Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World

1. 0:00 – 0:42

   Intro

   1. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad0:00

      ... thing with the US is a lot of its economic potential is put in to stop bu- by stupid, uh, regulations, zoning, nuclear, uh, regulations, and you know, the- the thing is once you have bombs dropping across London, it's going to be very obvious that these things have to go. It's a... these sort of things are a luxury belief for Western countries. No elected leader is going to listen to some- i- is going to listen to the people who are currently harming American or British or German, uh, industrial capi- capacity. They're, they're gonna say, "Uh, sucks about the pollution, but we got a war to win." But I also joke to my friends that- that- that- that among our circle, I'm the best at evaluating talent 'cause all my future mutuals end up getting famous.

2. 0:42 – 2:42

   Pradyu

   1. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad0:45

   2. DPDwarkesh Patel0:45

      (intro music plays) Okay. Today, I had the pleasure of speaking with Pradyumna Prasad about the book, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Herbert P. Bix. Pradyu is an incredibly smart young guy. He has a blog and a podcast called Bread & Goods, which you can find at breadandgoods.substack.com.

   3. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:10

      Cool.

   4. DPDwarkesh Patel1:11

      All right. Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with, uh, Pradyumna Prasad, um, who is... who recently graduated high school in, uh, Singapore, and now he just received an Emergent Ventures grant, very recently, uh, to continue work on his, um, great podcast and blog. Excellent. Excellent. So yeah, you, you got the Emergent Ventures grant. What are your plans? What are you... what are you doing?

   5. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:32

      Uh, what am I gonna do with it? I... at the moment I'm working on a bunch of stuff on reserve currencies. It was... it- it has been obs- an obsession of mine for a very long time. So, uh, it's... all the, all the reading is going to end up in writing at some point. Uh, on the longer term, I wanna have a blog where I can answer every single economic history question or economics question I don't know the answer to and nobody else has the answer to. I can answer it here. So, uh, pretty much going to be a mini encyclopedia of questions I'm interested in.

   6. DPDwarkesh Patel2:08

      Excellent. Excellent. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, I'm looking forward to it to peruse. And for the time being, today we're discussing, uh, this book you recommended to me, uh, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Herbert P. Bix.

   7. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad2:19

      Right.

   8. DPDwarkesh Patel2:19

      Um, and so just to give a little bit of context... well, actually, let- just... so let's just say who Hirohito was, right? He was the Japanese emperor. Um-

   9. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad2:26

      Yeah. He was the... he was the third emperor after the... after- after I mean, third emperor after the, um, Meiji Restoration. He was the first one to see Japan as an international power. He was the first and last one to handle it as an international power.

3. 2:42 – 6:22

   Hirohito and Introduction to the Book

   1. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad2:42

      And yeah, Hirohito was the guy responsible for a lot of stuff that happened in East Asia across the mid, uh, 20th century.

   2. DPDwarkesh Patel2:52

      Right. In- including, by the way, World War II, right?

   3. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad2:55

      Right.

   4. DPDwarkesh Patel2:55

      Um, so he- he was the Japanese emperor during World War II. And there's, uh... there's a big controversy around Hirohito because, um, he- he was in charge of Japan during the time that Japan invaded China and committed all the atrocities that we know, uh, we know happened there, um, including the Rape of Nanking. And he was also the Japanese emperor during World War II, during Pearl Harbor, obviously. So the book takes a very critical stance on Hirohito. It claims that Hirohito could have, um, stopped or at least, uh, in many ways, dulled these atrocities. Like, he had that authority. Um, the opposite view, I guess, which is the conventional view, is that Hirohito was kind of a constitutional monarch, much like a British monarch, and that he didn't really have the authority to intervene in politics. And then to the extent that he did, he did his utmost to, like, lessen the impacts of the war, for example, by surrendering in 1945. Um, so now what were your overall impressions of the book, of how well he did defending the thesis that Hirohito should have been tried as a war criminal, um, and so on?

   5. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad4:00

      Yeah. No, I think... I think, uh, the book sort of goes like a synthesis of these two. It says that Hirohito was a constitutional monarch, but he was a constitutional monarch because he chose to be a constitutional monarch. So yeah, he- he... it... in- in theory, on paper, he couldn't do it. It's- it's... it's- it's one of those things where, um, Japanese constitutional law wasn't very well done. I mean, it... for any, uh, anocracy, constitutional law isn't well done, and much more so for Japan. But, uh, Hirohito could have done something. He did not. He chose to be a constitutional monarch. So anyways, the book was- was well-written towards the end, poorly written towards the- the start. I think there was... the difference between a collection of events and a biography is a story, and there was no story at the start. So I think that could have been much improved. But I also think that, um, it's very hard to find people who read through original language sources, in this case Japanese and to a small... to a very small extent, Chinese and English, and then put it into English. So I think, uh, the author deserves a lot of commendation for that.

   6. DPDwarkesh Patel5:08

      Okay. Excellent. Yeah, yeah, so I- I- I agree. The most interesting part about the beginning, and I agree, it was pretty dull, um, was, uh, the author talking about how much Hirohito was influenced by his grandfather, Meiji. Um, so, you know, like, Meiji was the emperor during the time where Japan rapidly, rapidly, rapidly industrialized and kind of became a... went from being a- a kind of like a- a semi-colonized, uh, power to becoming a colonial power itself, uh, you know, ha- having colonies in Korea and Taiwan under Meiji. Um, so it- it's very interesting. You know, I- I- I have, uh, friends who s- kind of think that, um... I have one friend who thinks that y- many of the differences you see between countries can be explained, uh, largely by genetic differences. And I- I think one of the strongest, like, counterarguments to that is just like how different Ja- Japan has been over, like, the last 150 years, like, how many different evolutions it's gone through. And whenever you see these stories of rapid industrialization, it's just very... i- i- i- like, i- i- i- you- you kind of understand how it can happen over many hundreds of years.... how it happens in the case of Japan be- and during the major restorations so fast. It- it kind of stuns me. So, I- I

4. 6:22 – 11:54

   Meiji Restoration and Japan's Rapd Industrialization

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel6:22

      know you've been doing a lot of reading on Chinese industrialization as well, as well as like, uh, industrialization in many, uh, rapid industrialization in many other East Asian countries. Can you explain what happened during the major restoration? Like, how did they get everything up and running so fast?

