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Jan. 9, 2024 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:32:02

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #824

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	Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Seaters, No Tunnels to be Found.
	I'm joined by Harry and Dan.
	And I'm glad to be joining you on this 9th of January, Callum.
	Alright, and today we'll be talking about Boeing DEI convertibles.
	What day is it, Callum, on the 9th of January?
	What day of the week is it?
	I'll tell you a story.
	Okay, go on.
	So there's, you know Neil deGrasse Tyson?
	Sadly yes.
	And you know how he's utterly insufferable and is like, oh well this is the real problem with 50 pence pieces on bollocks and is just like bro shut up.
	I know that he's a Santa denier and that's enough.
	Stuff like that.
	He tells this story about how he met the guy who made Titanic.
	and um a party James Cameron yeah and he was telling him that you do you know that in that scene where Jack and Rose are freezing to death uh that you look up at the sky the stars are actually backwards they're not in the right position and James Cameron's like haha yeah oh well wow but then they go to another party like a year later he tells him the same bloody thing and he just goes Yeah, if I got the stars right, that movie would have made a billion dollars more, I bet.
	Ooh, yeah.
	I saw the worst tweet ever, not so long ago.
	It was somebody wrote a tweet saying that Isaac Newton was the Neil deGrasse Tyson of his time.
	Why?
	That's a bit of an insult to New Year's, isn't it?
	Also, just to get the association correct, your story about Neil deGrasse Tyson being an insufferable twat is to justify you not knowing what day of the week it is.
	Yeah, actually, how does that connect?
	It's a story about not sweating the small shit.
	If it doesn't matter, don't worry about it.
	I think knowing what day it is...
	It doesn't.
	This podcast isn't going to double our views.
	I never said it was going to double its views.
	It's more for your benefit than anything.
	Okay.
	Anyway, after the convertibles, we're going to be talking about how Europe could do this to us and the civil war defining moment, which I'm a little bit worried about, I'll be honest, but I'll keep my worries to myself.
	Anyway, let's begin, I suppose.
	I have no announcements.
	Yes, so I want to start this segment with a clear statement, okay?
	And the statement is, and I hope this is uncontroversial, but look, if you hire on any criteria other than competency, you will get less competency.
	As a statement, it follows logically, makes perfect sense.
	Perfectly logical statement.
	Now park that for a minute, and we're just going to watch a quick video.
	John, can we play the first minute of this video, please?
	Dozens of Boeing 737 MAX 9s are grounded this morning because of a terrifying mid-air incident.
	An entire section of the fuselage came off an Alaska Airlines jet as it left Portland, Oregon on Friday.
	Amazingly, no one was seriously hurt.
	Hundreds of flights, though, have been canceled, and it's raising obvious concerns about how could something like this happen.
	So Chris Van Cleave is at the Portland Airport.
	Chris, good morning.
	Anne-Marie, good morning.
	The plane is actually back behind us here.
	We understand from the NTSB, when this piece blew out, it did so with so much force that it ripped open the locked, fortified cockpit door that was 26 rows away.
	It sucked off the headset of the first officer.
	It literally ripped the clothing off a passenger's back, ripped the shirt right off.
	That's how intense this, you know, depressurization was.
	We can also tell you the NTSB has learned that on three separate incidents... I think that sort of makes a point.
	So, flight in the air, Boeing plane up there, Um, whole panel bloody comes off.
	Um, clothes are ripped from passengers.
	The fortified door is ripped off its hinges.
	Um, one woman was apparently desperately trying to hold on to her baby.
	This always happens.
	Yes, well, I mean, it's totally normal.
	I've never experienced an explosive decompression on an airplane, but I'd imagine it's not too much fun.
	But anyway, let's park that as well, because now we're going to have a talk about diversity, equity and inclusion hiring and just see if we think we think it matters in any way.
	So I think probably one of the first times that we really noticed this coming up in a big way was because Joe Biden, who decided a few years back that he was going to he was going to hire a new Supreme Court justice.
	But he was only going to consider black women.
	Okay?
	So, put that into context.
	Black women in the US make up about 7% of the population.
	And yet... I'm not going there!
	But 7% of the population, that's basically about the same as the population of Florida.
	So it's basically... An entire state!
	But nobody can sit through a single theatre screening!
	Guys, I'm trying to do this one desperately straight, okay?
	How funny would that be?
	If you were to go for a proper good tourist adventure, The State of Only Blackwood would be a hell of a tale.
	Thank God, this is not where I wanted to.
	I should have done this as a monologue rather than with two other people in the room.
	But my point is, if you're trying to hire the best of somebody and you limit yourself to just 7% of the population, is it more or less likely that you're going to get the best candidate for the job by excluding 93% of the population?
	If you're looking for the best Supreme Court justice and you looked only in Florida...
	Have you excluded that 7% of the population?
	Are they of the most competent, highest achievers, top scorers in their schools and their fields of work?
	Is that where... Okay, you're what we're excluding?
	You're jumping ahead.
	We are excluding the Chinese, yes.
	Because if we were excluding purely on the basis of competence, then perhaps...
	So I don't think I even need to bring that argument into it as to whether certain demographics have their strengths more in, I don't know, performing arts, culture and sports, as opposed to law enforcement and constitutional analysis.
	I'm not even making that argument.
	I'm simply saying that if you limit the population that you are going to draw from, you get less competency.
	Right.
	That's all I'm saying.
	In the end, Biden ended up hiring somebody.
	I think it was Shaniqua Brown Jackson, who I'm sure is a very competent lawyer.
	Although we did find out from her confirmation hearings when she was asked to define a woman.
	You know, apparently Senator Blackburn said, OK, can you provide a definition for the word woman?
	Shaniqua said, um, can I provide a definition?
	No, I can't.
	The Senator replied, you can't.
	And Shaniqua said, not in this context.
	I'm not a biologist.
	So, it gives you some clues of the level of competency of this woman.
	It's very possible that she is a great Supreme Court Justice, unless of course the case involves knowing what a woman is.
	At that point it sort of falls down.
	And actually, on this one, I don't mind it really, because it's quite funny watching her write her opinions so that Clarence Thomas can then rip them apart in his dissent.
	I don't even need to read any of those.
	I just need to see the graphics that people do of words per justice in giving their opinions and she writes thousands and thousands of words.
	She's writing an entire essay on it.
	Clarence Thomas writes about 200 words and even in that just dismantles the whole thing.
	Yes, now Clarence Thomas, it's worth mentioning him because he is somebody who does have melanin But is also competent.
	Who was hired on the basis of competency.
	And you can really tell the difference between those who are hired on competency and those who are not.
	Let's have a look at this post.
	So diversity and inclusion has sort of been trending lately.
	I think you did a segment on it in football yesterday.
	But it's currently a live topic.
	I find this one interesting.
	So Mark Cuban decided to take it upon himself to basically do this little essay thread on why he thinks that diversity, equity and inclusion is essential for a business.
	Go on, let's have a look at the next.
	Yeah, so when pressed on it, he's basically saying that he thinks that the way diversity, equity, inclusion is that you've got your existing workforce, right?
	And then you've got this entire mass of talent that nobody is looking at.
	And diversity, equity, inclusion is basically just adding that extra vast resource of talent onto your existing body of resource.
	Empirically, this is as wrong as you could get.
	When discussing this, the whole point of diversity, equity, and inclusion is to throw aside qualifications and necessity for competence.
	Oftentimes, universities and other places will lower standardized test requirements.
	for particular ethnicities purely to they can get more of these through the door.
	This was one of the big problems with Harvard was the fact that if you were black, you had to have to get in much, much lower scores than if you were white or you were Asian.
	So that's a fact.
	That's a fabrication.
	Well, complete fiction.
	Mark is putting forward an argument that is so stupid that I don't think he's even capable of making that argument intellectually.
	Well, let's take the steel man approach to the diversity crowd here, because as you can see Elon Musk there in the March response, arguing, well, what if we have a hypothetical situation in which we have two candidates who are completely equal in terms of competence, but one's diverse, which means a black woman, and one's not white man.
	And Elon says here, well, then the tiebreaker should be diversity of all kinds, and then Mark agrees with him.
	The thing is, firstly, that never actually happens, obviously.
	No one is the same, so there's a completely different in all human beings, pretty much.
	And even if you were in that hypothetical scenario, this still doesn't make any sense, because if you say you want diversity of all kinds to be the tiebreaker, well, where do you limit that?
	Well, I think Elon is smuggling in ideological diversity on that one.
	Well, that's the thing.
	What Why not just not race and sex, but then as Peterson points out, why not hair colour?
	Why not eye colour?
	Why not height?
	Yes.
	You will just endlessly waste your time if you even give a step to this.
	We'll eventually just get down to an individual, which is what we should have been hiring on in the first place.
	Yeah, and you've now wasted, what, about 10 years of America's time?
	Yes.
	And a lot of money!
	Mark, my reason for mentioning Mark in this context is because his argument is, like I say, it's so stupid.
	I don't believe that he is intellectual.
	Because he's a smart guy.
	He's a billionaire.
	I don't believe that he's actually this stupid.
	I think that he is potentially being put on the reserve list to replace Biden.
	As we see from the report from Bloomberg near the end of last year as well, when DEI is implemented most of the time, it's not going to be affecting the sorts of people in Mark Cuban's position.
	If you say that he is a billionaire, it's not going to be affecting most people within management positions or anything above worker drones.
	It's going to be affecting those on the lowest rungs Who are going to be the worker drones who are being priced out of any sort of jobs if you're just working factory or manual labor.
	A lot of the time that is going to be they'll bring in black applicants and Hispanic applicants over white applicants so that's who it's affecting.
	It's funny you say how should it affect Mark because he's of course very much associated with the Dallas Mavericks.
	Now let's have a quick look at their team, shall we?
	Yeah, so these are...
	Dan was also a diversity hire.
