosures were met with resistance. Colonizations make with resistance 0:07:24.440 --> 0:07:26.640 and even to the workers strike. You know, people do 0:07:26.760 --> 0:07:30.880 fight back. It's not just this sweeping and nevitable process. 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:35.280 But because of the collaboration between state and capital, that 0:07:35.440 --> 0:07:38.720 collusion of status and capitalist interests, the whole system has 0:07:38.800 --> 0:07:42.840 managed to persist thus far. It's a very formidable forward 0:07:42.880 --> 0:07:45.000 dealing with So we can set it back here and there, 0:07:45.640 --> 0:07:49.080 but we have not defeated it yet. Yeah, and I 0:07:49.120 --> 0:07:51.600 say yet, because you know, as we get into there 0:07:51.640 --> 0:08:04.880 are ways to loosen its script. I think what's fascinating 0:08:04.920 --> 0:08:09.600 about capitalistic externalization today is just how much it has 0:08:09.640 --> 0:08:13.640 skilled and got more sophisticated in terms of the work 0:08:13.680 --> 0:08:17.640 that makes the world run. The most essential labor is 0:08:17.720 --> 0:08:23.040 often the most invisible and undervalued and precurious labor. You know, 0:08:23.160 --> 0:08:26.640 where we're talking about the work that's necessary to clothe ourselves, 0:08:27.360 --> 0:08:30.560 the work that's necessary to feed ourselves, the work is 0:08:30.600 --> 0:08:34.080 necessary to build infrastructure, such as in the Gulf States 0:08:34.080 --> 0:08:37.480 where you have litual modern slavery taking place to build 0:08:37.559 --> 0:08:42.640 up those countries where they're talking about gig work, transportation delivery, 0:08:42.760 --> 0:08:45.760 that sort of thing, or reproductive work stuff like what 0:08:45.800 --> 0:08:49.000 it's called housewife y or domestic labor. So you can 0:08:49.040 --> 0:08:50.440 think of other examples as well. 0:08:50.840 --> 0:08:53.400 Yeah, I like the one you gave about your cell phone, right, 0:08:53.480 --> 0:08:58.640 like those rare earth materials. Like, it's not some slick, 0:08:58.840 --> 0:09:03.720 safe mining operation that brings serves out the ground. It's 0:09:03.880 --> 0:09:06.920 human hands in dangerous conditions that kill people. 0:09:07.360 --> 0:09:11.600 Exactly, poisoned people. It's not even necessarily a quick death. 0:09:11.600 --> 0:09:14.800 It's often a slow, yeah, lifelong death. 0:09:14.720 --> 0:09:17.760 And it poisons that part of the world for generator. 0:09:17.840 --> 0:09:21.040 We could stop right now, and it would take generations 0:09:21.240 --> 0:09:24.080 for the damage to stop, exactly. 0:09:24.840 --> 0:09:27.880 That's the thing about destruction, right, destruction can be very quick, 0:09:27.880 --> 0:09:31.679 as the rebuilding that can take a long time. Yeah, 0:09:31.880 --> 0:09:34.079 you know, if you look at how quickly Gazo has 0:09:34.160 --> 0:09:36.880 been flattened versus how long it's going to take to 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:39.440 recover from that, it's like nine and. 0:09:39.480 --> 0:09:43.800 D yeah, yeah, yeah like it. I mean I'm very 0:09:43.800 --> 0:09:47.240 familiar with that particular example, right, Like how quickly you 0:09:47.240 --> 0:09:49.960 can destroy something with a bomb from an aeroplane and 0:09:50.000 --> 0:09:52.520 how hard people had to work to build it. In 0:09:52.559 --> 0:09:55.000 October of twenty three, I was in Kurdistan, and like, 0:09:55.960 --> 0:09:59.280 I know how hard people work to build at Rijaba, right, 0:09:59.360 --> 0:10:02.360 to try and build a little island of democracy without 0:10:02.400 --> 0:10:05.920 the state, in a place where the state has been 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:10.800 