   2. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad6:34

      Um... Right. Th- the main difference between the pre-1868 Japan, which was the called the Tokugawa shogunate and the Meiji... Uh, and the Meiji era was that Japan had a lot more centralized power. There was one king r- r- r- running the place instead of feudal lords all over. Japan was a lot more open to the rest of the world, you know? Uh, there was the death penalty for- for Japanese who interacted outside of Japan during the Tokugawa shogunate, very, very, uh, brutal in today's words. And, um, Japan basically allowed... Did what- what would be called the holy trinity of industrialization. It had open labor markets, government investment, and basically allowed foreign capital to come in. And so you... A- across East Asia and- and- and across parts of Africa, like Botswana and to a smaller extent South Africa and Nigeria, the best way to get rich historically for countries when there are already other, uh, rich countries is to, uh, take all capitals from the- from the rich countries, copy their- their innovations, and, uh, use all their knowledge on how to get rich to get rich yourself, and then start to slowly push away on their hedgeman. And the results of it are somewhat mixed. The- the US did okayish well, Japan didn't do well, and we're seeing it with China now.

   3. DPDwarkesh Patel7:53

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Uh, is there any particular reason it happened first in, uh, Japan as far as these Asian countries go?

   4. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad7:59

      I mean, okay, that is... (laughs) I'm not a, I'm not a very good, um, source on this because I- I try to avoid the- the historiography of this because it's- it's- it's full of too many, uh, details, 'cause historians haven't done a very good job of it. But my take on it is that, uh, I think it's very much elite dependent, as in the... Uh, first is that the Japanese elite didn't have as much of a rent-seeking class as the Chinese elite did. You know, in- in China, because the country was so big, they- they invented a whole bureaucracy to administer it. The problem was you end up, uh, leaving too much power to the people in between you and the, uh, general public. So they- they en- ended up being sort of, uh, the barriers to modernizing and opening up. But, uh, in Japan that was less so. The second thing is Japan already had a small tradition of worshiping the emperor as god and became politically convenient for the shogunate to now, uh, reemerge. They actually had a small civil war and the... It- it so happened and this was just an accident of luck that the, uh, winners of the civil war happened to be the ones who wanted to open up and make Japan great again. So, uh, one part is that. The second thing is being a small island nation really, um, makes you see the realities of life much clearer. One explanation for why small countries would hav- have better economic policy than large countries is that if you're a small country, the, um, the realities of life are very often more in your face. So when Japanese elites saw the, uh, saw the American ships coming, they're like, "Whoops," you know? "We can't- we can't afford to be irrational anymore about it," and they were forced to modernize. Compare that to a lost... To a lot of East Asia, where they, uh, either could live in their own alternate reality. For example, Indian kings and- and the Qing dynasty in China, you know? The Japanese were just forced to deal with reality a lot faster.

   5. DPDwarkesh Patel10:02

      Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. Um, yeah, I- I also read on your recommendation Lee Kuan Yew's, uh, biography. And though... Uh, so yeah. So this is not the book we're discussing now, so... But just to, uh, just to tie it, uh, with this, it was really interesting to read him just go over all the different issues Singapore had to deal with at... When it got started. You know, the- the fact that it had hostile neighbors, the fact that-

   6. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad10:26

      Yeah.

   7. DPDwarkesh Patel10:26

      ... basically it was gonna lose, like, 25% of its GDP once the British left, uh-

   8. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad10:30

      Yeah.

   9. DPDwarkesh Patel10:30

      ... for their naval bases. And there's something about the fact that you're just, like, on an island, uh, you know, open to any sort of... Open to all the elements basically that I- I guess concentrates the mind.

   10. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad10:43

       Right, exactly. A very underrated measure of leader competence is how close to reality are you. And you see it... Like to skip to 2022 today, right? You saw it over the last two years where leaders who were more in touch with reality respond faster to COVID, got better vaccines, uh, tightened up faster, but also opened up faster. So basically, the- the- the- the Japanese elite in the 1860s w- was a lot more in touch with reality than other countries. And so they knew they were forced to- to open up. And the next part of it was they- they- they opened up and they- and they- and they opened up quick- quick. They got American, uh, industries to come set up in Japan and they basically... A lot of the history of- of- of- of economic development is also the history of intellectual policy. They just- just, uh, had- had what is euphemistically called forced technology transfers so they can learn how to make all the cool gadgets that the Americans had. And by around the 1910s and 1920s, they got rich enough to project their power onto the rest of East Asia. By 1905, they fought a war with Russia and then in... You know, in

5. 11:54 – 15:33

   Industrialization and Traditional Military Norms

   1. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad11:54

      1950, around the same time they- they invaded China and then later they invaded China again. They just didn't deal with the, um, sudden transitions of being a power that is coerced by the Americans but to a power coercing other countries.

   2. DPDwarkesh Patel12:10

      Right. Now, um, I mean, there's a way you can view this where, I don't know, if- if you have that kind of transition happens slowly in a country, you can have norms evolve.... from, um, I- I- I don't know how to put this in a way that's not, uh, derogatory, but norms that are very kind of brutish and very much geared towards, like, uh, the traditional norms of war, which is, like, you destroy the enemy, you pillage and you loot, uh, which is like... Which might make sense if you can, like, loot a village, right? But when you're talking about the capacity of in- in a modern industrial war and you can do that to, like, millions of people, that can become extremely brutal. And, uh, I- I don't know, it seems like in the West, uh, once industrialization happened, there was, like, enough time for things to simmer down before these countries were introduced to the worst weapons. And I... Uh, y- you could argue that the World Wars are a counter-example. But even still, um, on the, on the, um, on the E- Eastern theaters, uh, the... Oh, sorry, I mean, the, the Western theater, the- the- the, uh, the- the... There were just... There just weren't the kind of atrocities that you saw the Japanese, uh, make in the Pacific theater and in China. So, uh, I- m- like, one of the downsides of rapid industrialization is your cultural norms don't catch up to your technology. And so you have, like, almost these- these people who have, like, uh, very- very traditional norms around war with very modern weapons, and it gets pretty scary.

   3. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad13:32

      ... good or scholar stage. There's a very good essay on honor culture versus respect versus justice. I'm- I'm paraphrasing here. But overall, less industrialized societies have strong patriarchal cultures because, uh, for better or worse, it's the men who end up doing the work and they got more of the respect. And there's a... There's a lot of de- debate and literature about this, but that's more or less my understanding of it, right? So you're- you're right that the norms don't catch up, but I think you're wrong that... Even in the West, the norms didn't catch up for a long time, right? Uh, think of colonialism. Only very, very few people in the House of Commons thought they should impeach Warren Hastings for his atrocities in, uh, East India or to the- to the East India Company. So obvi-... So it's- it's not only in Japan that- that norms didn't catch up. It's almost everywhere that norms didn't catch up. Norms take a lot- lot of time to catch up. And in Japan, well, the first thing is that the Japan you see today is mostly... is- is artificial in the sense that it is a... it is an artifact of America, of the, of the Americans jumping in and putting a gun to the Japanese cabinet and saying, "You better, uh, accept the constitution we make." And some parts of the Japanese left that really liked it, some parts didn't. And... But it... They basically forged a coalition of- of- of only people who- who liked it and old people, uh, uh, people from the old regime who are willing to accept the new, uh, re- reality. So norms can change quick, but they... but when they do, they change with the power of a gun, not by some internal organic process. As to your question of why was there so much atrocity, you- you are correct in saying that norms didn't change, but I also think that public choice theory is what explains a lot of, uh, Japanese war crimes across the, uh, 1900s. I mean, the entire early 20th century, right? The... Uh, my entire understanding of the book was that it could have been written by any public choice theorist and been, uh, and would have ended up- ended up the same. So let's think of it