	Yeah, well, I'm coming to that.
	So these are the Dallas Mavericks.
	I'm not seeing vast amounts of diversity.
	I mean, for a start, I don't see any Asian guys, let alone women.
	Yes.
	So I'm just going to ask the question, is it possible that when Mark selected his Dallas Mavericks team that they were hired on no other criteria than competency at basketball?
	I think they probably were.
	I think I have to agree with you there.
	I do note that it gets slightly more diverse when you include the cheerleaders, so maybe that's what he meant.
	Because if you look at the middle of the front row, there's an Asian lass, so we are getting a little bit more diversity.
	Damn focusing on hard there!
	So just scanning through, where is she, where is she, where is she?
	Maybe when you start, you know, broadening out the organisation, you do get a little bit more diversity.
	But yeah, I don't think... But anyway, my point with Mark Cuban is, it's so stupid, he can't, he cannot believe this.
	So I do think that he's possibly being lined up as a reserve candidate in case they need to get rid of Biden.
	I'm so bored of paid liars though, and that's what he is if he's smart enough to- Well you can't be on the Democrat platform and tell the truth, I mean it's just incompatible.
	So, yeah.
	I put a 50 quid bet on Mark being the candidate this morning.
	Who'd you rather hang out with though?
	Like a genuine retard or a paid liar?
	Yes, yes.
	That's why we're being on here with you.
	You get a lot more colour in your conversation, ironically.
	But again, let me reiterate the central point.
	If you hire on any criteria other than competency, you will get less competency.
	For example, if you are trying to find the best chess player, In the United States, and you only look in Montana, you might find the best chess player in the United States.
	Do we have to spell this out?
	But it's also... I think we do, because... Okay, so let's move on.
	Even I get this!
	Let's move on to... Even Callum!
	And he doesn't know what day it is!
	Boeing on diversity, inclusion and equity or whatever it is.
	So a quick segment from the Boeing's CEO message on this.
	I quote, we prioritize diversity inclusion as measurable business imperatives that are vital to achieving better business outcomes.
	Okay, obvious lie.
	So, I mean, again I'm going to ask the question here, you know, what happens to the incentive of recruitment managers in an organisation like this?
	Because, you know, have any recruitment managers been told that their job depends on upping the amount of dye in the organisation?
	Yeah.
	I would imagine it has happened.
	I mean, anecdotally, I've heard of that.
	Not just that their job is dependent on it, that they will get financial bonuses if they hire more people of diverse backgrounds.
	Yes.
	So it's logically true.
	It's anecdotally true.
	Everybody who knows somebody who is a recruitment manager knows that they have been told, you must up your die.
	And worse than that, we know from experience that companies, when they can't reach their die percentages, even after that sort of finagling, they then lower the standards.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Well, and even if they don't lower the standards, I mean, I'll just pose the question, is it possible that if you're told that your bonus or your drop depends on you increasing the amount of die, is it possible that you would take a candidate who falls below the competency line and push them through?
	Oh, they absolutely do.
	The funny thing is when we're talking about the competency, it's not just that people are not hitting the standards expected them from, say, standardized tests.
	People's standards are being so lowered.
	I think it was possibly in Alabama last year after one of the police brutality scandals, of course, where people looked into it and found that some Alabama police stations were actually removing requirements for police officers who were trying to apply for not having been a former convict.
	So, former convicts, it's not just in terms of the intelligence that you're looking for, it's in the temperament, the behavioral standards.
	All the standards disappear.
	Just thrown out of the window.
	If you're telling me that somebody who has previously been a convict is nine times out of ten going to be more competent at administering the law than somebody who hasn't been, then I don't believe you.
	I think you're lying.
	Well, and just turn the question around, would you want to give a proven lawbreaker a badge?
	Cause that makes it, that makes it a lot easier.
	Would you like to give him a gun?
	Yes.
	Well, I'd imagine he's already got one.
	How about an aircraft with 300 souls on board?
	Well, yes, that's another angle to this as well.
	Um, so coming back to, coming back to Boeing and that, and that panel blowing off, um, look, we don't know exactly what happened on that.
	You know, the, the, the, the, the looking into hasn't been done.
	It is entirely possible that only boring men in their fifties were involved in assembling that particular aircraft.
	That could be the case.
	They just got a bit sleepy on Yeah.
	That could legitimately be the case.
	And it's also possible that the entire team who put that aircraft together were diverse, but they were genuinely competent.
	They had passed the competency threshold to get onto it.
	What I'm saying is, I'll keep saying this, if you select on any criteria other than competency, you will get less competency.
	And therefore, it is legitimate to ask, if competency is being pushed down in this organization, what impact does it have?
	Now, at this point, I want to turn to an excellent sub stack.
	From our friend Morgoth, who I don't believe he has been on the pod yet, we'd like to get him on, but he has an excellent subset, so check out morgoth.substack.com and he's basically laid out the whole thing here, which is very helpful because he basically did a lot of my work for me.
	Very kind of him.
	As you correctly note, Harry, I am a diversity high myself.
	That was Callum, actually.
	Oh, right.
	Even then.
	Yes.
	Well, because... No attention span.
	I'm not a desperately good podcaster, but Carl just wanted another Gen Xer in the office because he was fed up of making cultural references that nobody understood.
	So, you know, rather than having the most competent podcaster, you've got me.
	And anyway, so let's have a look at what argument... Oh, yes.
	So, Morgoth, has pulled out some very helpful bits from the Boeing literature, such as this.
	Boeing continues to make progress on our commitment to advanced representation and inclusion across our company.
	We know diversity must be at the table for every important decision we make, every challenge we face, every innovation we design.
	Equity, diversity, inclusion are core values because they make Boeing and each of us individually better.
	So, um, interesting.
	It's not, it's not competency.
	It's not making aircrafts that hold together mid-flight.
	The core competency is diversity.
	But everybody who dies in a plane crash that happens because of these sorts of things will die knowing that they died in service of a better society, in service of a better future.
	They can die knowing that their soul, as well as their culture, has been enriched.
	Well, I mean, I have questions on that, so Morgoth also found this.
	So this is Jada West, who was saying, and she's a Boeing hire, I was encouraged to push my boundaries and take opportunities outside of my comfort zone.
	Now you say that, Harry, but from the inaugural Thurgood Marshall College Fund, everybody's favourite former Supreme Court Justice.
	Look, even if you're, you know, Jada's brother or sister or close family member, when they get on an airplane, I wonder, do they want that airplane to be made by people who were hired purely on competency inside their comfort zone?
	Or do they want to be sat on an aircraft that was made by people who were hired for reasons other than competency who were operating outside of their comfort zone?
	I think even Jaden's brother and sister would agree that they probably want the latter.
	You know, this is not a race space point.
	I think, you know, no matter what you are, black, white, Hispanic, North Italian, cave Jew, Mongolian, Mormon, whatever you are, you want to sit on a plane that has been well made, right?
	Breakdown of Boeing staff.
	I like the idea of someone having a breakdown of the way this plane was put together by Mormons!
	New hires at Boeing.
	They've got a whole racial breakdown of who works at Boeing.
	By ethnicity.
	You notice the higher up the organisation you go, the whiter it gets.
	But they are correcting that with their new hires.
	Their new hires are 47.5%.
	The funny thing I find is that when you see that the board of directors is 25% as opposed to 16.7% minority now, oftentimes you'll get statements after these people leave these positions where they speak to magazines and journals and such and they say, yeah I was definitely just there for the photographs.
	I would put ideas forward and nobody would listen to them.
	So I was working in the city when the sort of proto die came along, which was at the time in the sort of early 2000s.
	It was let's get women on boards.
	That's what it was back then.
	So that you can have the statistics and you can have them front and center in all of the promotional.
	And basically what happened is because there was only, because a lot of women, they leave the workforce because they have other priorities.
	They want to focus on family.
	They make that choice themselves.
	They want to focus on family.
	You still do get a few women who rise to the top in organizations, big companies who started their own, but there's relatively few of them.
	So what I was seeing in the city in the early 2000s was there was a cadre of about 20 or 30, 50-year-old women who had the right experience, who would be on like 60, 70 boards each, and their entire job would be to do one day a month.
	Or half a day a month with various businesses, and that's all they did, just go from board meeting to board meeting.
	And how did that pay?
	Oh, each board job back then would have paid about £12,000 a year, so basically £1,000 a month.
	But if you got 50 of them... Well, yeah, that's the thing, isn't it?
	It's good living.
	So yeah, I've sort of seen this one emerge on itself.
	But my point of looking at this is, you know, America is still 62% white, and Boeing's new hires are only 52% white, so they're already doing the exclusion bit of DEI.
	And have been for some time, by the way, for measurements there.
	Yes.
	Now, for the fedora tippers who get really into the detail, Morgoth did pick out the particular panel bit in this aircraft.
	Apparently a large part of that was outsourced to something called Spirit something.
	Spirit Aerosystems.
	That's the one.
	So Morgoth writes, in the 737 model fuselage that lost a panel mid-flight was a company called Spirit Aerosystems based in Canvas.
	Ah yes, clever.
	Boeing is merely paying lip service to the woke agenda while outsourcing actual engineering to boring white men in their 50s.
	That's Spirit.
	So, I'm reminded of those images of that submarine from last year.
	Yeah, say hello to our team!
	Yes.
	Yes.
	And it's not just the aircraft design itself.
	This is a tweet from somebody pointing out that United Airlines wants to make half of its pilots women or people of colour.
	So basically, they want to force this through the person actually flying, having to land the plane that's falling apart.
	Now, this is not to say that women or people of colour can't be very competent pilots.
	I'm saying that if you are forcing through an arbitrary mandate to increase the number, you're going to have to push some people through who wouldn't have made the line otherwise.
	Well, what you're doing is you're arbitrarily limiting the potential candidates that you can hire from.