weaponized against tons of different ethnic groups who are not Arab, 0:10:11.280 --> 0:10:13.400 and even against Arab people who didn't agree with the 0:10:13.440 --> 0:10:20.160 state's particular line a thing. And one night, you know, 0:10:20.240 --> 0:10:23.000 like the power station has gone, they bombed while I 0:10:23.040 --> 0:10:26.400 was there, like an oxygen bottling plant for people who 0:10:26.480 --> 0:10:30.880 need supplemental oxygen, either temporarily or permanently, and like it's 0:10:30.920 --> 0:10:34.080 gone now. And now to build that back up in 0:10:34.120 --> 0:10:37.360 a world where you are largely alienated from the system 0:10:37.400 --> 0:10:40.079 of states in capital, right, you're trying to build stuff 0:10:40.120 --> 0:10:43.120 back up as much as you can from networks of 0:10:43.160 --> 0:10:48.920 solidarity and ingenuity, and that takes years and yeah, yeah, 0:10:48.960 --> 0:10:50.120 but it's not visible. 0:10:50.760 --> 0:10:54.240 And that's not even getting into the emotional and mental 0:10:54.360 --> 0:10:58.280 tool of something like that. Yeah yeah, Oh that can 0:10:58.320 --> 0:11:00.720 be a setback as well. Yeah, when we're not even 0:11:00.720 --> 0:11:05.080 talking about resources, we're talking about Yeah that loss, Yeah 0:11:05.400 --> 0:11:08.480 that that that pain, Yeah, yeah, a pain. It made 0:11:08.559 --> 0:11:13.360 even worse when the skilled people, skilled workers who were 0:11:13.400 --> 0:11:17.720 responsible for upkeeping such something like that also whiped up 0:11:17.760 --> 0:11:19.719 by that same bomb. It makes it all the more 0:11:19.720 --> 0:11:20.880 difficult to recover. 0:11:21.520 --> 0:11:24.680 Yeah, or drawn away right by the conditions of becoming 0:11:24.679 --> 0:11:27.360 a liverable. So you have this like brain drain, where 0:11:27.360 --> 0:11:31.040 people who have skills that are considered to be commercially 0:11:31.200 --> 0:11:35.640 valuable have an opportunity to leave. The people who who 0:11:35.640 --> 0:11:38.720 don't have those have the opportunity to stay or don't 0:11:38.720 --> 0:11:41.240 have the opportunity to leave, I guess, like or even like, 0:11:41.679 --> 0:11:44.920 you know, the US made a different version of externalization, 0:11:45.040 --> 0:11:46.600 I guess, But like the US made a big thing 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:50.280 of how it defeated the Islamic state in you know, 0:11:50.559 --> 0:11:53.960 twenty nineteen, I guess. I can't remember when the last 0:11:54.200 --> 0:11:57.360 Atlan Alba goose was, I think twenty nineteen. But like 0:11:58.360 --> 0:12:02.120 we externalized it off Lord, the cost of that struggle, Yeah, 0:12:02.120 --> 0:12:05.439 the dying part, Like, yeah, US pilots did a whole 0:12:05.480 --> 0:12:09.439 lot of killing, but the dying part that, yeah, we 0:12:09.800 --> 0:12:15.400 externalized that right to Kurdish and Arab and the Syrian fodder. Yeah, 0:12:15.440 --> 0:12:17.319 to people who would whose lives didn't matter. 0:12:17.640 --> 0:12:18.080 Yeah. 0:12:18.280 --> 0:12:22.880 And like I remember a time standing in a cemetery 0:12:22.920 --> 0:12:26.600 there just looking at lines and lines of graves, and 0:12:26.640 --> 0:12:29.320 I just left the house of someone who's thirteen year 0:12:29.360 --> 0:12:32.960 old son was killed in a drone strike and just 0:12:32.960 --> 0:12:37.160 thinking like each of these is a mother burying her child. 