Here with us today is Jason Szeftel. He is an expert with China politics. Listen how we tackle issues regarding force labor and many more.

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Ari Gronich

0:25

Welcome back to another episode of creating a new tomorrow. I'm your host, Ari Gronich. And today I have with me Jason Szeftel. Jason is an expert in China politics. He is a writer, a podcaster, and a consultant. He's been in the world of sustainability. And I'm really excited to have a conversation with him about all of that, because, you know, this world we're living in is changing. And we are creating a new tomorrow today and activating our vision for a better world. And Jason might have some good ways for you to do that. And, you know, relationships with the rest of the world. Jason, welcome to the show.

Jason Szeftel

1:45

Thanks, Ari. I'm glad to be here.

Ari Gronich

1:49

Why don't you tell us a little bit about your background, how you got started in, in the relationship with China, and some of your sustainability and those kinds of things. your background?

Jason Szeftel

2:02

Yeah, sure. My China angle for me goes back a long time, probably around 20 years. But I was really, really got interested in China around when 911 and the Iraq war. And all of that really started. That was very curious about not even curious, I was kind of worried and curious and tense and nervous, wondering what was going on in the world, are we going to see with China, the same sort of bizarre miscalculations and hysterical reactions we saw with the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. And then here we are 20 years later, and we've kind of fled with our tail tucked between our legs. And over that time, I just wanted to learn what was really going on in China, what the country was really about what to do with a country that's so large and complex. And we had to understand we have to really understand it, if you want to have any sort of way to get our hands around where it's going and where it comes from. Really. And then yeah, so I started I went, I learned Chinese. In college, I got a scholarship to study in China, in Beijing, at Beijing University. There, I learned about various systems. Actually, that's where a lot of the sustainability stuff came in. I was really interested early on, in how are we developing the world today? How, what systems what electrical types of systems are we building, sustainable water systems, transportation systems, all of this. And when I was actually in China, I was studying their transportation networks, agricultural systems, their demography, all of those inputs that kind of give us the societies that we live in. I was just very curious where that was going. And yeah, at the time, that was the, you know, 2010 to 2015, I was in and out of China, most of the time. And that was where that was kind of the heyday for me of sustainability, and what kind of sustainable future we were going to build. And I actually learned a lot of things that kind of set me against a lot of the mainstream about how would we would get that done? And what would work and what wouldn't work? And yeah, so I've just been kind of putting some pieces together, trying to figure out what could work and what we could do, and then trying to share it with people.

Ari Gronich

4:00

Awesome. So you know, this show is all about going against the mainstream. So let's talk about a little bit of what the mainstream solutions are. And what you've found, are the flaws in those systems, and you know, how they can be improved?

Jason Szeftel

4:17

Sure, well, right now, the two main systems from a sort of renewable energy perspective, it could just take this sort of green energy, which is very important, since the Industrial Revolution, you need energy to run society to run any of these civilizations, any of these industrial systems. And we've typically ran on fossil fuels, coal, oil, natural gas, and everyone, every where's talking about how we're going to get rid of them. And the main two that we've come up with are basically wind turbines, wind energy, and then solar energy with solar panels. And these two things are awesome. I have nothing against them. I think they're very cool. But the issue is that most of the world, the vast majority of the world does not have the solar irradiation you need or the wind speed, height and consistency that you need to have panels, I mean startup panels or turbines running. So if you sort of map it out, and you look at the sort of places where you have the right solar conditions, or at certain conditions that radiation you need, or the right wind conditions, to a very small percentage of the world. And you if you put that next to the places that have the population centers nearby, it's tough otherwise, you have to build very, very large transmission systems. And in the United States, for example, it's very tough to build a single transmission line, it can take decades, it can take 10,15 years. And so, red tape, but a lot of things, it could be environmental things, you could be crossing a lot of preserve, you know, sort of habitats that need to be preserved or endangered species, it can cross through tribal lands, red tape, and then yeah, and then there's increasing backlash from a lot of rural areas. So in California, the two oldest areas for one of the tools areas for wind and solar energy is near Palm Springs. And people in Palm Springs now see a lot of the solar and wind energy production as almost industrializing the landscape. So they don't want to see wind turbines, as far as the eye can see that I want solar panels on all land surrounding them. And it's a real challenge. So that's particularly on the left, where there's so much investment in these two technologies, there's ever more competing interests. And it's interesting that these are both environmental versus environmental, environmental versus humanitarian, environmental versus sometimes racial or other other justice issues.