	And so you will, by virtue of doing that, be reducing the number of competent people that you could be hiring.
	And you will be potentially, once again as we pointed out, as always happens, lowering the standards to accommodate for getting these people in.
	Well normally, normally we have this particular standard and we need to hire 10 people, but only 5 people within this candidate pool hit this standard, so therefore we're going to have to bring it down just a bit so we can justify hiring another 5 of you out of this group.
	Yeah, and you can see why people are talking increasingly about a competency crisis, because, frankly, I didn't care when it was in the academics.
	I didn't even particularly care that much when it was in the Supreme Court.
	But when it's the people making and flying my aircraft, I think I can.
	When it begins to affect things that you interact with on a daily basis, yes, all of a sudden the ability to maintain and operate complex systems becomes very important.
	Yes, you might possibly have a segment coming up in a few moments about the ability to maintain complex systems in the inability.
	In certain countries, so that's the truth.
	There's a weird schadenfreude to this for the Russians, because I met a guy in Russia whose grandfather lived during the Soviet Union, and Soviet universities operated on a system of affirmative action, so they would hire people based on their ethnic group.
	And this was against the Russian majority he was telling me, which is really weird, but obviously is exactly the same world the Americans now live in.
	And now in the 90s and then to today, that system got dropped because the Soviet Union collapsed.
	And this dude was telling me all this.
	He was just laughing when I told him about what goes on in the US like this.
	He was like, how did you guys end up copying Soviet theory that even we got rid of because it didn't bloody work?
	Yes.
	Our crack team of producers has just dropped another link in.
	This is a tweet from Ashley St Clair, so I'm reading this for the first time.
	On July 29th, a United plane was nearly totaled after a hard landing.
	Who was flying that aircraft?
	The co-pilot was a former flight attendant who was fired and then rehired through United's DEI program, despite being on the list to not return to United.
	Wait, not only did they get fired for incompetence, But they got a bump from flight attendant to co-pilot.
	Am I correct in thinking this individual failed multiple trainings, including a simulator training?
	We just need to bump up the statistics.
	So who cares?
	Who cares?
	We need them.
	Get them through the door.
	Am I also correct?
	United has covered up this DEI disaster and many others.
	Yeah.
	So, I mean, another question about Mark Cuban.
	I haven't checked, but do you think Mark Cuban's Because I'm pretty sure he's got a personal jet.
	Do you think his personal jet is flying by a diversity liner?
	Live your values, bro!
	I don't know.
	Anyway, final thoughts on the coming competency crisis, because there are further implications.
	Scott Adams here makes a really good point.
	Recommended question for all white male job applicants to ask when you're in an interview.
	Do you have a DEI group in this company?
	If so, how can I be sure I would have equal opportunity for advancement here?
	Now, the reason this is an important point is if you are a competent white male, And you're thinking of going into something like Boeing.
	Now, Boeing is one of those, I mean, some jobs people move around a lot.
	Engineering jobs, people tend to work there for bloody decades once they get in.
	If you're a competent young engineer who happens to be a white male, why would you go and work at Boeing knowing that your prospects for advancement are clearly limited because the organization is telling you very clearly they want to get the group that you are in down to the smallest level of representation that they can?
	For the exact same reason that people who were black in the United States would go and work for companies that were explicitly anti-black back in the day.
	You've got a choice.
	Well, some people won't have a choice, but a lot of people will say, okay, I'm going to look at something different.
	I'm going to go and set up my own thing.
	I'm going to go and work for a smaller engineering firm.
	Start your own airline.
	Well, not, I mean, there are plenty of other engineering firms that you can go and work for.
	Don't get me wrong, they exist, but it's just not the industry, is it?
	No, but what I'm saying is at the margin, you are going to have people who I mean, there'll be some people who are absolutely committed to doing avionics.
	And there are some people who could have gone into it who would have been competent and will instead see stuff like this decide to go elsewhere.
	And that will that will start to feed back on this competency mechanism.
	So not only are the people they bring in less competent, but they won't be able to hire the competent people if they happen to be white, which happens to be the majority population of the US.
	And therefore this competency crisis is probably only getting started.
	Fairly correct.
	Well, I suppose we'll move on to dropping some white pills for everybody out there.
	All right.
	Wonderful.
	And I've got a theory.
	So we've looked at the companies that are hiring purely based on diversity.
	Now let's take a look at some of the countries which have these incredible talent pools that we're taking this diversity from.
	Where everyone is diverse.
	Where everybody is as diverse as they can be.
	What a wonderful place to hire from.
	Because there are no white people.
	Therefore, 100% diverse.
	It's just a bounty of skills.
	So first, I have a theory.
	And tell me if this theory goes a little bit too far, but I do think that there is something to it, right?
	You know how children, through revealed preference of playing Minecraft, yearn for the mines.
	We know this as a fact.
	Okay, sure.
	Through revealed and stated preference of constantly whining that the world, read, The US and European nations constantly need to come in and fix their problems.
	I think Africa yearns for recolonization.
	A few of the countries definitely do seem to whine a lot.
	So, unironically, I did spend time... I haven't been to Africa, but I did spend time in India, and the amount of young Indian people who legitimately said to me they want the British Empire back.
	I was like, yeah, me too, but unironically, a lot of people do think that.
	Yeah, I honestly would not be surprised, because we came over there, we gave them competent governance, we gave them bridges, and we... A wheel?
	The wheel, in many cases.
	We also accidentally essentially induced a population bomb on the continent, which a lot of the more traditional methods of living are not able to sustain over there, which is why they're constantly starving and we constantly need to go give them foreign aid and give them food and airdrops and such.
	So it seems to me that a lot of African countries, once ruled by the white man, But don't want the indignity of saying that they're not being self-governed.
	Well don't worry, because of course now all of the British leaders are non-white, as we've seen, in which case we can have British Empire back, but it's now run by non-white people.
	Now it's run by Indians and Pakistanis.
	Yes, literally.
	So we've got the subcontinent in charge.
	Harry, are you pitching for the role of Viceroy of Cameroon or something?
	What are the benefits?
	What's the pay grade look like?
	Is there room for employment?
	You're going to have to supervise the building of a lot of bridges from the looks of it.
	That's absolutely fine.
	Listen, so this was all inspired by this particular tweet that was going around the other day, which is from a place called Africa Hub, a Twitter account called Africa Hub, where it showed this Slightly amusing video.
	It is horrifying to a certain degree, but also kind of funny with the context that this is a woman trying to cross an African bridge across a river, which is rather poorly put together, shall we say.
	I mean, it's two sticks.
	It's two sticks and some other sticks higher up that you can use as a handhold.
	And she loses all of her stuff.
	She loses balance.
	She was carrying a load of things on her head, what looked like some food supplies, and it drops in the river, gets carried away, and she has to struggle to get to the other end.
	And the fact that she was carrying a large quantity of food supplies tells you that that is almost certainly a heavily used crew route.
	This is common.
	They're not hiking here.
	This is very common in certain parts of Africa.
	I will reference it in a bit, but when Mr. Beast got in trouble for going to Africa and building wells and literally building bridges because Africa wants your help building bridges until you do it and that's neo-colonialism.
	Wait, why did he get in trouble for that?
	Because I think he went to, I think it was Gwana and some other countries in East Africa and built bridges and built wells and the governments, the totally legit and not corrupt governments of those countries said, this makes us look bad, how could you do this to us?
	Right.
	Well, just because you're the ones not supplying any infrastructure to these places and the populations don't seem to be able to do it themselves, I mean, that's a you problem.
	If you want to be able to get clean water and cross rivers, and you have to accept international aid, or some guy on YouTube with big bucks to come and do it for you, that's a you problem.
	So this tweet, it's not just the video, because it's Africa Hub, it just seems to, I looked at the account and tried to see what was going on with it, and it just seemed to be an account that Telling the African stories of the world where they go, oh look, Niger's military leadership has decided they're going to nationalize the water sector and kick France out, which I'm sure is going to end very, very well.
	So it's a beautiful tapestry of great ideas.
	Every single time, excellent ideas.
	We've got a brand new one, 51 minutes ago, celebrating Idi Amin.
	I'm sorry, but yeah.
	Yeah, why it was a great idea to get the British out of Uganda.
	Everything went well after that.
	Yeah.
	Here's an in shape African guy doing exercise.
	I mean, fair play to him.
	They can't use a tyre.
	I mean, what else would you expect them to use?
	Come on.
	But this account Tire weighs stuff.
	Okay.
	Tire weighs something.
	Everything weighs something if you try hard enough.
	It captioned this tweet with, The world has failed the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the rape capital of the world.
	Sad face.
	I mean, I'm sorry, but yeah, sorry.
	Of all the countries, it is the biggest joke.
	I mean, people talk about Somalia being a failed state or the rise of ISIS or something.
	There's too many failed states to count, really.
	But the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been... I mean, they almost... They did cause and became... What was it?
	World War Africa?
	Have you heard of it?
	Which is just a huge... Gigantic civil wars.
	It was a huge war between massive different factions in the country that then spilled over into the neighboring countries.
	So about a third of Africa was all at war to try and put down different forces in the Congo.
	I mean, it's just an utter calamity.
	I've never heard of that.
	But Callum, have you considered that they have Democratic Republic in the name of the country?
	Yeah, yeah, they're great.
	They must be a well-governed and non-corrupt state.
	And as African Hub points out here, there are no developments.
	Why is this?
	Due to the massive exploitation of the country.
	The exploitation by who?
	Exploitation by who?
	What are your thoughts on this?
	Well, people shared their thoughts on this.
	There was, for a time, there was a community note underneath here, but it seems to have been taken off, pointing out that the Democratic Republic of Congo is an enormous receiver of foreign aid.
	So if you're saying that the world has failed you, and yet if you look here, How much is the EU giving to them every year?