0:12:37.360 --> 0:12:41.199 That like we essentially asked for the most part, right like, 0:12:41.280 --> 0:12:43.160 to do that. We said, hey, what you guys do 0:12:43.280 --> 0:12:45.280 the dying part because we don't want to like it 0:12:45.360 --> 0:12:48.319 kind of sucks, sucks for the United States and Britain 0:12:48.360 --> 0:12:50.600 in Iraq and Afghanistan, so we'd like someone else to 0:12:50.679 --> 0:12:54.240 die now. And then you know, here we are a 0:12:54.240 --> 0:12:57.680 few years later, right and like the night before Turkey 0:12:57.720 --> 0:13:01.600 has been bombing the place where I'm looking at these graves, 0:13:02.120 --> 0:13:06.120 and the US ain't doing shit to help, right Like, 0:13:06.360 --> 0:13:10.280 even though these people had like made this massive sacrifice, 0:13:10.640 --> 0:13:13.760 the US wasn't like, yeah, we're your friends. It's not 0:13:13.840 --> 0:13:16.800 a friendship relationship, you know, Like it's it's like you said, 0:13:16.800 --> 0:13:21.480 I forget an interaction, look like a yeah, purchase more 0:13:21.520 --> 0:13:23.360 than a solidarity based thing. 0:13:24.040 --> 0:13:28.839 Yeah, And once again we really see that core externalizing 0:13:28.920 --> 0:13:33.840 its costs onto periphery. And we see that both in 0:13:33.840 --> 0:13:37.920 the sense of on the global stage between countries or 0:13:37.960 --> 0:13:43.960 between populations cores and peripheres, but even internally within countries. 0:13:44.000 --> 0:13:48.160 As we've mentioned in the previous episode talking about that 0:13:48.200 --> 0:13:50.960 divide between the core and the periphery where you have 0:13:51.679 --> 0:13:53.960 but a lot of people have called the economies biggest trick, 0:13:54.200 --> 0:13:58.920 you know, your socialized failures and privatize profits. Yeah. So 0:13:58.960 --> 0:14:01.120 in two thousand and eight to find and Shall crash, 0:14:01.480 --> 0:14:05.280 people were evicted, but the balanks got built out and 0:14:05.320 --> 0:14:10.000 the early stages of COVID corporations got relief. Gig workers 0:14:10.120 --> 0:14:14.439 were exposed. Yeah. You know, in the process of austerity 0:14:15.480 --> 0:14:21.000 resulting from neoliberalism, social services get cut in order to 0:14:21.040 --> 0:14:25.320 balance the books, but there's never any consideration of or 0:14:25.320 --> 0:14:28.600 the straight cuting profits. Yeah, and that's the one thing 0:14:28.600 --> 0:14:29.560 that can never go down. 0:14:30.400 --> 0:14:34.840 Yeah, yeah, exactly, I think or even like within you know, 0:14:34.880 --> 0:14:38.200 we all all food come from the soil at some point, right, 0:14:38.240 --> 0:14:42.120 But like I can't tell you how many people I 0:14:42.200 --> 0:14:44.360 know that my family are in agriculture, right, who have 0:14:44.440 --> 0:14:47.480 died or lost limbs on farms. It's the same is 0:14:47.520 --> 0:14:50.760 true if you're in the mining industry, right, Like, that's 0:14:50.800 --> 0:14:53.760 not something that's visible. You know, you don't like go 0:14:53.840 --> 0:14:56.080 to the supermarket and bite your bread, right, and you 0:14:56.080 --> 0:14:58.440 don't think that someone got their arm in the combine 0:14:58.440 --> 0:15:00.520 harvester when they were doing the fee that went to 0:15:00.560 --> 0:15:02.880 the flower that made your loaf of bread that costs 0:15:02.920 --> 0:15:05.760 one dollars ninety cents, and now that person doesn't have 0:15:05.760 --> 0:15:06.120 an arm. 0:15:06.160 --> 0:15:07.280 It's invisibilized. 0:15:07.720 --> 0:15:08.000 Yeah. 0:15:08.600 --> 0:15:10.000 I mean, it's the same thing when you see like 0:15:10.200 --> 0:15:13.560 these natural disasters taking on place, right, floods or burnings, 0:15:13.600 --> 0:15:17.560 right when California is on file and when Pakistan is 0:15:18.400 --> 0:15:23.680 completely flooded out. Those are the consequences of the actions 0:15:23.680 --> 0:15:28.320 of corporations, of the actions of this entire global economic system. 