6. 15:33 – 17:46

   Alternate Causes for Japanese Atrocities

   1. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad15:33

      this way. The Japanese army was powerful historically from the 1860s. They fought a war in 1905. They were always scared the Soviet Union after when... after it was formed was going to invade them and as historical vengeance, also because it was just a lot better run than the Tsarist Ru- Russia. But the problem was the Depression hit, and then the army and navy got mad that they, that their spending was cut. So they- they just kept inventing problems in East Asia for them to have their budget increased. And, uh, some part of inventing problems involve li- in... uh, involves lying about them. All- all- all allied bu- bureaucracies exaggerate their problems, but the army took the more extreme step of creating problems itself.

   2. DPDwarkesh Patel16:14

      Oh, yeah, yeah.

   3. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad16:14

      And then, uh, he's like, "Uh, we- we created this mess and we need money to solve it or else you're going to die." And then the- the Japanese government was weak enough to give them money and, uh, got drawn into World War II (laughs) .

   4. DPDwarkesh Patel16:27

      Yeah, so let- let- let me just, um, uh, let me just, like, fill in the details for the audience. So in 1931, um, uh, in- in- in ja- in Japanese-controlled Manchuria, the Japanese military stages a sort of attack on, uh, one of their railroads, if I remember, uh, if I remember correctly. And it's, like, pretty obviously staged by the military. It's not even that big of a attack. Um, or sorry, it's staged by the Japanese military and it- it- it doesn't cause major damage, but the military then uses it as justification to invade, um, the rest of China without permission from the emperor or with the rest of the civilian government. But yeah, so ba- basically, uh, what- what you have... Uh, and then so public choice theory comes in because you have, like, these, uh, uh, fa- uh, political factions in Japan who are like trying to control Japanese policy not in the best interest of Japan itself but because of what they're, uh... what- what is in the best interest of themselves as a faction. Um, in fact, I interviewed Richard Hanania recently on my podcast, and as you know, he has a book out called, uh, Public Choice, uh, Public Choice Theory and the Illusion of Grand Strategy where it makes-

   5. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad17:27

      Right.

   6. DPDwarkesh Patel17:27

      ... exactly this point where, uh, he's- he's arguing that unitary actor model does not apply to nation states, uh, because they're very influenced by these sorts of, um, factions and individuals in special interest groups like, for example, the military in, um, uh, the- the military and then specifically the Imperial

7. 17:46 – 22:17

   Richard Hanania's Public Choice Theory in Imperial Japan

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel17:46

      Way faction in Japan. But so there's many examples of this where, like, um, the, uh, uh, army officers, just, like, killed the prime minister at one point in, uh, I think it was 1936. And when- when they go to trial, they just say, "Yeah, we did this war because we're, like, loyal to the emperor and the prime minister was... you know, he wa- he wasn't nationalistic enough." And they get, like, very light sentences. Um, uh, you... so you- you- you know, it- it's called the government by assassination, uh, wh- what- what the government was like at this time.

   2. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad18:13

      I agree. A few things here, right? The first thing is that Japan had a very unique constitutional model as far as it could be called a constitutional model, which is- it was just... it was just ad hoc as... You know.A big problem in people's understanding of history is that they don't... They just don't realize that a lot of times, big events are just some guy deciding things, and so a lot of these things end- end up exactly as you would expect, some guy who end up deciding them. And so the big problem here is that, well, the way the- the- the Japanese constitution was designed was that the civilian government elec- more, um, elected by- by men with property, I don't remember the exact details. They had control only o- over every part of the government except the military. And most countries, like in the US you have a requirement that, uh, all defense secretaries should not have served in the military or if they have served there- there- there has to be some sort of, I think a five-year or seven-year gap to ensure that you have civilian control on the military, right?

   3. DPDwarkesh Patel19:12

      Right.

   4. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad19:12

      But-

   5. DPDwarkesh Patel19:12

      Defense secretaries can't have served in the m- uh...

   6. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad19:14

      No, no. Y- you have to have a- a five-year gap or something and if, and if you don't-

   7. DPDwarkesh Patel19:19

      Oh.

   8. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad19:19

      ... meet that gap, you have to get a waiver from Congress.

   9. DPDwarkesh Patel19:21

      Okay. Yeah, yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. Okay.

   10. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad19:24

       Okay? So that's to maintain civilian control on the military and a lo- a lot of countries don't do very well on that, right? To go on a sort of a tangent, Pakistan is alwa- is- is one of those places where you have very poor civilian control on the military, so the military just keeps, like, doing stuff and the government is forced to react to it. Then- then in most Western democracies, it's- it's the other way around. The crazy Western does something and the military is like, "Whoops. Now we're- now we're in this war and we gotta deal with it." In Japan, the problem was your army ministers were- were, well, part of the army. They weren't representing the civilian government, they were representing the- the- the army. To give you an example, it's- it's a- it's a funny thing. The Indian ambassador... So in the 1960s, India was having a, um... it was- was having high tensions with- with China which- which ended up in a war in 1962. I think it was V.K. Menon who was India's ambassador to China. And, you know, V.K. Menon came and told Nehru, you know, this happened, that happened, Chinese want this and Chinese want that. And Nehru asks him quite, uh, annoyed, "Are- are you our, um, ambassador to them or are you their ambassador to us?" And it's the- it's the- it's the same problem with the army minister being part of the army. Is he representing the civilian government or the- or the army? Nobody knows. And that led to a sort of a elite capture of the civilian government by the army. There's another great book, I- I- I forgot the title, but it was d- discussed on- on ChinaTalk a lot. Um, and basically it explains that the army took control of the entire civilian government and basically said, "You've got to prepare for total war." "Why?" "Because we said so." And they basi- and, uh, they reorganized the functions of government a lot to, um, to achieve this objective.

   11. DPDwarkesh Patel21:08

       Yeah. Yeah. Um, there's, uh, there's, like, a pretty well-known quote about the Pakistani, um, uh, military which can be applied, uh, equally as well to Japan in this era which is that in most countries, the government has a military. In Pakistan and I guess in this case Japan, the- the g- the military has a government, right?

   12. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad21:25

       Yeah, no, no.

