Konstantin Kisin’s WARNING: Our Leaders Have Lost Control, We’re Headed For Conflict And Violence!

1. 0:00 – 2:25

   Intro

   1. KKKonstantin Kisin0:00

      Our political class has lost control. The right is getting more right than ever, and any time you have a combination of economic problems and social instability and cultural problems, you put all those things together, it's not a good time. Uh, it's a time when conflict, violence, civil unrest, all of these things are much more likely.

   2. SKSteve Keen0:18

      Oh, civil unrest is absolutely guaranteed.

   3. KKKonstantin Kisin0:20

      And what you are now seeing is, I, I fear, the beginnings of a totally new level of separation between people. We are on the road to civil unrest and violence. But I'm glad we're having this conversation because these are difficult things to talk about.

   4. SKSteve Keen0:34

      And that's why China is outperforming the rest of the world. There are so many freedoms you don't get in America that you do get in China.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett0:40

      Would you prefer a Chinese system if you-

   6. SKSteve Keen0:41

      To America? Yes.

   7. KKKonstantin Kisin0:43

      What about political freedom, freedom of the individual, freedom of speech? Do you think Steven could run his show if he was a Chinese citizen in China and have any conversation he wanted?

   8. SBSteven Bartlett0:51

      And you think communism is bad?

   9. KKKonstantin Kisin0:53

      I grew up in the Soviet Union, so yes, I do think [laughs] communism is bad, and you end up in a place where the, the economy is just, uh, screwed. So you get equality, but everyone's just equally poor.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett1:02

       Konstantin, what is your perspective on AI?

   11. KKKonstantin Kisin1:04

       I think the biggest threat to humanity, if you talk about AI, is actually the fact that you're creating something that's smarter than you. And if you're creating a superior species, you will become an inferior species. Best case scenario, you become a pet. Worst case scenario, you become a cow.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett1:17

       So my next question logically becomes, what can we do about it?

   13. KKKonstantin Kisin1:20

       There is an actual solution that's available that's clear. I think what we should really be focusing on is-

   14. SKSteve Keen1:26

       You're wrong.

   15. KKKonstantin Kisin1:26

       Th-this is where, uh, uh, we're likely to have very strong disagreement.

   16. SBSteven Bartlett1:31

       This is super interesting to me. My team give me this report to show me how many of you that watch this show subscribe, and some of you have told us, according to this, that you are unsubscribed from the channel randomly. So favor to ask all of you, please could you check right now if you've hit the subscribe button, if you are a regular viewer of the show and you like what we do here. We're approaching quite a significant landmark on this show in terms of a subscriber number. So if there was one simple free thing that you could do to help us, my team, everyone here, to keep this show free, to keep it improving year over year and week over week, it is just to hit that subscribe button and to double-check if you've hit it. Only thing I'll ever ask of you. Do we have a deal? If you do it, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll make sure every single week, every single month, we fight harder and harder and harder and harder to bring you the guests and conversations that you wanna hear. I've stayed true to that promise since the very beginning of The Diary of a CEO, and I will not let you down. Please help us. Really appreciate it. Let's get on with the show.

2. 2:25 – 8:24

   We're on the Road to Civil Unrest

   1. SBSteven Bartlett2:25

      Konstantin, in terms of everything that's going on in the world at the moment, what are the subjects that are most concerning to you?

   2. KKKonstantin Kisin2:36

      I think that I wrote an article a couple of years ago called Why I Fear the Future, in which I basically predicted that what you were about to see was the rise of far left populism and the rise of right-wing populism, and in ca- some cases, far-right populism, uh, particularly in Europe, but also elsewhere, and I think that's exactly what you're seeing in the Western world. And then geopolitically, uh, the war in Iran, uh, will have an impact on the global economy that's only gonna fuel that further. So I think the trend... You know, people have spent the last ten years talking about polarization where- without really understanding the process that was driving it, in my opinion, uh, particularly in Europe. And what you are now seeing is, I, I fear, the beginnings of that process actually going to a totally new level of, uh, separation between people.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett3:28

      And what's the root cause of that?

   4. KKKonstantin Kisin3:30

      Well, the root cause of that is a mixture of things, of course. Part of it is economic. Europe has basically stagnated, uh, since the great financial crisis. This country, Britain in particular, has stagnated economically. But a lot of it is, uh, the consequence of mass unfettered immigration and people's concerns about what has happened culturally and demographically, and these are difficult things to talk about, which bu- you know, some people find challenging to even discuss. But, uh, it's, it's very clear to me, if you look at, you know, the AfD in Germany, Marine Le Pen in France, Giorgia Meloni in Italy, Farage and Rupert Lowe in the UK, and what we saw in Ceuta, however you, however you pronounce it, uh, uh, a couple of weeks ago in Spain. These are all things just, you know... The visual medium is very powerful. When you see sixty thousand people enter a country illegally in, in a day, that sort of imagery is likely to create a very strong amount of pushback. Oh, you came prepared, huh? Yeah, well, you know, if you're a normal person and you see this, whatever your other views, you just go, "Well, like, like, what's going on?" That, that will be your question. Whether you're a really nice, not racist person who really, really thinks, you know, no human is illegal. Like, you're thinking, "What is going on here?" And, uh, the compassion and empathy you might feel for people, um, fleeing conflict, for example, is unlikely to extend to something like this because we know that these people are economic migrants overwhelmingly. And they're coming, if you ask them, which many people did, uh, and ask them, "Why are you here?" They will say, "I want to have a better life for myself," which I, you know, I don't blame people for. I myself have [chuckles] moved from a foreign country to Britain, you know.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett5:10

      And if you were in their position, would you do the same thing?

   6. KKKonstantin Kisin5:13

      Well, I, I don't know the exact position that they're in. I, I, I... What I can tell you is I came to Britain legally because that's what I thought you're supposed to do, uh, you're supposed to follow the rules. So if I were in that position, uh, it depends what you mean by that position. You know, if I had a wife and children, would I abandon them to try and get, go, get to Europe and, you know... I don't know, but a lot of these people are overwhelmingly young men who probably don't have a wife and child. So it's difficult. I don't know.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett5:39

      But if you're in a situation where you had a wife and child, let's say-

   8. KKKonstantin Kisin5:42

      Mm

   9. SBSteven Bartlett5:43

      ... and there was a promise that if you got over that border over there, you could have a better life for your wife and child, a significantly better life for your wife and child, and send them money home and potentially even bring them over at some point, um, if you were currently living in a point of hardship, would you cross the border?

   10. KKKonstantin Kisin6:00

       I don't know. Like, I've never been in that situation and we don't know. But, but the issue for, for us, I think, in the West is not so much do we have empathy for those people. Y- it's kind of unimportant actually for this conversation. At a, at a personal level, you wanna feel like we're all empathetic, but the reality is it's a practical issue. We've talked about this so many times on your show, about how so much of our, uh, decision-making and public conversation is driven by what makes us feel good as opposed to what works. This doesn't work.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett6:27

       I think there is an element of The importance of that question in the sense that if you don't have empathy for them, you blame them.

   12. KKKonstantin Kisin6:35

       I don't blame them

   13. SBSteven Bartlett6:35

       You shout outside the hotels, you turn-

   14. KKKonstantin Kisin6:37

       I, I, I think the blaming of them is a pointless distraction and is kind of irrelevant. The question is what should we be doing about this, right? And the fact is this is not acceptable.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett6:46

       And what caused it?

   16. KKKonstantin Kisin6:47

       Yes. Well, what caused it is the world is unequal, and there are poor parts of the world from which people would like to move to richer parts of the world. It's a very understandable, uh, decision, but unless you have a world in which everybody has the same quality of life everywhere, which we're never gonna have 'cause that's not how the world works, then countries will have to have borders that they enforce. And that was the consensus view around the West for, for the entirety of, of, of its history.

   17. SBSteven Bartlett7:14

       And how is this contributing to the problems that you described in the West?

   18. KKKonstantin Kisin7:19

       If you're looking at that and you are, uh, in the center, center right, maybe an old-school leftist who, who sort of believes in high levels of redistribution, but believes in borders at the same time, you are looking at that and you're going, "Our political class has lost control. Our political class allows tens of thousands of people to enter Britain illegally on small boats every year." People on the right will look at that and say, "We need to get tougher on borders. We need to get tougher on immigration. We need to get really tough on illegal immigration." And as long as the political class left and right refuses to address that issue as they have done for this entire time, you will see more people on the right adopting harder line slogans, harder line policies when it comes to illegal immigration and immigration more broadly.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett8:05

       So it sound- sounds a little bit to me like we're saying u- unless we dress- address this, then the right has a very effective marketing campaign.

   20. KKKonstantin Kisin8:13

       Well, the right has a very legitimate grievance about what's happening to their society, and that will be very effective electorally, of course.

   21. SBSteven Bartlett8:21

       And the other thing you said was stagnation, economic stagnation-

   22. KKKonstantin Kisin8:23

       Yeah

   23. SBSteven Bartlett8:23

       ... I'm presuming.

3. 8:24 – 11:31

   Where This Leads: Unrest and Violence

   1. KKKonstantin Kisin8:24

      Yeah, of course.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett8:24

      So this polarization that you're talking about, this economic stagnation in Europe, where does this lead us?

   3. KKKonstantin Kisin8:32

      Well, I hate, as you know, to, to make predictions about the future with any great confidence, but I think any time you have a combination of economic problems and social instability and cultural pol- problems, you put all those things together, historically speaking, it's not a good time. It's a time when conflict, violence, civil unrest, all of these things are much more likely. Doesn't mean they're guaranteed, doesn't mean you can't change course, doesn't mean you can't course correct. But if you don't, we are on the road to civ- best case scenario, civil unrest and violence for sure.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett9:04

      Do you see evidence that there's gonna be a remedy to course correct the issue you've described?

