EP 71: Beneath the Surface of China's Politics with Jason Szeftel
1h 33m | Oct 19, 2021Here with us today is Jason Szeftel. He is an expert with China politics. Listen how we tackle issues regarding force labor and many more.
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Ari Gronich
0:25
Welcome back to another episode of creating a new tomorrow. I'm your host, Ari Gronich. And today I have with me Jason Szeftel. Jason is an expert in China politics. He is a writer, a podcaster, and a consultant. He's been in the world of sustainability. And I'm really excited to have a conversation with him about all of that, because, you know, this world we're living in is changing. And we are creating a new tomorrow today and activating our vision for a better world. And Jason might have some good ways for you to do that. And, you know, relationships with the rest of the world. Jason, welcome to the show.
Jason Szeftel
1:45
Thanks, Ari. I'm glad to be here.
Ari Gronich
1:49
Why don't you tell us a little bit about your background, how you got started in, in the relationship with China, and some of your sustainability and those kinds of things. your background?
Jason Szeftel
2:02
Yeah, sure. My China angle for me goes back a long time, probably around 20 years. But I was really, really got interested in China around when 911 and the Iraq war. And all of that really started. That was very curious about not even curious, I was kind of worried and curious and tense and nervous, wondering what was going on in the world, are we going to see with China, the same sort of bizarre miscalculations and hysterical reactions we saw with the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. And then here we are 20 years later, and we've kind of fled with our tail tucked between our legs. And over that time, I just wanted to learn what was really going on in China, what the country was really about what to do with a country that's so large and complex. And we had to understand we have to really understand it, if you want to have any sort of way to get our hands around where it's going and where it comes from. Really. And then yeah, so I started I went, I learned Chinese. In college, I got a scholarship to study in China, in Beijing, at Beijing University. There, I learned about various systems. Actually, that's where a lot of the sustainability stuff came in. I was really interested early on, in how are we developing the world today? How, what systems what electrical types of systems are we building, sustainable water systems, transportation systems, all of this. And when I was actually in China, I was studying their transportation networks, agricultural systems, their demography, all of those inputs that kind of give us the societies that we live in. I was just very curious where that was going. And yeah, at the time, that was the, you know, 2010 to 2015, I was in and out of China, most of the time. And that was where that was kind of the heyday for me of sustainability, and what kind of sustainable future we were going to build. And I actually learned a lot of things that kind of set me against a lot of the mainstream about how would we would get that done? And what would work and what wouldn't work? And yeah, so I've just been kind of putting some pieces together, trying to figure out what could work and what we could do, and then trying to share it with people.
Ari Gronich
4:00
Awesome. So you know, this show is all about going against the mainstream. So let's talk about a little bit of what the mainstream solutions are. And what you've found, are the flaws in those systems, and you know, how they can be improved?
Jason Szeftel
4:17
Sure, well, right now, the two main systems from a sort of renewable energy perspective, it could just take this sort of green energy, which is very important, since the Industrial Revolution, you need energy to run society to run any of these civilizations, any of these industrial systems. And we've typically ran on fossil fuels, coal, oil, natural gas, and everyone, every where's talking about how we're going to get rid of them. And the main two that we've come up with are basically wind turbines, wind energy, and then solar energy with solar panels. And these two things are awesome. I have nothing against them. I think they're very cool. But the issue is that most of the world, the vast majority of the world does not have the solar irradiation you need or the wind speed, height and consistency that you need to have panels, I mean startup panels or turbines running. So if you sort of map it out, and you look at the sort of places where you have the right solar conditions, or at certain conditions that radiation you need, or the right wind conditions, to a very small percentage of the world. And you if you put that next to the places that have the population centers nearby, it's tough otherwise, you have to build very, very large transmission systems. And in the United States, for example, it's very tough to build a single transmission line, it can take decades, it can take 10,15 years. And so, red tape, but a lot of things, it could be environmental things, you could be crossing a lot of preserve, you know, sort of habitats that need to be preserved or endangered species, it can cross through tribal lands, red tape, and then yeah, and then there's increasing backlash from a lot of rural areas. So in California, the two oldest areas for one of the tools areas for wind and solar energy is near Palm Springs. And people in Palm Springs now see a lot of the solar and wind energy production as almost industrializing the landscape. So they don't want to see wind turbines, as far as the eye can see that I want solar panels on all land surrounding them. And it's a real challenge. So that's particularly on the left, where there's so much investment in these two technologies, there's ever more competing interests. And it's interesting that these are both environmental versus environmental, environmental versus humanitarian, environmental versus sometimes racial or other other justice issues.
Ari Gronich
6:38
So when it comes to those two, right, we're not talking about something that I've thought of as a great source of energy for years, which is wave energy, right, the flowing of waves, so they're constantly coming into shore, there is a way to harness that energy, right. But we're not talking about that as far as like a main kind of energy source. The other thing that comes to mind with regards to things like the wind turbines, right, I remember reading, this is maybe 12, 13 years ago, and a Popular Science magazine was a wind turbine that was horizontal. So instead of vertically spinning, it's been horizontal and spun on basically a fulcrum. So there was very little resistance. So it was like a three mile per hour breeze that would cause it to generate energy, which is almost nothing and can be found almost everywhere. Yet, those kinds of newer forms of the old technology still aren't being adopted, right? The solar panels are just starting to undergo transformation in their technology as well. To make you know them less expensive. So here's my question, the point of that rant is, when it comes to these things, how quickly can we move with technology if we got out of our own way, rather than holding technology back due to money concerns and other things like that?
Jason Szeftel
8:31
Yeah, it's an open question. But even you bring up a really good point, that there are different styles of these sorts of technologies, and some of them aren't being considered as much. A big reason why is that? It's a question of scale, and centralization, and a lot of ways. So the large solar and wind companies are just as invested in controlling these resources as a typical fossil fuel company, oil company is. So they want to build giant wind farms. And giant solar farms. Because it gives you scale, it gives you a large size. They're not as interested in doing small micro local sorts of things. There's a big battle going on between should we have giant, giant transmission lines all over the world and all over the country in sort of take advantage of the great wind corridors in the center of the country and sort of shift the energy out, you know, and take advantage of, you know, the Southwest, the United States for solar, or should we try and do this in a more diffuse distributed way, where you have little, little power plants everywhere? I mean that's a big question. Yeah, I mean, that's just one of the things we always got to remember. It's trillions of dollars to replace the grid. And it brings up real questions about reliability, about who runs it, how the systems work, because they're not meant for solar panels on every house. That's not how they're designed. And we'll see where it goes. But you also bring up the question of the tech, the actual, how far can we go? With the technologies we have and so, on solar panels, there's about there's an efficiency threshold, we really not gonna be able to go beyond it. But it's very good, I mean, it's very good. And then with wind turbines, you're sort of what they've decided to do is just go for bigger and bigger turbines, they're not really changing, like, the arrangement of them, they really just want them huge. I mean, I think they're multiple football fields long at this point. And that's also really good for the companies. Companies like vest das in Europe, the manufacturers, these because no one is gonna come at you, if you manage. If you're manufacturing things that big. It's, there's very few companies that can do it. The other question is the industry, where's it located? So and so one of the things with solar panels Is that something like 80% of all solar panels are built in China. And most of the polysilicon one of the key ingredients comes from shinjang. Whereas run it where the entire system runs on forced labor. So there's a big question about, well, should we be getting solar panels from there? You know, if we ramp it up to kind of expand it all over the country and all over the world to run on solar energy? Are we going to do that on the backs of forced labor, in western China, with their people, and basically, in concentration camps, three indoctrination camps and stuff like that? These are real questions. And it's, again, I think there's a strong corporate push at this time behind traditional renewable energy in the form of solar and wind companies. And I find a lot of dishonest at this point, especially because they pretend like there's gonna be a big green revolution in terms of energy and jobs. It's like, No, you guys are just buying panels from China and installing them. The jobs are an installation and construction, it's like, those are temporary jobs, you get the build out, you get the time you get the jobs from the build out, then it's gone.
Ari Gronich
11:45
So, you know, let's say, I mean, we obviously can't change China's stance on how they treat their employees. And at least it up till now our policies are as such that it is tremendously incentivized to work with China, right? versus other places that have maybe better policies towards their people. So how do we bridge that gap between bringing those jobs back to America, bringing those jobs actually to anywhere that they're going to be installed, the manufacturing should be kind of in the areas in which there'll be installed? So that we're always buying local, right? So even big companies can, you know, think a little differently and do that. But how do we bridge those gaps?