	Well, the EU says that the UN's humanitarian response needs 2.25 billion dollars to meet the needs of the vulnerable people of it.
	How much is the EU giving?
	92 million euros.
	How much is the U.S.
	giving?
	How much is the U.S.
	giving?
	Well, they say $48 million purely for additional humanitarian assistance.
	Further in the article, they point out that this brings the total U.S.
	humanitarian assistance to nearly $486 million for this fiscal year in response to urgent needs.
	Yeah.
	So we're giving them the money.
	It's one of the most resource-rich countries in the entire world.
	So after a certain point, whose fault does it become that people of local communities don't know how to put more than two sticks together?
	So can I still man their argument?
	I think what their argument basically is here is that it's a country with lots of natural resources, and basically what Western companies have been doing for the last hundred years.
	He's going and buying those resources super cheap.
	And the way they basically do that is they go to a bunch of the tribal elders and say, OK, well, we're going to give you loads of money and then we're going to extract the resources and they extract them for, you know, a tenth or a hundredth of what they would have had to have paid if those resources were on, you know, a field in France, for example.
	Why is that?
	Yes.
	Why is the oil actually not worth that much?
	Well, it's because you guys can't drill it.
	You've got no infrastructure for us to use as a company.
	It's a massive risk on our part.
	That's the thing I always hear about.
	There's also all the political instability.
	I mean, there was the giant civil war going on there.
	Why would anybody invest in a country when you don't know... But that's the stillman argument that they want to be made here.
	Because, you know, theoretically, if we paid them the same price that we would pay, you know, a farmer in Dorset, if we happen to discover vast amounts of cobalt under his field, That's the argument they're trying to make.
	But exactly your point is... Yeah, but you've got to extract it.
	The man in Dorset won't shoot me if he just doesn't like me one day.
	Yes.
	The man in Dorset has roads nearby I can use to ship the stuff out.
	And also, the man in Dorset... I don't know.
	I just... It seems like a safer bet.
	Well, and also you can't go to the man in Dorset and buy his uncle a Mercedes in exchange for the rights to take whatever you want from his field.
	We have a system of property rights, the whole thing.
	Yeah.
	I mean, what happened in Zimbabwe?
	Oh, we've got all these white farmers.
	We don't like that they're white.
	We need to give all of this land back to our black farmers.
	Why are we starving now?
	Please, come back white farmers.
	So this is the age-old question I think you're hitting on the wider topic, which is how many years since decolonization do you have to wait until colonization wasn't a factor in what's going on anymore?
	And I think we've wasted enough.
	I mean, I think I forget what his name is.
	Lumembe, whatever his name is, the president of the DRC back when decolonization happened.
	People like to point to the fact that he was assassinated and they say, oh, this is what threw the country into turmoil.
	Yeah, but that was what, 50 years ago, 60 years ago now.
	So how long does that stop being a factor?
	How long until you stop giving excuses for yourself and just say, okay, we can't run the country, or the people in charge of the country are completely corrupt, or the people of the country aren't able to build bridges for some reason?
	As I pointed out, Mr. Beast had to go into a lot of these places across East Africa and build bridges and build basic infrastructure, build wells, and the corrupt governments of those countries said, this is making us look bad, how dare you?
	So if you don't want Africa to be starving, you will have to go over the heads of a lot of these governments, and even just do it as private enterprise a lot of the time, because otherwise these people will be left in terrible conditions and will be left to die of dysentery, of disease, and starvation.
	But they could get a job at Boeing.
	Well, that's another thing.
	They could also travel up to the north of Africa and pay a few human traffickers a bit of money so that they can get a boat over to Europe, at which point our governments will be more than happy to give you asylum, be more than happy to give you as much money as you want on welfare.
	And then if you decide, not that you have to, no pressure bro, don't feel that you have to, but if you do decide that you want to get a job, you can probably get an easy one on DEI anyway.
	So that's another option for these people.
	But once again, that suggests to me that they're desperate for some kind of non-corrupt political rule, which can only come through the re-establishment of our beautiful empire.
	You really are going for this Viceroy job, aren't you?
	No, I'm going to be the head PR manager.
	That's what I'm going to be.
	And it reminds me of something.
	Well, first of all, actually, somebody under the original post decided to post a, here's a picture of a single man building a bridge and you'll notice here he's what you may say when you say oh well these people are coming and taking all of their natural resources there seems to be only a limited amount of resources needed to build a bridge and if I look into the background of this video hmm There is indeed wood.
	There is indeed wood.
	In fact, that looks like some hefty logs over there.
	I've seen some people did response to this by showing that there are pre-Roman Britain bridges built that have been discovered by archaeologists.
	So, if you're literally living in the Barbarian Age, Yes.
	We're talking about before the Romans.
	You can still build wooden bridges, it's not hard.
	Yeah, I saw those.
	Well, they'd been excavated from the underground, hadn't they?
	There was top layers of soil on top of it, you would dig underneath it, and oh my goodness, there's the stilts for a bridge on there.
	Because this brings a deeper question, which is, of course, the governments in these particular countries are utterly corrupt and destroying everything, and it's that bad, don't get me wrong.
	But then you have to wonder, I mean, you look at other countries in the world that have corrupt governments, and yet their populations are able to build the basics, just in spite of the oppression by the state and the large taxes they put on them, given what they actually have.
	So then you have to wonder, on a population level, are we looking at something even worse here?
	Because, I mean, this dude's just built a bridge.
	I mean, it isn't the newest technology.
	It isn't something you need to... As you correctly say, you could do this in the Bronze Age.
	I mean if you're just a random guy out in the woods and you have access to wood, sharp tools, and you've spent probably about 10 minutes on any number of bridge building games that are available on Steam.
	You could do this!
	An awful lot of cheap smartphones in the world now.
	There are cheap smartphones that you can do bridge building games where you just simple support bridge to get these little people from this part of the country.
	I suppose the idea is stress load.
	Okay, I'll give you that.
	The basic mechanics of it, you'll have a better idea and you could do something like this yourself if you have access to a bit of wood, some sharp tools to do some cutting.
	And basically the willpower and determination to do it.
	Yes.
	You can do it yourself, but there are certain populations that still haven't been able to do this and require international aid and assistance to be able to come and do it.
	Go to Woodbridge.
	Yes.
	Go to Woodbridge.
	I mean, once again, the interesting thing is it did remind me, and I saw a few people sharing this, because it always goes back to this particular thing, the Empire of Dust, the legendary now documentary that's actually set in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where you've probably seen, this is where the meme of the Chinese man going, it's all so tiresome.
	Oh, is that where it comes from?
	Yeah, this is where it comes from.
	Are you aware of the context?
	I'll explain it to you, Dan.
	So the description of the plot, you could say, because it's a documentary, is Lao Yang and Eddie both worked for a company called Chinese Railway Engineering Company.
	They have just set up camp near the remote mining town of Kalwezi in the Katanga province of the RDC, which was, I assume, at the time... It's name keeps changing.
	Yeah, the Congo.
	Yeah, I imagine why.
	The goal of the company is to redo the road covering 300 kilometers, bloody hell, that connect Kulwezi to the capital of the province Lubumbashi.
	Lao Yang is head of logistics for the group.
	He is responsible for the equipment, building materials, and food, mostly chickens, to arrive in the isolated Chinese prefab camp.
	The Congolese government was supposed to deliver these things, but so far the team hasn't received anything.
	With Eddie, a Congolese man who speaks Mandarin fluently, fair play to the guy, I wasn't expecting that, as an intermediate, Laoyang is forced to leave the camp and deal with the local Congolese entrepreneurs because without the construction materials, the roadworks will cease.
	Obviously.
	What follows is an endless, harsh, but absurdly funny rollercoaster of negotiations and misunderstandings as Lao Yang learns about the Congolese way of making deals.
	I want to watch this film now.
	Well, I'll play a clip from you, and this is a very notorious clip that gets shared around on Twitter.
	Especially because the Chinese just do not have a filter when it comes to talking about these issues.
	Oh, yeah.
	Laoyang really doesn't, because I assume this is Eddie right here, and he just tells him everything that is wrong with the country straight to his face.
	So if you're just listening to the audio of this right now, it will just be Chinese in your ear.
	You can read it for a minute, but we'll give you the gist of it because there are subtitles for those watching.
	We'll give you the gist of it once it's done.
	So let's play this clip.
	You've been in charge of Europe for a long time.
	You must have learned a lot of advanced management skills.
	Not much time.
	It's been 50 years.
	50 years ago, you were in charge of everything.
	Yes, the influence of advanced management.
	It's been passed down from generation to generation.
	It's become more and more civilized and developed.
	It's more of a new world.
	The railways were electrified in the 1930s.
	When was the last time China had electrified railways?
	Look at the Kuangchun Railway.
	It's electrified.
	It's a double-track railway.
	Look at how well it's built.
	Look at what's on top of it now.
	It's a mess.
	It's a mess.
	For some reason, there's nothing left.
	There's nothing left to protect it.
	Instead, it's been destroyed.
	It's a disaster.
	I was able to protect her, and I was able to destroy her.
	I was like, "I'm going to kill her." I was like, "I'm going to kill her." I've been through several years.
	She was a man.
	There's a saying in China, if you're drunk today, you'll be drunk tomorrow.
	That's it.
	That is brutal.
	That is brutal.
	It's very blunt.
	So for those of you who are only listening, he's just saying, you guys have been independent for 50 years, why has everything gotten worse since the Europeans stopped ruling you?
	And he said, oh, well, it's only been 50 years.
	He said, well, you actually had, in the 1930s, better technology than we had in China at the moment, at the time.
	You had railways, you had mines, you had everything.
	So why have you made everything worse?
	And then he explains at the end, I think it's a really good analogy, where he says, if I have money, I'll drink all night, and if I don't have any money by morning, I'll drink water.
	That's how things work here.
	That point though, the comparison to China, is exactly what I was thinking about when I said about the population difference.