   5. KKKonstantin Kisin9:09

      Currently, I don't see that being addressed, but we are in, in a, uh, in a time when unusual things are possible. And so at the next election in Britain, you may see the right-wing populace come in and, and then the question is can they do the things that they're promising to the people who will vote for them? And there's a big question mark about that because the things that they'll be promising, which is about addressing not just this problem in terms of people currently coming in, but the people who are already here. You know, I don't know how much exactly we spend now, but there was a point at which we were spending £8 million a day on hotels for illegal immigrants. So it tells you the scale of the problem, and it's a very difficult problem to address because the legal system and, uh, international conventions and all sorts of other things that are now in place and are now enforced make it very difficult to address. It's not a dishonesty, but the thing that people on the right don't tend to say is even once you've dealt with illegal immigration, the country's not magically going to be better. You have to have an economy that's growing for people to feel like their lot has got better. The fact that you have rightly removed people who should never have been allowed in in the first place will contribute somewhat to easing their concerns, but that's not going to solve the problem. And so even if you get right-wing populists into power, that's not necessarily a remedy for addressing the tensions that I'm talking about.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett10:29

      And in the United States, a different set of issues, but maybe symptoms are similar. Polarizations leading to, and inequality is leading to a rise in socialism and, and then the right is getting more right than ever.

   7. KKKonstantin Kisin10:41

      The right is getting more right than ever. I think Trump's election was kind of like the peak of it and, and it's just carried on in terms of ICE and deportations and, and whatever. And look, y- there's a lot to be criticized about the Trump administration. The one thing they have done is close down the border, and I, I think that's a very good thing, and it was very necessary. But in terms of the, the rise of socialism, and look, Democratic socialism, we should be honest and just call it communism because that's, that's what it is. It's a very unwise but understandable reaction to the economic circumstances of young people's lives in particular. If you're locked out of the housing market, which historically speaking is really the only way for an ordinary person to accumulate capital, if you don't have access to capital at a time when asset prices are inflating and, and have been inflating for a long time, you're basically watching the possibility of capitalism run away from you, of course you're gonna turn over the apple cart.

4. 11:31 – 12:32

   I Grew Up in the Soviet Union

   1. SBSteven Bartlett11:31

      And you think communism is bad?

   2. KKKonstantin Kisin11:34

      I, I grew up in the Soviet Union, so yes, I do think [laughs] communism is bad. Ideologically, it might sound great to people, and I understand why. Equality to all men, everyone being, you know, equal i- in every way. It's wonderful. It just doesn't, it's not compatible with human nature for s- all sorts of reasons. The most obvious one is, you know, the, the basic 80/20 rule, uh, 80/20 rule of things. Most people are not aware of it, but what communist try- communism tries to do is to take from, from the disproportionately productive 20% and spread it out across everybody else. The problem is that disincentivizes the 20% from doing anything, and so you end up with a communist system like the one we had in the Soviet Union where no one really has any incentive to produce, to create, to innovate. And so you get a very stagnant econ- economy. And on top of that, then you have central planning where the government is trying to decide what to do. They're not getting market signals about what's the right or wrong thing to do, and you end up in a place where the, the economy is just, uh, screwed. So you get equality, but everyone's just equally poor.

5. 12:32 – 21:09

   Steve Keen: Capitalism Is About to Fail

   1. SBSteven Bartlett12:32

      Steve

   2. SKSteve Keen12:33

      Uh-huh

   3. SBSteven Bartlett12:34

      What do you think in terms of what Konstantin said to me? What, he said that he thinks there's civil unrest potentially coming.

   4. SKSteve Keen12:39

      Oh, civil unrest is absolutely guaranteed. Uh, uh, there, there's... I, I... All I can see is civil unrest ahead of us because it isn't just communism in that sense, the Russian Soviet version that you experienced, uh, that's failed. It's also capitalism, and-

   5. SBSteven Bartlett12:54

      Capitalism has failed us

   6. SKSteve Keen12:56

      I think capitalism is going to fail, and you guess who I blame for it?

   7. SBSteven Bartlett12:59

      Who?

   8. SKSteve Keen12:59

      Economists.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett13:00

      You're an economist.

   10. SKSteve Keen13:01

       Neoclassical mainstream economists have a fantasy vision of capitalism, and that fantasy vision has led them to trivialize what's happening with global warming. And most people are simply aren't aware of that they've, they've done this. So nobody is worrying about global warming because they think it's something... Not nobody, but the, the political authorities are not putting any effort into global warming because they read The Economist, and The Economist tell them that by 2100, if temperatures rise by three degrees, there'll be a tiny fall in GDP, so why worry about it? In fact, we're starting to see the beginning of it this, this year with the crazy El Niño coming our way, the crazy weather we're living through in, in England right now. And the system is going to collapse because the productive system won't be able to cope with the change in the climate. So that's what I see as the main source of conflict. I don't... I think the o- everything else we're seeing is trivial compared to what that's going to do.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett13:57

       What about-

   12. SKSteve Keen13:57

       Yeah

   13. SBSteven Bartlett13:57

       ... so Konstantin talked about these crossings-

   14. SKSteve Keen14:00

       Yeah

   15. SBSteven Bartlett14:00

       ... in Ceuta in Spain.

   16. SKSteve Keen14:01

       Yeah.

   17. SBSteven Bartlett14:02

       And he w- was alluding to the fact that this needs to be addressed, or this polarization, which is having lots of downstream consequences, isn't gonna change. What is your perspective on-

   18. SKSteve Keen14:11

       Well, I, the, I, I've-

   19. SBSteven Bartlett14:12

       ... this issue?

   20. SKSteve Keen14:13

       Again, there's so much of a fog of misinformation around these days that it's very hard to know whether what you hear is accurate. But the proposition I've been told is that Morocco has close relations with Israel, and the Zionists wanted this as a way of destabilizing Spain, which is about the only country in Europe that is attacking the Zionist state, and so this was a political setup.

   21. KKKonstantin Kisin14:35

       Well, hold on a second, but Spain has the ability to enforce its own border.

   22. SKSteve Keen14:39

       Of course it does.

   23. KKKonstantin Kisin14:40

       So it's gonna... So-

   24. SKSteve Keen14:40

       But the fact that this actually happened is ar- arguable. It's being argued, and I don't know whether it's right or not. I'm giving up on trying to say whether something is AI or not these days.

   25. KKKonstantin Kisin14:49

       Yeah.

   26. SKSteve Keen14:49

       But it's, the argument has been that because the Spanish government came out and was critical of Israel-

   27. KKKonstantin Kisin14:54

       Yeah

   28. SKSteve Keen14:54

       ... critical of Zionism, then this was a setup by the Israelis through Morocco to disturb Spain.

   29. KKKonstantin Kisin14:59

       But hold on. What, what I'm... I'm making a different point, Steve-

   30. SKSteve Keen15:02

       Yeah
6. 21:09 – 24:18

   "We're Not Spending Enough"

   1. SKSteve Keen21:09

      Uh, but-

   2. SBSteven Bartlett21:09

      So Steve-

   3. SKSteve Keen21:10

      Yeah

   4. SBSteven Bartlett21:10

      ... so just to pick up on some of those points-

   5. SKSteve Keen21:11

      Yeah, yeah

   6. SBSteven Bartlett21:11

      ... are you saying that the UK don't have a spending problem?

   7. SKSteve Keen21:16

      No, they don't have, they, they have a problem. They're not spending enough. The government should be spending more.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett21:20

      The government should be spending more.

   9. SKSteve Keen21:20

      Should be spending more money.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett21:22

       On what?

   11. SKSteve Keen21:22

       On the opposite.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett21:22

       On what?

   13. SKSteve Keen21:23

       Education, welfare, infrastructure, dams for a start. You know how many dams... One of the reasons that we've got a potential crisis in the UK right now is the UK, after privatizing its water 40 years ago, has one less dam now than it had 40 years ago.

   14. SBSteven Bartlett21:39

       So you want the government to spend more?

   15. SKSteve Keen21:41

       The government should be providing the infrastructure.

   16. KKKonstantin Kisin21:43

       Well, see-

   17. SKSteve Keen21:43

       The foundation that enables economic activity to act, to occur.

   18. SBSteven Bartlett21:47

       Yeah.

   19. SKSteve Keen21:47

       That's what we're seeing happening in China, and that's why China is outperforming the rest of the world.

   20. SBSteven Bartlett21:51

       Well-

   21. SKSteve Keen21:51

       When you cut back on providing the infrastructure, you mean you've got to build your own roads to connect your factories together. Okay? So by not providing the long-term stuff, which a government should finance, you end up hobbling your private sector rather than enabling it.

   22. KKKonstantin Kisin22:05

       But what you've done there is you've packaged a bunch of things together, some of which, in my opinion, are accurate and some which are really inaccurate. When you say infrastructure, welfare, da, da, da, da, da, uh, infrastructure, like I'm in favor of government borrowing money to invest in things that generate productivity.

   23. SKSteve Keen22:20

       And I'm in favor of them spending money to create that stuff. Same thing, but the borrowing is not important.

   24. KKKonstantin Kisin22:24

       Irrelevant.

   25. SKSteve Keen22:25

       Yeah, okay.

   26. KKKonstantin Kisin22:25

       Where, where you get that money from-

   27. SKSteve Keen22:26

       Yeah, yeah

   28. KKKonstantin Kisin22:26

       ... is actually irrelevant. The government spending money to invest in useful infrastructure, productive infrastructure. I mean, one of the other reasons the US is growing in a different way to us, uh, the UK has the highest industrial electricity prices in the world.

   29. SKSteve Keen22:40

       Right.

   30. KKKonstantin Kisin22:40

       So if you're trying to do AI, you're not gonna do it here.
7. 24:18 – 28:59

   Should Britain Drill in the North Sea?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett24:18

      ... and about the oil in the North Sea. Do you think we should be drilling there?