0:15:28.400 --> 0:15:31.800 And meanwhile, the corporations are getting carbon credits to continue 0:15:31.800 --> 0:15:34.280 doing what they were always doing. Yeah, you know, and 0:15:34.320 --> 0:15:36.720 so the actual consequences of what they're doing, they're paying 0:15:36.760 --> 0:15:39.880 for carbon credits, but the actual consequences of what they're 0:15:39.880 --> 0:15:43.440 doing are being paid for by the communities that are 0:15:43.440 --> 0:15:47.520 displaced by the consequences of this climate change. 0:15:47.800 --> 0:15:49.840 Yeah. Yeah, And we never talk about when we talk 0:15:49.840 --> 0:15:52.760 about migration, right, Like that's a great the climate change 0:15:52.800 --> 0:15:54.880 is a great example that we don't talk about how 0:15:55.360 --> 0:15:57.720 the bulk of people coming to the United States are 0:15:57.720 --> 0:16:00.560 coming from the place is most heavily impacted by climate change. 0:16:00.720 --> 0:16:01.000 Yep. 0:16:01.320 --> 0:16:03.480 Or like I was in the Marshall Islands a few 0:16:03.560 --> 0:16:08.640 years ago, and there will be no more Marshall Islands 0:16:08.680 --> 0:16:12.320 within our lifetime, yeah, because of the consequences and massive 0:16:12.360 --> 0:16:15.360 corporations have made, but like they don't have any agency. 0:16:15.520 --> 0:16:18.600 It made me really like it was hard because they're 0:16:18.600 --> 0:16:21.480 doing stuff like they use a to get it to 0:16:21.480 --> 0:16:23.760 get around the atolls, right, they use little like two 0:16:23.760 --> 0:16:27.080 strikeout boards, and they're trying to build solar canoes instead 0:16:27.480 --> 0:16:30.760 and solar boats so that it's it's cleaner energy. Right, 0:16:31.840 --> 0:16:33.760 Like less than a percent of a percent of the 0:16:33.760 --> 0:16:38.160 world's carbon emissions come from the Marshall Islands and they're 0:16:38.200 --> 0:16:41.200 like trying their hardest to do their part to reduce 0:16:41.480 --> 0:16:45.360 their emissions, but like they can't make the impact that 0:16:45.400 --> 0:16:47.640 needs to be made just stop the sea levels rising 0:16:47.880 --> 0:16:50.760 and arguably like when the world had a chance to 0:16:50.800 --> 0:16:53.040 do so, like you see them speaking at the United 0:16:53.120 --> 0:16:55.640 Nations and then the UN being like the line has 0:16:55.680 --> 0:16:58.800 to go up. Yep, that means your island has to sink. 0:16:59.320 --> 0:17:02.240 And that's why you know reform is not in kneph 0:17:02.240 --> 0:17:05.119 for be enough, because this is how the system is designed. 0:17:05.840 --> 0:17:09.119 It's designed to push risk downward and outward, onto the 0:17:09.119 --> 0:17:12.760 working class, onto the global south, and onto the next generation. 0:17:13.680 --> 0:17:18.000 Because that's another dimension of externalization right time, even our 0:17:18.040 --> 0:17:21.399 future gets externalized in a sense. You know, all of 0:17:21.440 --> 0:17:25.560 our resources are limited or finite resources that can used 0:17:25.640 --> 0:17:30.399 up now at an increase in velocity. Right, Yeah, the 0:17:30.480 --> 0:17:33.639 national debt of some countries is being sunking further and 0:17:33.680 --> 0:17:37.000 further into now right the emissions the center of all 0:17:37.000 --> 0:17:40.680 those emissions now fossil fuels, you know, all that stuff, 0:17:41.320 --> 0:17:43.840 because we don't have to do the consequences, so the 0:17:43.840 --> 0:17:47.480 future don't have to do the consequences. As the system 0:17:47.640 --> 0:17:53.240 digging its own grave, because even though the system needs stability, 0:17:53.320 --> 0:17:57.440 it will sacrifice future stability for present profits. It will 0:17:57.480 --> 0:18:01.680 sacrifice nature, which is the basis of the economy. It 0:18:01.720 --> 0:18:05.359 will sacrifice nature to the economy in service of the economy. 