Three non experts talk about globalisation

I, V, M. Okay. Okay. Listen, listen, the last two to three years, we have seen both the good and bad of globalization.

Right. We responded great to the pandemic, but at the other hand, the globalization gave us the pandemic itself. The war in Ukraine affected everything, but at the same time, there was also positives that aid, et cetera, came very quickly, especially online and all that culture from Korea became a phenomenon around the world. But at the same time, simplified managed to reach the other end of the planet also.

So the one I'm trying to say is globalization has a good side and a bad side. There's a lot being written about globalization these days from which we used to op-eds saying that we're just getting started. So to make sense of all of this for you, dear, listen up, we have gathered our esteemed panel of three people whose idea of economics is using both Ola and Uber to see which one gives the cheapest fare to the IBM studio in Carvest Mumbai. That's right.

Our panel today consists of one fellow whose idea of globalization is to make sure his fantasy cricket team has representation from at least five countries. Hey, hey, hey. Another fellow who is not interested in any kind of trade unless it involves stocks. Say hello, Shri Katwe.

No, no, no. Shri Katwe. And one fellow whose throws steep in economics that despite being an MBA allegedly cannot still read a P&L sheet. That is me.

So why have we gathered this esteemed panel here? It's this very same panel who landed up at Davos Switzerland looking for a good fight only to be told that it was a world trade organization and not the world trade organization. And we were further berated that it was a WEFN, not the WTO that handles some of that. So we're still stationed.

The reason why we have this panel today is because collectively one, we know which locals to spell globalization with a Z and which to spell them with a S. Two, we are all fans of sapiens, which we can all ultimately drive back any conversation to. And three, most importantly, we know which freedom is an economist and which one is still alive. That is all I've written for this episode.

This is globalization good or bad? I think we should close the episode. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm sorry.

The same thing globalized basically. Okay. No, but okay. So I mean, there have been lot like for some reason, like MBA GD now.

Booner bean. Booner bean. Booner bean. Booner bean.

Booner bean. Yeah. Booner bean. Really, I just wish there was a superhero called Boone so they could fight with me.

That would be a good day with it. No, no, it's all secret, no, not excellent. It's not like I sought out this topic specifically. Like I am as much a fan of globalization as an ex person, I guess.

But I wouldn't go around wearing a T-shirt off it, but I've been seeing a lot of articles over the last, I mean over the last two years, especially like is this the death of globalization? And now with all the war and stuff that's happening and China, US trade war and all that. So just okay. Okay, let's bring up this topic to the most esteemed panel that I could manage to get with my resources.

for all the reasons that I mentioned about. And yeah, just ask you guys what you think. So yeah, first. No, no, no, no, no, no, not really.

So in preparation for this episode, what I did was I read the two white papers promptly close them after I couldn't get past the intro. And I read this fairly nice series of articles by this author called Richard Baldwin, he wrote a book called The Great Convergence in 2016. And it's a series of articles for a website called VoxU. I think it's the content part of some European think tank called CEB and it's called a long view of globalization in short.

And there are five parts to it. But honestly, each of those parts are so small that together, it just makes up one interesting long read. And what he does is, and this is why I said sapiens, because it's a very sapiens way of thinking. When he says, OK, let's talk about the history of globalization.

He goes all the way back to when our ancestors got out of Africa and things like that. And we'll go through those in a bit. And that's really where the idea for this came up. And then from that, so a couple of other things.

And all that. But I guess this word has been thrown around a lot over the last few years. Even going before the pandemic, I think it really started with Srikit and my favorite drinking game, which is what it begs it cause today. I think till 2015, the world was a fairly sane place.

Sure. A few crops of EDRC here and there, including the 2015 World Cup final, which we shall not talk about. But from 2016 onwards, things just seem to, the world just seems slightly different. It seems like when it almost seems like that.

It started to be fine. Yeah. That was Greek economic crisis that gave both to that place. Simplified was a result of the Greek economic crisis.

It's almost like somebody just added a filter to the entire world that became slightly bleaker. And that's what has been for the last seven years. And starting from Brexit and Trump and all that followed after that, it almost seems like this is sector of, what do I say, self-reliance, but at the same time, nationalism has come in and that's threatened to increase the chance that globalization is dead and all that. So let's start with that.