Jason Szeftel
12:43
Yeah, that's a great question. And I think you really nailed it, it's going to be more production, where the consumption or the installation happens. That's where things are trending. And the way it works is that China basically flooded the market with solar panels, and did them below cost so no one else can compete to basically cornered the market during the 2010s. That's what happened. They just wiped out the competition. It was not. Again, you don't want to say what's fair, unfair in sort of global economics, it's kind of not how it works. But that's the game they played, and they did very well. So most US solar panel manufacturers are all gone. And what they're relying on now is industrial policy. So they're relying on the Biden administration just like the Trump administration to start, basically, preventing, incentivizing things to make it happen, make them happen in the US subsidizing things, tariffing, different products from abroad, and basically trying to rearrange the global production system we've had since the 1980s. That's kind of what's happening. We see it in semiconductors, we see it in certain solar energy stuff, we see it with certain rare earth minerals. It just goes on and on. It's kind of what we're seeing across the board. COVID really set this, I mean, just set this loose after with the PPE and all of the vaccine problems, mean people in the United States would be freezing out if we didn't have vaccines made in the country. If they were coming from India or China, it would be even worse. So it really gave people a sense of almost like a national security thing for production for the economy. And we're seeing it. I mean, it's almost a bipartisan thing at this point. So we'll see where it goes. But that's where things are happening. We're not really trying to help other countries as much anymore, trying to prevent it from being in China. Number one, trying to build it here. And then we'll figure everything else out later. That's kind of the thought process.
Ari Gronich
14:26
Yeah, well, so my thought process is always How can we plan and work backwards versus, you know, plan from the end result, right. So, in my case, this series I told you about, when in our pre interview, the series of books that I'm writing, tribal living in a modern world is a lot about how do we take technology and marry it with nature, marry it with a natural way of living that does support all the people on the planet and In a way, that's not like the planet isn't killing us because of what we've done to it, right? So how do we marry the modern, the technology, the influx of this revolution that started with the industrial revolution? and bring it back to a sustainable natural flow so that they're kind of together and helping one another versus destroying one another?
Jason Szeftel
15:30
Yeah, that's a big question. I think it's one of the things that really animated the sort of sustainability movement, the more modern one that's more technologically focused since the mid 2000s. It's been a huge question that we need this greater sense with global warming, with climate change, with anything going on in the world. And even with the sort of political conflicts you see everywhere, resource conflicts, water conflicts, that we have to do something. But there is a real question. And a real challenge, just because it's not clear that we can do this for everyone everywhere. what's likely is that the sort of place that could have a sort of marriage of nature and technology is a place like the United States that puts the money into it really invest in it develops a host of new technologies which don't exist, and then is able to sort of transform its society and economy while also keeping it stable, and productive and healthy. Most places on earth cannot do that. And so for China, for example, trying to just transform the Chinese energy system is a massive, massive undertaking. So they use 50% more energy in China than in the United States. And they have all the dirty industries on Earth, right? They do more steel manufacturing, like steel and aluminum preachers like 50% of the entire world, they pull 50% of all the coal in the world out of the ground. Everything. I mean, all these really, really energy intensive, dirty industries, whether it's, you know, minerals processing, or gas, or steel and steel in different smelting procedures. It's just that everything is 30% of world manufacturing. So how do you retool this entire production node in the world to run on new forms of energy? I mean, it's trill again, trillions and trillions of dollars. And it's tough for China to do because they need low costs for everything they have to keep people employed. They can't have dislocated people running out of the factories and started marching through the streets, like you saw on a bit in Hong Kong. I think that it's really tough to see I actually see more countries, not marrying nature and technology in a wholesome way, but sort of heading heading back down in a bad way, not able to get the resources they need, not able to evolve their economy and the way they need not able to sort of bring society forward. At the same time as they're doing all this. It's just extremely difficult. And even in the United States, we don't have the best politically minded, cooperative sort of party system right now. So we'll see how that goes.
Ari Gronich
17:57
I mean, if you were to if you were to like if you were to be doing this, right, but I was Biden, for instance, and you are giving me your, you know, five minutes, so to speak, your your elevator pitch on why I should listen to your consulting, and what I should be doing with the country. As far as this aspect goes, what would you be saying to me?
Jason Szeftel
18:28
I don't want to shirk the question. But I will say that I don't think that the President has nearly as much power as people think
Ari Gronich
18:33
I understand that. And, and here's how, here's where I feel the power lies. The power lies in somebody like Kennedy saying, we're going to the moon, you have a decade to do it. You know, it's just gonna be done. It's like a mandate, right? They say something, and then the world kind of starts doing the things to make that happen. Right. So Biden has the power of a leadership position where he can create a mandate, he can say, this is what we're doing, you know, like a Kennedy would, I don't think we've had anybody since Kennedy, like that.
Jason Szeftel
19:17
We'll also think our government or federal government's not as competent as it was particularly starting in the 1970s. Its ability to actually execute on programs like that for multi decade or even 5, 6, 10 years. It's just completely almost disappeared. So what we see is some of the biggest revolutions are just privately funded things. So for example, the shale revolution, particularly in Texas, North Dakota, and in Pennsylvania, all these small places, they, it was revolutionary for the US energy system, but it wasn't didn't come through any federal initiatives and actually sort of had to push back against a lot of state initiatives that didn't want fracking and didn't want all this stuff to happen. But it's been probably the biggest energy transformation in 50 years in the United States. So I'm very wary of, I love the idea, I love going to the moon, setting the mission, setting the plan. But even look at NASA since the end of the Cold War, NASA hasn't been able to do anything right now. It's gonna be Elon Musk that goes to the moon with his rockets in Texas.
Ari Gronich
20:15
Now, I understand that. But here's the thing, I guess is the difference. Most people believe that when the government says, Let's do a mandate, that it's the government doing the job, right? You don't realize that it's the private contractors, it's the private citizens, the private companies, the engineers, the geniuses, that are actual human beings, right, that are doing the job that are getting paid. So when they hear something like this will be trillions and trillions of dollars, they don't hear Cha Ching, that means that we're going to be getting paid. That means that our communities are going to have sustainable incomes, and we're going to have a future and we're going to have money to spend and we're going to have things to do all they hear is it's going to cost trillions of dollars. Right? So I guess this is where, yes, I believe that private companies are the answer, private citizens, private people, but I believe that there needs to be some kind of level of incentive that says, You guys got to do this. And you gotta do it now. Because we're not waiting anymore. For your, you know, return on investment, so to speak, we're looking at what's the newest technology? How can we get it out the fastest and most effective, etc.
Jason Szeftel
21:37
Yeah, so I don't want to shirk your question, I'll get back to it and just say, I think that what I would what I would tell them to focus on is, you know, actually try and focus on technology development in certain key areas and stop thinking about technology as just new texting apps, and new video messaging apps and stuff like that. We've really diluted the meaning of the word, technology. And it's really tragic. And some of the consequences. So I'd say, you know, focus on encouraging people to develop new ways to deal with natural disasters. Are there better ways that we can deal with fires? Is there something better than throwing water on it? Right, is there something we could do, you know what I mean, things like that, I think are very important.
Ari Gronich
22:16
You're in LA, right?
Jason Szeftel
22:17
I am in LA? Yeah, I am familiar with it.
Ari Gronich
22:19
I saw 310 cuz my numbers were 310. And so I used to live through those LA fires, right. And I had an idea once and I brought it to the government. I said, Let's plant some ice plants all alongside the mountains, they grow very well there. They don't need a lot of water, but they hold a lot of water. It's like planting cactus, they'll keep a lot of that area from, you know, from burning, because it'll extinguish the fires, but nobody listened. was kind of interesting. It was like a really easy thing I felt like to do. But you're right. We're not telling people to do that.