0:18:05.880 --> 0:18:10.119 It will treat natures disposable and infinite and something external 0:18:10.160 --> 0:18:12.439 to the way that we run things as if, as 0:18:12.480 --> 0:18:15.520 if it's not going to catch up to us, and 0:18:15.560 --> 0:18:19.080 so as collapse will accelerate as the consequences become more 0:18:19.080 --> 0:18:23.040 apparent on the sacrifice zones of the periphery, the powers 0:18:23.040 --> 0:18:26.280 are beyond interested in fixing it. You know, they're going 0:18:26.359 --> 0:18:30.000 to fortify themselves against it through border patrols, through climate 0:18:30.080 --> 0:18:35.560 walls through militarized disaster response. They're going to double down. 0:18:36.359 --> 0:18:39.119 Yeah, make it harder and harder to see the consequences 0:18:39.200 --> 0:18:45.760 of excessive consumption of capitalism, like until the levy breaks, 0:18:45.760 --> 0:18:48.000 I guess literally or metaphorically. 0:18:48.760 --> 0:19:02.920 Yep, literally or metaphorically. And I want people to keep 0:19:02.920 --> 0:19:06.200 in mind who are listening. You know, this Quan periphery 0:19:06.359 --> 0:19:09.159 is un just the periphery out there, it's also the 0:19:09.200 --> 0:19:13.160 periphery within that we're talking about in terms of consequences. 0:19:13.200 --> 0:19:17.040 The internal dumping grounds, whether it be you know, indigenous 0:19:17.119 --> 0:19:22.280 reservations or the neighborhoods of black and round people, or 0:19:22.320 --> 0:19:25.800 the prisons are often serve as the holding tanks for 0:19:26.359 --> 0:19:30.119 discontent and for poverty and for all the nasty consequences 0:19:30.200 --> 0:19:32.560 that society doesn't want to deal with because of the 0:19:32.600 --> 0:19:34.000 way society has been structured. 0:19:35.080 --> 0:19:38.520 Yeah, or just like under the bridge near your house, 0:19:38.600 --> 0:19:42.040 you know, like like we exactly treat our exactly. Like 0:19:43.520 --> 0:19:47.000 San Diego has this particular legisative initiative, which I find 0:19:47.080 --> 0:19:51.679 like obviously it's fucked, but also like it's very so 0:19:51.720 --> 0:19:55.119 it's so obvious, like they passed to think or of 0:19:55.200 --> 0:19:57.840 camping there where they're going to make it illegal to 0:19:57.920 --> 0:20:01.480 be unhoused on the sidewalk. You're like, it's a band. 0:20:01.880 --> 0:20:05.399 It's a band against camping on the sidewalk, right, And 0:20:05.520 --> 0:20:09.080 all it does it doesn't provide housing for people, and 0:20:09.160 --> 0:20:13.439 that's it doesn't solve the issue. It moves people. Our 0:20:13.480 --> 0:20:15.760 cities very hilly, and we have lots of canyons in 0:20:15.800 --> 0:20:19.240 which they can't build, so it moves people into these canyons. Wow, 0:20:19.280 --> 0:20:22.239 and it just makes the same people invisible, right, Like 0:20:22.320 --> 0:20:25.640 that's the goal that the goal is not to provide 0:20:25.680 --> 0:20:30.240 any form of solution. It's just to move these people 0:20:30.280 --> 0:20:32.360 away so they don't have to be poor in public. 0:20:33.200 --> 0:20:37.879 And so the people who who use homes as a 0:20:37.960 --> 0:20:40.680 vehicle for wealth creation, not as a place for humans 0:20:40.680 --> 0:20:44.600 to live, don't have to see the consequences of their actions. 0:20:45.359 --> 0:20:50.600 Exactly. It's all about what they want, right I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. 