What do you guys think? But my question is, has only the narrative changed or is there a decrease in global trade or something? Yeah, that's the thing. There actually isn't.

Yeah. If you look at numbers, if you look at numbers and all that, it actually isn't. In fact, more trade is happening than ever before. And you will find, see the thing is we are talking about something that's so vast, which has so many variables and all that.

You can cherry pick numbers to show either narrative. So you can take some numbers and say, oh, the trade is actually decreasing. But the flip side of that is one of the classic stats is China is not exporting as much. A good reason for that is because China's middle class is so prosperous right now that they are consuming a lot of the products that they actually make.

So China's actually creating more, but it's also ending up consuming more. So that could be one reason. Another reason could be that a car is now made in multiple places instead of just one place. And that affects how trade is calculated and things like that.

So there are so many variables. So there's so many moving parts, so many different numbers, excel sheets, and all that. So you can really make the numbers talk anyway you want. So I think the answer to your question, Tony, overall, I don't think trade has decreased as such.

Yeah, I mean, so just to sort of round out their thought, I think the narratives have changed a lot because it has become sort of the zeitgeist of our time to gain political power. It sort of has to speak to just something nationalism, et cetera, et cetera. It's so good. We don't need to take so many different parameters of trade.

But I would assume like after sort of the BJP has come to power in 2014, has the export of cows first lottery to other countries gone down, right? And I would assume that it is not if anything, it would probably have gone up or remained the same. So what you do and what you say at home to gain votes has nothing to do in terms of the economy or how you are going about actually negotiating deals and stuff like that. Because once you've gone global, I don't think there is a way that you can fully go.

Yeah, that's precisely the point. That's what I was trying to say was that in this, I mean, the genie got out of the bottle of while ago, right? Like the globalization of the genie has been out there. And like, there is no desire also to kind of push it, to go real, like corporate or economic or any kind of concerted effort to kind of go back and go as a full self-proplization.

There is rhetoric. There is a whole bunch of rhetoric. So there is a social rhetoric. Like you said, that whole, I mean, it's not just India, but also when you look at the cross the world, the world-riving movements of saying that nationalistic movements, we will retain our, I think, whatever pride and all that stuff.

Or if you talk about the white replacement theory, it's anti-globalist in its own way, all that stuff. Those are just theories that free-geniments are using to kind of gain political power, to stir up discourse and thereby gain political points. And that's what the thing is the noise around that is what becomes the zeitgeist, so to speak. But when you talk about what is the reality of how globalization is working, I mean, the great example of that was, you all immediately, like how the world, how like the serious part of the world fully fell apart when there was that shift that got stuck in the Swiss canal.

But the whole world of shift that like, whole better shipping stock for a whole wheat. And that's when you realize that you actually like, kind of block the pulse of this globalization for a little bit also, how it will fall apart. It's actually a lot of these guys, I mean, a lot of these Trump's life is from East Germany, I've heard it right now. So I mean, the whole point is that he's, I mean, people are using globalization benefits as a springboard to actually make rhetoric about nationalistic points and all that stuff.

But what it's doing is, I mean, the reason that rhetoric seems to work is because not what globalization, I mean, globalization has brought its benefit. What globalization has done is it's really screwed with the individualistic uniform monolithic identities. Right. Yeah.

It has brought about so many different conflicting identities together and where they've kind of forced this homogenous society narrative to a great extent, where suddenly, and this, because of that homogenous society aspect, being threatened or the unit of society aspect being threatened, is where this world, like if you see it also, both commonly in the US and all the right movements is this one nation, one philosophy, one theology, one nation under God philosophy, I was coming in to play where everyone's like, oh, let's go back to the day when things were simpler and the world was very, very cleanly divided into two parts. But it's just like, that's what the dying echo of a world that's gone a long time ago. Yeah. So it's interesting that he said that, you know, that the genius out of the bottle a long time back.

So one of the courts that I have over here was by the Friedman, who's actually still alive, Tom Friedman, who spoke at the forum, the one that we didn't go to. And he said, I suspect ever since the first refill in a pathway used by paleolithic human sapiens, somebody wrote a tablet globalization is over. So the point he was making was people have been saying that this thing, like globalization is dead for a very, very long time. They said it in 2008, they said it after the 9-11 attacks, they said it during the dot-com crash.