Jason Szeftel
23:00
Yeah, and it's a lot of the reason is just the government contracting methods. So let's say you and I had an idea for how to better, you know, fight fires in California, well, we'd go and we'd pitch something to, you know, probably this callfire, it would take, you know, three years for them to get back to us. And then you know, we get a decision, then we'd start we get to work on the project for maybe two, three more years. And it's just, it's this massive, extended timeline to try things out. So I believe they should be more encouraging of a lot more experimentation in agriculture and transportation technologies in electrical and energy technologies. I mean, the places bizarre. I mean, even the right to try, that's, I think that's a very good policy, like let's, you know, people are going to die, they have no other options. We should try things if they want, if they want to pay consent, you know, try things. I think that's a good policy. But it's funny, the place where you see the bizarre small innovation and experimentation is often in the military. The military has things like DARPA, that are invested in trying to push things forward with technology. And a lot of impressive technologies have come out of that. So we need a bit more of that focus. It's just very hard to get it together in government, especially the state governments trying to contract with state governments is not fun. So those procedures, I think a lot of things related to it sounds a bit, you know, buzzworthy, but smart government things that can just running the systems for government on more modern systems would be a really good thing. The reason everything's so bad on a government website is because it took the same thing we said, three, you know, six years ago, seven years ago, they had an idea for the website for unemployment benefits in Florida. And then, you know, crisis hits, and it all collapses because it was like, well, this thing was basically 2010 technology, and we don't live in that and it can't be updated. It's not right. It's not right.
Ari Gronich
24:47
Yeah, you know. That's part of like, in general. My issue with business, with government, with what I see in the world, like, I see the technologies as they come out, you know, like the prototypes and the things that people are working on and they're showing done. And then I see what's out and I go, there's such a gap, it's like a 50 year gap between what is here, and what's developed and could be out. And bridging those together is usually a conversation of money, which to me is like the silliest conversation we could have, right? Money is something we made up, the planet, we didn't make up. You know, we didn't make up the need of money to be people who wanted to innovate or grow or things like that, I just find that by using that money as the excuse not to, we have stunted our personal growth, our financial growth, our systemic growth, and, you know, our technological growth.
Jason Szeftel
26:11
Yeah, the places where you see the most technological growth tend to be places with a big consumer market that you can keep coming back to. So if you look at iPhones, or consumer electronics, you get a lot of innovation, just because every year you can put up something new and you can convince them to buy it. And that's huge, big promise for these technologies is if you just have a government buyer, if you just have something like that you can't get rates of innovation and iteration that you need to really continuously advance them. And so in China, for example, there's a new policy, not new five, six years old, called civil military fusion, where basically the Chinese government realized that they can't develop military technology, as it's as good as a lot of consumer stuff. And so what they're doing is trying to actively take consumer technologies, things like electronics, or little drones, that kids use to take videos or whatever to and bring that into the military, because they've realized that the military timelines are now too long and too slow for the same reason. And the United States has actually the same problem. They tried to have a big military cloud product they bought it from there's a whole brouhaha between Microsoft and Amazon. And they basically just said, you know, we're gonna cancel the contract, even though it's four or five years old, because already the technology is already too old. So there's a real challenge of bringing, we actually see. have to find a way to either give something a consumer market, to let it innovate continuously, right? Or you're in trouble. And so it's, that's the place where you can really see a lot of innovation, it's just hard to get. That's why so many technologies just die on the vine, can't pay the people to keep doing it.
Ari Gronich
27:44
So there was something I saw recently, and it was, I think Samsung had their TVs on a subscription, where you're paying just, you know, a monthly amount, and you get the TV and every couple years or whatever, you get the latest one. So you send them back that one, you get the latest one kind of like Apple does with the iPhones these days. And stuff like that. Would it be with you know, if we have to have a money system, I think that would be a good money system is we have a subscription model instead of a buy for model. And that way, we're encouraging innovation versus encouraging people to have to get rid of their inventory before they can sell anything new.
Jason Szeftel
28:32
Yeah, I mean, a lot of things are moving towards the subscription model. It's pretty crazy. Everything feels like it's a subscription. Now, Netflix is a subscription, your entertainment is a subscription. Even writers are doing subscription stuff on substack. There's a subscription ification of everything. It feels like I think there's a good reason why it gives you reliable recurring revenue in a way that one off purchases, that could be one year four, five, six in between really don't do. And often you just don't need as many as much marketing, customer acquisition can be a lot lower, smaller enough to do as best as much. If you have someone in there with you for years, it's reliable revenue, you can loan you could lend off of it, you can do a lot of cool stuff. So I don't think it's going to replace the money system. But it's becoming a bigger and bigger part of the way services are sold in almost every app and every sort of cool app on the internet or on your Mac or on your iPhone. They want you to subscribe because it gives them the certainty that they'll have money and they'll actually continue to invest in improving the technology or at least keeping it up to date for the newest operating system. There's a lot of apps I'll get on my Mac that are free that once you update to a new operating system. They just never updated either because they don't have any incentive to so the subscriptions are definitely here to stay. Although they're kind of getting out of control. They want you to have a subscription for like boxes for your dog. And like everything.
Ari Gronich
29:56
I'm I'm more thinking like if that was the model we went to for technology, like, you know, whether it be our energy system, we're on subscription models, but they don't update the technology with every month, you know, the way that we're paying for subscription, they keep the technology, kind of they maintain it, but they they're not always updating. So that's where I'm thinking, like, Is there a way I just want ways I want things that we can do something that people if they're listening to this in the background, the audience, you know, they're like, what do I do, I'm passionate about something, and I want to be able to, you know, create a sustainable life, I want to create sustainable living with all the subscriptions people are going broke. Because they don't realize that the $9 here and the $10 there and the $9, there's adding up to $3,000. Right, so I you know, it's like, how do we get to where innovation and sustainability technology, and free flowing ideas is like the norm again, kind of like the Roman era or the Greek, you know, era where people were the Renaissance, where it was all about rebirth and growing, I think we've like hit this stage in our evolution, where it's like, we like we got to a place in the 50s, where we liked it, and we just want to stay there forever. And, and so, how do we get back to that rebirth? mentality? I know, you talked a little bit about the psychology of it.
Jason Szeftel
31:44
Yeah, I'm with you on that. I think there's a bit of stasis. And you know, we're all watching Tick tok, and watching videos and all the subscriptions we have are typically little consumer comforts, that let us just keep doing what we're doing, kind of avoid the fact that the rest of the world that we live in, looks exactly like it did in 1970. None of the new physical systems are there, most of LA was built, every home feels like it's a weird, poorly built stucco building from the 70s. They were supposed to go up for like 5, 10 years be replaced and then never get replaced. So yeah, we live, you know, our digital comforts, and digital, little digital consumer electronics really helped us avoid realizing and looking at the fact that the world around us otherwise looks completely old, 50 years old. And you know, in China, it's a bit different, everything is brand new. So there's actually a lot more of a forward looking hungry edge to it, they've seen transformation in their lifetimes in a way that most of us have not. So to get back to it is a real, I mean, it's I think it's like a key key thing we all need to be thinking about. But for stuff, little people, I mean, stuff, little things people can do. That little people, I mean, the challenge with energy is that you often need huge, multi billion dollar investments. So that's not it. But so I mean, if you live in the southwest of the United States, you basically live in one of the best places to have solar energy, you should probably get, I don't want to say should, you can get solar panels on your home, that can be installment payments, and it probably will be a great deal. The panels are really good now. So people who bought solar panels, like 10 years ago, they were paying, they were paying for you to have great solar panels today. You don't I mean, those are outdated, and they're terrible compared to what we have now. And the cost is going down so much. I think you mentioned this earlier, that by 20, 30, solar panels are going to be really, really cheap. And they're going to be at industrial scale at sort of major grid scale stuff, they're gonna be really good. But for consumers, the probably be even better. So that's a great thing to do. I mean, I think Solar City, which is owned by Tesla, Tesla, energy, whatever it's called, now, they integrate batteries and solar panels on your home. And that's a good that's a good combo if you if you want to live in a world where you there's electric cars and solar panels and batteries. And that's I mean, that's a big part of the future. That is advocate the of the most optimistic future advocated by the solar energy cohort of the sort of renewable technology thing. That's something to invest in. I have certain reservations about electric cars, like for example, in China, I don't think China's ever going to be able to run on electric cars, there's, it would need something like four or five times the amount of energy China currently uses, which is more than any country ever, which is 50% more than the United States. And they don't have the energy for that. You would need massive, probably massive, massive amounts of nuclear energy to do that. That's probably the only way. So yeah, I think that's something people should keep in mind running. certain places aren't going to run on electric cars and solar energy. Germany is a great example. They built alot of solar panels in Germany, but they forgot to look up at the sky. And notice that it's overcast all the time. So there's a big installed capacity of solar panels, unfortunately, also old panels, like we said, they said, Germany is subsidized the good panels you can get today. They just, it's just the actual energy generation, the power generation from these panels is very limited. And so Germany actually uses more coal than it did 10 years ago. So those are one of those contradictions that you, you don't get caught in. But again, for people here who live in the southwest, feeling Florida, he lived in the southern part of the United States. So panels ain't a bad idea. And so that's a good one that I would focus on for the energy side of things. Yeah, it's good. The time is there, time is now.