	Because he's saying the 1930s there, but of course, The rest of those decades were not fun for China.
	No.
	The 30s was just war and genocide, and then the 40s was war and genocide, and the 50s was genocide, and then the 60s was genocide, and in the 70s things finally stabilized.
	And now they have skyscrapers, bullet trains, and are taking over high-tech industries.
	Yeah.
	And kind of stealth colonizing a lot of Africa as well, as we see in the documentary itself.
	But they have to deal with the intermediaries and the actual population on the ground to be able to rely on local resources, and they can't.
	And this isn't necessarily a question of intelligence, this is a question of a particular work ethic.
	Cultural attitudes that people hold, as well as you could talk about general competency.
	Because what we're seeing there, what he's describing at the end there, if you're going to look at it from economic terms, is high time preference.
	A lot of these populations have very, very high time preference.
	They don't want to, as Jordan Peterson would recommend, for instance, put things off till tomorrow so they can have something better tomorrow.
	They want what they can get right now.
	Right now, that's what they want.
	Well, as the academic agents, as we've had on the show, there are only two demographics that matter.
	Those who have built civilizations and those who haven't.
	Absolutely.
	It's a hard, hard statement to question.
	Uh, and, but speaking of general competency, I did want to point out that on the website, this is one of the most popular articles that we've got on here.
	And it's really worth a read if you've got the time for it.
	And if you don't have the time to read it, then you can listen to it.
	If you're a silver member, which is Josh's old article that's over two years old now, but still as interesting as ever talking about the dumbest country on earth, which is in terms of raw IQ scores.
	The average country of the countries is a West African country called Equatorial Guinea, which is 59 points.
	That's the average IQ.
	So half of the population is below 59.
	And 60 is clinically retarded.
	I think 70 is what he lists here.
	Below 70 is the generally recognized benchmark to consider someone clinically retarded.
	So clearly what we need to do is import as many of these people into the West as we possibly can and then put DEI requirements on every high competency business.
	Because that will clearly work.
	I don't think these populations are the ones generally coming to Europe.
	No, that's the funny thing about Josh's article here.
	I mean, a bit of a spoiler, but the sad tragedy of a society that looks like that is there's basically a couple of families who are average.
	And of course, that means they're just stealing massive amounts of money from the general population and living like kings while everyone else lives in poverty.
	That's the way you end up.
	Oh yeah, I mean if you've got an 85 IQ in Equatorial Guinea, you can live like a- You're a king.
	Yeah.
	You're a king.
	You can take advantage of anything and anyone.
	But that's the thing.
	There's, um, once again, when you look at data like that, you don't have to make a particular value judgment over it, over, you know, the worth of these people.
	If you think it's a good or bad, you can just look at it and say, okay, from an objective standpoint, these are not people who are going to be able to contribute much of any economic value to a developed Western nation.
	If you bring them over here, which is always the thing that we get told is we're being given economic value.
	And then this is a crazy foreign nations.
	This is either true or it isn't, and, you know, it looks to be true, but you're not allowed to acknowledge that.
	There is no acknowledgement of this in the mainstream discourse at all, and so instead you have to default to other explanations when you encounter the difference in outcomes.
	But moving on to the next thing, talking of bridges and everything, Which is that people point out that there is this bridge in Ethiopia that was built by Europeans centuries ago.
	And the Ethiopians, after it got bombed in 1941 during the war, never rebuilt it and crossed it via ropes.
	Now this goes around every so often as well.
	I think you actually... Was it you or John that sent this to me, Dan?
	I think it was John that sent it to me.
	I decided to look into this bridge and see what was going on.
	How did it get built centuries ago by Europeans?
	I assume when we colonized it.
	But we didn't colonize Ethiopia until the Italians.
	Oh, did we not?
	Oh, I assume maybe some kind of trade route, perhaps?
	I don't know.
	That doesn't make sense.
	I don't know.
	Either way, it was built by Europeans and destroyed in 1941, and they just decided to cross it with ropes, which led to about five deaths per year because of this, and it was only repaired in February of 2002 by American engineers.
	So for those listening, it's a large stone arch bridge where the connections between two arches have been blown out and people are basically swinging themselves in rope across.
	But I mean, it wouldn't take that much to even put a wooden rejoinder across that bit.
	It's not that difficult.
	It looks like 70% of the span is already covered.
	Well, once again, it was repaired in 2002 by Americans and then another bridge company, presumably American, did a lasting repair in 2005 and now there's more modern bridge support around it so that people don't have to throw themselves off a bridge and have five people die per year trying to cross it.
	I mean, it looks fun!
	It looks fun!
	I wouldn't do it.
	Personally, that's not for me.
	And to end this off, going back to responses to the original tweet from AfricaHub, this person decided to give his story.
	Now, bear in mind this is a story from Twitter that a random anon has put out, so you can say, you can cast some doubt on it, but it does seem to line up with a lot of other stories I've heard from people who've gone into Africa and tried to help out the local communities there and then gone back.
	After the help.
	So he points out it reminds him of his time in Africa as a young man.
	He learned that 60% of the tomato harvest in the area he was in went to spoil each year.
	So he built an air dryer out of simple village materials and made huge batches of sun-dried tomato pesto that year to give away.
	Everybody loved it and the matriarchs loved using the dried tomato in meals.
	I told them that they could keep the air fryer and possibly sell it for side income next harvest.
	I left at the end of my term and checked back a year later.
	The air fryer was dismantled for the wood and the parts.
	Yeah.
	Very, very high time preference behavior right there.
	And again, this is a thing.
	So if people started going over and building bridges in Africa, a lot of the time they would get dismantled pretty quickly for firewood and spare parts.
	Yes.
	And once again, there are some people casting questions as to whether this is true or not in the comments.
	I think the spirit of it is what's certainly true here.
	Because once again, I've read many, many stories of people who've gone out and lived in those areas, and this seems to be the general attitude of a lot of the people who live there.
	Which means, once again, revealed preference to me seems to be that they desperately want us to come back.
	They need us.
	You'll get your Viceroy job.
	Alright, I assume boys.
	I suppose we'll move on and enjoy.
	I'm not looking forward to that video coming, I can see it coming.
	I don't know what else it's going to be about.
	Which video comment?
	Did you not see the massive Indian flag?
	I don't know where that's going, but anyway.
	Who needs toilets anyway?
	That's what I'm worried about.
	You've all been tricked by big toilet.
	I want to talk about something serious today, which is I'm actually a little bit worried.
	Like, I don't put much stock in this, but maybe like 5% of my brain, and I hate to be temporal, is genuinely worried about a civil war in the United States as of the 2024.
	Oh, it's not my base case, but you definitely have to assign a non-zero probability to it.
	I'm not the only one.
	Okay.
	And the thing that brought me to this conclusion is the following, which if we get this up, you can see here, this is just one of those websites that shows you the prediction of the next presidential election.
	And they have here, based on the current polling, Donald Trump already has a win.
	And the states that are up for toss aren't relevant.
	They'd be nice to have, but they don't actually matter.
	So they think he's locked up 277 electoral votes before he can even get into the contentious ones?
	If you take the polling by state and then plot it in, which is why I presume this website is down here, because I've tried to do it myself as well, and I came to a similar conclusion, Trump's already won.
	If the election was done tomorrow, he'd win easily.
	That's obviously not going to happen because you've got a year of campaigning and all sorts of shenanigans will go on and Biden might be replaced.
	But if you're not Trump, let's say you're the other guy and you're looking at that, you would probably shit yourself.
	Rightfully so, because you would think, Jesus Christ, I've painted him as everything, including Hitler, and this is the result?
	People want him back, and that should be a normal situation.
	Okay, that didn't work.
	Your Presidency, that was a waste of time.
	In fact, it really, really didn't work and has gone terribly.
	But of course, that can't be the response.
	Instead, the response has been, let's just kick him off the ballot.
	Which, amazing tactic, if nothing else, in the sense of, are you serious?
	And this is in Colorado, to begin with, of course, in which the state of Colorado, their Supreme Court decided that they could just kick Donald Trump off the ballot and then cite the 14th Amendment saying he caused an insurrection.
	Which is basically what that was written for, right?
	Not an actual civil war, but no it's not.
	Some have been suggesting for a long time that that's why they've been going so hard on the insurrection rhetoric, so that they could fit it into the 14th amendment.
	The only evidence of insurrection they've got is MSNBC coverage.
	Yeah, this is the disconnect between reality and then the attempts, of course.
	Because if anyone, we'll get back to it in a minute, but the obvious video evidence exists of what Donald Trump did that day.
	And it's him giving a speech, then some people breaking into the Capitol whilst he's still speaking.
	And then they go off and start doing that.
	He stops speaking and then puts out a series of tweets and videos telling them to be peaceful and to leave the Capitol.
	Then Twitter deletes his account, so you can't see him doing that.
	And then for the next several months, wall-to-wall coverage of how he'd caught an insurrection.
	And then the ultimate goal, which people speculated, came true.
	Which is that several states are like, well, because we've said it enough, we'll now just lie to ourselves in court and say that he should be off the ballot, so he physically can't come back.
	Because obviously, people actually quite like him and would vote for him.
	Okay, that isn't small.
	I think that's really scary, and we should take it somewhat seriously.
	Because, of course, that's Colorado to begin there.
	And they say in here that the case has obviously now gone to the Supreme Court of the United States, but that won't be heard until the 8th of February.
	That says the Republican presidential primary will already be underway.
	Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada will have already voted.
	Now, almost certainly Trump is going to win the primary.
	He's going to be the candidate, I think.
	It would be stupid to do anything else.
	Well, it would be statistically really, really unlikely, given the polling.
	So, okay.
	If that went the other way, it's unlikely to.
	You would presume the Supreme Court, everyone presumes, is just going to bat this down.
	But that's a presumption.