   13. DPDwarkesh Patel21:26

       So... Uh, okay, so th- that's what's playing into here. And now, now the claim of the author is that at various points where the military's power is growing and it's doing more and more audacious things, it's, like, directly contradicting the will of the civilian government. Th- the civilian government says, like, "Hey, what are you doing, like, invading these other parts of China? Like, go- go- you know, stop this." And the go- uh, the military leaders are just like, "Uh, yeah, fuck it. We're- we're going in."

   14. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad21:46

       Mm-hmm.

   15. DPDwarkesh Patel21:47

       And so at- at this point, the, um, um, uh, Biix is like, uh... the author, he's, like, um... Uh, the emperor who is... I- it- 'cause, like, he has a unique role here where he has such moral authority because the army is claiming to... Like, i- in the US it's not like if there was this... um, if- if there is this sort of, like, military coup, the gov- the gover- um, assuming the president's not in favor of it, the government, the army- military is not going to be like, "We're doing this in the name of the president," right? Uh, whereas in Japan it was like, "W- w- w- for the glory

8. 22:17 – 25:16

   Hirohito's Relationship with the Military

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel22:17

      of the emperor and the empire we're, you know, we're going to invade." So the... Biix is like, yeah, he could have just been like, "Yeah, this is not in my name," right? And he doesn't do that.

   2. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad22:24

      Yeah.

   3. DPDwarkesh Patel22:24

      He- he issues, like, these very mild, if at all, condemnations, um, whenever these kinds of things happen, and so they keep escalating and escalating. Um, a- and so- and so yeah.

   4. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad22:36

      Yeah. So a f- a few things about that, right? So it- so a lot of it, um... there's a question in- in the way you think about history is how much of it is contingent on, uh, you know, structural forces and how much of it is contingent on actual people. And foreign policy is one of the three places of history where things are contingent on actual people, and one of those actual people was Hirohito. The problem with Hirohito was that even as a child he was very mild-mannered, uh, his tutors described him as, you know, he wouldn't win- win any debates, wasn't really a good public speaker. And the- the Japanese government and the Japanese state (laughs) very different than the Japanese government, were very concerned that the public support for the emperor was going down so they went to, so they went to- to England to learn how England did it. And the problem was that Hirohito was not the- the right person for this job because the job demanded, uh, a little closer to what a modern day politician's job demands, a lot of public opinion formation, a lot of, um... how do I put it? Dealing with, uh, various factions inside and, um, you know, uh, lying to a lot of people and keepi- and- and keeping them, uh, quiet. But Hirohito was just not politically s- suave enough to do it. And that was the... the clear problem here was that he didn't underst- even if he understood, he didn't... he didn't understand clearly the level of impact he had, and- and- and- and he had this, uh, personal teams mindset of I...

   5. DPDwarkesh Patel24:10

      (laughs)

   6. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad24:10

      We can probably link to this. He had this- this- this- this personal teams mindset of like, "Eh...... it's not worth it. Let- But then, you know, that's what led to his, his downfall in the end. To what extent was Hirohito responsible for this? My, my answer is, um, it depends on your definition of responsible. Could he have stopped it? Probably. Could he have lessened it? Definitely. Could he have led to, uh, m- have it have lesser... Have it have a less stupid direction of the, of the war, right? One of my biggest beliefs is that the entirety of Japanese military strategy across, uh, the World War was completely stupid. They were shooting themselves in the head. I'm, I'm, I'm going to go on a rant here if that's fine with you.

   7. DPDwarkesh Patel24:51

      Yeah, please do.

   8. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad24:52

      Okay, so ba- so basically Japan was really, really scared of a war with the Soviet Union for obvious reasons. They're their largest neighbor and they, and they were get- and, and they were getting richer and richer under Lenin and Stalin because, you know, uh, transformations from agriculture to industry has made every single country rich. Okay? The problem was Japan was smaller with lesser people, and obviously they would have lesser

9. 25:16 – 33:53

   Rant on Japanese Strategy

   1. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad25:16

      ammunition and military power during the war. The Japanese war planning said, "Okay, we're going to plan for war with the Soviet Union." Naturally if you're going to plan for war with the Soviet Union, you should plan for the war with the Soviet Union. You should not plan for war with China or with the Philippines or America or with, uh, Malaya, right? But what they did in the 1930s was they said, "Oh, we have this," and public choice problems forced them into, into entering, um, uh, China. And, you know, the, the Japanese army wanted to be relevant, the Japanese Navy wanted to be, uh, relevant. They just kept, like, nudging, provoking the, the Chinese into attacking them. So, what the original plan was, "We will use our assets in Manchuria to fight the Soviet Union, and we need Korea... and we need Manchuria because to pro- to protect all the assets in Korea." A sort of a, a early to- 20th century version of domino theory. And then they, they did that.

   2. DPDwarkesh Patel26:09

      Oh, so sorry.

   3. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad26:10

      But-

   4. DPDwarkesh Patel26:10

      Just to shut up. Uh, for the audience, Ma- Manchuria is this region in China, uh, like the, uh, the Northeast. That's like the-

   5. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad26:15

      Yeah, in the Northeast of China.

   6. DPDwarkesh Patel26:16

      Yeah, no, it borders Korea.

   7. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad26:16

      Yeah, that-

   8. DPDwarkesh Patel26:17

      Uh, rich resources-

   9. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad26:18

      That borders Korea.

   10. DPDwarkesh Patel26:19

       ... that Japan needed. Yep.

   11. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad26:20

       Yeah, it's, it, it's very rich in iron and minerals-

   12. DPDwarkesh Patel26:23

       Yeah.

   13. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad26:23

       ... and so on. And the original plan was that they would use their resources in Manchuria for doing it. Now, why did they want to use their resources in Manchuria in general? The answer is that, uh, Japanese, uh, military planners saw this, um... The model they built their government wo- Their government, the entire thing, including trade policy and everything, was Imperial Germany. The problem was Imperial Germany lost World War I, th- so they went, did this entire sort of, like, self-reflection period. Why did they lose World War I? The answer was Imperial Germany really never had the resources to win World War I. They were blockaded by the, by the British and so on, right? So their answer was, "We're going to get Manchuria and we're going to use it so in any future wars we don't, we, we don't lose it." Finally, uh, if you don't want to lose any future wars, a good way of not losing wars is to not get into ones you can't win. (laughs) And so... But they didn't do that. They, they just walked into Japan. That was mistake number one. The problem with walking into, into, into, into, into China in the 1930s... I said Japan earlier, my bad.

   14. DPDwarkesh Patel27:24

       Yeah.