Ari Gronich
35:42
So, you know, you mentioned China could never run unless it was like on nuclear. Unless maybe it was local. You know, local supply, I think, might be a little different. But here's I guess that where I want to go with this question. So we're looking at China, and all of the innovation, all of what they're doing, all the energy, they're consuming the pollution that they're making, the violations that they have on human rights. And we go, all right, we don't really understand their culture much. And so we judge it from our outside perspective and our outside eyes. And so you have a little more of an insider's view on you know what it is to be in China and what it is to be under that culture. So just for the audience who has preconceived notions, which ones are true, which ones not so much. Can you kind of just illuminate on what this thing that we've now known to be? China?
Jason Szeftel
36:57
Yeah, so there's a lot of sort of myths and sort of misconceived notions about China. I'll just try and kind of run through some things that people might find illuminating, to give them a sense of that place. And, yeah, I think one interesting thing people wouldn't realize, and that is so hard for people from the west to understand is that the Chinese Communist Party is not despised as a totalitarian dictatorship. Until the last 10, 15 years, the Chinese Communist Party was actually not in most people's faces. But all that much, it wasn't like authoritarian forcing you to do this or that there was a lot of freedoms on the ground level, because people were, they wanted to encourage private innovation. So back in the 70s, very different story back in the 60s, very different story. 50 very different story. But in the last 50 years, overall, it hasn't been 40 years, it hasn't been up in people's grill all the time, although that's now changing. And so the party is actually thought to be a good force of ease that you can't do polls in China, because that would be dangerous. But in a healthy majority of Chinese people think the Communist Party is overall a good thing. And they support it hard to hard to believe that goes very much against our Western individualist ideas, That's the way it is. So So why, what what MC, is
Ari Gronich
38:18
So why? Is it indoctrination? Is it just history and culture? Is it? What is it that that says to them? And are they allowed to be individuals still, even within the system of control that they're in?
Jason Szeftel
38:32
So there's always a propaganda element in every Chinese state, that the Chinese state has to manage its population. So China has on a broad scale has overall bad land relative to the size of the country, and it has limited capital. So it doesn't have a lot of money, it doesn't have the best land. And so there's labor land and capital and technology, but just thinking about labor, land capital, the primary resource in China is labor. It's always been the population. You if you need a great wall built in the desert, you send millions of people to do it. If they end up as mortar for the stones, well, you have millions more. And that's what you see. You need to build things. You get them sent here, you just send people all over to deal with whatever needs to get done. But the people are also a threat. At the same time. You have a large, large, poor population, there's something like the entire population of the United States, there's like a group that large in poverty in China. It's hard to fathom. And yet the Chinese government and Chinese people are more concerned with one thing probably than anything else. And that's political integrity, its political stability and order. And the thing they're contrasting the communist party with isn't some Western democratic liberal ideal of a individualist democracy, blah, blah, blah. It's just chaos. They see the two options as order, often tyrannical authoritarian and terrible versus chaos, which is much worse. And most of China's history is chaotic, it's chaos. It's not in an integrated state ruling over an integrated people integrated territory. It is warring factious clans, and warlords duking it out all across the country.
Ari Gronich
0:11
Wow. So you're talking about the land like, you know, we have a whole song about how majestic our land is. So I want you to, I want you to explain that in a way that people who have never been there could grasp what that means for the people what that land is like and what it means for the people.
Jason Szeftel
0:30
Sure. So China's big. China's about the size of the United States overall, like the physical territory. But China, something like 66-70% of China is mountainous. And a large part of China is just huge deserts, the whole western and northern parts of China are massive deserts. So when you get down to it, the sort of flat, temperate, arable land, you can farm-on, build cities easily, all of that is really small. It's something like maybe 15% of the entire country, and maybe the size of Colombia, like the state of Colombia and South America, that's very different than the United States. The United States probably has 30% of the country, mountainous and hilly, right, sort of like the Rockies. And you know, Denver and Salt Lake are, and then you have massive flat stretches of land, all the way in between the Rockies and the Appalachian is basically the Appalachian Mountains is basically a giant Valley, it's like a million to a million square miles. It's enormous. And there you have the Mississippi River system, really like a bunch of rivers that are all interconnected, you can float things down, that you can send goods, products, troops, messages, everything down and across these rivers. And overlaid on top of these rivers are some of the best access to some of the best agricultural land on Earth. So you really have a Nexus, not trying to sing America, the beautiful here, but just to give the comparison, the United States does have a very, very, very fortunate set of natural features that are a major reason why this country is wealthy and powerful. It's not imperialism, it really isn't. It's not colonialism, the United States was the largest consumer market, the largest agricultural manufacturer, the largest industrial manufacturer, the largest food produced the largest everything by like the 1880s, within about 100 years after it was formed. And it's been all of that since for over 120 years. And that was before it ever invaded Cuba before it ever did any of that it was after the Civil War. So it wasn't built on the back of slavery. So that's something I want people to keep in mind. It's always good to have a good sense of our country, because otherwise we get caught up in very misguided and dangerous forms of American exceptionalism will think, oh, we're so great, because XYZ maybe, but maybe we'd be just as great if we all spoke Spanish, or if we'd all been Catholic or something. And my read on things is, that's probably true. If you happen to be in this part of North America, you've managed to take it all over. And no one had ever been here, in a sort of industrializing and heavily agricultural manner, like the Native Americans weren't quite like the 1000s of years of Chinese agriculture. It's very different. But in China, you don't have something like that. The Eastern lowlands of China that are basically the core regions of China are the yellow and Yangtze river valleys. This is 90% of the Chinese population lives there. And it is not like the United States. It's not like what we were just talking about, like this great large center heartland or whatever you want to call it of the United States. It's much meaner, it's much more overpopulated. It's crowded one way, think about it. Imagine the United States was mostly mountains. And then on the East Coast, you had a big kind of large East Coast was, you know, you could fit more people there, you had 90% of US population there. But instead of, you know, 300, 200, something million people, you had 1.2 billion people all stuffed there. So you have in China, you basically have the American Midwest. And on top of that, you have the equivalent of New York, and Boston, and Washington and all of it, it's all piled all piled on top of each other. There are people fighting for land, space, air, water, everything. And there are factories and mines and schools and in cities on top of farmland. I mean, this is just the way it is, there's not enough land. And that's really, really important to keep in mind.
Ari Gronich
4:17
Right? And so for people who have belief systems, like everybody should go back to their country or something, right. We're talking about a country, where are they planning on going? Right, when the population gets too much for that place? Are they planning on terraforming some of those mountains? Are they I mean, like, what can they do? once that population is too much for the landmass?