	And of course, this then went on to Maine.
	Maine decided they'd kick him off the ballot as well.
	I mean, this one was...
	Very funny, to say the least, because the lady, the Secretary of State there, she came out and said, democracy is sacred.
	That was her first line.
	I am mindful that no Secretary of State has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access, based on the section of the 14th Amendment.
	I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection.
	So she said, you know, democracy is so important, that's why I'm doing this.
	Trust me, he did engage in insurrection.
	But as you rightly point out, there is no... No one's convinced by that.
	All of the polling on the January 6th committee shows the public don't care.
	They knew it was just political pandering.
	To yourselves.
	Not to the public, to yourselves.
	And once again, it really doesn't... You can't emphasize enough that throughout 2020, After George Floyd's death, the Democrats actively mobilized their own client groups to cause chaos across cities in America that killed multiple people and caused billions in property damage.
	And they completely ignore that.
	They completely ignore that Democrats have been promoting things like the Innocence Project forever, which is explicitly a scheme to get guilty minorities out of prison.
	Well, in those circumstances as well, we're looking at, what is the politician's response exactly?
	And the exact response was either, they deserve it, abolish the police, or we need to rise up.
	No point was there, please go home, be peaceful, blah blah blah.
	Politicians didn't tweet that.
	What's the one, Portland, Oregon?
	That's the place where I went off the deep end.
	The mayor completely was on the side of Antifa the entire time.
	Whilst they were firebombing officers.
	Yeah, and then they came to his house and said, this isn't good enough and tried to attack his house.
	And at that point, all of a sudden you go, okay, maybe the police are needed here.
	I mean, there's a reason the Homeland Security guys had to go there.
	And in California, the interesting conversation is that there, the debate is about why haven't we kicked Donald Trump off the ballot?
	Again, three states where he probably shouldn't win.
	Even in a free and fair election, but it's interesting to see.
	Part of me still wonders if Donald Trump won California last time around.
	I doubt it.
	I really do.
	But we'll get to that in a minute.
	I've got a good case.
	But the conversation here is about why haven't we?
	And the quote from this Secretary of State for California says, if I believe in this democracy that is here, I have to basically continue to abide by the rule of law.
	And for me not to do that, I would be no better than Donald Trump.
	So, even California is like, well that's mad.
	That's obviously an insane thing to do, but they didn't stop Colorado and Maine from doing it.
	And this brings us back to... I like the idea that in California they opened up the dictionary definition for democracy and went, guys, you're never going to believe this.
	Turns out... I don't think we can kick Trump off.
	Yeah, and this brings me back to...
	Something really gross here because, of course, I just said Donald Trump probably won't win these states anyway if they kick him off and then the election goes ahead like that.
	But that's really not good enough, is it?
	Because you've still got millions of people in those states who have now massively been disenfranchised purely because the American system is now going this way needlessly.
	And so I wanted to look at some data real quick.
	And I'll start off with this, which is a graph I made last time of postal votes, so mail-in voting per presidential election.
	So you can see here it was on a general upward trend from 96, where it was 7.6% of the public sent in a postal vote.
	Didn't really matter all that much.
	And then 2016, it was about 20%.
	Not a general trend, I think, that is healthy.
	But then in 2020, it jumped to 42% of all votes cast were mail-in postal votes, which is unusual.
	So, yeah.
	For some reason, I'm not going to use the 2020 election.
	I'm going to jump to the 2016 results to look at these individual states.
	Don't ask me why.
	But as you can see here, you have California.
	I mean, 4 million people, 31% of the electorate in California voted not for Hillary Clinton but for Donald Trump there.
	And okay, he's not going to win though.
	The swing's not there.
	But that doesn't really matter.
	I mean, you've still got 4 million people completely disenfranchised.
	And that's just California.
	When you get onto Colorado, as you can see, it tightens quite a lot.
	There's a 5% difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
	But first of all, I don't believe the California number because I think that the last election was not the first time where the Democrats have lent on the scale, have fortified.
	But yeah.
	I'm just trying to pick a Donald Trump election in which... I think everything that you consider even vaguely purple is actually red if you count it properly.
	So you can take that perspective.
	We'll scroll down so we can see the county map there.
	Yeah.
	As well.
	And you can see that there is a very clear divide.
	I would imagine that those big blue areas are mostly urban counties.
	But that's the same in every country.
	Yeah.
	which is the real divide between the right and the left is the urban versus rural mindset.
	And then the in-between is where the battle is.
	But you can see that if we take these numbers out of red, there's a very small margin there for actual victory.
	And then again, you've got another million people who are disenfranchised if this went ahead.
	And then you get to Maine, which surprised me.
	Very small margin, 3%, as you can see there.
	Oh, really?
	47 to 44.
	Which, I mean, Maine on every presidential map I ever see is always blue.
	It's always deep blue.
	Like, they are going to win this one.
	But another 300,000 people who would be disenfranchised there.
	Which is mental.
	I mean, I'm sorry, but this just is not normal circumstances.
	And what's the response?
	Because largely the response has been a further swing for Donald Trump by the public.
	But if you're the elite who did this, and you think you're just going to get away with it, I mean, I don't know what their plan is, but currently they're just playing the victim, which... who's that convincing?
	So this is the lady in Maine who is like, I have death threats now.
	This is this is a fear tactic from Donald Trump's campaign.
	I think that their plan is that they know that they have a weaponized legal system that they can deploy against people if needs be.
	If you're posting the wrong thing on social media, sorry, buddy, we've classified that as terroristic hate speech now.
	So you're going to get a knock on your door.
	And if that doesn't work and if they can't get people on that, they know that they do still have And also bear in mind that during the pandemic they basically purged the military of Trump supporters with a mandate of some sort that came along a couple of years ago.
	That was effectively used to purge free-frinking right-wingers from the military.
	A lot of people keep posting.
	Again, it's hard to tell.
	Please let us know.
	A lot of people keep posting.
	I see it.
	Military emails or recruitment in which they're talking about, now you don't need that certain something.
	Okay, that's weird.
	Yeah, because we might actually want to go to war with China now, so we need all the white boys to sign up again.
	This article here though, where she's saying she has faced death threats since determining that Donald Trump was disqualified from being able to run for presidential election, and she said it was an effort to scare her and others No.
	Call me wrong, but I don't think the United States is about being spooky anymore.
	I don't think they're trying to scare her.
	It's not that level.
	I think, genuinely, they're at the angry level.
	Genuinely, you have taken away 300,000 people's votes in your own state.
	How do you think they feel about that?
	I mean, what was the rallying cry of the American Revolution?
	Taxation without representation?
	I literally can't vote for my representative of my choice?
	Well, I mean, the thing is, we know how this works in countries that aren't democracies.
	Basically, they just have a civil war every now and again.
	Yeah, and that's sort of the big worry because, yes, global superpower kind of in charge of the entire West.
	Yes.
	And what they are doing is they are dismantling democracy in the name of democracy.
	And you're just going to get what you get in all other countries that don't have votes.
	You have civil wars.
	And the evidence here is clear as well.
	I mean, Josh documented it here, which is a breakdown of the timeline.
	And of course, you can go and check it out in your own time.
	I mean, what did Donald Trump do during all this?
	Well, you could see his tweets in which he's literally saying, be peaceful.
	And then you can also just go back to his account.
	Now that Elon's taken over as a historical document that now exists again.
	Weird how they didn't want it to exist, because when you go and have a look at what was tweeted during that time, it's telling everyone to go home.
	This video is just him speaking for 2 minutes 40 seconds saying go home, be peaceful.
	And he just goes on, you know, support the women in blue, we support law and order.
	Thank you.
	I'm sorry but this is- And that's why they banned his account.
	Stay peaceful, and then it's his livestream where he's still talking.
	So literally, after he finishes his talk, he's telling everyone, stop, support the police, be peaceful.
	There is no case to be made that he engaged in an insurrection.
	It just isn't there.
	You have some people that broke the law, okay?
	But he's not involved in this, nor did he advocate it.
	So, presumably, when it goes to the Supreme Court, it will be shot down.
	And even if that happens, because it's not guaranteed, that's an assumption we're making, what's the response?
	Because they were willing to do this, and I presume they're willing to then extend that to as many states as possible, so they can push it through.
	I mean, they seem to be willing to do literally anything.
	They've played their hand and they've shown what playbook that they're working from here, which is the screw you playbook.
	Yeah.
	And if every, like you say, if these large populations in these states see that the game that's being played is the screw you game, I'm being taxed but I can't have any representation.
	So one interpretation of this is, is that, um, I mean, I, I think it's the case, but I'll just mainstream it a bit, but they genuinely did cross the Rubicon at the last election.
	And now they cannot go back because lots of people know that they're going to be in jail for a very long time for election fortification.
	And they have to win the next one.
	It's not, you know, the crime has already been committed.
	It is no longer an option to lose.
	And whenever they, it's kind of a meme now, but when they talk about our democracy, what that literally means is me ruling you.
	Specifically, me being in a position in government ruling you.
	That's what it means.
	And like you say, a lot of these people are in positions that are completely untouchable.
	By the electorate.
	The only people that might be able to touch them are people at the executive level going in and saying right we're going to purge all of these jobs from the federal government or he puts people in positions in the federal government who are going to be able to do that for him.
	Aaron McIntyre has a good series of tweets called what does democracy mean in this sentence where he shows up loads of articles like this.
	Yeah, and I think the last one was something like 40% of Western democracies are voting next year.
	This is a threat to our democracy.
	But he's got a whole bunch of them, where basically the idea of democracy obviously means we're ruled by the elites.
	It's funny because it's not even just in America that this happens.
	This is why Germany was also saying, I don't know, the AFD is getting pretty popular.
	We might have to purge them off the ballot as well.
	With the United States though.
	And to get back to my Tim Paul-ism.
	He's made a series of, I should have brought my beanie on for you.