Ari Gronich

6:38

So when it comes to those two, right, we're not talking about something that I've thought of as a great source of energy for years, which is wave energy, right, the flowing of waves, so they're constantly coming into shore, there is a way to harness that energy, right. But we're not talking about that as far as like a main kind of energy source. The other thing that comes to mind with regards to things like the wind turbines, right, I remember reading, this is maybe 12, 13 years ago, and a Popular Science magazine was a wind turbine that was horizontal. So instead of vertically spinning, it's been horizontal and spun on basically a fulcrum. So there was very little resistance. So it was like a three mile per hour breeze that would cause it to generate energy, which is almost nothing and can be found almost everywhere. Yet, those kinds of newer forms of the old technology still aren't being adopted, right? The solar panels are just starting to undergo transformation in their technology as well. To make you know them less expensive. So here's my question, the point of that rant is, when it comes to these things, how quickly can we move with technology if we got out of our own way, rather than holding technology back due to money concerns and other things like that?

Jason Szeftel

8:31

Yeah, it's an open question. But even you bring up a really good point, that there are different styles of these sorts of technologies, and some of them aren't being considered as much. A big reason why is that? It's a question of scale, and centralization, and a lot of ways. So the large solar and wind companies are just as invested in controlling these resources as a typical fossil fuel company, oil company is. So they want to build giant wind farms. And giant solar farms. Because it gives you scale, it gives you a large size. They're not as interested in doing small micro local sorts of things. There's a big battle going on between should we have giant, giant transmission lines all over the world and all over the country in sort of take advantage of the great wind corridors in the center of the country and sort of shift the energy out, you know, and take advantage of, you know, the Southwest, the United States for solar, or should we try and do this in a more diffuse distributed way, where you have little, little power plants everywhere? I mean that's a big question. Yeah, I mean, that's just one of the things we always got to remember. It's trillions of dollars to replace the grid. And it brings up real questions about reliability, about who runs it, how the systems work, because they're not meant for solar panels on every house. That's not how they're designed. And we'll see where it goes. But you also bring up the question of the tech, the actual, how far can we go? With the technologies we have and so, on solar panels, there's about there's an efficiency threshold, we really not gonna be able to go beyond it. But it's very good, I mean, it's very good. And then with wind turbines, you're sort of what they've decided to do is just go for bigger and bigger turbines, they're not really changing, like, the arrangement of them, they really just want them huge. I mean, I think they're multiple football fields long at this point. And that's also really good for the companies. Companies like vest das in Europe, the manufacturers, these because no one is gonna come at you, if you manage. If you're manufacturing things that big. It's, there's very few companies that can do it. The other question is the industry, where's it located? So and so one of the things with solar panels Is that something like 80% of all solar panels are built in China. And most of the polysilicon one of the key ingredients comes from shinjang. Whereas run it where the entire system runs on forced labor. So there's a big question about, well, should we be getting solar panels from there? You know, if we ramp it up to kind of expand it all over the country and all over the world to run on solar energy? Are we going to do that on the backs of forced labor, in western China, with their people, and basically, in concentration camps, three indoctrination camps and stuff like that? These are real questions. And it's, again, I think there's a strong corporate push at this time behind traditional renewable energy in the form of solar and wind companies. And I find a lot of dishonest at this point, especially because they pretend like there's gonna be a big green revolution in terms of energy and jobs. It's like, No, you guys are just buying panels from China and installing them. The jobs are an installation and construction, it's like, those are temporary jobs, you get the build out, you get the time you get the jobs from the build out, then it's gone.