0:20:50.680 --> 0:20:54.120 You know, in a sense, depending on how you look 0:20:54.160 --> 0:20:57.200 at it, any one of us can be a core, 0:20:57.920 --> 0:20:59.760 and any one of us can be a periphery. You know, 0:20:59.840 --> 0:21:03.399 to a rulers, we are all the periphery that they 0:21:03.400 --> 0:21:07.600 can push their consequences onto. In another sense, you know, 0:21:08.119 --> 0:21:10.320 I am part of the periphery, and do you are 0:21:10.359 --> 0:21:13.800 part of the core, James? And in another sense, you know, 0:21:13.880 --> 0:21:15.439 I might be considered part of the core in my 0:21:15.480 --> 0:21:20.760 own country in some ways because of my class position, 0:21:20.920 --> 0:21:23.720 because of my educational background, because of some of the 0:21:23.720 --> 0:21:28.119 ways that I can be insulated, whereas you know, other ways, 0:21:28.160 --> 0:21:30.280 you know, you might be the periphree in the United 0:21:30.320 --> 0:21:33.880 States to the core, to the elites, to the ruling class. 0:21:34.720 --> 0:21:38.200 And so this isn't to diminish the very real differences 0:21:38.240 --> 0:21:41.520 between the global core and the global periphery. It wants 0:21:41.560 --> 0:21:43.680 to make it clear to those of you in the 0:21:43.720 --> 0:21:46.159 global core that you should be in solidarity with that 0:21:46.200 --> 0:21:50.960 global periphery because their consequences are ultimately your own. You know, 0:21:51.200 --> 0:21:53.159 ultimately we are all the ones who are going to 0:21:53.160 --> 0:21:56.960 be holding the costs, cleaning the mess, surviving the fallout, 0:21:59.200 --> 0:22:02.080 and then somehow tough it is because when you live 0:22:02.119 --> 0:22:06.520 with a system that is based on externalization harm, you 0:22:06.560 --> 0:22:09.919 can end up lashing out on others as well. You 0:22:09.960 --> 0:22:13.399 know that that that logic, that systemic logic becomes it 0:22:13.480 --> 0:22:17.159 o anizes, becomes part of how you navigate even your relationships. 0:22:18.160 --> 0:22:20.399 But we don't have to accept that way of doing things. 0:22:20.480 --> 0:22:24.000 The periphery, regardless of which prefer you're referring to, does 0:22:24.160 --> 0:22:28.840 hold the potential for change. And so, you know, in 0:22:28.880 --> 0:22:33.160 the beginning when we were speaking of externalization of economic 0:22:33.240 --> 0:22:38.520 and economic dimension specifically, it's important to understand capitalism relies 0:22:38.840 --> 0:22:43.200 on these flowers, these very smooth flows of labor, energy, 0:22:43.240 --> 0:22:47.520 and resources and data from preferred to core, however you 0:22:47.520 --> 0:22:51.320 define those terms, and so when we interrupt those flows, 0:22:51.440 --> 0:22:55.760 even briefly, we can shake those foundations. And that sort 0:22:55.760 --> 0:22:59.080 of approached, that effort to interrupt, is really part of 0:22:59.119 --> 0:23:01.840 what social revel is about. It's how we make the 0:23:01.920 --> 0:23:04.879 changes that we want to see. Yeah, you know, I 0:23:04.880 --> 0:23:10.240 speak a social revolution as not some flashy one time 0:23:10.280 --> 0:23:15.120 event or moment in history, but as an ongoing process, 0:23:15.119 --> 0:23:18.439 as something that has taking place right now at different levels, 0:23:18.480 --> 0:23:21.280 in different ways all over the world. And so we 0:23:21.320 --> 0:23:24.199 can speak of the things we do to oppose the 0:23:24.240 --> 0:23:29.000 current system, like these strikes and blockades that have taken 0:23:29.000 --> 0:23:32.960 place around the world, the indigenous land defense struggles that 0:23:33.000 --> 0:23:35.199 are taking place around the world, they rent strikes and 0:23:35.280 --> 0:23:40.280 mutual aid that have taken place around the world. And 0:23:40.320 --> 0:23:43.520