   15. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad27:24

       Problem with, with walking into China in 1930s is that it's a, it's a war that pisses off a lot of people, right? So Hiroyuki Mito of modern Japan mentions it. The Americans were quite outraged by it because the, it was the, uh, what would be called the Mutual China Principle. All colonial powers would be completely f- uh, fair in, in, in using Chinese resources for their own industrialization. You know, a ver- (laughs) a very morally poor thing to say, but that, that's how morality was back then. Like, whatever, okay? And so the point was this pissed off the, the, the Americans and the British and the French and... and, you know, that re- it's, it's, it's useful to have powerful friends, especially when, when your end goal is world domination, right? So they did that. And then the, the problem is you can't really, uh... China doesn't have much oil. Japan doesn't have much oil. And all their oil was imported from the US. All their atrocities in turn led to very bad publicity in the, in the US, you know, American public opinion on China. Especially because the answer historically for governments has been, "Don't piss off, don't piss off the Church too much." And Japanese governments s- didn't know about that because, well, they were their version of the Church. But the Japanese ad- atrocities in East China led to Am- American missiony- missionaries in China going to America and reporting it to the American public. And the American public got really outraged by it. So by the 1930s you had this sort of, like, mini movement among the more religious people saying, "We should not have American resources in- uh, involved in the Japanese pillage of China." And so there was a lot of domestic pressure on the American end trying to, uh, stop them. Japan... So mistake number two was pissing off the Am- Americans, right? The problem with pissing off the, the Americans almost all the time is that almost all of Japanese oil imports came from America, right? Saudi Arabia wasn't a thing back then. So all of, uh, all of Japanese oil imports came from America.

   16. DPDwarkesh Patel29:23

       Like, it's like 97% or something like that.

   17. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad29:25

       Yeah, yeah. Like what we have.

   18. DPDwarkesh Patel29:26

       Almost all, literally.

   19. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad29:27

       Yeah. In the, in the, in the high 90s. And they, and it's not like wanted to make synthetic oil, but that didn't, didn't work very well. The history of oil, of, like, countries thinking they can, they can make their own oil is kind of funny because Deng Xiaoping almost, like, uh, 30, 40 years after this thing, uh, told his, uh, cabinet that China would finance its industrialization because it had some oil plans, and it kinda didn't work out because, you know, it took a lot of re- re- resources to make oil, which China didn't have and Japan doesn't, didn't have it at that point in time. So anyways, that aside, that, that aside aside, you basically have mistake number, uh, two was pissing off the, the US (laughs) . And so Hirohito, you know, to what extent was the emperor responsible for this? I don-... I, here's where I will put my structural hat on and, and tell you that Hirohito was not prepared to deal with these challenges. The first thing was all... No country had ever dealt with total war before in East Asia, right? Wars used to happen in East Asia, obviously, but they were sort of like the European wars before World War I. You'd send a few people to fight and you fight and you lose. Well, it sucks. But you'd never mobilize your, your, your entire economy. There'd be a new type of war which Hirohito wasn't... didn't know of. He, you, you could model it, but the guy wasn't kind of smart, you know? He wouldn't... He, he wasn't the, the sharpest tool in the, in the, in the shed. So he really wasn't prepared to model, like, this, this sort of war.

   20. DPDwarkesh Patel30:57

       Huh. I mean, but wasn't the Taiping Rebellion, like, one of the deadliest things in history or something like that?

   21. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad31:01

       The... Yeah, but-

   22. DPDwarkesh Patel31:01

       I mean, it seems like a civil war, but-

   23. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad31:03

       It's a, it's a civil war, but the difference between a conventional war and, and a civil war is that in a conventional war, the- the- the Taiping, uh, Rebellion didn't have much organization. There was just people going and killing each other. There, there was no ammunitions factory that said, "This month, we- we're going to make X thousand guns 'cause our soldiers need, need, need to fight it." Compare that to World War II where, you know, you had the guys with the... You had a bunch of lots of economic planning in the, in the US very successfully managed to say, "We, we have to make these many guns and these many bombs to fight the German and Japanese." Right? But that sort of thing was very underdeveloped. In a, a very different aside, a, a big problem with having your, um... in, in, in not having high level manufacturing like America had with automobiles is that you don't... In wartime, what is useful is being able to coordinate large amounts of resources to their desired purpose. And people like... Peo- people make the joke that, uh, that Amazon and Walmart are centrally planned economies and it's, well, it's slightly half a joke because in World War II when the US needed central planning, it, it didn't, it didn't, it didn't go to the Department of Commerce. It went to, it went to Ford and GM and said, "We have, uh, like, like a five times bigger version of you and we need your managers to run this 'cause you're, you're the only people who know how to." But Japan didn't have that sort of experience. The Japanese planning board, you know, it talks about the various problems. Supplies didn't come and, and like is Hirohito responsible for this? Kinda. He didn't... In, in, in the end, the emperor is responsible, but, but also because the guy couldn't do it. He, he didn't have the tools to do it. And the reasons for that are, are, are much deeper than Hirohito himself, is that if you read through the first part of the book, Hirohito didn't have much of an education in, in economics or science or, or, or... I mean, science to a small extent because it was considered a noble subject, but all engineering, right? If you, if you asked him a question which, uh, w- the answer to which "I learned in seventh grade, how do you extract iron?" He probably wouldn't know it. He, he, he wouldn't be able to think to model through those things. So the problem was no economy was prepared for total war because they'd never done it before, but Japan was the first country to say, "Yeah, let's do it," and they paid the price for it. (laughs)

   24. DPDwarkesh Patel33:23

       Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you, you bring up the, uh, you're bringing up Pissing Off America. I think... So we picked this war before the Ukraine... uh, we picked this book before the Ukraine thing happened, but people have been making this analogy so we might as well talk about it. So as, as you know that people have been making this analogy between Ukraine today, the situation in Ukraine today, and what was happening with China and Japan, um, before World War II. So the idea is that, uh, what happened with, uh, Japan was they were... They, they invaded China, they did all these atrocities,

10. 33:53 – 39:05

    Modern Parallel to Russia/Ukraine

    1. DPDwarkesh Patel33:53

       they invaded different parts of Indochina, um, and this pissed off America. So America embargoed, um, iron, steel, copper, and most importantly oil, uh, exports to Japan. They froze their assets in the US which basically prevented them from buying oil, and the Japanese war machine required oil. So then basically Japan decided, "Um, we're going to have to invade other parts of Indochina to get this oil, but to do that, we're going to need to, um, we're going to need to invade American's sphere of influence, like places like the Philippines. And to do that we're probably going to first need to disable America's ability to wage war in the Pacific. And to do that we're going to have to bomb Pearl Harbor." So the analogy goes that what we're doing with Russia is similar in the sense that we're... You know, just, just as Japan invaded China and we responded, uh, the US responded back then, um, uh, Russia has invaded Ukraine and we're responding very strongly with sanctions now.