Ari Gronich

11:45

So, you know, let's say, I mean, we obviously can't change China's stance on how they treat their employees. And at least it up till now our policies are as such that it is tremendously incentivized to work with China, right? versus other places that have maybe better policies towards their people. So how do we bridge that gap between bringing those jobs back to America, bringing those jobs actually to anywhere that they're going to be installed, the manufacturing should be kind of in the areas in which there'll be installed? So that we're always buying local, right? So even big companies can, you know, think a little differently and do that. But how do we bridge those gaps?

Jason Szeftel

12:43

Yeah, that's a great question. And I think you really nailed it, it's going to be more production, where the consumption or the installation happens. That's where things are trending. And the way it works is that China basically flooded the market with solar panels, and did them below cost so no one else can compete to basically cornered the market during the 2010s. That's what happened. They just wiped out the competition. It was not. Again, you don't want to say what's fair, unfair in sort of global economics, it's kind of not how it works. But that's the game they played, and they did very well. So most US solar panel manufacturers are all gone. And what they're relying on now is industrial policy. So they're relying on the Biden administration just like the Trump administration to start, basically, preventing, incentivizing things to make it happen, make them happen in the US subsidizing things, tariffing, different products from abroad, and basically trying to rearrange the global production system we've had since the 1980s. That's kind of what's happening. We see it in semiconductors, we see it in certain solar energy stuff, we see it with certain rare earth minerals. It just goes on and on. It's kind of what we're seeing across the board. COVID really set this, I mean, just set this loose after with the PPE and all of the vaccine problems, mean people in the United States would be freezing out if we didn't have vaccines made in the country. If they were coming from India or China, it would be even worse. So it really gave people a sense of almost like a national security thing for production for the economy. And we're seeing it. I mean, it's almost a bipartisan thing at this point. So we'll see where it goes. But that's where things are happening. We're not really trying to help other countries as much anymore, trying to prevent it from being in China. Number one, trying to build it here. And then we'll figure everything else out later. That's kind of the thought process.

Ari Gronich

14:26

Yeah, well, so my thought process is always How can we plan and work backwards versus, you know, plan from the end result, right. So, in my case, this series I told you about, when in our pre interview, the series of books that I'm writing, tribal living in a modern world is a lot about how do we take technology and marry it with nature, marry it with a natural way of living that does support all the people on the planet and In a way, that's not like the planet isn't killing us because of what we've done to it, right? So how do we marry the modern, the technology, the influx of this revolution that started with the industrial revolution? and bring it back to a sustainable natural flow so that they're kind of together and helping one another versus destroying one another?

Jason Szeftel

15:30

Yeah, that's a big question. I think it's one of the things that really animated the sort of sustainability movement, the more modern one that's more technologically focused since the mid 2000s. It's been a huge question that we need this greater sense with global warming, with climate change, with anything going on in the world. And even with the sort of political conflicts you see everywhere, resource conflicts, water conflicts, that we have to do something. But there is a real question. And a real challenge, just because it's not clear that we can do this for everyone everywhere. what's likely is that the sort of place that could have a sort of marriage of nature and technology is a place like the United States that puts the money into it really invest in it develops a host of new technologies which don't exist, and then is able to sort of transform its society and economy while also keeping it stable, and productive and healthy. Most places on earth cannot do that. And so for China, for example, trying to just transform the Chinese energy system is a massive, massive undertaking. So they use 50% more energy in China than in the United States. And they have all the dirty industries on Earth, right? They do more steel manufacturing, like steel and aluminum preachers like 50% of the entire world, they pull 50% of all the coal in the world out of the ground. Everything. I mean, all these really, really energy intensive, dirty industries, whether it's, you know, minerals processing, or gas, or steel and steel in different smelting procedures. It's just that everything is 30% of world manufacturing. So how do you retool this entire production node in the world to run on new forms of energy? I mean, it's trill again, trillions and trillions of dollars. And it's tough for China to do because they need low costs for everything they have to keep people employed. They can't have dislocated people running out of the factories and started marching through the streets, like you saw on a bit in Hong Kong. I think that it's really tough to see I actually see more countries, not marrying nature and technology in a wholesome way, but sort of heading heading back down in a bad way, not able to get the resources they need, not able to evolve their economy and the way they need not able to sort of bring society forward. At the same time as they're doing all this. It's just extremely difficult. And even in the United States, we don't have the best politically minded, cooperative sort of party system right now. So we'll see how that goes.