   2. KKKonstantin Kisin24:21

      Uh, look, uh, the energy conversation, it, uh, well, this is where, uh, uh, we're likely to have very strong disagreements.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett24:27

      Yeah.

   4. KKKonstantin Kisin24:27

      But I think it's important to get the, the groundwork in place before we have the conversation.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett24:31

      Mm-hmm.

   6. KKKonstantin Kisin24:32

      Um, we, uh, I mean, Steve said that w- you know, p- no one's taking climate change seriously. I, I would argue, and I think we, I think it's based in, in what we have seen, we've talked about climate change in such a way for such a long time now that you literally have people who are so terrified they're not having children, they're so terrified, uh, they've got climate anxiety. We had the, the, you know, the phenomenon on Greta Thunberg going around, you know, giving speeches everywhere, being taken, uh, as a credible person. Let's look at the reality, okay? Almost all of, uh, the CO2 emissions, s- not almost all, but the overwhelming bulk of the CO2 emissions of the future, the greenhouse gases of the future, are going to be produced in two countries: India and China. That's just a fact. Uh, the world now uses more oil, more gas, and more coal than it ever has done, ever. And people will say, "Well, China's building, uh, dams and wind turbines and solar p- uh, ba- uh, panel arrays, et cetera." It's true, but they're also building coal power stations every week. They're building every form of energy that they can because they know something we in the West have forgotten, which is GDP is energy transformed.

   7. SKSteve Keen25:38

      No, there I'd completely agree.

   8. KKKonstantin Kisin25:40

      Okay.

   9. SKSteve Keen25:40

      Okay? That's a shock, but I do.

   10. KKKonstantin Kisin25:41

       Good. Fantastic.

   11. SKSteve Keen25:42

       Okay. Okay. Okay.

   12. KKKonstantin Kisin25:42

       In other words, if you don't have energy, if you're not creating energy, you are going to be poor. Almost all wealth creation in the history of humanity has been about using more dense fuel. So you go from hay, which you put into horses and cows and other-

   13. SKSteve Keen26:00

       Ah

   14. KKKonstantin Kisin26:00

       ... animals, to coal, to wood, to coal, to, uh, oil, to, to gas, to nuclear. You get denser, denser, denser.

   15. SKSteve Keen26:08

       Ah.

   16. KKKonstantin Kisin26:08

       You're creating more energy, and you convert that energy into wealth, into prosperity, into hospitals, into schools, into money, into everything, right? So any society which creates a structure where energy is expensive and not abundant is going to get poorer. It's one of the main reasons we are stagnating in Europe-

   17. SKSteve Keen26:28

       Yeah

   18. KKKonstantin Kisin26:28

       ... in a way that America is not, okay? Now, in terms of climate change, I don't want to get bogged down in how impactful this is, who's doing this, who's doing that. The hard reality is Britain can literally do absolutely nothing about climate change. Britain produces 1% of global carbon emissions, right? And the narrative was, well, it doesn't really matter that we only produce 1% of global carbon emissions because Britain has moral leadership in the world. And so if we reduce our energy consumption and if we increase our energy prices and we, uh, slightly repackage and we use slightly more wind and slightly more solar, uh, then other countries will follow suit. That was the argument. It's very clear now that that is not remotely happening. India and China, if you talk to people in India and China, they're like, "We want to grow. We need our people to be prosperous. We need our people not to die." I mean, life expectancy in India at the time of partition in 1930, 1947 was 32 years old. That's how long people lived. Life expectancy at birth was 32 years old. It's now, I think, over 70 or maybe 80 now at this point, right? And that's because they've been burning fossil fuels, and they're going to keep burning fossil fuels, and they're going to keep using nuclear, and they're going to do everything else. Britain can't affect that. We can't do anything about it. And climate ch- the planet will get warmer. So what we should be doing is investing in infrastructure that allows us to cope with that reality in exactly the way the Dutch have done. So they build flood defenses and other ways of managing the fact that sea levels change. That's the only thing that we in Britain can do about that issue. And in the meantime, rather than suiciding our economy by creating less energy and therefore reducing our, our ability to grow our GDP, what we should be doing is creating a system where we produce abundant cheap energy. And you know, Nick Clegg, former Deputy Prime Minister, there's, there's a very instructive video of him 15 or 20 years ago being asked why we're not building nuclear power stations, him saying, "Well, it's going to take 15, 20 years." Well, it's been 15, 20 years, and we don't have any bloody nuclear power stations because of the shortsightedness of our political leaders on these issues. So should we be pumping out as much CO2 into the atmosphere as we can? Absolutely no, we shouldn't be. Should we have a sensible energy policy that is about making sure that we actually grow our economy and keep our people wealthy and also have the money to make the adjustments we're going to have to make to the fact that t- climate will change and we can't control that? That's the real question. It's not about do you believe climate change or whatever. This, this a silly conversation. The real conversation is what can we do about the inevitable reality of the climate

8. 28:59 – 33:08

   "You Can't Defend Yourself Against This"

   1. KKKonstantin Kisin28:59

      changing?

   2. SBSteven Bartlett28:59

      And you're saying we can't do anything to stop it, but you're also then saying we should just build defenses to deal with the symptoms.

   3. KKKonstantin Kisin29:05

      We should adapt. We should adapt, and this is what human beings have done throughout the history of our, of our civ- of our civilization and of our species. There have been times when the planet has been way warmer than it is today. 12,000 years ago or so, there were hippopotamuses swimming in the Thames and elephants ro-

   4. SKSteve Keen29:19

      No, not 12,000 years. Please.

   5. KKKonstantin Kisin29:21

      I, I'm pretty sure it is 12,000.

   6. SKSteve Keen29:22

      No, no.

   7. KKKonstantin Kisin29:22

      Steve, would you, would you-

   8. SKSteve Keen29:23

      12,000 years ago is the beginning of coming out of the Ice Age

   9. KKKonstantin Kisin29:25

      ... would, would you, would you just check, check me on that, please?

   10. SKSteve Keen29:27

       No.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett29:28

       12,000 years ago, Britain was coming out of the ice, last Ice Age.

   12. SKSteve Keen29:30

       Yeah.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett29:30

       The climate was cold.

   14. SKSteve Keen29:32

       Yep.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett29:32

       Tundra-like. Um-

   16. SKSteve Keen29:34

       The opposite. Okay.

   17. KKKonstantin Kisin29:34

       Just let, let him finish.

   18. SBSteven Bartlett29:35

       So because it was cold, but it says 120,000 years ago.

   19. SKSteve Keen29:39

       Yeah.

   20. KKKonstantin Kisin29:40

       Okay.

   21. SKSteve Keen29:40

       The Ice Age.

   22. SBSteven Bartlett29:40

       Yeah.

   23. KKKonstantin Kisin29:40

       120,000 years ago.

   24. SKSteve Keen29:41

       Okay.

   25. KKKonstantin Kisin29:42

       What I'm saying is the climate has changed in, in all sorts of different ways. 2,000 years ago, the Romans grew grapes on Hadrian's Wall, right? And, uh, 200 years ago, it was really cold. The Thames would freeze every year, et cetera. This happens. People have to adapt to it, uh, and we're going to have to do it.

   26. SBSteven Bartlett29:58

       So Steve, the assertion there is that the UK can't do anything about climate change in terms of affecting on a global scale, but they can defend themselves. ... against it by-

   27. SKSteve Keen30:07

       No, you can't

   28. SBSteven Bartlett30:08

       You can't what?

   29. SKSteve Keen30:09

       You can't. You can't. You cannot defend yourself against what England faces if climate change continues. England will become a... This is the most, some of the most recent research on what's called the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. You're aware of the AMOC? That translates about 10 degrees Celsius of heat from the south, from the, actually the middle of the p- of the p- uh, Atlantic up to Europe. If it stops running, temperatures in E- Europe on average will fall by 10 degrees.

   30. SBSteven Bartlett30:35

       So I guess the central question here is there, is there something the UK can do to affect global climate change?
9. 33:08 – 37:15

   The World Government Admission

   1. SKSteve Keen33:08

      They're one for one.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett33:08

      So Steve, when you say we need to reduce energy, do you mean the UK?

   3. SKSteve Keen33:11

      I mean the species. I mean human species.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett33:13

      Okay. So how does Andy Burnham do that?

   5. SKSteve Keen33:15

      We are not set up to deal with this problem because we're broken into nation states.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett33:19

      Okay.

   7. SKSteve Keen33:20

      We can't make decisions that affect the entire planet.

   8. KKKonstantin Kisin33:21

      So we need world government to reduce world energy consumption. Is that right?

   9. SKSteve Keen33:24

      We're gonna be stuck with that, yes.

   10. KKKonstantin Kisin33:26

       Uh-huh.

   11. SKSteve Keen33:26

       We're gonna be stuck with it.

   12. KKKonstantin Kisin33:27

       Well, see, this what... I'm glad we're having this conversation 'cause at least this is the first time, and I mean this in a genuinely respectful way-

   13. SKSteve Keen33:33

       Yeah

   14. KKKonstantin Kisin33:34

       ... it's the first time I've ever heard anyone be honest about this issue.

   15. SKSteve Keen33:36

       Yeah. Yeah.

   16. KKKonstantin Kisin33:37

       That's what you want. You want world government-

   17. SKSteve Keen33:38

       No, I don't want it

   18. KKKonstantin Kisin33:39

       You believe it's inevitable

   19. SKSteve Keen33:40

       ... I'm saying it's inevitable-

   20. KKKonstantin Kisin33:41

       It's inevi-

   21. SKSteve Keen33:41

       ... because by ignoring-

   22. KKKonstantin Kisin33:42

       You believe it... Yeah, I get it

   23. SKSteve Keen33:42

       ... this problem, we've got to the scale-

   24. KKKonstantin Kisin33:44

       You believe it's inevitable-

   25. SKSteve Keen33:45

       ... where it's an existential threat to our species

   26. KKKonstantin Kisin33:46

       ... that we have a world government-

   27. SKSteve Keen33:47

       Yeah

   28. KKKonstantin Kisin33:47

       ... that reduces world energy consumption and therefore the prosperity of everyone living on the planet.