    2. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad34:45

       Yeah.

    3. DPDwarkesh Patel34:46

       And maybe Russia feels like it's gonna become backed up in a corner and therefore it decides to launch like a conventional attack against, I don't know, NATO headquarters in Europe or something, and from there you have an all-out war. So I, I... What, what do you think-

    4. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad34:58

       It'd be very, it'd be-

    5. DPDwarkesh Patel34:59

       What do you think of this analogy? Do you think it's, uh, valid or applicable?

    6. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad35:02

       Yeah. They'd be very stupid to do that, but historically Putin's actions have, have been more stupider, so you can't, (laughs) you can't model him through your rational active model. To what extent does the ana- analogy apply? Uh, to a much less extent. The first thing is Russia can... Okay, actually it does apply, but, but in a different way. Uh, a lo-... Russia is dependent on the Western world in... not in terms of oil, they have a lot of that themselves, but in terms of things like, you know... Dentist offices in Russia have shut down because the crowns and bridges and the sort of stuff you need to do to make fillings are made in Germany and the, and the US. They're very dependent on these sort of like highly specialized small scale things, and you can't find that outside, (laughs) outside the West. So yeah. Are they gonna have another war? I da-... Are they gonna escalate it? Base rate, say, is very low. I'm gonna go slightly higher than the base rate but very low with small possibility. So does the ana- analogy apply? Probably not. Uh, Japan was a, was a, was a militant country in the sense that the... You don't see the level of elite capture you had in Japan today in Russia, right? It just didn't exist back then, exist as it, as it is now. So that's your first problem. The second problem is Russia wants Ukraine and it knows through historical experience, right? Putin was a KGB lieutenant colonel. He, he knows that, uh-... what are the costs of a protracted, uh, level of atten- of military tension with the US? And it's very, very obvious to anyone watching here right now, that if the EU decides to re-arm and the US continues, just continues its current level of armament, I'm not predicting a- a level of armament towards the 1980s, right? Uh, they will overpower Russia in every single margin. So, will they do that? I don't think so. But I think the- the main objective right now for Western policymakers should be, uh, get Putin to save face and back out without, you know, pushing him into a corner. Are they going to push h- push him into a corner? I- I don't think so. It's gonna be very bad for people living in Russia now, but, uh, so far, he's not as stupid as to go and invade, uh, Poland, or Estonia, or, uh, literally go to the Netherlands and kill the NATO Secretary General. That'd be s- that would suck a lot because of... Well, it's World War III, I'm stuck in Singapore, so I'm sort of halfway between the East and the- and the, and the West. Sucks for me. But I doubt the- the analogy applies because they're not captured enough by the military for the, uh, rest of the government to care.

    7. DPDwarkesh Patel37:47

       Mm. Yeah, I mean, uh, as far as, uh, the stupidity goes, uh, you could continue the metaphor by saying that it was very stupid of Japan. People were saying this back then. I think- I think Hirohito said it himself, right? Which was, um, like, listen, uh, the US has, like, a much higher GDP per capita, even has a higher population, so, um, that, the idea that we're going to be able to win a war against them is, uh, you know, i- i- i- it's very stupid. And e- even if you, like, plan out everything, like, we're going to have this offensive that, in a few months, we're going to capture all these islands in the Pacific, and we're going to d- destroy their Pacific fleet, um, e- even then, it's like, it- it- it was just such a... It was such a daring scheme, like, it w- I- I don't know what it would have taken for the whole scheme to work. But, you know, so, like, uh, I don't know. I- I don't- I don't think we should underestimate the stupidity of, uh, nation-states.

    8. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad38:36

       I was doing some work on this last week. Uh, allied GDP, uh, was almost always greater than axis G- uh, GDP for the entire of the war, not counting colonies of either. And for a majority of the war, the allies were... had a GDP twice that of the axis powers (laughs) . So, uh, they were very, very stupid. It would be like... How do- how... What's a good analogy here? It would be like

11. 39:05 – 48:57

    Economics of War and Western War Capacity

    1. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad39:05

       Denmark going to war with UK. Like, maybe you will... uh, maybe you will capture a bit of Scotland, but swear to God, once the UK starts re-arming, there's no way (laughs) you can win.

    2. DPDwarkesh Patel39:17

       Right. So, th- you know, reading this, uh... 'Cause, you know, I was looking at the same numbers, uh, earlier today, or not the same, but, uh, those kinds of numbers, uh, where... Like, at the time, Japan had, in 1935, it had a GDP per capita that was, like, a- almost a 10th of the US's. And, you know, I was thinking about this, and I was thinking about, in the future, like, let's say there's a-

    3. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad39:34

       It wasn't a 10th actually. I'm not sure where- where- where you got your numbers from. But I have a book, uh, open called The Costs of World War II, and it's- it's around 40%. Yeah.

    4. DPDwarkesh Patel39:43

       Oh, okay.

    5. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad39:43

       The US was 5,800 something, Japan was 2,700 something, around 40%.

    6. DPDwarkesh Patel39:48

       Okay. That sounds way more reasonable. Um, yeah. Okay.

    7. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad39:50

       Yeah.

    8. DPDwarkesh Patel39:50

       That makes sense. Uh, but... And then, uh, it also had a bigger population, right? So it's a total- bigger total GDP.

    9. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad39:54

       Yeah, yeah.

    10. DPDwarkesh Patel39:54

        Um...

    11. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad39:54

        It's- it's- it's- it's the GDP in that bandage here.

    12. DPDwarkesh Patel39:56

        And... Yeah, yeah. So, uh, I was thinking about this, um, like, with the potential that, in the future, if there's a conflict between the US and China, um... You know, like, the analogy is like, oh, we ha- we have a b- bigger current military, like, we spend way more on, uh, the military now than China does. But if it has a higher industrial capacity, if it has a higher GDP, um, maybe in like a- a year or like a couple of months of conflict, all- all the stuff you have so far is kind of useless, or, you know, it- like, it doesn't matter as much as your capacity-

    13. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad40:22

        Yeah.

    14. DPDwarkesh Patel40:22

        ... as a U- in the- as a... Sorry, as- as the US had, uh, d- during the World War II. It just, like, produced more stuff.