	Yeah.
	He's made a series of points where it's like, you know, if this happens, then are we not in some kind of low level civil war?
	And usually his stuff is along the line of breakdown of law and order, right?
	Um, but there is a solution to that.
	And it's not one that Americans are unusual to, which is if there's a low level of law and order, you have the second amendment, you protect your own family.
	And this happens periodically when something happens in LA, for example, and roof Koreans become a thing.
	And that's a solution that's built in, but this, where we're looking at not having a representative, I don't think the American system has a failsafe for that, and the written solution to that is to overthrow the government.
	That is what the Founding Fathers wrote you should do.
	So if I'm looking at those 300,000 people in Maine, or the several million in Colorado or California and such, I mean, I'm not saying do it, okay?
	Not advocating violence.
	I'm saying that the American Constitution, as written by the Founding Fathers, is instructing their ancestors to do that if it ever happened in the United States.
	And I wouldn't be very shocked if quite a few members of the American Republic took that up.
	That is the thing they pledge allegiance to and obsess over.
	That's why the US elites are desperately, desperately pushing Nikki Haley.
	Because if they can get Nikki Haley over the line, they can have a Republican president.
	She won't do anything about the last fortification.
	She won't do anything about the Jan 6th political prisoners.
	She's just part of the machine.
	She'd give Raytheon another war.
	They're desperate to get somebody like her, but they're not going to get it.
	Because if it's not Trump, it's going to be someone like Ramaswamy or something.
	Yeah.
	Again, I mean, please discuss.
	Let me know what your thoughts are.
	There we are.
	I'll end this off with one more thing, though, which is, as you alluded to correctly, if you actually want to build a case for someone engaging in insurrection, I don't know enough about Joe Biden's statements during the George Floyd riots, but the best candidate I could think of is Kamala Harris.
	Would actually be ineligible.
	Because as you can see here, this is one that obviously went viral at the time.
	It's one among several.
	In which she tweets out, if you are able to chip in now to the Minnesota Freedom Fund to help post a bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota.
	Protesting meaning burning and looting.
	Yeah, well, I mean, we're talking about violent criminals.
	I mean, the response at the time, rather correctly, was you're funding domestic terrorism, whatever that is that's been sensitive content, and so forth, in which people are like, no, we're talking about actual violent criminals burning the place down for your political agenda, and you want to bail them out.
	And you are right that it's not even really comparable to Donald Trump, because all we have of Donald Trump is him saying, don't do this, go home.
	With her we have explicit...
	I endorse bailing these people out of prison.
	Explicit statement saying, yeah, please, please get these criminals back on the streets.
	And an example in which, well, this did result in one death we can tangibly point to.
	It's just a single individual because we can point directly to her donations and then the individual who was released in regards to that time period who then went on to murder someone.
	This is an urban man, as you can see there.
	And he, as you can read from the headline and the details, he was in prison.
	for rioting and so after Kamala Harris's tweet the Minnesota Freedom Fund bailed him out so he could be free and they've acknowledged it helped secure the release of Sean Michael Tillman who then in May shot and killed a passenger on a rail platform in St.
	Paul because when I'm waiting for a train I need to kill people.
	Quote, it is neither just nor effective to respond to violence by denying bail and preemptively pushing people who are disproportionately poor, black, brown and indigenous into the prison system, said the Minnesota Freedom Fund.
	What's that got to do with the price of eggs?
	I mean, it means nothing.
	They were talking about violent criminals here.
	Because the dude had a criminal history as well.
	It wasn't just he was so outraged about George Floyd and deeply cared about Fentanyl rights or something.
	Yep.
	Here's his list.
	The criminal record includes multiple counts of indecent exposure, including indecent exposure to a minor, as well as assault and unlawful possession of a firearm.
	And then they bailed him out for rioting.
	Thanks, Conor.
	And he won't kill someone.
	But nevertheless, the Democrats look at that individual and think, one of ours.
	Yeah.
	At least you can draw... Literally, that's what it is.
	They go, oh, okay, he's useful to us.
	So, I mean, that's a case in which a politician did actually help pardon the riots which were destroying the United States and did result at least in one tangible murder we can point to directly.
	As to indirectly, God knows.
	Whereas Donald Trump said, don't do it.
	I'm sorry.
	That's just the evidence there is.
	Watch out though.
	Trouble in paradise.
	Black women.
	The block of black women.
	7% Florida threatens to boycott Biden.
	Maybe some good news.
	But there we are.
	I'm a bit worried.
	Let me know in the comments what you think.
	Let's go to the video comments.
	So if you thought India being the poo capital of the world was bad, wait until you see these packages.
	This is from my Indian friend who showed me these ice cream cones.
	My ice cream cones.
	They have Adolf Hitler as their mascot.
	And it gets worse.
	They have firecrackers too.
	I mean, they just really love Hitler over there.
	I mean, look at this.
	It's everywhere.
	Look.
	You can't get away from it.
	No chimney stills?
	If you want a copy of Mein Kampf and you buy it on Amazon, you'll notice that the price on the back is listed in rupees.
	Oh, really?
	Do they get produced and printed in India?
	Oh, fair play!
	See, I think, weirder than that, I did see something on Twitter earlier, and I don't... I hope it wasn't serious.
	It was a video of a bunch of Indian men getting really excited when their cow did a lot of pooing, and then they picked up all of the poos, ran back home with it, and started cooking it.
	I'm going to use my rare privilege as the host to veto any further conversation.
	I'll move on to the next video comment.
	Hi, hello the Cedars.
	How are you guys doing?
	Robert Archer here.
	I'm really bad at doing these videos.
	I'm going to get better.
	With all of the premium content, which is freaking amazing, do you have favorite pieces of premium content?
	There's so much.
	Is there any way that we could more regularly do sort of recommendations of, oh, remember this piece of content, you know, that's maybe from at this point, could even be two years ago, but it's actually one that really should be seen if you are a recent subscriber.
	Anyway, thanks guys, all the best.
	Yeah, so he's talking about curation of the body of work that we have.
	Hey, Dan, maker of Brokonomics, what series would you recommend people?
	I think that might be a bit of a useless endeavor.
	Yeah, we have been thinking about ways we could do curation on our own site.
	So we've got some ideas, but they're not ready yet.
	So hopefully we will address that.
	I don't think he's suggesting that we just recommend our own series.
	That's pretty obvious.
	That's what I think you're going to get if you ask Dan what's the best thing that you will get him saying.
	What's a specific episode of Brokenomics that you think really packs punch, gives it a lot for its value?
	The first one just gives the full overview.
	I think that there's a lot for everybody that could do something like that.
	You don't even need to say your own content.
	Maybe it might be worth to promote some older stuff a bit more often.
	I mean, we try and do that during the episodes themselves.
	I promoted Josh's old article.
	You're constantly promoting your Active Measures book club.
	I think that's... Hey, I've taken a several month hiatus from doing that.
	Yeah, you've got to get back to it soon though, aren't you?
	Yeah, of course.
	Cheap bastard.
	I mentioned something because I think it's funny, which is we were recently doing a bit of analysis on the premium stuff.
	And one of the things I found, which I just did not expect, is in the last two years, which is the day that we have for, the most viewed piece of premium content we had was a live stream in which suddenly Carl looked at me one day and said, there are big cats in the UK.
	And then we did a live stream where he just tried to argue that there are tigers and leopards in this.
	Is that the number one?
	That's the most viewed piece of premium content.
	Not like Count Dankula on Ladzour.
	That's close, but... I was Big Cat's Wins.
	Even over Bigfoot?
	Yeah, Bigfoot was pretty popular.
	Even over Brokenomics Episode 1?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	To be fair, even Carl can't push Bigfoot in the UK, so eventually he realised, big cats!
	When's his UFO coming out?
	When's his UFO streams happening?
	Oh wait, no, he doesn't believe in space, does he?
	No, he doesn't believe in aliens.
	I thought he doesn't believe in space.
	Bigfoot, yes, aliens don't.
	You don't believe in space, do you?
	I believe in space, yeah, I believe in space.
	You were the one who was like, the moon landings didn't happen.
	That's different from not believing in the concept of space.
	Do we have a flat earther in the office yet?
	Yeah, I think that's the same.
	Has anybody become a flat earther yet?
	I don't know.
	You're not a flat earther, are you?
	Okay, alright.
	And I'm not anti-moon landings, I'm just saying I'm no higher than 50-50 that they actually happen.
	Do you believe in satellites then?
	What's your percentage on satellites?
	So satellites is fine, that's certainly possible.
	Yes.
	But getting to the moon... I mean, do you believe you can get a rover to the moon?
	I believe you can do it now, yeah.
	You've not done it in decades!
	All I'm saying is I'm not at 100% but they did it when they said they did it.
	That's all I'm saying.
	Do you reckon Stanley Kubrick had much to do with it?
	Was 2001 his preparation for it?
	Was that the practice run and then Shining really was him admitting to it?
	Look, I used to be at 100% the moon landings happened and then COVID happened and I was like okay government can lie to us on a mass scale so my My confidence level on the moon went from 100% to 99% and then I started looking into it and the more I looked into it, the more my confidence level went down.
	And I got to 50-50 and I stopped looking because I didn't want to go any lower.
	But do you believe rovers can go to Mars at that time period or not?
	In the 60s?
	No.
	But the Soviets were sending them to Venus and Mars, never mind the bloody moon.
	Well, they sent something that parachuted down.
	I mean, it's not exactly a rover, was it?
	But it's still able to take pictures and travel.
	Like the one on Mars, I think.
	Yeah, but getting humans there.
	Like I say, I'm not saying it didn't happen.
	I'm just saying I'm at 50-50.
	What's that?
	Why is that?
	Like, we can parachute a drone, but I don't believe we can put wheels on it.
	What are you, mental?
	No.