   29. SKSteve Keen33:50

       And if we had taken the advice of The Limits to Growth 50 years ago, we would not be having this conversation.

   30. KKKonstantin Kisin33:55

       Good.
10. 37:15 – 40:23

    "Brace for Impact" - Climate Change Is Here

    1. SKSteve Keen37:15

       Yeah.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett37:15

       Steve, one of the things, you know, one of the things that I, um, I spend a lot of time doing on this podcast is trying to find reality through, like, wishful thinking. And, uh-

    3. SKSteve Keen37:25

       Yeah

    4. SBSteven Bartlett37:25

       ... you know, I have a lot of conversations about AI, for example.

    5. SKSteve Keen37:27

       Yeah.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett37:27

       It, it, I see so many parallels with AI because we're saying that AI could be a big problem. But when you look at human incentives, the US are trying to beat China, and China are trying to beat this person, and they're trying to beat them.

    7. SKSteve Keen37:38

       Mm.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett37:38

       And even in the US you've got-

    9. SKSteve Keen37:39

       Yeah

    10. SBSteven Bartlett37:40

        ... you've got OpenAI trying to beat Anthropic.

    11. SKSteve Keen37:41

        Yeah, yeah.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett37:41

        So when you look at h- incentives, you go, "Okay, I kinda see, can see how this is gonna play out."

    13. SKSteve Keen37:46

        Mm.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett37:46

        There's an inevitability to it. And the example you gave there, what I'm hearing is reduce pollution, which would have meant getting China, and India, and the US, and the UK, and Europe to all cooperate-

    15. SKSteve Keen37:56

        Yep

    16. SBSteven Bartlett37:56

        ... which is as, has proven to be-

    17. SKSteve Keen37:58

        Impossible-

    18. SBSteven Bartlett37:59

        ... impossible

    19. SKSteve Keen37:59

        ... with our political systems, yeah.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett38:00

        And the other thing you mentioned was re- stopping people having babies.

    21. SKSteve Keen38:04

        Yeah.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett38:04

        Stabilizing at four billion-

    23. SKSteve Keen38:07

        Mm

    24. SBSteven Bartlett38:07

        ... which would have come with a t- a lopsided economy and lots of other problems. I mean, we've seen it, it, it wasn't, it looks like-

    25. SKSteve Keen38:13

        It doesn't

    26. SBSteven Bartlett38:13

        ... it wasn't possible.

    27. SKSteve Keen38:13

        And the, and the, and the fossil fuel lobbies and conventional economists undermined all that stuff. So the reason we're having this conversation now is you basically think we've got to adapt. It's like we're going up a hill, so we've gotta, you know, have a lighter car or more power for the car, whatever else. I'm saying we're five inches from a, from a brick wall, okay? And we're not gonna slow down in time to hit the wall. We're gonna hit the wall. Brace yourselves. Okay? Brace for Impact. That's the advice-

    28. KKKonstantin Kisin38:37

        Fine

    29. SKSteve Keen38:37

        ... I'd give.

    30. KKKonstantin Kisin38:38

        But when I asked you earlier if we need world government, you said yes. If I asked you when are-
11. 40:23 – 45:31

    "It's Too Late" - What Breakdown Looks Like

    1. SKSteve Keen40:23

       Yeah.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett40:23

       We get... So my next question logically becomes what can we do about it?

    3. SKSteve Keen40:27

       It's too late.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett40:28

       Mm.

    5. SKSteve Keen40:29

       Okay? The extent to which we're unaware of the energy forces we've unleashed on the planet are huge, and when, when you f- find that people think all this stuff is gonna happen in, you know, it's a couple of, you know, decades away or s- you know, half a century away and somebody else's problem-

    6. KKKonstantin Kisin40:46

       When is it gonna happen?

    7. SKSteve Keen40:48

       I've got a feeling the next 10 years.

    8. KKKonstantin Kisin40:49

       Next 10 years, okay.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett40:50

       What's gonna happen?

    10. KKKonstantin Kisin40:51

        The, the climate catastrophe.

    11. SKSteve Keen40:51

        The beginnings of the breakdown of our s- our capacity to maintain a civilization on the planet. I'm probably wrong in terms of timing. I'm probably putting it too far in the future, okay? I might be wrong, but it might be less.

    12. KKKonstantin Kisin41:02

        So it could be less than 10.

    13. SKSteve Keen41:02

        Yeah, could be less.

    14. KKKonstantin Kisin41:02

        I really, really hope all three of us live long enough to be able to-

    15. SKSteve Keen41:05

        So do I

    16. KKKonstantin Kisin41:05

        ... sit down-

    17. SKSteve Keen41:06

        So do I

    18. KKKonstantin Kisin41:06

        ... and have that discussion.

    19. SKSteve Keen41:07

        I hope I'm wrong. This is, I mean, the... I'm desperately hoping I'm wrong, okay?

    20. SBSteven Bartlett41:09

        Steve, can you define what you mean by climate breakdown specifically?

    21. SKSteve Keen41:13

        Okay.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett41:13

        What does that look like for me as I walk out onto the street?

    23. SKSteve Keen41:15

        Well, let's say the, one of the, the big ones, again, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, the AMOC. The most recent estimate says that's gonna stop functioning sometime between last year, which, 'cause it hasn't, it's happened, and 2095. When that happens, the temperature on Europe will fall, roughly speaking, by three degrees per decade for three decades. So the temperature on Europe on average will fall by 10 degrees. The extremes will become even more ridiculous. So this is r- research from Tim Lenton, Exeter University professor of climate change. The range of temperatures in London will be between minus 20 and plus 35, okay? Now, what's the chance of London surviving That scale of temperature range. You can, you can't even cope with leaves on the train lines here. That's one thing I found ridiculous.

    24. KKKonstantin Kisin42:00

        That's right.

    25. SKSteve Keen42:00

        As an Australian arriving in London and find my train from, from, from Waterloo to Kingston is slowed down because there are leaves on the rail.

    26. KKKonstantin Kisin42:08

        Uh-

    27. SKSteve Keen42:08

        Leaves on the rail? Has that never happened before? What are your engineers doing about that? Why don't you have trains that move the leaves?

    28. KKKonstantin Kisin42:14

        So Steve-

    29. SKSteve Keen42:15

        This sort of unprepared nature, we are completely unprepared for the scale of what we face.

    30. KKKonstantin Kisin42:19

        Look, as someone who is Russian, [laughs] minus 20 is a nice spring day for me.
12. 45:31 – 49:09

    The Trap Trump Walked Into

    1. KKKonstantin Kisin45:31

       What is your perspective on what's going on in the, the Middle East at the moment, Konstantin? Why has this happened? So the, one of the things I think is very important not to do is project our own ideas onto people who we've never met-

    2. SKSteve Keen45:42

       Mm-hmm

    3. KKKonstantin Kisin45:42

       ... like President Trump. I assume none of us have met President Trump-

    4. SKSteve Keen45:45

       No

    5. KKKonstantin Kisin45:45

       ... et cetera. So I can only tell you what I know from speaking to people in his administration-

    6. SKSteve Keen45:50

       Mm

    7. KKKonstantin Kisin45:50

       ... other people who have some access to the administration's thinking, et cetera. My understanding, and it's a very frustrating thing, uh, to have to articulate and to believe, but it is true, is that the level of analysis we all have about the complicated machinations of how different departments in the US government s- you know, work out the complex, it really isn't as complicated as that, and I think we all wish-

    8. SKSteve Keen46:13

       Mm. Yeah

    9. KKKonstantin Kisin46:13

       ... it was sometimes. Trump walked into a trap.

    10. SKSteve Keen46:16

        Yep.

    11. KKKonstantin Kisin46:16

        Uh, I think he walked into a trap that it was a sugar high from Venezuela.

    12. SKSteve Keen46:20

        Yes.

    13. KKKonstantin Kisin46:20

        You know, there was a kind of feeling of perhaps invulnerability and a, and a sort of belief that we can solve every problem, and Iran is different to Venezuela. Iran has the ability to choke off the world's supply, not just of oil-

    14. SKSteve Keen46:31

        Mm

    15. KKKonstantin Kisin46:31

        ... but I think as you discussed with Steve when you recently had him on, of gas, of helium, natural gas, of helium, uh, fertilizer, and lots of other things. And it hasn't quite fed through to the global economy in the way that people have talked about in a catastrophizing way. Uh, but if this carries on, it will do because our stocks, you, you, you've got this talking about oil-

    16. SKSteve Keen46:52

        Mm

    17. KKKonstantin Kisin46:53

        ... but it's stocks of other things too are gonna start running out, and the price of those things is gonna go up. And so then the many predictions that people like Steve have been making are likely to come true. We had Senator Ted Cruz on our show around the time this war was launched. He's not only a huge supporter of President Trump, but a huge supporter of this conflict, and he advocated for it. And when I said to him, "Look, come the midterms, this is not going to be good for you and for your party," and here's what his exact words, quoting from memory, so maybe [laughs] they're not his exact words, but the, the, the, the broad theme of what he said was, uh, "If we're still in this conflict come the midterms, we've failed." I suspect that that is almost certainly going to happen. You've just shown me a picture of President-

    18. SKSteve Keen47:35

        Mm

    19. KKKonstantin Kisin47:35

        ... Trump's approval ratings. They seem to verify what I'm saying. And so I, I think he's walked into a trap, and, uh, you've had people on a, on your show to articulate why the trap will continue to, to bear, uh, fruit for the Iranians. You know, there's this great saying in, in the East, "In the West, you have all the watches. In the East, we have all the time."

    20. SKSteve Keen47:54

        Right.