    15. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad40:29

        Yeah, no, I agree. So, to what extent would, like, that thing's... The first thing is that, in a short-term conflict, you would have the US outmatched directly in- in- in, like, every single thing, right? Not because of the US, but it's US plus EU. And thing is, it's... (laughs) So, if you told somebody in 1922 that 100 years later, the EU is, like, what we call Europe today, is disarmed, they would laugh at you. It's historically not the norm for- for European countries to not spend illogical amounts of their, uh, economy on defense, right? Just because they- they fight a lot, and now they've been, they- they're fighting a lot again, so it's a conflict (laughs) per- per continent. So basically, I find that very, uh... Like, the moment you attack the US, you are also, uh, s- more or less attacking, with or without NATO, a lot of countries dependent on the US. So, uh, a lot of those countries... So, in the short term conflict, you would obviously be depending on only American defense because they're the only power ready to wage war in, like, uh, 15 minutes time. But in a 15-month span, you would, uh... No other grouping of countries can match what the West has now, just because the West is technologically superior. So, maybe in the time span of like six months to 12 months, you- you'd see a lot of Chinese advances, but in the time span of, uh, 12 months plus, it would be very quick for the West to re-arm and... You know? 'Cause the West has a sense of competency about- about- about- about wars. All the wars that they fought are in the Middle East and very far away, right? So... At least, uh, the moment it starts hitting you, right, the moment you have bombs flying on their head, you're like... It becomes a lot more real to people. So, uh, there's no question that you would have a similar scenario. Uh, UK plus EU... so US plus EU GDP is like $31 trillion, and China plus Russia GDP i- is like 40 today maybe? I- I don't know. I'm just, I'm just ballparking numbers here. But China plus Russia GDP is like...... maybe 30 trillion. I can guarantee you, this 40 trillion is a lot more productive (laughs) than this 30 trillion because a lot of it is just, you know... For all the chaos that the American economy goes through, the chaos makes it more productive. So you're going to have... You have a, you have a lot less ghost cities and a lot less corruption on, on this end of the, uh, new Cold War.

    16. DPDwarkesh Patel43:04

        Yeah, yeah, I guess one concern is, um, I don't know how true this is, I just heard from, like, The Zeitgeist is the idea that we, we don't have the industrial capacity that we're used to. So the GDP is higher, but it's, uh, the industrial capacity we, we shipped elsewhere. Um, I, I, I don't know how true that is. Um, ?

    17. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad43:19

        I, I, I think that is... Industrial capacity is overrated. Please, it's 2022. First thing being, right, a lot of initial war is going to be very high tech. You've got to have underwater drones that like, uh, uh, uh-

    18. DPDwarkesh Patel43:32

        What is an underwater drone? (laughs)

    19. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad43:35

        It's, it's, it's exactly what it sounds like. It's an aut- autonomous vehicle that's underwater. It's like a... You, you take a drone that can swim.

    20. DPDwarkesh Patel43:43

        Okay. Yeah, yeah.

    21. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad43:44

        It's exactly what it sounds like, right? You have drone and then you have a lo- a lot of, uh, satellite target... Like, these satellites targeted for you and then you bomb them u- using the, the, the satellite imagery, right? Initially in a war, uh, human intelligence is going to be very important. And now there've been some pretty embarrassing parts for the US on this. Like in 2015, there was a China hack, there was a Chinese hack of the DHS, uh, employee database, which was very embarrassing because... (laughs) Yeah. And then, you know, a l- a l- a lot of CIA assets in China mysteriously disappeared in the years after that. So, uh, sucks. But I also think that the industrial capacity argument goes like this. You know, America is outsourced manufacturing to China. If you have a war with China, they're not going to sell it to us and they won't be able to do it. And my answer is, uh, they started like the story where, you know, the two guys running and there's, there's a bear and, and only one guy has to outrun the, the other. The first thing is, the nice part of ha- of being the largest consumer for your, for your largest trading partner is if you cut your taps off-

    22. DPDwarkesh Patel44:54

        Mm-hmm.

    23. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad44:54

        ... it will hurt you a little, but it's going to hurt them a lot. Where are they going to get the resources to start to, to, to re-industrialize again, right? The Chinese, uh, state-run, uh, economy is not known for its efficiency, okay? The second thing is, if we need to, if the West needs to, they could absolutely always rearm very, very quickly. The... It is, it is, it is, it will be painful, right? Your software engineers who spend maybe 40% of their time working will be forced to work in some stupid factory that, uh, makes javelins, but regardless of the annoyance of it, it will, it will happen, okay? Finally, Dan Wang has the best critique of this. He says that cloud apps don't, don't win wars, and he's right about it. Semiconductors win wars and the US has the nice advantage of being the only and largest ally of Taiwan. And, you know, thing with the US is, a lot of its economic potential is put into stop by, by stupid regulations, zoning, nuclear regulations and, you know, there's, there's, there's a whole Twitter u- universe dedicated to exposing them. I'm not-

    24. DPDwarkesh Patel46:06

        Yeah, I'm aware.

    25. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad46:07

        ... going to spend time on those. The thing is-

    26. DPDwarkesh Patel46:09

        (laughs)

    27. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad46:10

        ... once you get into the... Once you have bombs dropping across London, it's going to be very obvious that these things have to go. So, you know, it's... These sort of things are a luxury belief for vested countries. They can believe in it because, "Yeah, sucks these guys couldn't get a house in New York, but it's not materially harming us in a way that, that it's obvious to us now." I want this to start becoming obvious, you know. No elected leader is going to listen to some... Is going to listen to the people who are currently harming American or British or German, uh, industrial capa- capacity. They're going to say, "Uh, sucks about the pollution, but we got a war to win." (laughs) So it's, it's, it's, it's going to rearm very, very quick and we... One of the reasons I'm very optimistic about the future is that we have, we have a lot of spare capacity left like this because of stupid rules. And, well, once we start removing those, uh, stupid rules, you, you... It's, it's, it's just rocket take off and-

    28. DPDwarkesh Patel47:07

        (laughs)

    29. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad47:07

        ... you know, uh, it's... I'm, I'm being animated because it is going to be very animated like that. People fundamentally underrate the benefit of like a liberal-ish democracy, which then you can change ve- very quick and not blow up while, while doing it. A good historical example is that America had a lot of mess ups early in World War II, right? So there... So during the Phony War, the Phony War was this, uh, sort of like lull in 19... It was in the 1930s, I don't know, '40, can't remember, in, in, uh, Europe where there was... There was sort of fighting, but it's not a war yet and it's not like a stalemate. This was called the Phony War for that reason. And American c- the, uh, uh, Congress didn't want America to get involved in it because they were isolationists and they had good reasons, right? And FDR wanted to. But once it became clear that American interests in Britain, uh, were going to be harmed by it, even the most isolationist Congress members changed their mind because of overwhelming public support. So it is going to happen and the thing is people just, um... They're, they're, they're right to assume that, uh, the US doesn't have industrial capacity, but it is wrong to assume that it will never have industrial capacity.