Jason Szeftel
4:52
It's a real question. It is certainly straining the ecological carrying capacity of the land. So many people China's built over 600 major cities that has over 100 major cities with over a million people that all built in the last few decades. And that's an enormous amount of people's products of resources that you need. And to sustain that is even harder, you have to keep feeding it, you have to keep pouring down. So you have to keep building buildings, you have to do all of that. It's just maintaining it is very difficult. But one thing people should remember is that waves of Chinese people have been leaving China for over 800 years. Okay, this has nothing to do again with colonialism. China was not never colonized. Or it was beaten up by Japan in the 20th century, but was not colonized by other European powers before that. And the reason you have waves of Chinese people in Southeast Asia, and why you have Chinese people in the United States, originally in California in the 19th century, is because China is chaotic and unstable. And you actually saw basically wars between the northern equivalent of northern and southern China, and the southern Chinese fled to Southeast Asia. And then they fled to California as well. These are typically people from southern China from the Guangdong Hong Kong sort of region. And it's that instability in China that has led to waves of Chinese people elsewhere in the world. So that's a very important thing to keep in mind. Because Yeah, people are you tell them to go back to their country, but they've left because of instability to call it often to call China a country is not correct. Like that's a new modern nationalist thing started in the 20th century, China was more of a culture and a civilization, ethnic heritage, cultural heritage than it was a single unified country. That's, that's important. But you also asked just the question of, well, what do you do with when there's too many people. So China has been in a war between its geography, nature, this terrible land it's been given, and any and all technologies that can use to help it. So China has enormous plans for everything, right? They're trying to move water from southern China, up to northern China, because northern China is sinking, drying out and getting covered in dust storms. And it's prone to drought and floods. And it's a problem in a lot of ways. So they're trying to do that, they're trying to build a green wall, basically, a Great Green Wall, to block out the expanding Gobi desert is trying to eat up a lot of northern China. So they're trying to do all these things. But there are fundamental limits, it costs a lot of money just to remediate all the pollution, all the, you know, the air and the water pollution. And like we mentioned, just paving over important farmland, all this kind of stuff, just to remediate that is trillions of dollars. So in a lot of ways, China is stuck with a kind of bluets load, it stuck with the development, it managed to get in the 80s,90s,2000,2010s. And it's going to have to make choices make tough choices about what to do afterwards. That's really the best way to think about it. But in China, typically, things devolve into pretty brutal scenarios you run out of, you have to choose between water and electricity to choose between getting fertilizer, and, you know, building military weapons or whatever. And that is, those sort of brutal questions might be coming back pretty soon. So that's what to keep in mind. It's very hard, like we said, like I was saying earlier, to, most places don't have the ability to marry nature and technology in the way that perhaps the US can if it can build a sustainable system. But like I mentioned with energy, even Chinese agriculture is its own disaster, Chinese transportation, a lot of it is just being built to keep people employed, right? Do you need autonomous electric cars, and rail systems to go to every single country, every single city? Wouldn't you just need one or the other? Maybe one of these never gonna do you need also planes and airports and every single one, like you a lot of the basic economics of these things aren't rational. This is a political project, all of this stuff in China, like we said, they worry about political integrity, and chaos. And that's what they're trying to prevent. And we'll see how it goes. But it's a tough, tough problem.
Ari Gronich
9:10
Seems like a bit of a pressure cooker. Actually. You know, it seems like something's gonna blow.
Jason Szeftel
9:15
I believe so. I believe so. I think that all you need is one the hammer to fall in one area, and it can start a chain reaction, that's what's always happened in Chinese history. So the people don't remember if China is a massive superpower. And it's always been it's, a once in future superpower. And this is just as rebirth into the modern world, which is kind of some of the narrative we've all heard. Really, if that is the case. Why? Why do all of its states always collapse? Every single one has collapsed. Every single Chinese state has collapsed and ended in a massive kerfuffle and bloody struggle. And we need to look at why that's happened. And see if there's anything different today. It's really the question is, What is different today. They could keep China together not? Well, China will continue forever, without any problem, because that's not what's happened.
Ari Gronich
10:06
So let's take it to a cultural step there in that case. So culturally speaking, what keeps China going? Is the culture that they've developed over the last, however many 1000s of years of doing this behavior of implode, rebuild, implode, rebuild, implode, rebuild, right? So different mentality, different psychology. You know, let's talk about how the psychology of that is manifesting in the scenario versus, say, the psychology of, we're in this together, we can do this. And we just got to figure out and plan the steps and then execute them. Right. So taking it out of that emotional, back and forth, upheaval. Do you think that China's capable at this point of shifting the psychology from ancient to modern?
Jason Szeftel
11:12
No, no, I think that the psychology is the desperate struggle for political integrity and unity. And it's very hard to move away from that. And so the way it works in China, like we were saying earlier, If US has a lot of different pieces, right? There's Texas, there's California, like there's the Northeast, the Northwest, there's Alaska, there's Hawaii, there's many different parts in different cultures all around the country. And that's something we all we always think about Florida is not California, Alabama, is not Minnesota. And this is the same thing in China. So when I'm talking about political integrity, and all of that, what I'm really talking about is northern China, Beijing is in northern China, Beijing actually means northern capital, in Chinese. And northern China is where you have political, military, and political military power. And what has always happened in China is that China is the creation of the Northern warlords, basically, and they conquered the rest of China. And they actually did that. Just as recently as well. That's there's only one time in Chinese history when there hasn't been like a northern power that took over everything else. And that's the culture that matters. That's the culture that is running the show. So southern China, in the southern ports have a very different perspective, Shanghai has a very different perspective, western China, Tibet, shinjang, very different perspective. But the overriding one, the only one that can come to the top, and really set the tone is the one in northern China, because that's the one that can keep things together, or can try to, if you let Hong Kong run China, there's not going to be China very long, there's not going to be any of that. So to have a unified China, you really need this northern power to keep things together and obsessively try and make it work. And usually it fails at some point. But that's the culture that rises to the top. So there's never No, no Chinese leader since Mao has ever been from southern China. They go down on tours to southern China. That's a big moment in Chinese history in the late 70s, early 80s. When and then early 90s, when Deng XIAO PING went to southern China, that was a big moment was it was a symbolic event, because southern and northern China aren't the same even ethnically or visually, a lot of Chinese people know and can tell someone who is from Southern versus northern China, it's, again, these have been not not even just separate countries. I mean, they've been different places that are populated for 1000s of years. Right there. There's a region in China called Sichuan, which has the good food that has its own, you know, old culture that had a culture that went back three over 3000 years, had its own language. And even today, the Sichuanese is like the language they speak there, more people speak that as a first language than German or French. And the, you know, the province of Guangdong in southern China, where Hong Kong is that there's more people there than any country in Europe, except for Russia. So there's just it's a scale question. So this question of like, can you integrate it into a new harmonious sort of cultural and if the Chinese perspective is no, there's way too much diversity, the histories are way too old. And what they did was they they simplified the language they impose written Chinese on everyone, because these languages in China they say they call them dialects. So this is a dialect this a doubt. It's not most languages in China are mutually unintelligible only propaganda calls them a dialect, right? But you have to do that because you want this sense of unity. It is essential. So that's what I would say this up and down this endless up and down, build, collapse, rebuild all that it has a permanent mark. And to move beyond it. That's been the goal since 1949, and Wilson's modern try since 1911, really, and they just have not found a way to do it, and technology and pushing into the future. Pushing as fast as you can. It's kind of like Republicans or Democrats trying to focus on enemies abroad or broader ideals that pushes people forward and can also avoid some of the immediate problems like, well, maybe everyone, the republican party doesn't agree right now on things. Maybe everyone that, you know, the democratic party doesn't quite see eye to eye and in factor, you know, clashing in moments? Well, let's look into the future. Let's just ride this technology wave as far as possible. That's what China's been trying to do.
Ari Gronich
15:30
That sounds like a good thing to do, though. So that's what I like is let's ride technology as far as it can go, until it becomes seamless with the rest of nature and the rest of the world. But, so for Americans who want to do business with China, who are in the business, like, I used to do a lot of manufacturing of gym equipment, we know he had factories in China. So for people who want to do business with China, don't know how safe it is, don't know the processes and all that stuff. Just kind of give a little bit of a what would somebody want to think about?