    21. KKKonstantin Kisin47:54

        Uh, they don't have midterms in Iran. They can wait. They can take the pain and the punishment that they're currently experiencing For as long as they really need to. This is kind of like their Battle of Stalingrad. They can take the pain, they can throw men at the problem, they can throw bodies at the problem as long as they need to because they know the US can't go the distance. Uh, and because of that, the incentive structure is for the Iranians to hold on as long as possible because they know that the US will have to deal with this reality. So I think it's been a catastrophic mistake. Um-

    22. SBSteven Bartlett48:25

        And do you think Iran are actually gonna be stronger on the other side of this?

    23. KKKonstantin Kisin48:29

        Nobody knows exactly. They're definitely stronger now than they were. But look, th- this, all of this is very unpredictable. I, I think we should be very careful about, uh, making predictions about the future of countries that we understand very little in the West from the outside. This is very difficult for anyone outside of Iran today to understand what's happening in Iran. The example I like to give is, uh, Nicola Ce- Nicolae Ceausescu, uh, the Romanian dictator. He had a 92% approval rating th- the day before he was, uh, seized with his wife and summarily executed. The predictability of how long a regime survives in th- in these countries is difficult, uh, to judge from the outside. Currently, Iran has a choke hold on the global economy, and they're leveraging it very powerfully.

13. 49:09 – 51:13

    The Famine He Says Is Coming

    1. SBSteven Bartlett49:09

       You predicted a famine, Steve.

    2. SKSteve Keen49:11

       Yeah, I think it's still going to happen. But the thing is, it's, it's, again, it's a question of what the stocks are. Like, for example, we know this story about the-

    3. SBSteven Bartlett49:18

       Mm

    4. SKSteve Keen49:18

       ... US strategic oil reserve. We also know that China had a huge reserve, and they've run that reserve down from about one and a half years of supply of oil for them to, I don't know what amount, but they're going back in the opposite direction now. So we didn't need to know what the stocks of all these products were around the globe beforehand. So when you make an estimate, yes, there's going to be a, you know, a running out of oil. Well, China reduced its oil consumption. America's running its stock down. At some point, though, with the, with, of course, the flow is still blocked through the strait, then there won't be the oil, there won't be the fertilizer, there won't be the sulfuric acid. All these things will not be available, and then we'll have a, a physical hit coming out of all that. And I c- I completely agree, Trump was sold a pup, it's the old expression, and we're paying the price.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett50:01

       Oh. Is there any way out of this, in your view, Steve?

    6. SKSteve Keen50:04

       I, I think America [laughs] has to leave the Middle East. That's about the only long-term resolution, America stops interfering in the Middle East.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett50:11

       If, if they were to leave now, the issue that they face is they've now given Iran-

    8. SKSteve Keen50:15

       Yeah

    9. SBSteven Bartlett50:15

       ... they've sort of established a precedence where Iran can use the Strait of Hormuz, which is like a proxy for the global economy, as a bargaining chip. And so if you're Iran, you now can proceed potentially with your nuclear program, and if they come back, you shut down the global economy via the Strait of Hormuz.

    10. SKSteve Keen50:31

        Yeah.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett50:32

        Or you, you c- you sort of kneecap it, which is-

    12. SKSteve Keen50:33

        Which is why it was a catastrophically bad decision to provoke them in the first place.

    13. KKKonstantin Kisin50:37

        The thing that no one really talks about, and it's an issue close to my heart with the Ukrainian family and, and, you know, the conflict there is something that's very important to me, is one of the hopes I had for the Trump presidency was that, uh, he would find a way to bring that conflict to a close.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett50:51

        Mm.

    15. KKKonstantin Kisin50:51

        Uh, this has only made things better for Russia. The, the fact that they've had to lift sanctions on Russian oil, for example-

    16. SBSteven Bartlett50:58

        Mm

    17. KKKonstantin Kisin50:58

        ... in order to compensate for the lack of supply. This is allowing Russia to continue this war and to fund its war. And so I just, I, I, it's been a, a disastrous intervention, um, and really, really unfortunate, uh, in the way that it's been done.

14. 51:13 – 53:55

    How Does Trump Get Out of This?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett51:13

       Do you think this is gonna completely tarnish his presidency more than any other issue?

    2. KKKonstantin Kisin51:17

       It depends on how it ends. The only way out of this that I can see at the moment... Look, th- there's, again, these things are very unpredictable. I think we really should be very honest about that.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett51:27

       Mm.

    4. KKKonstantin Kisin51:27

       But the way that, that I see it at the moment is his only way out, really, I don't know about pulling out the Middle East, that seems a bit extreme, but the best way for him to get out of this is to find a way to s- to sell Americans on the lie that it's been a success.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett51:41

       Yeah.

    6. KKKonstantin Kisin51:42

       That is the only way he's gonna get out of this. If he can find a way to sell a terrible deal, which he's going to have to sign with Iran, as a victory for America, which Trump is uniquely placed to do [laughs] let's be honest, right? His ability to sell things is pretty, pretty strong. Then he can leave with less egg on his face than otherwise, at which point how the world judges him for a temporary interruption of oil and fertilizer and gas supplies, how history go- judges him is hard to say, not least because he's still got time in his term to either do good things or [laughs] or to do more things that don't work out well. But, uh, at the moment, this is a conflict who- whose only resolution that it seems to me is for him to accept the reality that he made a mistake and to find a way to extricate himself from it without admitting it was a mistake.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett52:32

       Steve mentioned that he predicts a famine is coming, a global famine.

    8. KKKonstantin Kisin52:36

       Yeah.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett52:36

       Do you agree with that?

    10. KKKonstantin Kisin52:37

        Depends how long it runs.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett52:38

        Mm.

    12. KKKonstantin Kisin52:38

        It depends how long... I mean, I have friends in Australia who are farmers, and when this first started, they were telling me they can't get hands on fertilizer bey- even at the quotas they already had.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett52:47

        Mm. And again, context here is that a lot of fertilizer comes from via the Strait of Hormuz-

    14. KKKonstantin Kisin52:52

        Yeah

    15. SBSteven Bartlett52:52

        ... and fertilizer-

    16. KKKonstantin Kisin52:52

        It goes to all over the world. But even if, even if, say you get your supply of fertilizer not from the Middle East. Well, given that the supply of fertilizer is no longer coming from the Middle East, the people who used to get it from the Middle East now have to get it from somewhere else, and there's less of it to go around, therefore price goes up, quotas, allocations go down. You can't plant the crops, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

    17. SKSteve Keen53:13

        Yeah. Like on the, for the Australian front, I've got friends in the same boat, and they tell me that, uh, about half the usual wheat crop has been laid-

    18. KKKonstantin Kisin53:21

        Right

    19. SKSteve Keen53:21

        ... because of the cost of fertilizer. Which, and we used, Australia used to produce seven times as much food as it needs for its people. So it's gonna produce three times as much food, three and a half, and that means, of course, less availability for food around the world, and this is gonna be a global phenomenon. When, where it hits, again, that's very hard to say because you don't know what stocks exist, you don't know how dependent different agricultural systems are on the fertilizer that they, that they bring in. But yeah, it's, it's a catastrophically bad decision, and the only way that Trump can get out of it is to lose and declare victory. That's what he'll do.

15. 53:55 – 55:57

    Does America Need a Socialist President?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett53:55

       Well, there's midterm elections coming up, which could have a big impact, but there's also the 2028 elections coming up for the-

    2. SKSteve Keen54:00

       Mm

    3. SBSteven Bartlett54:00

       ... presidential position. Um, a lot of people are now forecasting that the Democrats The left side of politics or potentially even a socialist candidate-

    4. SKSteve Keen54:09

       Right

    5. SBSteven Bartlett54:09

       ... is gonna get into office. Do you think that would be a net good thing for the United States?

    6. SKSteve Keen54:14

       Well, after Trump, anything is gonna be better. Okay? So yes, I do, because again, I think America's pushed far too far in the, uh, you know, independent self-reliance, don't let the state do anything. Uh, and you get an unbalanced economy out of that.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett54:28

       Do you think the US needs a Democratic socialist candidate?

    8. SKSteve Keen54:31

       Yeah. Yeah.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett54:32

       Why?

    10. SKSteve Keen54:32

        Because they will promote the need for the, the public goods that the private se- the public sector provides and the private sector does not. We've got the classic illustration here with water supplies for the UK. We privatized them 40 years ago. What's the consequence? You can't swim in any river in the, in the United Kingdom anymore because they're polluted with feces. The beaches are impossible as well. We have one less dam than we had f- 40 years ago. Privatizing resources which take a long time to construct is a recipe for those resources not to be cons- created in the very first instance. Whereas China, with obviously a socialist economy, has built the energy supplies you were mentioning earlier. They have provided the, uh, the transportation, the education. It's extremely hard to get in. You can't buy your way in. The, the education is publicly funded. All these things show that you need a balance between the public and private sector, and America's gone too far in the private direction, and we now need to swing b- switch back in the opposite direction.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett55:29

        So China's model would be better?

    12. SKSteve Keen55:30

        Yeah, because, I mean, if you, if, if it provides the infrastructure that enables a private sector to thrive. If you don't have the energy, as you were saying earlier, then you can't even imagine building the private s- sector facilities, or if you do, they've gotta be used at the expense of some other activity. So we're seeing Americans protesting about rising energy prices because of data centers being established and rising problems with the water supply for the same reason.

16. 55:57 – 1:01:30

    Why China Works and the Soviet Union Didn't

    1. SBSteven Bartlett55:57

       Steve would prefer a socialist government coming into the United States in the next election cycle.

    2. SKSteve Keen56:02

       Democratic socialist. There's a big difference.

    3. KKKonstantin Kisin56:04

       Democratic socialism is, is the same idea that has been tried repeatedly and failed repeatedly, which is communism. It's, it's sort of the idea that if we elect communists instead of having them, uh, win in the revolution, that it'll all be better. It won't be. Their policies don't work.