Ari Gronich

17:57

I mean, if you were to if you were to like if you were to be doing this, right, but I was Biden, for instance, and you are giving me your, you know, five minutes, so to speak, your your elevator pitch on why I should listen to your consulting, and what I should be doing with the country. As far as this aspect goes, what would you be saying to me?

Jason Szeftel

18:28

I don't want to shirk the question. But I will say that I don't think that the President has nearly as much power as people think

Ari Gronich

18:33

I understand that. And, and here's how, here's where I feel the power lies. The power lies in somebody like Kennedy saying, we're going to the moon, you have a decade to do it. You know, it's just gonna be done. It's like a mandate, right? They say something, and then the world kind of starts doing the things to make that happen. Right. So Biden has the power of a leadership position where he can create a mandate, he can say, this is what we're doing, you know, like a Kennedy would, I don't think we've had anybody since Kennedy, like that.

Jason Szeftel

19:17

We'll also think our government or federal government's not as competent as it was particularly starting in the 1970s. Its ability to actually execute on programs like that for multi decade or even 5, 6, 10 years. It's just completely almost disappeared. So what we see is some of the biggest revolutions are just privately funded things. So for example, the shale revolution, particularly in Texas, North Dakota, and in Pennsylvania, all these small places, they, it was revolutionary for the US energy system, but it wasn't didn't come through any federal initiatives and actually sort of had to push back against a lot of state initiatives that didn't want fracking and didn't want all this stuff to happen. But it's been probably the biggest energy transformation in 50 years in the United States. So I'm very wary of, I love the idea, I love going to the moon, setting the mission, setting the plan. But even look at NASA since the end of the Cold War, NASA hasn't been able to do anything right now. It's gonna be Elon Musk that goes to the moon with his rockets in Texas.

Ari Gronich

20:15

Now, I understand that. But here's the thing, I guess is the difference. Most people believe that when the government says, Let's do a mandate, that it's the government doing the job, right? You don't realize that it's the private contractors, it's the private citizens, the private companies, the engineers, the geniuses, that are actual human beings, right, that are doing the job that are getting paid. So when they hear something like this will be trillions and trillions of dollars, they don't hear Cha Ching, that means that we're going to be getting paid. That means that our communities are going to have sustainable incomes, and we're going to have a future and we're going to have money to spend and we're going to have things to do all they hear is it's going to cost trillions of dollars. Right? So I guess this is where, yes, I believe that private companies are the answer, private citizens, private people, but I believe that there needs to be some kind of level of incentive that says, You guys got to do this. And you gotta do it now. Because we're not waiting anymore. For your, you know, return on investment, so to speak, we're looking at what's the newest technology? How can we get it out the fastest and most effective, etc.

Jason Szeftel

21:37

Yeah, so I don't want to shirk your question, I'll get back to it and just say, I think that what I would what I would tell them to focus on is, you know, actually try and focus on technology development in certain key areas and stop thinking about technology as just new texting apps, and new video messaging apps and stuff like that. We've really diluted the meaning of the word, technology. And it's really tragic. And some of the consequences. So I'd say, you know, focus on encouraging people to develop new ways to deal with natural disasters. Are there better ways that we can deal with fires? Is there something better than throwing water on it? Right, is there something we could do, you know what I mean, things like that, I think are very important.

Ari Gronich

22:16

You're in LA, right?

Jason Szeftel

22:17

I am in LA? Yeah, I am familiar with it.

Ari Gronich

22:19

I saw 310 cuz my numbers were 310. And so I used to live through those LA fires, right. And I had an idea once and I brought it to the government. I said, Let's plant some ice plants all alongside the mountains, they grow very well there. They don't need a lot of water, but they hold a lot of water. It's like planting cactus, they'll keep a lot of that area from, you know, from burning, because it'll extinguish the fires, but nobody listened. was kind of interesting. It was like a really easy thing I felt like to do. But you're right. We're not telling people to do that.