Jason Szeftel
16:13
Yeah, so the whole relationship with China is changing right now. It's transforming, there's more conflict, more animus than in hostility that we've seen since relations were normalized, in the 1970s. So we are really looking at a major sea change and what's been happening. So you know, how to think about it. Not to plug but I do if people have specific questions, sort of, you know, if you're in the entertainment industry, you want to see if your content can work, if you manufacture things, you want to see if your products will get stolen and copied right away. Those are sort of things I help address sort of directly, because it can be very specific. But in general, you probably, it depends industry by industry. But in general, I think what you said earlier, is the long term, right move. I think, if you can, you want production maybe in North America. I know that it's very difficult that the challenge of moving out of China is extreme. But the costs are also rising. I think that, you know, maybe you're not going to be able to do massive production runs all across the world, right, you don't need the same scale that you had, if you're just really selling in the United States. If the global supply chain system, global production world we live in changes, maybe you don't need that you can get ahead of the curve. But in general, it's very dicey these days, I mean, energy costs are going up across the Chinese coast. So our labor costs, so prices are higher. So a lot of them, they're eating a lot of those costs. So right now they're keeping people employed, their subsidies, etc. But they're rising, and a lot of people are moving to Southeast Asia. Is Vietnam. If you're, you know, textiles, you can move back to the United States, you can move to Southeast Asia, but does depends on each industry. But we're also seeing more and more party infiltration of operations in China. So just to think about it, just to give you a broad context, the Chinese Communist Party is a 95 million person organization that runs the country, right? So you have all these government agencies, and they're staffed by party officials, it's as if there was one, you know, Democratic Party, there's only one party allowed in this country. And they sort of had a shadow organization in everything, right. In the 1970s. Like I was saying earlier, this was everywhere, you used to get your food from the party leader, the party bureaucrat, the press secretary in your town, you get your housing from him, your business would be, you know, secured by him, etc. That changed when you had, you know, the privatization and entrepreneurial sort of time came, but later, now, we're kind of getting back to some of that. So there are party officials, party cells, party councils, and coming back to everything, multi-tenant buildings will have party officials, major corporations, all our party officials. So a lot of people that have joint ventures with companies in China are realizing that the state companies that they're partnered with, have a lot of party activity going on. And so the party is trying to both claim the glory for rejuvenating China and wants to be back in everyone's face and doesn't want to be behind the scenes as much anymore. Once people see the red armbands, you know what I mean? Here we are, you know, we rebuilt China, it's the national rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. But it's also just getting up into everyone's grill again. And so major tech companies are having, you know, there's party control of their data at this point as well. So I'd be very wary, I think, again, it really depends on the industry, if you're just manufacturing small things, probably not a big deal. Keep doing it wherever cost is lowest, right? I mean, you're trying to have a business. So that's a smart thing to do. If you're sending a lot of data back and forth to China, that's probably gonna be dicer and dicer. But, but yeah, it's again, I think there's so much transformation and change right now, that giving the broader sort of general stuff can be tougher, but the general stuff I'd say is that relations are getting worse with China every year and things are probably gonna keep getting worse. Because the humanitarian crisis in western China, the political conflict with Taiwan, the sort of eradication of a lot of the freedoms and everything that's gone on there for decades, centuries, the conflicts with potential conflict with Taiwan, you know, the militarization of the South China Sea, all this isn't going away. In fact, it's all kind of hitting into a massive nexus of problems. That is allowing the US government to target China more than ever before. We are also seeing more cyber attacks and cyber targeting by Chinese companies than we have ever seen. So how do I be wary of all this? Personally, I'm not going back to China. I don't think I'm welcome anymore. I wouldn't want to have an exit ban. So I come in and never allowed back. But people should be wary of this. I mean, this is not. Yeah.
Ari Gronich
20:44
So, what's the devastation potential? As we pull back and start manufacturing in the US again? And in doing those local things? Is there a net devastation or a net benefit to like calming the water, so to speak, by taking back some of those jobs? And some of that? I mean, what the prognosis.
Jason Szeftel
21:07
China? Do? You mean, calming the waters? Are there tensions with them?
Ari Gronich
21:11
No, I mean, calming the waters as far as like, they're busy, right? They're busy, busy, busy, busy, they don't stop, they're busy. They're doing all our stuff, all their stuff, you know, all of the rest of the world stuff, as you said, like 50%, of manufacturing and of energy consumption and all these things. They're busy. If we pull back, and we start manufacturing in the US, as the largest probably user of the Chinese, you know, people. What's the prognosis? What's going to happen?
Jason Szeftel
21:49
Well, it's a, it's a dicey thing, the Chinese system is built for exports, it got all the money, most if not all, got a lot of the money, it needed to develop the country through exports, since the 70s, late 70s, and 80s, it just money came in through the ports, they loaned against it, and they built everything in their country. That's the general super simplified story. So that's also where that's one of their most productive and credible industries. And it brings in hard currency and does a lot of things to stabilize the Chinese financial monetary system. But you know, if that goes away, there are deep deep challenges that the state has to face. And a big one is just that, China needs the enormous volumes of global manufacturing, it needs to build not just for China, widgets, just for China, but widgets for everyone. That's how it gets the volume. That's how it gets the profits. That's how it gets the scale. And that's how it keeps the employment levels up. China needs people employed and needs money coming in. And the US pulling back is a major, major threat, because the US is the largest consumer economy in the world. So you can add up the rest of Europe, and you're not going to get the same sort of effect for China. And they need to read. So this has been the whole thing, the last 10 years, people were like, well, China's gonna have to change catches export forever. Japan doesn't just do that Japan's clue that's just exporting all around the world, like it was in the 70s. Things have changed, but China's going to really struggle, I don't think it's, I don't think it's impossible for it to be a consumer economy. Ideally, China would want to start manufacturing for itself, sort of rejigger the economy, have more internal products and services and be able to sort of self-sustain what it's built. But that's for a lot of reasons. That's probably not possible. So this is this question. I mean, this is what makes the Chinese state governments so tense, so nervous and anxious, and defensive. You see that with every all of their diplomats are, you know, getting, you know, in everyone's face and having all this negative commentary, and they're, they're trying to project the image of power to their own people primarily. And, you know, to try and not be seen as weak to not have any, any event that could suggest that the Communist Party is, you know, weak or incompetent, or out of its depth, or illegitimate because they run on getting things done. Like you said, busy, busy, busy, keep doing things that people agree with it. You don't you can't vote on on their policies, but you can, you can see that they're responsive and making things better. And that's what they run on. It's like performance. It's like, well, LeBron James gets rings, right? vote on him, but I don't mind that he, you know, is on the Lakers. So that's kind of what they're going for. They wanted to like, have results, and they don't want things like, you know, a lab leak, or something like that, that would suggest that the party is totally incompetent. So you're not going to find answers to that sort of question in a state where they're worried about those issues.
Ari Gronich
24:42
So with with that, and with all the fear going on, you know, let's just talk about the psychology of the fear of other because obviously, we're experiencing that a lot. The other as far as other technology, other new things, the other as far as race and culture, the other, let's just talk a little bit about that and how we can possibly come to a place where, like you learned about a culture, you have an insight about them and what might be as possible for a solution that they might not see. Because they're blind. They've been in the same, you know, mindset forever, so they don't have your outside mindset. So how can we get to a place where we're teaching more the ideals of the other and the history of the other so that we can not only appreciate and respect it, but then help that transformation go smoother, faster?
Jason Szeftel
25:52
Yeah, you want to have, you want to get the insiders and the outsiders perspective, I think that's a great way. So you want to, you know, you want to have your own outside perspective on China, but also really work to get a look, you know, see through their eyes over the long term. And I think that the idea of multiculturalism, multicultural education, and all of that, when I really got big and things, the 60s in the 70s, there was this impulse behind it, but it's gone wildly astray. We only learn very superficial things about countries, we look at some trinkets and weird, minor aesthetic things in the country and think we're multicultural, we go travel around the world and act like tourists, and think that we're actually learning and getting a handle on these places. I don't think we do. I think that part of the reason we have so much racial conflict, tension, ethnic tension, religious tension everywhere is like we've never actually managed to teach people how these different groups really function and really think and actually get people to acknowledge the actual differences. So that's a major, major, major challenge, and I don't see a system I see we're kind of becoming more hostile and tribalized for all sorts of groups, both within this country and outside the country. So I don't support any of this. I don't think I also think that all the you don't need anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States. A lot of like I said, a lot of people in China fled to the United States from China, originally fled China. You know what I mean, this is not a this is not what people think it is, I guess I would say. And I would also say that we need to find a way to actually acknowledge people's histories, their ethnic heritage is, as well as you know, the American one, we have to find a synthesis of this actually works. It's too much of this as being as having people's identities that are already kind of weak and fragile, being yanked around pulled by all sorts of media and political groups that want them to participate in whatever programs or activate activists or, you know, policies that they're trying to implement. I think that's also very dangerous.
Ari Gronich
27:54
Yeah, you know, I mean, I'm an all believer in activating your vision for a better world. That's kind of the whole thing with create a new tomorrow today, is so that we can activate our vision and so that people can become activists. So I like encouraging activism. What I feel like is, it's really difficult for people to know the truth, so they never know what they're really fighting for or against. Yeah. And that's what concerns me kind of the most is like, I've had conversations with people who have a very staunch position. And then you tell them the truth, and they go, huh, I never knew that, right. And then now their position shifts, and then you have other people who staunch position, and you tell them the truth. And they double down on that staunch opposition, right? So we've got to figure out a balance between those in this, you know, I I like to get both sides of an opinion or all sides of opinions so that I have all things to work with. And then I could develop my own. From that right my own truth.