    4. SKSteve Keen56:17

       Mm.

    5. KKKonstantin Kisin56:18

       And by the way, the one thing-

    6. SKSteve Keen56:19

       The poli- the Soviet policies obviously did not work.

    7. KKKonstantin Kisin56:21

       Yeah.

    8. SKSteve Keen56:22

       Russia failed, no doubt about that.

    9. KKKonstantin Kisin56:24

       Mm.

    10. SKSteve Keen56:24

        Okay? China's succeeding. So what's the difference between the two?

    11. KKKonstantin Kisin56:28

        Uh-

    12. SKSteve Keen56:28

        Why is the Chinese system being so successful and the Russian system so abjectly a failure?

    13. KKKonstantin Kisin56:34

        Well, in the 1930s, a lot of people thought that the, the rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union was a massive success.

    14. SKSteve Keen56:41

        Mm.

    15. KKKonstantin Kisin56:41

        I, I, I think it's worth remembering that communist societies lie all the time about the real figures in their economy, and they create fake growth and fake numbers about all of-

    16. SKSteve Keen56:50

        Oh

    17. KKKonstantin Kisin56:50

        ... these things. We know, for example, that almost certainly, according to the intelligence assessment of pretty much an- every Western intelligence service, that the, the, uh, COVID virus came from a lab in China. It's something they lied about to the world and still haven't paid any price for. And the way they lie about that is the way they will lie about other things, including economic growth and all sorts of other things. In the short term, models can look appealing, uh, if you don't understand the full implications of what it is. But also you gotta remember that, uh, the, the Chinese system is not just about the economy. It's also about what rights people have and don't have, uh, the right to express your opinion freely, the right to criticize the government, the right... I mean, we talk about private enterprise in China. If you're a private, uh, business owner in China, well, there's no such thing really, 'cause the moment you are inconvenient to the government, you're gonna disappear and come back suddenly with a totally different new set of beliefs about what's right and wrong and who's right and who's wrong. So, um, I think we should be very, very, very careful about prai- praising communist dictatorships.

    18. SKSteve Keen57:49

        Mm. I have friends in China, both nationals and, and, uh, immigrants-

    19. KKKonstantin Kisin57:54

        Mm

    20. SKSteve Keen57:54

        ... who tell me that the, the level of discussion and argument in China is far, far greater than people-

    21. KKKonstantin Kisin58:02

        Mm

    22. SKSteve Keen58:02

        ... think. You don't get left versus right conversations, okay? You've got a political system which you're, uh, you, you're not gonna change, Communist Party be in control and so on. But the level of debate over what policy should be, uh, whether the government should balance its books, whether the government should run a deficit-

    23. KKKonstantin Kisin58:17

        Mm

    24. SKSteve Keen58:18

        ... whether the government should build infrastructure or not, um, there's enormous debate there.

    25. KKKonstantin Kisin58:24

        Mm.

    26. SKSteve Keen58:24

        So people do ha- there's more conflict, but it's mediated. It's not conflict that leads to flipping from one party one year-

    27. KKKonstantin Kisin58:33

        Mm

    28. SKSteve Keen58:33

        ... to the opposite attitude at the next election and so on.

    29. KKKonstantin Kisin58:37

        Do you think Steven could run his show if he was a Chinese citizen in China and have any conversation he wanted?

    30. SKSteve Keen58:41

        I think so.
17. 1:01:30 – 1:05:29

    "Would You Prefer the Chinese System?" — "Yes"

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:30

       Would you prefer a Chinese system if you, if you-

    2. SKSteve Keen1:01:32

       To America? Yes.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:34

       Even though you can't criticize the government?

    4. SKSteve Keen1:01:35

       Yes, I've, I've, I've spent enough time in American cities and Chinese cities to know which ones I prefer, and I'm down to cities of a mere four million people, which is a small city on Chinese standards.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:44

       And you're okay with-

    6. SKSteve Keen1:01:44

       I didn't see the homelessness, I didn't see the poverty levels in, that I see in American cities-

    7. KKKonstantin Kisin1:01:49

       That's sort of true

    8. SKSteve Keen1:01:50

       ... in Chinese cities.

    9. KKKonstantin Kisin1:01:51

       That's sort of true, but, but it's exactly the sort of thing that people would've said about aspects of the Soviet Union in the 1930s.

    10. SKSteve Keen1:01:56

        The Soviet, no, the Soviet never pulled that off. I mean, the Soviet, you know, if you, you... One thing I-

    11. KKKonstantin Kisin1:02:00

        What about the Moscow Metro? This is what e- every-

    12. SKSteve Keen1:02:02

        The Moscow Metro is, you know, a great system

    13. KKKonstantin Kisin1:02:04

        ... every Western idiot, uh, like Tucker Carlson goes to, to Moscow and says-

    14. SKSteve Keen1:02:07

        And raves about the underground. Yeah

    15. KKKonstantin Kisin1:02:08

        ... "Oh, my God, the Underground." Well, that was built by totalitarian dictators with slave labor. You can get a hell of a lot done with slave labor and an authoritarian society.

    16. SKSteve Keen1:02:17

        Well, that's not being done in China right now, which has the world's greatest metro systems and the world's greatest high-speed rail. So i- again, your experience... And I, I'm not Russian.

    17. KKKonstantin Kisin1:02:26

        No.

    18. SKSteve Keen1:02:26

        I wasn't born there. I respect that your experience-

    19. KKKonstantin Kisin1:02:28

        Mm

    20. SKSteve Keen1:02:28

        ... is very different to what I had growing up, and it's a horrific society, and it led to, you know, a whole range of horrors, as we know. The people things instantly say what happened in the Soviet Union is happening in China is misidentifying those two systems.

    21. KKKonstantin Kisin1:02:42

        Well, first of all, what happened in China, if you take the entire history-

    22. SKSteve Keen1:02:45

        Mm

    23. KKKonstantin Kisin1:02:45

        ... of China under communism, is actually much worse than what happened in the Soviet Union.

    24. SKSteve Keen1:02:49

        Uh, well, like, I was in there in '81, '82.

    25. KKKonstantin Kisin1:02:51

        45 million people killed.

    26. SKSteve Keen1:02:52

        Yep.

    27. KKKonstantin Kisin1:02:53

        Great Leap Forward-

    28. SKSteve Keen1:02:54

        And the Great, the Great Leap Forward was a disaster

    29. KKKonstantin Kisin1:02:55

        ... and the Cultural Revolution. Right.

    30. SKSteve Keen1:02:55

        The ideological stuff under Mao was horrific, and I saw... Literally, I saw examples of that in Sichuan with children who c- clearly had kwashiorkor protein deficiency disease-
18. 1:05:29 – 1:11:20

    Will Andy Burnham Change Britain's Trajectory?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:29

       And if you want the link, the link is in the description below. So bringing this back to the sort of where we started a little bit, um, on the United Kingdom, we've just appointed a new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham. Do you think he's gonna be successful?

    2. SKSteve Keen1:05:41

       What do you mean by successful?

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:42

       Do you think he's going to improve the UK's position to such extent that we change our trajectory?

    4. SKSteve Keen1:05:50

       No. He has absolutely smashed the PR side of things.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:54

       Oh.

    6. SKSteve Keen1:05:54

       There's no, uh, arguing with that whatsoever. But in terms of the tectonic stuff that we've been discussing-

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:00

       Oh

    8. SKSteve Keen1:06:00

       ... today, he is not remotely going to address any of it. You know, we started the conversation with popular- populism-

    9. KKKonstantin Kisin1:06:08

       Immigration, ma- illegal immigration, et cetera. He seems to be totally doubling down on, on what the Labour and before that, the Conservative government were doing on that. On the economy, he is not going to restart the British economy, not least because it takes a long time and a mandate he doesn't have-

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:23

        Mm

    11. KKKonstantin Kisin1:06:23

        ... for the reasons that Steve alluded to. And the only question really is, is he going to call an early election, which would be the ballsy and probably smart thing to do because I don't think he's ever gonna be as popular as he is now. That is a question that remains because it probably would be the sense, the rational thing to do, but it is a big risk 'cause elections are unpredictable, election campaigns are unpredictable. Nobody knows what will happen once it kicks off. But, uh, fundamentally, I don't believe he's going to be the-

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:50

        No

    13. KKKonstantin Kisin1:06:50

        ... transformative candidate that will change Britain for the better, no.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:53

        Can anybody?

    15. KKKonstantin Kisin1:06:55

        That's a very good question. I think it's, it's a very difficult job. I, I think it's theoretically possible. You need a whole different set of policies, um-

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:02

        What would those policies look like?

    17. KKKonstantin Kisin1:07:04

        Uh, we talked about it already. Uh, uh, we want, uh, abundant, cheap energy.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:09

        So would you drill in the North Sea?

    19. KKKonstantin Kisin1:07:10

        It's not something that I'm an- I'm not an expert in the oil industry, so I don't know. I mean, one of the things I've never understood is why we don't build more nuclear power stations. Part of it is they're so expensive to build here because of the regulations, and the famous example is with, like, bat tunnels for train lines that cost more than the trains and all this kind... It's very difficult to build energy infrastructure in the UK. I would pursue every avenue of every kind, and probably including drilling for oil and other things, to create the cheap, abundant energy that we need to grow the economy, number one. Uh, for the reasons that we talked about in the climate discussion. The other thing is you've got to, uh, the, the situation where you literally have tens and maybe even hundreds of thousands of young people now completely on the scrap heap, no chance of ever getting into employment, uh, because they have anxiety or they have depression. You know, when I remember being 20, going to the, to, to get a job as a student to the student employment office and sweating buckets because I was so anxious. It was a, an, an, uh, like a weird experience I'd never been through. I'm sure... You know, I know your background. You've had times when you were scrapping and scraping, and you would've been depressed or anxious and all sorts of things. Those are obstacles in life you have to get over. Those are not medical problems by and large. Some people have really serious depression. We shouldn't trivialize that. But by and large, you have to overcome anxiety, you have to overcome, uh, your feelings of, uh, discomfort about the reality you face and get into the workplace. So we have to do that as well. Uh, for the reasons that we talked about earlier, I think one of the most important policies to pursue is to make sure that there are no benefits of any kind for foreign nationals. That will create a system where rather than doing terrible optics like the ICE, you know, rounding people up and trying to get them out of the country, people will just leave. The people who shouldn't be here, who are not contributing, will leave of their own volition.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:56

        Is that really what will happen?