Jason Szeftel

23:00

Yeah, and it's a lot of the reason is just the government contracting methods. So let's say you and I had an idea for how to better, you know, fight fires in California, well, we'd go and we'd pitch something to, you know, probably this callfire, it would take, you know, three years for them to get back to us. And then you know, we get a decision, then we'd start we get to work on the project for maybe two, three more years. And it's just, it's this massive, extended timeline to try things out. So I believe they should be more encouraging of a lot more experimentation in agriculture and transportation technologies in electrical and energy technologies. I mean, the places bizarre. I mean, even the right to try, that's, I think that's a very good policy, like let's, you know, people are going to die, they have no other options. We should try things if they want, if they want to pay consent, you know, try things. I think that's a good policy. But it's funny, the place where you see the bizarre small innovation and experimentation is often in the military. The military has things like DARPA, that are invested in trying to push things forward with technology. And a lot of impressive technologies have come out of that. So we need a bit more of that focus. It's just very hard to get it together in government, especially the state governments trying to contract with state governments is not fun. So those procedures, I think a lot of things related to it sounds a bit, you know, buzzworthy, but smart government things that can just running the systems for government on more modern systems would be a really good thing. The reason everything's so bad on a government website is because it took the same thing we said, three, you know, six years ago, seven years ago, they had an idea for the website for unemployment benefits in Florida. And then, you know, crisis hits, and it all collapses because it was like, well, this thing was basically 2010 technology, and we don't live in that and it can't be updated. It's not right. It's not right.

Ari Gronich

24:47

Yeah, you know. That's part of like, in general. My issue with business, with government, with what I see in the world, like, I see the technologies as they come out, you know, like the prototypes and the things that people are working on and they're showing done. And then I see what's out and I go, there's such a gap, it's like a 50 year gap between what is here, and what's developed and could be out. And bridging those together is usually a conversation of money, which to me is like the silliest conversation we could have, right? Money is something we made up, the planet, we didn't make up. You know, we didn't make up the need of money to be people who wanted to innovate or grow or things like that, I just find that by using that money as the excuse not to, we have stunted our personal growth, our financial growth, our systemic growth, and, you know, our technological growth.

Jason Szeftel

26:11

Yeah, the places where you see the most technological growth tend to be places with a big consumer market that you can keep coming back to. So if you look at iPhones, or consumer electronics, you get a lot of innovation, just because every year you can put up something new and you can convince them to buy it. And that's huge, big promise for these technologies is if you just have a government buyer, if you just have something like that you can't get rates of innovation and iteration that you need to really continuously advance them. And so in China, for example, there's a new policy, not new five, six years old, called civil military fusion, where basically the Chinese government realized that they can't develop military technology, as it's as good as a lot of consumer stuff. And so what they're doing is trying to actively take consumer technologies, things like electronics, or little drones, that kids use to take videos or whatever to and bring that into the military, because they've realized that the military timelines are now too long and too slow for the same reason. And the United States has actually the same problem. They tried to have a big military cloud product they bought it from there's a whole brouhaha between Microsoft and Amazon. And they basically just said, you know, we're gonna cancel the contract, even though it's four or five years old, because already the technology is already too old. So there's a real challenge of bringing, we actually see. have to find a way to either give something a consumer market, to let it innovate continuously, right? Or you're in trouble. And so it's, that's the place where you can really see a lot of innovation, it's just hard to get. That's why so many technologies just die on the vine, can't pay the people to keep doing it.

Ari Gronich

27:44

So there was something I saw recently, and it was, I think Samsung had their TVs on a subscription, where you're paying just, you know, a monthly amount, and you get the TV and every couple years or whatever, you get the latest one. So you send them back that one, you get the latest one kind of like Apple does with the iPhones these days. And stuff like that. Would it be with you know, if we have to have a money system, I think that would be a good money system is we have a subscription model instead of a buy for model. And that way, we're encouraging innovation versus encouraging people to have to get rid of their inventory before they can sell anything new.