They said, like, every era has every major event has seen something. This time is going to be like no different. The genie is out of the bottle and I saw somewhere else. This is an article, this is from an article I read on a site called the Center for Global Development or other, the site of the think tank, I guess.

Amidst the debate, fear of political polarization is a great surrounding globalization. We cannot ignore a central reality. Much of it is not reversible or even resistible. As in other periods of human history where new connections are forged between geography and civilizations, whether driven by empire building, technological change, regime change or climate change, the globalisation, that's the whole of sapiens in four words for you there.

The pandora's box, the pandora's box once opened cannot be close. The flow of good services, people in capital will continue across borders and increasingly encompass once isolated parts of the world, except of course, the North Sentinel Island from the Netherlands, which nobody will ever achieve with. Pardon not. Yeah, and that's what it is also like this aspect of saying how, I mean, globalisation, what can you make the argument that it's not just that globalization is a recent, I think in the entire post of the globalisation, it's been the most consistently steady march across any movement that has been there.

Like, since when I guess the Homo sapiens migrated from Indonesia and went and killed all the fauna in Australia, that from there onward, humans have only continued to spread and migrate and interact and move to different areas constantly. And as always, when going and it continues to go, even till now, the only thing is that at a certain point of time, so this is where also the other aspect is the other anti-globalisation movement is like, that will make America great again. And so I think there was a brilliant video on YouTube, which is where there's this guy called Jordan Klepper. And Jordan Klepper is actually like, he's there with the daily show, Trevor, who is one of the correspondents on that show.

And he actually goes to, he goes to Margarralis and asks from fans like questions and stuff. And he's like, okay, so when you say make America great again, what is that time that we're going back to? What is it great? And so he's actually like, no, we want to go back to 1776, okay, eventually we'll be able to see.

Then he's like, no, we want to go back to like the 1950s, so when there was like segregation and like still civil rights movement, it was established and all that stuff. So Ben was America great, but there is no real, single-day definition of America was great because every point of time that globalization has constantly kept feeding into and going consistently. Now, your point of view, there is BRT globalization, but honestly, we still live, I mean, effectively, most people still live in a country where the races that have lived in that country are still the majority races of that country for a long time. So we still haven't really reached the peak globalization, but actually like there are real population displacement from one place to another because of migration or that people have migrated, or majority of the population has moved from one place to the other.

Or forget even for the other aspect of developing cultural practices in the new land or getting old culture practice from an older land to a new land, in any significant way that has also still not taken place. So in fact, the peak of globalization is still really, really still here to come. Yeah, I will concur with that. I would say that much like Elon Musk's assholery, you think that the peak has been reached with globalization, but it will be very well needed.

I think this might be a nice time to actually just summarize that series of articles that I know you're about, right? And I'll link it out. It's fascinating reading actually, and he's actually written it quite entertainingly. So first, he starts off with humanizing the global basic...

This is a great man, is it? No, no, this is not a treatment. This is by an author called Richard Baldwin, who's a professor of international economics and some institute in Geneva who wrote this. So he's written a book called The Great Convergence, where basically summarizes globalization.

And this is a summary of the summarization. So obviously, he was out of favor. He was simply fine. Yeah, which we have to further simplify.

Which we will have to further simplify in our show notes. So we talk about globalization. So anyway, part one was humanizing the globe where people went out of Africa, the first out of Africa, because of climate change at that point of time. So basically what they did is they took their food, they went to places where food was, right?

Because agriculture wasn't a thing yet. So they basically consumption and production were bundled, but it had to happen sort of together. And then in phase two, which happened from 10,000 BC to 1820. So it's a fairly wide span that he's talking about.

This is really is when agriculture started being a thing. And civilizations were set up in places which were next to reverse, right? There are throwback to a small joke that we made in our last episode. Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Egypt, China, India, and Pakistan and Greece, where the civilizations around which the ancient great civilizations around which agriculture was, I would say, kind of perfected or became a thing.

And along with that came everything else that Harari talks about in sapiens, culture of fictions. And all those things were fascinating as many of these things evolved, sort of like independently of each other. And yet each of these civilizations had their own thing, sort of like cementing the fact that humans are wired for fiction or wired for being in social groups and things like that. But that's another episode, I guess.