Jason Szeftel
29:14
Yeah, I think I think that's really a good way to go about it. So when I think about China, just to use my sort of example, I think the Chinese political system is brutal, totalitarian, awful, merciless, cruel, all of that. But I think Chinese civilization has produced some of the more profound things I've ever seen, never heard about, never learned about. So you really have to keep certain contradictions in your head in a sense, like, if I just left it that and said, China, brutal, terrible, awful, whatever that would please. All sorts of people then make it less complex, but it really would prevent you from getting that inside look at things right prevent you from actually seeing what what does it mean to struggle in a place with so much bad land, difficult enemies all around And actually, you know, build something Nonetheless, for all of its flaws, right? No one can look at modern China and think, Wow, they really screwed up here, right? I mean, they didn't manage to accomplish anything. I mean, I know they clearly built something ridiculous. So I support that. But your question, I really agree, you want people to be activated, and involved, but we sort of, we sort of are putting the cart before the horse a bit, because we're not giving people a strong sense of themselves. And you know, their group affiliations, or whatever it is, before they get activated. So when I was mentioning earlier, it feels like people are just getting pulled around by different media political forces. My sense is that, you know, against the mainstream media, they know people don't have the strongest identity or understanding of things around the world. And they kind of take advantage of that. So I want to give people a better understanding of the world of, of how things work, and what their country is when we talk about what the United States is, and what makes it great or powerful, or wealthy. What, when and what's bad about it, I want to take this perspective to everything because it can give people the context they need to navigate successfully, you know, to a better tomorrow.
Ari Gronich
31:06
Right. So let's get to the US a little bit. The US hasn't been number one in much of anything for about 4 years, right? But we still consider ourselves the greatest country on earth. And at one point, the greatest superpower while we still are a force of nature that way. What is the US identity? you've you've looked into the United States in relationship to China, but also just in the US? You're, you're a history, you know, person. And so if you were to explain to somebody not in the United States, what is the US? What would you say to them in the context of what we've been talking about?
Jason Szeftel
32:05
Yeah, I mean, I'd say the US is very, I mean, I think it's the most powerful country in the world, but it is struggling to find a sense of self and a direction for the future. And a lot of it has been aimless, adrift, listless, misdirected, for decades, and that you can go as far back as you want, you know, at some point, I think a good time to keep in mind with maybe the end of the Cold War, where the US are 1945 to 1991. The US was pretty competent on a lot of things, it was getting a lot of things that it was keeping allies around the world together to, you know, to compete against the Soviet Union bringing people to the moon to build space station's was doing really impressive stuff. I think that since then, it's been a major challenge to even figure out, well, what's an ally of the United States? I think I actually asked people to question these sorts of things. What's an ally? What are we? Who's an ally? What does it mean? What are we trying to do? Right? We have a global military that was built for to compete against something that doesn't exist. And I think that the key for the United States is to define a vision of the future and try to move forward towards it. I think that what you're doing is part of that. I think that what you're talking about with technology, where we've been talking about with technology is a key way that the future is going to be technologically driven. So you have to move much like we were saying China does take ride technology as far as can take you. And obviously there's problems that come with that there's doing having social interaction entirely be on dating apps, have, you know, personal interaction lowered have all sorts of weird trolls on the internet, you know, running everything off, there's all these negative consequences, but you really have to move into the future. And I think it's been very hard for the US, I think you mentioned earlier that there's a sense of stasis. And yes, we will have, we're both adrift, listless, misdirected and also static. And it's a very painful painful thing to feel to experience that you have we feel you probably feel the same way there's so much potential in this country I still feel it but it just seems like it's dissipating out and people aren't investing they're not able to put the time in in the work in or the energy and it's it's tough we need a motivation and we have to we have there's a motivational component we have to move the curve of motivation towards you know, towards putting in more effort more.
Ari Gronich
34:24
Yeah, motivation needs to be moved into action. That's been my biggest thing and motivation is crap. You know, I love that saying motivation is crap. Action is everything. You got to do it. And we're in such a state of trauma. I look into people's eyes when I'm, you know, walking down the street because you can only see their eyes when they're still wearing their masks. And, and people just look worn out, they look done. And you know, like, like, I don't see a whole lot of life in people. All right. So the question is, as we're activating our visions for a better world as we're doing all these things, having it be in a place in a way that it adds to your life, right. And I think that what you were saying is that the information, getting them the information gets that, but also that sense of purpose, that sense of self. So how does the individual right, the American citizen? drive that together? And then the government responds, because we're going to talk citizen up versus government down?
Jason Szeftel
35:48
Yeah. Well, to sustain the action that you need to really accomplish whatever a major goal is, you really need to have a lot of meaning and purpose behind it. I think you're right. And people need to really pursue things that give them profound meaning and they're willing to work for for a long time. One problem I really see is I feel like a lot of our energy goes into routine politics, like it's the current issue that's on politico.com, or is the next midterm election, or it is the most recent budget or bill proposal, the perspective I've tried to take on China to understand China, you can't look at the last five years, last couple 10 years, you can't look at every little word, the government says you have to look at sort of the broader structural things that guide what's going on. And I really encourage people to take the same perspective on the United States. So one thing that I think might be helpful is that the way I read what's going on in the country right now, people should expect, like when you said, you see everyone just sitting, you know, they look dead and drained, walking around. I think that's true. But I also think that we experienced no back to normal after COVID, I think what we're gonna see most likely, is a period of serious political, economic, social and cultural instability for eight to 10 years, probably at least. And I know that's a really tough thing to hear or to say, but everyone I've talked to guess has a sense that the hammer is about to fall again. I get that sense from a lot of people. And I think that it is true, it's maybe not going to be like another pandemic. Unfortunately, it's not that easy. But they say like, the history doesn't repeat, it rhymes. So something like that. Something different, but it feels just as bad. But yeah, it's a major thing. And our political parties right now are not going to solve this problem. They are struggling to redefine themselves. For a moderator we have Biden who's almost 80 years old, and doesn't clearly doesn't represent a lot of where the real energy is, in the American left. Then you have on the Republican side, on the right, you have Trump who really wants to kind of try to stay in the limelight. He doesn't want to give new people breathing space to maybe integrate some of the changes that seems he's caused on the right and so you don't have political you have rearranging Coalition's among the political parties right now. And it's not a time to invest all of your energy in politics, it's going to burn you out. I'm not saying to not invest in not believe in politics, that's very important for people. But there's other things that we're talking about: technology, how things come from the private sector, how things come from communicating, and then doing things that are what you really need to do. It's not just investing in hopeful political change, I think we're, you know, we're going to be in a period where there's gonna be a lot of recurring crises. And what the government's going to do is respond to crises, like we saw more government action when the COVID hit, and we saw 10 years before, and we're going to see a government governing by crisis for many years to come. So if we just accept that, then we get a sense of like, Okay, well, we got to put our energies elsewhere and see how we can marry this, how marry this crisis down, and maybe human action US citizen action up, if that makes sense.
Ari Gronich
38:56
Absolutely. We got to manage the crisis down citizen action up but also maintaining that level of communication, I guess, between the two. So Buckminster Fuller, one of my, you know, heroes, I guess, in life mentors, said, you know, don't fight the system as it is build something next to it, that's better, and people will. Pretty much that's like the basic of what he was saying it's a paraphrase. But that idea kind of goes along with my saying is, we made this shit up, we could do better. And the idea around all of it is, all of this is a figment of our imagination. Everything that we see, zoom in front of me, everything that's in front of us that sometimes didn't exist and was created by us in our imagination. And so we can create and we can imagine differently. So let's imagine differently for a second, right? If you could just go into your imagination and create the world as you would like it, create the China as you would like it, as you'd like to see it create the United States as you'd like to see it, or just in general, but take a couple of minutes to just go in your imagination and say, What would I like to create? What would I like it to look like?