Jason Szeftel

28:32

Yeah, I mean, a lot of things are moving towards the subscription model. It's pretty crazy. Everything feels like it's a subscription. Now, Netflix is a subscription, your entertainment is a subscription. Even writers are doing subscription stuff on substack. There's a subscription ification of everything. It feels like I think there's a good reason why it gives you reliable recurring revenue in a way that one off purchases, that could be one year four, five, six in between really don't do. And often you just don't need as many as much marketing, customer acquisition can be a lot lower, smaller enough to do as best as much. If you have someone in there with you for years, it's reliable revenue, you can loan you could lend off of it, you can do a lot of cool stuff. So I don't think it's going to replace the money system. But it's becoming a bigger and bigger part of the way services are sold in almost every app and every sort of cool app on the internet or on your Mac or on your iPhone. They want you to subscribe because it gives them the certainty that they'll have money and they'll actually continue to invest in improving the technology or at least keeping it up to date for the newest operating system. There's a lot of apps I'll get on my Mac that are free that once you update to a new operating system. They just never updated either because they don't have any incentive to so the subscriptions are definitely here to stay. Although they're kind of getting out of control. They want you to have a subscription for like boxes for your dog. And like everything.

Ari Gronich

29:56

I'm I'm more thinking like if that was the model we went to for technology, like, you know, whether it be our energy system, we're on subscription models, but they don't update the technology with every month, you know, the way that we're paying for subscription, they keep the technology, kind of they maintain it, but they they're not always updating. So that's where I'm thinking, like, Is there a way I just want ways I want things that we can do something that people if they're listening to this in the background, the audience, you know, they're like, what do I do, I'm passionate about something, and I want to be able to, you know, create a sustainable life, I want to create sustainable living with all the subscriptions people are going broke. Because they don't realize that the $9 here and the $10 there and the $9, there's adding up to $3,000. Right, so I you know, it's like, how do we get to where innovation and sustainability technology, and free flowing ideas is like the norm again, kind of like the Roman era or the Greek, you know, era where people were the Renaissance, where it was all about rebirth and growing, I think we've like hit this stage in our evolution, where it's like, we like we got to a place in the 50s, where we liked it, and we just want to stay there forever. And, and so, how do we get back to that rebirth? mentality? I know, you talked a little bit about the psychology of it.