Then comes 1820 to 1990. This is a fascinating phase. Really where local economies get globalized. So here we are talking about the steam revolution, the industrial revolution and all that.

So basically, this became TLDR at this point of time because of advances in technology, especially transport. It became economical for people to consume things that were made in far off areas. Till the agricultural revolution, you still needed to stay close to where stuff was made. But the unbundling, if I could really came in this phase, when things could be manufactured on the other end of the country or even the planet, and it could be shipped easily to you.

And there were lots of things that made this possible, right? From the steam engine, all the way to things like unhearled it, things like the shipping container, just a reference back to the Swiss canal again. Yeah, yeah. This is insane stat that I read somewhere, but I don't remember exactly what it was that when standardized shipping containers were introduced, that was the biggest boost to global trade and consumption since any invention before it.

Because it became so much easier for manufacturers or shippers to pack stuff, ship stuff, all that became insanely cheap. And they could pack huge amounts of the standardized ships containers onto ships and ships just getting bigger, all that sort of thing. And again, like you said, we saw the reality, very physical reality of our virtual world in last year when that happened. Then comes 1990 to the present, which is not all that much when you realize that the story had started, he starts the story in 300,000 BC.

And he basically talks about how the information and communication technology revolution just changed everything, data and knowledge workers, India and other places became back offices to the rest of the world, because of technologies like high OTXRite was possible for cars to be manufactured in 10 different places, rather than one standardization started becoming more of a thing, so on and so forth. So this is fascinating and it leads me to almost think like, this is inevitable, right? Like humans were wired for this sort of thing. And another way of thinking about it, I guess, is this is law in economics.

I forgot to forget what it's called, but the world will always move towards a place where each country manufactures or does what it's best at. I forget exactly what this law is called, but it's there. It's fasily there in my head. So basically what it, for me, this entire thing is like we are moving towards a state of optimization, if that kind of makes sense.

Politicians will come in and try to put in hyper-nationalistic narratives, but they can't stop globalization from happening because that's how the human race is progressing. And also towards globalization. Yeah, and also, I mean, if you look at it this way, you get all the major, like, for example, I remember this, I don't remember the exact details of it, but the construction of the Swiss canal, when it happened, right? It happened through a whole bunch of Arab states that were at conflict with each other.

It was done by the British who were entering that area, which was heavily conflicted, and they actually got that Swiss canal, through a major conflict and that later on, like, over a geopolitical nonsense that happened because of the Swiss canal being constructed. When you look at like any major conflicts, like, I also remember this with one of my favourite figures, one of the most underrated figures in human history, who I want to do in episode about some days, is this guy called Norman B who is a Norman Bolo who is responsible for the Green Revolution, the guy who actually got beat to stand and the reason why most of India is still alive. Wow. And so there's actually a part of his, so when he was actually doing the experiments with the wheat in Punjab, there is actually a very, very, and I, I totally believe there should be a movie made about this particular thing, because there's a real life scene that while he was planting the first genetically modified crops in the fields in Punjab, he could see the flashes of artillery fire happening between India and Pakistan in the 1971 war.

So there were artillery flashes happening at one point of time, and he was literally showing the seeds of the Green Revolution, like, almost shells through away effectively. So what is always been the case, and even now, if you look at it from the perspective of the Russia conflict also, the whole point is like, what is the underlying reality, is the whole reason why Putin is able to continue this war, is because literally the best is funding him to do the war that they are trying to get them in for, by buying his oil, on Saturday, because they cannot do without it. Right? So at the end of the day, what's happened is all the rhetoric aside, the rhetoric can be pushed to a certain extent, right?

And you can talk about where the Indian government can try and ban TikTok, but there is no way the Indian government would ban all Chinese products, or when I'm cooking and knocking at my door and say, I'm trying to talk about the abandoned door, some stuff like that. That's never been a real estate, it happened because all this rhetoric and all the political austering that happens absolutely falls apart the moment it anywhere gets close to happening in your business. Right? Because growth has always been privatized even through the toughest of situations, right?

Through all the conflicts in the world. Yeah, and there are two different parts to this, right? And I think those two parts may have moved away in terms of optics, but fundamentally they're still together, which is that to gain power, you need a lot of money, right? The only reason a party can keep winning elections is by people funding them.