    21. KKKonstantin Kisin1:08:58

        Yeah.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:58

        Or does, does... Is crime not a consequence of desperation?

    23. KKKonstantin Kisin1:09:02

        Crime? I'm not talking about crime. I'm talking about if you are a foreign national and you live in social housing and you receive benefits, I don't understand why you're here. I, I understand taking care of British people who, who were born here or even who've become British citizens. You know, once you become a, a citizen of the country and you commit to it, at that point, you f- you fall through the net, you get an injury, w- w- like, we should look after you. But by and large, perhaps other than healthcare, which I think i- is something we'd, as a compassionate country, would want to provide to anybody who, who needs it, uh, I don't think you should get access to so- social housing, unemployment benefit, or any of the other things if you're not a citizen of this country, and I'm very pleased to see that more and more parties are adopting that policy because what it will do is it will create a system where people who are not contributing will leave of their own accord and, and go to other places.

    24. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:52

        Is that truly what happens? 'Cause I'm imagining, you know, I'm imagining people start coming over on boats, or you remove the current social housing infrastructure. Wouldn't that just result in a lot of homeless people that we then... That creates another problem.

    25. KKKonstantin Kisin1:10:05

        No, because I'm not talking about illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants apply for asylum, and, uh, th- there's a different process for that. I'm talking about people who are here legally, who have settled status here or who have a visa to be here or whatever.

    26. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:18

        So they shouldn't get social housing.

    27. KKKonstantin Kisin1:10:19

        They shouldn't get any benefits.

    28. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:20

        So w- what... If you removed that today-

    29. KKKonstantin Kisin1:10:22

        They will leave.

    30. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:23

        How?
19. 1:11:20 – 1:13:50

    Wokeism: A Hierarchy of Oppression

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:20

       There's this term called wokeism that people talk about a lot. It's often associated with... Hmm. I mean, you can probably explain it better than I can.

    2. KKKonstantin Kisin1:11:28

       I believe I can.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:29

       Yes. I think you should explain it.

    4. KKKonstantin Kisin1:11:30

       Okay. Wokeism, uh, in certainly in the way that it's been implemented, is a hierarchy of oppression, uh, based on various demographic characteristics. In other words, it's a system that says an outsider looking in to this conversation between the three of us can say, without knowing anything about any of us, which one of us is more oppressed than others and which one of us is doing more of the oppression, and therefore, to whom victim status should be accorded and to whom oppressor status should be accorded. So you don't win on this one, I'm afraid, Steve. You're a pale, male, and stale.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:07

       [laughs]

    6. KKKonstantin Kisin1:12:08

       And therefore you're the oppressor. Um, I am an immigrant, so somewhat oppressed. You're Black, so you are like, you know, way at the top of the chart of oppression. You've been... And, you know, if I think if you compared all our three bank balances, you might find that's not quite true. But nonetheless, my, my point is it's, it's a very simplified, uh, and frankly racist way of looking at the world. And then it says from that it follows that we must pursue policies that seek to address these imbalances and inherent privilege between people who look like us. It's a way of judging people by as groups, not as individuals, and pursuing social policy aimed at ensuring what's called social justice.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:44

       Last time you said to me, "We need to stop worrying about how things make us feel rather than the consequences of our actions."

    8. KKKonstantin Kisin1:12:51

       Yeah. Wokeism is the idea that we should really, really focus on what makes us feel good and really ignore what works. I think what we should really be focusing on is what works. And I thought our climate discussion, I misspoke about the years, but the, the... actually where we came to I thought was very constructive, which is like, what do we do about this? And when you have that conversation, you get to a constructive place, right? Which is, I think we all agreed the only way to do it is to create forms of energy that are actually gonna be clean, right?

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:18

       Innovation.

    10. KKKonstantin Kisin1:13:19

        Innovate. But that's what we came to.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:21

        Yeah.

    12. KKKonstantin Kisin1:13:21

        But, but before that we were all talking about how what makes us feel good and bad and, and what we're scared of and et cetera. So I, I think that's part of it.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:29

        Steve, we need to stop worrying about how things make us feel rather than the consequences of our actions.

    14. SKSteve Keen1:13:34

        We actually need to understand the consequences of actions. Absolutely. That's, that's vital.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:37

        But do you think we focus too much on what makes us feel good-

    16. SKSteve Keen1:13:40

        Yes. Yeah

    17. KKKonstantin Kisin1:13:41

        ... and not enough about w- how does our system actually function?

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:43

        Right. What works?

    19. SKSteve Keen1:13:44

        Okay. And that leads, is why I led to my position on climate change as well as my position on economic policy.

20. 1:13:50 – 1:17:41

    AI, Mass Unemployment and The Hunger Games

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:50

       Last thing I wanted to talk to you both about is, um, just getting any of your thoughts on all of this stuff that's going on with AI at the moment-

    2. SKSteve Keen1:13:56

       Mm

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:57

       ... uh, and the impact you think that's gonna have.

    4. SKSteve Keen1:13:58

       Well, A- AI is a potentially transformative technology, without a doubt. Okay? You think about the sort of future we might imagine for a, you know, a wonderful human species is to the stage where we all have universal high income, to take a quote from Elon Musk. The m- machines do the work, and we live in a world where the machines are doing it Star Trek style. That's, that'd be a dream outcome.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:19

       Mm-hmm.

    6. SKSteve Keen1:14:20

       To get there, how are you gonna give people income if they're not working anymore? Okay? The only way to do that is the government has to create the money. Now, that is something which I don't think Musk has thought through. If people d- who don't own capital, and that's the vast majority of the population, therefore don't have an income, they can't buy the goods being produced by the robots in the first place. So you need a mechanism that enables people to pay for the basic goods and services to stay alive, and then if you want to become wealthy, you've got to become an entrepreneur as well. Okay?

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:51

       So you could tax the AI companies instead of printing money?

    8. SKSteve Keen1:14:55

       No. Taxation takes money out of the economy. Okay? It doesn't, it doesn't pay for services. It takes money out. There's excessive money creation. If the government simply spent and didn't tax, then the money supply would be growing at 20 and 30% per annum, and you would have hyperinflation without a doubt, okay, that level of money creation. So the taxation is there to take excessive money creation out of the process.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:19

       Could you not tax... Say, let's take one of the big AI companies.

    10. SKSteve Keen1:15:21

        Yeah.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:21

        Let's call them company A.

    12. SKSteve Keen1:15:22

        Yeah.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:22

        Tax company A 50% of their, I don't know, their profits. Give it out as a U- UBI or something.

    14. SKSteve Keen1:15:27

        Yeah.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:27

        I don't know.

    16. SKSteve Keen1:15:28

        You'd need a system like that because if AI works, then all the manual labor, all the clerical, boring clerical jobs will disappear. Okay? And if they disappear and people don't have incomes, then we end up in The Hunger Games.

    17. KKKonstantin Kisin1:15:42

        Indeed.

    18. SKSteve Keen1:15:42

        And that's the fear that I have. If we, if we just go for a totally private sector approach to AI, then we end up as either The Hunger Games or the government provides an income for people to enable them to have a basic standard of living, and if they want to go above that, they've got to become entrepreneurs.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:58

        How, how, how are you feeling about AI, Konstantin?

    20. KKKonstantin Kisin1:15:59

        Well, it's a mix of things. This, this is where I... If you remember last time we spoke, I... we talked about the fact that I think my anti-communist credentials are pretty well established. But I did-

    21. SKSteve Keen1:16:08

        Definitely

    22. KKKonstantin Kisin1:16:08

        ... but, but I did say that I thought that if we get to the position where AI is doing all the work-

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:14

        Mm

    24. KKKonstantin Kisin1:16:15

        ... communism was an inevitability.

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:17

        Mm.

    26. KKKonstantin Kisin1:16:17

        I.e., from each according to his ability, which will be zero, to each according to his needs, which will be whatever our needs are, right? So once we get, if and when we get to that-

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:26

        If and when. Yeah

    28. KKKonstantin Kisin1:16:26

        ... if and when we get to that point, that seems kind of inevitable. The mechanism by which we achieve that, whether it is taxation or whatever... You know, I struggle to understand the economic concept that Steve has been presenting, but, you know, I, I, we probably don't have time to get into that. Nonetheless, a form of redistribution will be inevitable because, as we spoke about last time, if six people in the world own all the revenue-generating assets in the world, they're either gonna have to share it or they're gonna find their heads on spikes.

    29. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:57

        Yeah.

    30. KKKonstantin Kisin1:16:57

        That's, that's a fact. Unless they can have really powerful robots to stop the rest of us from climbing over their big walls, even then their heads are gonna be on spikes. So I, I, I would not recommend that, that approach to the, the big tech AI oligarchs. But I think we're talking about... I was gonna use the term long term. No one knows what short, medium, and long term is in AI because nobody knows how quickly we're likely to get to that point where we're talking about, which is kind of artificial generalized intelligence, i.e., a machine that can think like humans and probably faster and better.
21. 1:17:41 – 1:21:14

    Best Case a Pet, Worst Case a Cow

    1. KKKonstantin Kisin1:17:41

       is fair to say.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:41

       Do you not think this is, like, the most important or consequential-

    3. KKKonstantin Kisin1:17:44

       I do

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:44

       ... issue of our time?

    5. KKKonstantin Kisin1:17:45

       I do.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:45

       Because it does permeate even subjects like immigration, and s- we talked about socialism and capitalism.