Jason Szeftel
0:43
Yeah, I mean, I would like for the United States first. I mean, I would like the information technologies that we're developing to be widely accessible, I'd like learning to be easily accessible, I would like the barriers to action into entry into different markets to be very low. I'd like people to be able to create podcasts, create audio, video content, to communicate, share ideas, develop knowledge very easily. I'd like the learning that's sort of contained in universities, and more and more cloistered and inaccessible, to be broadly distributed. I would like a lot of, you know, people interdisciplinary sort of teams of people working on very hard problems. I would like people, I would like our imaginative entertainment to be pushing towards a more interesting place, I wouldn't, I don't want a world of endless sequels, sequels of comic books from the 40s. I think all of that is important. I think I'd like to see a world where these technologies are improving people's lives in an immediate way. And they're starting to pile on top of each other, where you're like, oh, wow, we've, we now have electric boats, and we've improved the whole Mississippi River, we can do really cheap transportation. And well, now let's do this, oh, let's add this on top of it. And I would like this sort of sense of increase, I mean, from an economic thing, it's like, I'd like the sense of increasing prosperity to sort of return, because it really pushes greater levels of action, and inspiration. And I think a lot of people, particularly the millennials, and younger, there's the sense of, well, I'm just gonna post some images, you know, some have some funny videos, because everything's terrible, and no one's gonna have money and things are getting worse. That I think is super dangerous. And yeah, I think a world where there's real things being built in the physical world, that are new, that are different, that are impressive, that are inspiring, very important, I think, adding these new digital technologies, and making them less addictive, and less compulsive, and more, you know, broadly beneficial to be awesome. And then trying to marry places where the physical and the digital world could come together in new ways to that enhances human flourishing, right, that would enhance human flourishing that would give us augmented reality that instead of showing us ads everywhere, would let me communicate with you know, full full body to body person to person, we got a digital virtual podcast that everyone could see every people can even join in, like, as an audience, right? I think anything like that is awesome. And that's a feature that I think is cool. I think that there's something very true like our future. We only imagine a future that's better if there's new, cool, more advanced technology, it seems like that's built into modernism, to the industrial world, to the world we've had since you know, in the last 500 years. So I don't believe in sort of ditching technology. And going back to Arcadia, I don't think that's going to inspire anything. So that's something I look for. I mean, I also I'll be honest, I don't believe in the end of political conflict. And I believe in the end of political violence, but not the end of the political back and forth, right. Yeah, conflict is necessary, the opposition is good. I mean, people don't know. But in the 19th century, Americans were proud of how virulent their political conflicts were, they would love to have just gangs of people going outside of polling stations and duking it out to show how much they cared about their cause. Right. People thought that was a sign of, I don't know of a lively and invested sort of political system. So we obviously have different idea. Now it seems Oh, so uncivilized and barbaric. And we're also should be beyond this now. But maybe not. Maybe we're not as you know, maybe a little bit more medieval than we think. And maybe it's not that bad obviously problems but.
Ari Gronich
4:30
You know, our biology doesn't necessarily evolve at the same speed as what we consider our maturity right.
Jason Szeftel
We're stuck with I'd like a world we also don't try and ditch our biology as much as we tried to understand it and bring it with us into the world. Right. That makes sense.
Ari Gronich
4:53
Absolutely. I've been a studier of humans, you know from the inner to outer the physical body to the emotional body, the spiritual body that's been my field of inquiry for most of my life, and there's always going to be conflict, right? The idea is there progress? Or is there stagnation in the conflict? And I'll give you an example. I remember, I was part of a group that had been around since the 60s, this is in the early 2000s, when I first moved to LA. And it was based on old Marx groups out of San Francisco. And I remember after about two or three years of going there, every single Monday, I would go, Okay, I just heard the same conversation between the same people. As I heard two years ago, the same problems, the same issues that they had with you know, it's like the same conversation and I'm like, these people aren't moving, I gotta go. Because I can't, it's like, I have my own personal discomfort, I have problems, watching things stagnate. it's still not grow, not advanced, not move forward to their next evolution, right. And what it feels like to me is that we have that stagnation. This is like, it's like we're in the boiling pot or the pressure cooker. So you can't see the steam yet. You can't see the violent roar of the boil. But it's just the pressure cooker is there. And, yeah, I want to be able to let off the steam and move forward with eating that food, and then making a new meal, right, versus just letting it steam until there's nothing left.
Jason Szeftel
6:58
Yeah, the idea that we're all stuck in the same meetings, we're all go, and we're just having the same conversation about the same problems and nothing moves toward I think that's pretty accurate, man, if we look at it at the political level, we all seem to be having the same dead political conversations, whether it's about abortion, or other rights, or racial justice, it seems like a continuation of the same thing. So I think to add to our imagining of a better world, I think we should maybe consider that the famous isms of the 20th century 19th century, the communism, the socialism, capitalism's all of these, maybe the like, do we think that the best thinking on these subjects is in the future? Or that it's already happened? Right? Are we still going to get a lot of mileage out of talking about them? And the way we've talked about them using the ideas? We've talked about them? I think not. And I think that we're going to need actual new ideas. So one thing I think is very important is pulling ourselves out of the media discourse that we see on a day to day basis is not meant to move a sport, it's meant to make every issue we see our personally emotionally invested in an issue we're personally and emotionally invested in. And I think that's very dangerous when there's a million endless things to be personally and emotionally invested in. And you really have to self direct where you're going to go. And I just want new new ideas and new conversations. So like you said, for the frog to jump out of the pressure cooker, not just steam to death, and just start hopping along to new places, we really need that. And I think the great thing about podcasts, the great thing about this world is that we can actually have discussions, they don't have to fit the same formula. So if you just go on to cable news, or you go into even just a talk show, or someone's just doing their bit over and over again, you can't see new ideas and new thoughts, new communication happen in real time. And we need that. I mean, I think it's so stimulating, like when you hear like, well, I've never heard that. Never heard that talked about ever heard him talk anything about that in that way. It's like, it's stunning, because it's so rare in the sense that because it is rare because we're not it's not we're not allowed to see it. When you go to university, you are supposed to be exposed to all these new ideas. You just hear all that's where all the bad crusty ideas come from now. So it's a real challenge. I think a lot of people are starving for this sort of stuff.
Ari Gronich
9:24
Yeah. This is why I go back to that Roman Greek era where you know, the Renaissance where you had the great thinkers where the culture was revered for their thinking for their study for their art for their creativity for their imagination, instead of their production. And that's like a big difference. Like, do we need this much production? Or can we slow down? Can we create, can we think deeper? Will we get further faster, I always tell this To my patients and clients, you'll get there faster, the slower you go, will we get there faster if we slow down and take a minute to actually think and figure out what we want. And one of the things that I have is I want people to stop gathering to complain and start collaborating to succeed. And, and so that's, that's where this shows about. And I'm very glad to have you on and talk about these things that aren't really ever talked about. How can people get a hold of you? If they'd like to learn more work more with you?
Jason Szeftel
10:39
Sure, yeah, you can. There's my email j.szeftel@gmail.com. If you want to contact me there, I'm on Twitter at Jason Szeftel. I have a podcast called the China unraveled podcast, there's currently 11 episodes, they're kind of deep dives in different things about China. I'm doing one more that's going to be about the Communist Party. Just about what what is it? Like? what actually is it? How does it function? Where's it going? What does it mean? And then I'm going to change the format, make it more interactive, put a lot more content out for people, I think it'll be really cool. There's also a YouTube channel where I do some live streams and probably some questions and answers now I'm getting more of them. And I think there's that and yeah, I also have a website where there's certain essays, other stuff I've done up there. It's also just www. jasonszeftel.com. Last thing people might be interested in just, I realize what we kinda need is not so much experts telling you how things are but someone trying to give you the framework to figure it out for yourself. So later this year I'm gonna be doing probably a free course that's going to explain some of these principles about different countries, how to think about them, how to build up your understanding about yourself, I mean your ethnic heritage from where you happen to be, your country, wherever you're from and then all the weird political conflicts we see around the world and where things are headed. So that will be kinda cool, people interested can message me or learn more.
Ari Gronich
That’ll be really cool. I'd be interested.
Jason Szeftel
Yeah. definitely send it to you. It be really fun.
Ari Gronich
Awesome. Well Thank you so much for being here. This has been another great episode of Create a New Tomorrow where we are creating a new tomorrow today and activating our vision for a better world. We could look at all these things we were learning and hearing and discuss it and try to figure out where we fit in this mix of activating our vision for this better world. So thank you so much for being here Jason, I really appreciate it.
Jason Szeftel
Thanks Ari, It was a lot of fun.
Ari Gronich
Awesome. See you next time.
Jason Szeftel
Yeah. See you next time.