And the only reason someone will fund them in the capitalist system that they are in, is so that they can get some benefit out of them. Right? So it means that to keep businesses flourishing, you'll obviously need a large amount of globalization to take place, which means that you will fund parties who are likely to win elections, but also you expect some wheat peroco in return. Yeah.

And even it's not just the case in India, even in the US, basically Washington is full of lobbies and big corporates basically doing the same thing, right? Which means that the perpetual growth machine of capitalism cannot be stopped, right? If it reaches a point where it is turning down, then you'll pick another party and you'll fund them so that they come over. Yeah.

So the capitalist machine has to move on, but the thing that has changed in our times is that nationalism has to become the formula to win elections from an optics perspective. But I think the moment that this sort of downturn happens and globalization stops and you are seeing economic effects for even the largest capitalist, then there will be a blowback, right? And it will correct itself. Yeah.

I mean, arguably Brexit was a great showcase of exactly that. Like for all of Trump's rhetoric, I'm pretty sure the US traded more with China and all that. So very clearly, and they were reports that his own office staff were trying to sabotage whatever he was trying to send across in terms of memos and all that. Right.

On the other hand, Yeah, no, I'm sorry. No, the point I was making was, see, on the other hand, Britain very visibly divorced itself from the EU. And we saw how difficult it was for them to, I mean, now they have to send trade directions to every country and start negotiations all over again. I might be oversimplifying things.

I mean, I'm not like lost out something spatially, but that to me is an example of, hey, if you're actually going to make a clean break from the existing system, it's actually a lot of work to get things back on that. Basically, aligning reality to rhetoric is a lot, lot harder than it looks, is basically what it is. Yeah. So, and also, I mean, combining, and again, there is like going off on my own tent idea, but there was always like very struck by this the classic matrix line that was there, which is even being exact parasites, basically, we have parasites on this network, like who are efficient, very efficient parasites from that?

The only evolution on that is that we have parasites who are still being symbioms. Right? So we love to posture that we are symbioms, so we love to posture that we are like working in a certain way and all that stuff, and we have some moral compass and all that stuff. But fundamentally, our nature is not being a parasite.

So, like Tony was saying, we would continue working and making that efficient capitalist engine, converting natural resources into value of some sort for us. And as we are, as we start running out of those resources, we migrate to different resources. And when all the resources and the environment become like for us to sustain, that's when we do two, we learn much to fly us to Mars. So we can spread to another ecosystem and we go on that side.

So it's interesting that you got that up because it's something I wanted to raise later, but might as well do it right now. You know, when globalization first became a thing, arguably when Christopher Columbus set sail, and I'm sure there were a lot of skeptics like, why do you want to go to another land? Who knows what's over there? You know, who knows what kind of diseases are?

Do we even need to do that when there's so many problems back home and all those kind of things? In many ways, those are the same kind of arguments, fears at the same time, optimism, etc, that we have when it comes to space level. So for all, you know, the next stage of globalization, I mean, whatever you want to take it from their globe to whatever. So, polarization.

So, realization. Yeah, I mean, it's almost like this is just a precursor for what is to come. And then you're talking about not just different cultures, but different species altogether. And, yeah, different forms of evolution.

And also that's the other aspect of also, I mean, again, referencing homeowners, which is all about like now, we are also on the cusp of being in a place where we can improve ourselves as organisms. We can like, literally change our own biology so that we can be better, more efficient. I mean, better organisms, so to speak. But again, what it always tends to be is how can we be more efficient consumers?

How do we become more efficient consumers? How do we become more attractive products that can consume different resources in a better way? And also more efficient in trying to further our own cause of survival. And in which case, that is where now using the resources over there, that's what the moment we are able to already see that to some extent with the black market, all that trade and all that stuff.

But I was watching this, it's a fairly old movie called Out of Time. Out of Time or something, I forget what the heck is that is. It's based on a movie, but it's quite interesting, which is like, yeah, time currency. Everyone has a lot of time that you live with and you work for buying time.

It's fascinating. And you move into a lot of time, you die. So you have to keep getting time all the time. And that's why also they also discovered how the rich keep getting richer with time.

And the poor are constantly reaching time and living week to week. So if you lose one payment or you fall sick for a couple of days, then you're dead. So the moment we are able to, and once we are able to, all of our associates to a certain point, as parasites, we will also, there is nothing stopping us from feeding on ourselves. That's profoundly true.