    7. KKKonstantin Kisin1:17:51

       Sure.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:51

       All of these things change in such a scenario.

    9. KKKonstantin Kisin1:17:53

       Yes, they do. Yes, they do, and we talk about economic stagnation. I mean, it's a relevant conversation. Private debt, irrelevant conversation in that scenario. But I suspect we're not gonna get there-

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:18:03

        Mm

    11. KKKonstantin Kisin1:18:03

        ... uh, overnight. It will take some time. In the interim, what I say to the guys that work for me is, "You will not be replaced by AI." You will be replaced by someone who uses AI better than you do

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:18:14

        In the interim

    13. KKKonstantin Kisin1:18:15

        In the interim. So if you are a young person making your way in the world, these are tools, and you wanna be using these tools as efficiently as possible if you want to succeed in the current environment. And I think that situation will carry on for some time. I think the, to me, the biggest risk is actually not the economics of it. I think economics will probably be painful, but actually ultimately potentially beneficial once we put the [laughs] if we put the right heads on spikes, you know, in the extreme scenario. I'm being met- hyperbolic and metaphoric here, of course. Uh, or maybe not. We'll find out.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:18:49

        [laughs]

    15. KKKonstantin Kisin1:18:50

        Um, but I think the b- the biggest threat to humanity, uh, if you talk about AI, is actually the fact that you're creating something that's smarter than you. You are creating a superior species, and if you're creating a superior species, you will become an inferior species. And if you become an inferior species, you only need to look around in the world, at the world in which we live to understand what that means for you. Best case scenario, you become a pet. Worst case scenario, you become a cow.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:19:16

        I- I've really tried, uh, you know, I've had so many conversations on the show about artificial intelligence. I've really tried to, like, reason my way to a different conclusion.

    17. KKKonstantin Kisin1:19:23

        Yeah, you can't. It's not possible, is it?

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:19:24

        And I can't.

    19. KKKonstantin Kisin1:19:24

        You can't.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett1:19:25

        That's why I keep having these bloody conversations, 'cause I'm hoping that someone will say something-

    21. KKKonstantin Kisin1:19:28

        They won't.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett1:19:29

        [laughs]

    23. KKKonstantin Kisin1:19:29

        They won't

    24. SBSteven Bartlett1:19:29

        ... about this idea that a more intelligent species, es- especially in a world where it has legs and can move through physical space, which is what Optimus is accelerating towards, won't be superior to me as it relates to, like, the, I don't know, the, the pyramid of, uh-

    25. KKKonstantin Kisin1:19:46

        The hierarchy

    26. SBSteven Bartlett1:19:47

        Yeah, the hierarchy of-

    27. KKKonstantin Kisin1:19:48

        The hierarchy of power. It will have more power than you, and therefore it will make decisions and not you, and therefore it will make decisions that are in its own interest and not yours. That's a fact.

    28. SBSteven Bartlett1:19:57

        But okay, so one argument might be we'll control it and design it in such a way where it can't get there.

    29. KKKonstantin Kisin1:20:02

        Really? Can squirrels control human beings?

    30. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:04

        [laughs] But maybe, maybe we can... We, we program it so it never gets to the point where it wants to turn on us.
22. 1:21:14 – 1:26:27

    Can You Program Love Into an AI?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:14

       Could you program the same maternal instinct into a large language model?

    2. KKKonstantin Kisin1:21:18

       [laughs] Uh, I don't think you can, because as we discussed, it will be a superior intelligence, and it can always rationalize its way out of that, because it's not a biological function, right? Projecting my genes into the future is not going to be its agenda. It's going to have its own, because it's a different species.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:36

       This was the argument that, uh, one of the godfathers of AI made, made actually after coming on my show. So he came on my show.

    4. KKKonstantin Kisin1:21:43

       Yeah.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:43

       Um, Geoffrey Hinton.

    6. KKKonstantin Kisin1:21:45

       Yeah.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:45

       Yeah.

    8. KKKonstantin Kisin1:21:45

       I've seen that episode, I think.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:46

       Yeah.

    10. KKKonstantin Kisin1:21:46

        Yeah, it was a very good episode.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:47

        And he came on and he made the warnings that make a lot of sense to most of us, but then subsequently, about a year later, his... He came back to the world with a hypothesis that the only way to do it was to replicate a mother and their child's relationship, this sort of deep maternal instinct where the AI is born believing that we are to be protected.

    12. KKKonstantin Kisin1:22:04

        Protected?

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:22:05

        Well, you know, in the same way that-

    14. KKKonstantin Kisin1:22:06

        Compassion. Oh, that's interesting, isn't it?

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:22:07

        Well, no, not just protected.

    16. SKSteve Keen1:22:07

        In the sense of compassion.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:22:08

        It's, it's, it's really about love.

    18. KKKonstantin Kisin1:22:09

        To be nurtured and l- looked after.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:22:10

        Yeah.

    20. SKSteve Keen1:22:10

        Yeah.

    21. KKKonstantin Kisin1:22:11

        Mm.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett1:22:11

        It's really about love.

    23. KKKonstantin Kisin1:22:12

        Mm.

    24. SBSteven Bartlett1:22:12

        To, to like, yeah, to have that maternal instinct not to want to destroy us.

    25. KKKonstantin Kisin1:22:16

        Mm-hmm.

    26. SKSteve Keen1:22:16

        And that's why I said empathy beforehand, because-

    27. KKKonstantin Kisin1:22:18

        To, not, and not to, perhaps not to let us destroy ourselves, right?

    28. SBSteven Bartlett1:22:20

        Potentially, yeah.

    29. KKKonstantin Kisin1:22:21

        So, so let's make sure that we don't go to war.

    30. SBSteven Bartlett1:22:23

        Yeah.
23. 1:26:27 – 1:33:58

    Nobody Can Stop It So How Do You Live?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:27

       I would think that we can have an impact, though. I think even you watching Eric Schmidt be booed at that university commencement speech he did by 7,000 students-

    2. KKKonstantin Kisin1:26:36

       Mm

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:36

       ... was a consequence of what a lot of us do. I mean, all of us do, where we put information out into the world and we have the public conversation.

    4. KKKonstantin Kisin1:26:42

       Mm-hmm.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:43

       And once upon a time, maybe we wouldn't have been able to do that because there's, there was gatekeepers in media.

    6. KKKonstantin Kisin1:26:47

       Mm.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:48

       But now the public is, I think... And then you think about the 2028 election cycle. What are the issues that are really gonna be on the ballot? I think AI is gonna be a massive one.

    8. KKKonstantin Kisin1:26:57

       Mm. I think you're optimistic about that.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:59

       Really?

    10. KKKonstantin Kisin1:26:59

        I think most people don't get this conversation.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:27:01

        You don't think it's gonna be a big issue?

    12. KKKonstantin Kisin1:27:02

        Not as big as you think it is, I think. The reason I say this is we all think and talk about this a lot. One of the reasons is we've all, I imagine, been to San Francisco and seen and talked to people, et cetera. The overwhelming majority of people don't have that experience, and most people's ma- biggest exposure to AI is they tried an early model two years ago. It was totally inaccurate-

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:27:22

        Mm

    14. KKKonstantin Kisin1:27:22

        ... and they went, "Oh, this is a bit shit," and moved on with their lives. It's kind of where most people are at this point.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:27:26

        But you think in the next two years there'll be unemployment levels, especially the entry level stage of employment, and y- then you're gonna see on the other side that Anthropic hits a $10 trillion valuation.

    16. KKKonstantin Kisin1:27:37

        Yeah.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:27:37

        And that, you know-

    18. KKKonstantin Kisin1:27:38

        People won't make that connection. They'll say, "Oh, I'm, I'm unemployed because Trump is bad." Or they'll say, "I'm unemployed because Burnham is bad." That's how people think, uh, unfortunately. And by the way, in terms of, you know, impact, et cetera, I've talked to a few people who are, not, not the very people at the top, but, uh, from what I hear, they are kind of similar. There's a messianic cult in, in, in, in Silicon Valley-

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:27:59

        Yeah

    20. KKKonstantin Kisin1:27:59

        ... of people who believe that they are on the frontiers of being God, and most of them are young men who are very, uh, very seduced by the idea of being God, as young men have always been. And when I see them, I, I see them as... It's not that they're addicts exactly, but there is, there's a gold rush happening.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:28:18

        Mm.

    22. KKKonstantin Kisin1:28:19

        Except it's not gold. It's, it's power. It's destiny. It's the ultimate technological breakthrough. It, it's your name in history. These are things that are way more powerful than gold. And what I see happening in Silicon Valley is a bunch of young men who are, uh, absolutely determined to get there as quickly as possible, and there is no way in hell they're gonna stop.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:28:43

        I know. I think you're right. I mean, that's also what I've heard in sort of some private conversations where, you know, some of my friends who know these people have told me these kinds of things.

    24. KKKonstantin Kisin1:28:51

        And, and they have very good arguments, by the way, and we should give credit to those arguments. They will say, and I can, I can present to you that argument, "Look, I, with my frontier model, am going to solve cancer. I, with my frontier model, am going to solve inequality. I, with my frontier model, will make sure that human beings never fight another war again. I, with my frontier model-

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:29:13

        Mm

    26. KKKonstantin Kisin1:29:13

        ... will make sure that no child ever dies in infancy ever again. How can you be against this?"

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:29:20

        Mm.

    28. KKKonstantin Kisin1:29:20

        "How can you say we must go slower? How can you say we must be careful? Why should I be careful when I'm saving lives, billions of lives? Humanity. I am saving humanity from nuclear disaster. I am saving humanity from climate change, which will destroy this planet. If we just go harder at this problem, five years from now we can set up life on a different planet and not worry about climate change."

    29. SBSteven Bartlett1:29:45

        But also China are coming.

    30. KKKonstantin Kisin1:29:47

        China

Episode duration: 1:33:59