Jason Szeftel

31:44

Yeah, I'm with you on that. I think there's a bit of stasis. And you know, we're all watching Tick tok, and watching videos and all the subscriptions we have are typically little consumer comforts, that let us just keep doing what we're doing, kind of avoid the fact that the rest of the world that we live in, looks exactly like it did in 1970. None of the new physical systems are there, most of LA was built, every home feels like it's a weird, poorly built stucco building from the 70s. They were supposed to go up for like 5, 10 years be replaced and then never get replaced. So yeah, we live, you know, our digital comforts, and digital, little digital consumer electronics really helped us avoid realizing and looking at the fact that the world around us otherwise looks completely old, 50 years old. And you know, in China, it's a bit different, everything is brand new. So there's actually a lot more of a forward looking hungry edge to it, they've seen transformation in their lifetimes in a way that most of us have not. So to get back to it is a real, I mean, it's I think it's like a key key thing we all need to be thinking about. But for stuff, little people, I mean, stuff, little things people can do. That little people, I mean, the challenge with energy is that you often need huge, multi billion dollar investments. So that's not it. But so I mean, if you live in the southwest of the United States, you basically live in one of the best places to have solar energy, you should probably get, I don't want to say should, you can get solar panels on your home, that can be installment payments, and it probably will be a great deal. The panels are really good now. So people who bought solar panels, like 10 years ago, they were paying, they were paying for you to have great solar panels today. You don't I mean, those are outdated, and they're terrible compared to what we have now. And the cost is going down so much. I think you mentioned this earlier, that by 20, 30, solar panels are going to be really, really cheap. And they're going to be at industrial scale at sort of major grid scale stuff, they're gonna be really good. But for consumers, the probably be even better. So that's a great thing to do. I mean, I think Solar City, which is owned by Tesla, Tesla, energy, whatever it's called, now, they integrate batteries and solar panels on your home. And that's a good that's a good combo if you if you want to live in a world where you there's electric cars and solar panels and batteries. And that's I mean, that's a big part of the future. That is advocate the of the most optimistic future advocated by the solar energy cohort of the sort of renewable technology thing. That's something to invest in. I have certain reservations about electric cars, like for example, in China, I don't think China's ever going to be able to run on electric cars, there's, it would need something like four or five times the amount of energy China currently uses, which is more than any country ever, which is 50% more than the United States. And they don't have the energy for that. You would need massive, probably massive, massive amounts of nuclear energy to do that. That's probably the only way. So yeah, I think that's something people should keep in mind running. certain places aren't going to run on electric cars and solar energy. Germany is a great example. They built alot of solar panels in Germany, but they forgot to look up at the sky. And notice that it's overcast all the time. So there's a big installed capacity of solar panels, unfortunately, also old panels, like we said, they said, Germany is subsidized the good panels you can get today. They just, it's just the actual energy generation, the power generation from these panels is very limited. And so Germany actually uses more coal than it did 10 years ago. So those are one of those contradictions that you, you don't get caught in. But again, for people here who live in the southwest, feeling Florida, he lived in the southern part of the United States. So panels ain't a bad idea. And so that's a good one that I would focus on for the energy side of things. Yeah, it's good. The time is there, time is now.

Ari Gronich

35:42

So, you know, you mentioned China could never run unless it was like on nuclear. Unless maybe it was local. You know, local supply, I think, might be a little different. But here's I guess that where I want to go with this question. So we're looking at China, and all of the innovation, all of what they're doing, all the energy, they're consuming the pollution that they're making, the violations that they have on human rights. And we go, all right, we don't really understand their culture much. And so we judge it from our outside perspective and our outside eyes. And so you have a little more of an insider's view on you know what it is to be in China and what it is to be under that culture. So just for the audience who has preconceived notions, which ones are true, which ones not so much. Can you kind of just illuminate on what this thing that we've now known to be? China?

Jason Szeftel

36:57

Yeah, so there's a lot of sort of myths and sort of misconceived notions about China. I'll just try and kind of run through some things that people might find illuminating, to give them a sense of that place. And, yeah, I think one interesting thing people wouldn't realize, and that is so hard for people from the west to understand is that the Chinese Communist Party is not despised as a totalitarian dictatorship. Until the last 10, 15 years, the Chinese Communist Party was actually not in most people's faces. But all that much, it wasn't like authoritarian forcing you to do this or that there was a lot of freedoms on the ground level, because people were, they wanted to encourage private innovation. So back in the 70s, very different story back in the 60s, very different story. 50 very different story. But in the last 50 years, overall, it hasn't been 40 years, it hasn't been up in people's grill all the time, although that's now changing. And so the party is actually thought to be a good force of ease that you can't do polls in China, because that would be dangerous. But in a healthy majority of Chinese people think the Communist Party is overall a good thing. And they support it hard to hard to believe that goes very much against our Western individualist ideas, That's the way it is. So So why, what what MC, is

Ari Gronich

38:18

So why? Is it indoctrination? Is it just history and culture? Is it? What is it that that says to them? And are they allowed to be individuals still, even within the system of control that they're in?

Jason Szeftel

38:32

So there's always a propaganda element in every Chinese state, that the Chinese state has to manage its population. So China has on a broad scale has overall bad land relative to the size of the country, and it has limited capital. So it doesn't have a lot of money, it doesn't have the best land. And so there's labor land and capital and technology, but just thinking about labor, land capital, the primary resource in China is labor. It's always been the population. You if you need a great wall built in the desert, you send millions of people to do it. If they end up as mortar for the stones, well, you have millions more. And that's what you see. You need to build things. You get them sent here, you