And let's speak. Oh, it's getting better. So I think we need to take a bit of a break, I feel. And speaking of time, just like time said in December 2020, I'll be back in a bit with something that involves some secrets.

You know that feeling when you finish a movie and you just need to talk about it? That desperate need to discuss why Calhuna Ho hates different. Enter IBM's brand new podcast, Sennified. It's streaming on current just yapping over Hindi cinema every Friday.

romcom's director will debut with career-defining moments. Whatever they're vibing with, they're breaking it down. Join the podcast on IBM Pub's YouTube or any audio streaming platform. Caution, you want to rewatch everything after listening to us?

Come join us on Sennified. Are you looking for finance products and services that can enhance your personal finance experience? Are you looking for a space to talk about your financial product or service? And are you looking for a Chris Proxio where the conversation is all about money?

Well, your search ends here. Hi, my name is Aruk Gupta and I post other best-of-a-part podcast and I invite you for the conversation about your personal finance on each Monday, on the IBM Podcasts app or the website or not any podcast streaming platforms. See you folks. All right, welcome back to Sennified where we are discussing the future of globalization.

It's been left to our hands, the best brains at WTR and WEF. Still having a difference between those two. They and official mail from it. Did an idea please give me this assignment.

All right, so I promise you a matrix and this was indeed from one of the two by two matrix, not the two by two matrix. So from God. You know the matrix franchise is going south when you prefer a Boston consulting group. Whatever it is, whatever it is that's actually not from PCCC's from, I think this is from WF itself.

So they were basically trying to TLDR of everything that you read is basically globalization is not shopping. The genie is out of the bottle. Some national district cuy then source. But this party is going to go on for a while.

It's just a matter of okay figuring out where it's going to go and what levers we can pull change better or whatever. So these guys have done a nice job of putting the matrix together. So I will read that out or try to read that out. So imagine if you can integration on one axis and fragmentation.

What I'm saying over here, very sorry about virtual on one axis and physical on the other axis. Does that make sense? The two aspects of our lives in the 21st century. Right?

There is a physical aspect and then there's a virtual aspect. Think of physical as like physical trade that happens in containerships. So it's kind of happening and all that. And your virtual things of course being everything that's aided by the internet.

So they have integration fragmentation for both of these. So you have virtual integration virtual fragmentation physical fragmentation physical integration and they had basically put these scenarios in each of these four. I'm sure all in these over here can picture this. I'm not going to get into the gory details of all of this but I will link out to the PDF if you want to read it.

It's actually not a bad read at all. The TLDR to everything seems to be this that it's not going to cleanly. The future of globalization is not going to cleanly fall into any one of these. But there are certain aspects of each of these things that we should take into account.

For example, virtual fragmentation might happen. I know that sounds a little fancy but what it essentially means is we can't expect the internet to be open and free completely like how it was in the 90s. Or at least how it was idealized by its early creators and the early proponents. Like China has already put up the great firewall.

It looks like many other countries are going the same way. We can't access a lot of, I mean we can't access big conferences. Because social networking happens in the world right now and the second largest country in the world is completely cut off from that. So it's increasingly likely that virtual fragmentation will happen.

Which I think was a nice way of thinking about it. So now when you think about it that way, like what is the physical fragmentation that would happen. After COVID especially a lot of countries have been speaking about being self-sufficient and all the be it. Make in India or other Akmanybor or here or make America great again.

Or even build back better and all that. Even the US wanting to reduce its semi-conductor alliance on Taiwan and build factories. So there are several aspects to all of these that we should take into account which might point to what the future of globalization might look like. And what I find interesting over here is how to me why this is fascinating.

Is how they have included the internet inside this. So when I opened the PDF I just expected to read about supply chains and all that. But what's interesting to me is how these guys have said that the internet and all that is also a very vital part of globalization right now. What a future of globalization could be like to me was what was interesting.

Sorry I don't have any questions to ask you. No so basically a few sort of add-ons. Basically the culture as it were and how it spread in the past versus in the internet is very different. So you have access to all of the sort of all kind of entertainment culture from around the world.