	There's a big step between parachuting a lump of something onto Venus and getting humans onto Mars and then onto the moon and then more accurately getting them back up off and back again.
	I was just talking about rovers because I didn't even want to get into the whole human thing because I mean I think you're mad on that too but I wanted to take baby steps.
	Hang on, I'm not anti-rover.
	So you think rovers are okay?
	Yes.
	That's perfectly possible?
	Yes.
	We've still got two more videos.
	Shall we finish this conversation?
	I just find it fascinating, honestly.
	Sorry.
	So yeah, let's get back to the video comments.
	You're right.
	Hello, Lotus Eaters.
	My wife and I watched The Lads Hour from last week together, and the answer to one of the questions you posed about women is no, she doesn't, and has never even considered it until you brought it up.
	I'm not going to elaborate further, and anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about needs to subscribe to the website and watch Lads Hour.
	You do not know what you are missing.
	I like your words, strong man.
	Good home gym as well.
	What does the Danes think about the Danegard?
	Well, the truth is that most Danes don't even know it happened, but it is one of my favorite stories to tell, and when I do tell it, people think it's hilarious.
	We was Vikings and that's awesome is kind of the Danish mentality.
	We just think it's hilarious.
	My other favorite story to tell is how the Vikings became Christian.
	Basically, the German Christian monks gave the Vikings gold gifts to become Christians.
	So what the Vikings did was that they would travel all across the country to get Christian multiple times to get multiple gold gifts.
	So the Vikings kind of really now very honest, but they did become Christian because it was just kind of easier that way.
	That's pretty funny.
	That all makes sense to me.
	I like the idea of some Nordic guy in the modern day, just like a Persian covered in gold rings.
	What, we stole gold from someone?
	Let's go with the, I think we have a last one.
	What do you mean I've already been christened?
	I need it one more time.
	That was the other guy, he had the mustache.
	My name is Guy Incognito.
	Do we have another video comment?
	Today I got bored and decided to make a bunch of network diagrams for family structures.
	Here we have the cornerstone of the conservative Western movement, the nuclear family, which has a dismal one to five ratio of support for the parents.
	The parents could barely take a day off.
	They're overwhelmed.
	It's a mess.
	Here's a better strategy.
	This is the tall strategy.
	The grandparents get involved, and you end up having more of a one-to-one ratio.
	And we have the wide strategy, where you have aunts and uncles and cousins involved, and you get a big happy family.
	These families are way more robust, and it's no wonder the West is crumbling if they're basing it on the nuclear family, because that family is not sustainable, except in really good economic times.
	I appreciate that.
	It's an interesting point.
	The only thing that I find weird is it looks like a HR spreadsheet.
	You've come to the office with them and you're like, look everyone, you need to be having more kids and more people involved.
	I want to know how you've mathematically calculated ratios of support.
	Yeah.
	For this.
	This all seems a bit... The fact of the matter is that different family structures work for different kinds of people and I've been doing some reading upon English customs back in the day, the fact that English... The English, by the sounds of it, as far back as you can find records before you get to the Dark Ages, have always been really individualistic.
	You can go back to the 1200s and find that people were living in nuclear families back then.
	It seems that the nuclear family structure works really well for the English and other Western European peoples, and maybe doesn't work so well for other populations.
	That's the fact of the matter.
	The reasons that we're so screwed over here right now is not because Mum and Dad decided they don't need Gran and Grandad's help to raise the kids all the time.
	Okay, now before we end this off, I've just got to say, somebody in the live chat has started a fight with me, so I'll just... No, I have to respond to this.
	So, listen, have you noticed the direction the flag was waving and the photos?
	No, no, no, no, no, where is it?
	Where is it?
	They don't line up!
	Somebody called Dragonhawk, who really bloody hates me, I always look out for his comments because... I love people who hate me in the comments because it just makes me giggle at the concept that you couldn't like me.
	Anyway, so he says I'm a... Hang on, hang on.
	He says that I'm a moron because I don't think people landed on the moon.
	I'm not saying that I don't think people landed on the moon.
	I said my confidence level is not 100% so you're a fucking moron because you didn't listen to what I said.
	Then somebody responded to that by saying Dan doesn't even know that you can prove it with lasers.
	That is one of the most easily dismissible arguments of the whole bloody lot because the whole thing is there's an episode of like the Big Bang Theory where they say you can point a laser at the moon and it bounces off.
	Yeah, okay, yeah.
	There are laser reflectors on the moon, right?
	Do you know who else has got laser reflectors on the moon?
	The Russians, the Chinese, and the Indians.
	You could get a laser reflector on the moon without having put people on the moon.
	You could just land the bloody things.
	So no, that is not an argument.
	And yes, I have done the basic bloody research.
	So carry on bloody commenting!
	I like the rest of you, but not them.
	What about putting death lasers on the moon?
	Has anyone done that yet?
	Has Dr Ethan got around to it?
	Local moon denier has an argument with chat.
	The point is, the chat does this.
	I mean, I dip into it every now and again.
	It's like, do you not think I've considered that?
	For God's sake.
	Anyway, if you walked into Tesco's and told people you don't think the moon landing's happened, what do you think?
	I wouldn't have the conversation in Tesco's, would I?
	If you want to go down the pub, I'll lay out the full argument as to why my confidence interval has been reduced.
	If I hear anybody hysterically explaining high pitch and high speed why the moon landing... I've heard about the lasers in Tesco!
	I'll know what's going on.
	Golf clubs?
	You think they take golf clubs?
	We get that in the office every other week with the Bigfoot issue, so what would it matter if I had a talk?
	Hull doesn't really talk about Bigfoot that much anymore.
	There is a lovely insight into how the office works, which is each one of us has some mental belief that obviously isn't true, but we fervently defend it.
	What's mine?
	I don't know.
	We'll figure it out.
	Right, let's go to the written comments.
	Mine is that Nu Metal was always good.
	The thing is, see, you don't even know what Nu Metal is.
	I'd argue with you, can I?
	You're not rolling.
	Right, okay.
	You don't know what time it is.
	Alright.
	You're not down with the Nookie.
	So, someone's typing.
	Dan, I've just been told that Dragonhawk is a woman.
	Oh yeah, I've done that before.
	Have you been misgendering?
	Yeah, there's somebody in the chat who bloody hates me and I decided to mention it before and then I found out I misgendered them or something.
	They're very particular about their pronouns.
	Right, should we read some comments?
	Anyway, yes, yes.
	He did promise to digital all the women who watch, so... What?
	No, no, that was if they bought an episode or something.
	I can't remember.
	Well, I'll send you a receipt.
	That's going to put them off, then.
	Sales dropped dramatically!
	Sales dropped to zero!
	So I can only do one because we're running out of time because we were arguing with the chat.
	You were arguing with the chat!
	No, they were arguing with me.
	I didn't start it, I finished it.
	No, you were arguing!
	You can't fire me, I quit!
	Right, anyway, quick comment.
	Sean Goffrey says, I work in the aerospace sector.
	When I was in school, there were five male students for every one woman in the engineering program.
	The women I worked with are highly competent and absolutely deserve to be there.
	On graduation, they had the pick of companies.
	More or less, every aerospace company is trying to get 50-50 females in hiring.
	As a result, the companies are targeting this tiny pool of females for applicants.
	Companies that can't compete end up even more male-dominated.
	Yeah, so again, you know, it's... What's this he's saying at the bottom, though?
	He then goes on to talk about Indians, but I wanted to address the core point in the 30 seconds I've got, right?
	You guys do a comment, I'm going to scan the live chat again to see if anyone else needs telling off.
	You pick one and I'll pick one.
	You're so salty.
	Over the moon, lad.
	Alright, so Robert Longshaw says, a woman neighbor I've had in the early 2000s paid to go on holiday to some African country to help build a school.
	She took a bricklaying course before going so she could hit the ground running.
	She actually wanted to help.
	When she got back, she told me the only building materials they could get for the school project were ruined old bricks from another building somewhere.
	Two days before finishing her stay, which had been about six weeks, she realized what they were doing were dismantling another school up the road.
	That makes a lot of sense.
	I like the idea that sediment moving along parts of a coast from one beach to another, that was happening with the school.
	groups of holidaying volunteers were probably re-re-re-locating a school, not to improve the situation in a rundown township, but to line the pockets of a travel company and local government.
	That makes a lot of sense.
	I like the idea that sediment moving along parts of a coast from one beach to another, that was happening with the school.
	It's the natural migration of the school.
	The school is migrating over time.
	That was incredible.
	I...
	I actually have a friend who went to Africa to do some aid work and do charity over there.
	I forget exactly what country that it was that she stayed in, but she went very idealistically.
	She was like, I can't wait to help these people.
	And she comes back and she gives us all of these stories about the attitudes and behaviors over there.
	But then the most amazing thing was she was saying, Oh yeah, we were staying in like the only house in this small village, because all of the rest of it was mud huts and such.
	And we were in contact with the place, with the people who were next door.
	And the thing that really amazed me was they had a slave!
	And I didn't know they still did that over there!
	She was so shocked by this!
	I think that's all I can really say there.
	We're into your viceroy of Cameroon, in which case you can... I can finally abolish it!
	Was it nice to have?
	No, she said that she gave this person a mobile phone to try and help them escape.
	And I think that she's messing with the local economy.
	I know.
	The imperialist.
	I told her she was a filthy, filthy colonist and should be ashamed of herself, but apparently this did help the person who they'd enslaved get in touch with their family.
	And hopefully they're living a free life now.
	But the family next door did have a slave.
	The colonialism of our values.
	You can't be oppressive like that, you know.
	Interfering their culture.
	I know, I know.
	Right, we'll end off on a short note.
	JJHW gives us a nice old Americanism, he's telling us.
	Soapbox, ballot box, jewelry box, ammo box.
	Using that order.
	There we are.
	I like them all.
	Use the website you're on.
	Bye.

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