And growing up more and more education is going to be online. So your influences are in some senses going to be many and varied and from various sort of global cultures. And the second sort of thing is that while sort of trade policy and probably like foreign policy and interaction etc. is going to be determined by the government.

The economic engine is going to be determined by private parties. So if basically Facebook needs to be profitable they will need sort of population from India to be on Facebook. And therefore how they sort of deal with the Indian sort of governmental thing may be different. But at all points in time they will make sure that they are present as an entity in India purely out of wanting to sort of grow their economic things.

Similarly companies in India will make sure that the rules and laws are such that they can propagate their sort of growth. And therefore the real sort of difference as I see it is that while globalization will continue on the economic lines. We are born and grew up in the early 90s, sorry late 80s and early 90s. At least I till 2015 or so never imagined that life could get worse than what it is.

We grew up in a very optimistic time saying life is always going to get me. In the last seven years I realized that that is not necessarily true. That your own government can shoot yourself in the foot. And like wow that's a great line by the way.

Your own government can shoot yourself in the foot. Brilliant. And like there are several examples. Like for instance Iran was on the path of like sort of westernization globalization and some random event happened and look where they are now.

But by all accounts like I know which Iran I would have wanted to live in. That is probably going to happen a lot more across different countries sort of harkening back to some ancient culture time. But the opposing force is way too strong for globalization etc. And the cultural force there is going to push it in one particular direction.

Because at the end of the day your government cannot create jobs for everyone. It has to be the sort of ambit of the private enterprise. And the only way that is possible is that if you have arbitrage on something globally. And for India it is human resource saying we can do it cheaper than someone else at a better personal price.

Therefore automatically the demand will come towards India. That's why the efficient algorithm of economics will win out. That will go to the world point. Then the W of R2 for sure.

And the other aspect that comes out really is that it's also I mean there's two aspects to it. Like when you look at it from the perspective of how the country is doing and what are the things that are holding back to country and stuff like that. What globalization increased globalization has done is made the absolute death knell to some extent to make this whole aspect of okay. I am this is my country and I am very patriotic about it and all that stuff.

Obviously there is a vast majority of people who are still identifying themselves as patriotic. The ones that have like the employees that globalized ideology. There are some fundamental truths that actually come out as I really wonder. I mean there's some things that I really wonder about how they are not gaining more weight stream credence.

This aspect of which America also has this entire concept of American exceptionalism. They have a concept called American exceptionalism which is that we are an exceptional race of people. We are an exceptional group of people and we work in a sort of way and all that stuff. There is even some things that the US has fewer percentage of population with passports than some probably many third world countries.

Most people have never even told outside the US. The thing is there was I think the only country in the most recent country in modern times that actually could claim that exceptionalism was America. It was actually claimed that like say in the up to the 70s, including up to the 90s, there was a thing that America was the center of the universe in some way. But I mean right now what they are living with is a hangover of that American exceptionalism.

But this exceptionalism angle is also two of many other countries. I mean there is an Indian exceptionalism, there is Chinese exceptionalism of any sort. What really seems to not gain credence yet is the fact that all the exceptionalism aside the real power is when all of these different, when you actually mix these different kinds of exceptionalism in a common environment. When you talk about hybrid babies, when you talk about immigrants actually going to a new country and drinking their culture there and mixing it and they are coming up with something that is much more powerful and resilient.

And also having parallels with nature, like crossbreeding has always been encouraged by nature and has always been proved out to be much more resilient in the form of genetics. Like it is part of like evolutionary biology in some way. So that aspect of, and that is actually the fundamental, if you look at it, it is not nationalism or the lack of it that is the enemy of this anti-globalization movement. It is actually the active mixing or the open and free mixing between people.

That is the enemy. The thing is the moment when you mix something out there and when you mix with another thing out there, you see, you literally lose people from that identity. Automatically, like someone has lost their identity right there. The greatest example of this would be Parsis, for example, Parsis in India.

I remember seeing a very big ad about Parsis, actually encourage, they provide a lot of social support and a lot of money support. There was a bad series of ads also about how you need to marry and have kids and have Parsis kids and all that stuff. And in the Parsis community there is actually a counseling that happens if there is a Parsis person who is either not looking to be married outside the community or is married and not going to have kids. There is an active counseling in that community.

The whole point is without procreation that society is shaking and dying out. So they need it desperately. That is the fundamental core of Nationalism, if you look at it that way. Which actually shows how this whole, what you can call it, is almost like a dying death class effectively.

Of sticking to when a time was when races were able to, races and countries were able to stay apart. Now we have come to a point where it is the final death class before as Rassipita is included in some standard special. I was just about to say, I decided to be like, we will all be there. We will all be there.

We will all be there. We will be there. We will be there. He said he was working somewhere and there was a white woman who he called from him.

He kind of contextualized this with a stat that said everyone would be proud by the equal by 2050. He was like, he was like, you can run now, you can run now. We will be able to have you. He is not such a colorful language or in some sense colorful language.

I told you one of the points that you mentioned, I thought it was pretty nice, which is culture's traveling. I think that amount of soft power, which is because of its exported culture has given it so much weight, which I am sure Hollywood producers wouldn't have thought that it was going to happen. It makes me think that that might happen to other countries. I imagine all this stuff that is happening with the Korean culture spreading across the world, which has only happened in the last few years, whether it will have a big impact, an outsized impact for years down the line.

Or Malayala movies on OTP. Or Malayala movies on OTP. I am not pretty sure. But actually, when I think about Korean culture, I think there is a great path.

Also, you can see, not just with Korean culture, it is going through its peak in some way where it is one of the dominant cultures of South Asia. But actually one culture, you can see how these things happen in waves because there is also a very good example of formerly dominant culture that is kind of living still in its glory days to some extent. And I thought, actually, Japan was this major cultural exporter where everyone was like, from the Tamagosies to everything else. And I looked at all of that stuff.

If you look at it, their HIDI was in the 80s to the 90s. In fact, when I got to Japan, actually the country is kind of frozen in that particular era. So, these things are like, you still have vending machines everywhere, you can get stuff. It still feels like very, very caught in the 90s and that was when our HIDI was still somewhere there.

And I think in Japan right now, they still call it, like, since the terms of the millions are called the lost tickets in Japan because culturally they didn't really have as much more than the lost property. It's a little bit from a cultural point of view where someone like South Korea have accepted to fill the vacuum. So, I think these things happen in waves. The cultural dominance is not like, even if you see the biggest cultural dominance, the world has seen was the US, right?

And even though they have lasted for a lot longer, these things happen in waves. So, they very well may be like 10 years down the line we are talking about. Or something else. Yeah, absolutely.

And it's all very humbling to go back in history. I mean, when you read a book like Sapiens, or indeed that set of articles that I was talking about is, we are discussing so many things as if they're super important and all that. And all these things have just happened in the last 20 years, in the long hour of human history. So, whenever this is a bottom blip, the difference is that I would say that too much has changed quickly in this year, especially with regard to climate change, etc.

But at the end of the day, culture is going to be trumped by economics. If you just look at cricket, for instance, England and Australia were supposed to be, or England at least were supposed to be the centricate. No one gives a damn. Like IPL can literally call the shots and BCCI can do whatever it wants.

We are only because we are the largest market and economically it makes sense. And if you want to have other cricket, you have to bow down to the whims and fences of DCC. Purely because we are very rich. It's as simple as that.

So, cultural sort of power is soft, but economics power is too hard for anyone to be. And I think that's a nice way to actually wrap up this entire thing. We've spoken of air a bit, but yeah, it all comes back to economics and whatever replaces economics. I don't know whether there will be a higher power because any other solution like anarchy or whatever it is.

At the end of the day, people have to eat, live whatever their desires to be fulfilled. I currently, for all its faults, there is no better system than economics slash capitalism. What do we want to call it? To fulfill that for the majority of people.

I think I'm a fan of entropy. I always think the world moves towards a state of some kind of stability. And there are these political narratives and all that. They try to pull things in various directions.

But at the end of the day, people are going to resist and move. I mean, just keep going with whatever state of school. Does that make sense? I'm not quite sure if that did.

I think that's a theme of this episode anyway. It's like raffles. I think we should we have somehow magically crossed 15 minutes for this episode as well. So I think we should end this.

Any of you want to take a stab at Hendik. Please don't say stay globalized. I think that's something. Stay, stay, stay, stay, stay, stay simplified.

Yeah, but except if you go to an actual border, please take a passport. It's going to be my second. Bye.