    30. DPDwarkesh Patel48:18

        Mm-hmm. Yeah. I, I hope you're right. I hope you're right.
12. 48:57 – 56:36

    Elements of Effective Occupation

    1. DPDwarkesh Patel48:57

       um, like, very propagand- uh, prop- uh, you know, like, just... S- s- uh, supremely convinced public, uh, that was, like, su- supremely hardcore about the, uh, ideology of, uh, the, uh, imperial way and stuff like that. And, you know, this public, um, you... I- it didn't take that much at all for, you know, the w- western, uh, the w- the western occupation to be able to put in a liberal democratic constitution and basically just, like, turn around the entire trajectory of the country. And whereas if you look at countries that are way weaker, like, you know, um, uh, Afghanistan has, like, uh, like, one- uh, 1,000th of the GDP of America or something like that and we can't, uh, we can't occupy it, right? So like, what was it about Japan, uh, or about our military at the time that made it such a successful occupation? You could say, of course, one major factor is that we had Hirohito, was somebody they viewed in such a, uh... almost as a deity. We had him basically surrendering and cooperating, and that counts for a lot. Um, but... And you know-

    2. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad49:58

       No, no. Okay, okay.

    3. DPDwarkesh Patel49:59

       ... that also explains why he wasn't tried as a war criminal afterwards. But-

    4. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad50:02

       Yeah.

    5. DPDwarkesh Patel50:02

       Yeah, yeah. But is there anything else, like... Well, what, what-

    6. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad50:04

       Yeah, no.

    7. DPDwarkesh Patel50:04

       Why was the occupation in Japan so successful?

    8. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad50:06

       Okay. I- I've- I've thought a lot about this. There's a great book on this called Embracing Defeat, which you should read because it's about the exact thing. It's about Japan after World War II and how the Americans did. So why was Japan a lot more successful than Afghanistan? The first thing is, um, stability is sort of like Lindy, you know? Once- once you have stability under the- the rel- relatives' stability again, under the imperial government, they just change the people at the top, okay? You can't really compare it to Afghanistan because there was- there was chaos before, chaos after. You- you aren't solving the root problems of chaos. It's like, you- you have ethnic tensions. In Japan, the thing was, there was a lot of s- uh, stability. People were really tired of the war. After when Hirohito had his, uh, surrender address, the concern among imperial household, the- the imperial household was that there would be protests ahead of the, um... uh, outside the, uh, palace. The problem was... I mean, like, that was the most... In their view, that was the- the optimal end, that people would be angry with them that they were at the end of the war. Thing was, there were no protests. A few people were- were happy because the- the war ended, a few people were sad that- that they lost, but the- the Japanese public in general had a very, very difficult war. Fun fact, Japanese GDP per capita in 1937 was only achieved back again in 1952. So you can imagine how bad the Japanese public had it. So in some sense, they were very much happier under the Americans.

    9. DPDwarkesh Patel51:40

       I don't know that that's a fun fact (laughs) .

    10. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad51:40

        I mean, it's not a fun fact.

    11. DPDwarkesh Patel51:42

        It's interesting fact (laughs) .

    12. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad51:44

        It's an interesting fact. It's quite a sad one. And when the war was ending, right? You had large-scale looting of Japanese, uh, military supplies because they knew food would be scarce for the next few months or so. And so you had army colonels and majors just stealing food and was completely lawless for a few months till the American military police came and they sort of calmed things down. The- the American occupation of Japan was successful because even the Japanese government was like, "Yeah, we're going to get done with this. We're going to get back to making Japan great again, again." And, uh, that was the most important. And also very interesting, not fun, but- but interesting. MacArthur spoke to the Japanese. MacArthur, I- I don't think he addressed the Japanese public ever, okay? That's very rare if you're an occupying force. They worked through the mechanisms of the previous Japanese government. So also interesting, um, a lot of Japanese... So I think I made this joke on Twitter a while ago. Average Japanese political family; our grandfather was a war criminal not executed because Hirohito asked MacArthur not to. Father was, um, a finance minister in the '80s, current kid is, uh, number five in the NDP leadership election. And like, the answer is, the elite of Japan was not changed after the war. It made it really easy, made it really convenient to continue. They had this- this mass hallucination that, "Oh no, the..." Uh, what is it? I- I- I'm blanking on the- on the guy's name. Yeah, Toji made us- made us do it and the- and the, uh... And the army made us do it. They just continued with the old elite again, you know? It- it didn't change much. So you see a lot of these... Like, it is also very interesting that elites don't change after revolutions. It is not a well appreciated fact, but after the... So there's this great paper, let me, let me find it. But it basically shows that the Chinese elite in 1980s when the country reformed was the same as Chinese elite in 1920s when the country was having economic growth. The same thing with Japan. In 1960s and '70s, the same, uh, family connections made them, you know, be... were powerful again, right? The next thing is that America didn't really change another really big part of Japan. Japan was occupied, as in its formal structures were changed, but it'd be... You would be hierarchically a little crazy to call it a democracy till like 1990 or something. It was just... Bernhard has this great post about East Asian industrialization. I think it's a- it's a- it's on Medium, it's quite popular. And one part of it was, uh, the Ministry of Industry and trade, MIT, I forgot their, um, their full form. And their policies were basically rubber stamped by the lower house of the- of the Diet. And, you know, he's like, there wasn't much difference between those guys and the Soviets up north. So yeah, Japan was a democracy, but it was a democracy.... it didn't re-... it didn't change much.

    13. DPDwarkesh Patel54:53

        Right. Yeah, okay. So, uh, the fact that the elite to begin with was, I guess, open to Western ideas, uh, it- it kind of raises the question of why this elite... where- where- where was this elite during the 1930s and the 1940s?

    14. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad55:07

        Mm-hmm. Many of them were suppressed. The first Japanese prime minister after World War II, I'm blanking on his name again, but, like, he was a left-wing leader and, you know, he's basically one of those, "And we- we shouldn't have war. We shouldn't have war." The Japanese equivalent of the girl offering the flower to the American police guy during the Vietnam War. And those guys were obviously suppressed because it was inconvenient for them. But the... a- a lot of the, a lot of the Japanese left. But also very interesting, the Japanese Communist Party welcomed the American occupation, so (laughs) yeah. So, like, they were seen as the antithesis of this. But, uh, Article 9 of the Japanese constitution, which to those of us who don't know, it states that Japan can't go to war again roughly, right? It says... it says that the c-... uh, that the Japanese state, uh, gives up war as a means of int-... of- of policy. So that basically, like, guarantees... not guarantees, but gives the... gave the, um, new elite a good excuse to stop fighting, to- to stop with that. But the- the problem is where were those people? The ideology is fake. It's just what... it's just what helped them to- to- to get them into power. So now, it's if pacifism helped them gain the power, I guarantee you Hideaki, uh, Toji would have... would have become Mother Theresa. That- that- that- that's- that's not the- the- the ideo-... I don't think many of them really believed in what they... in what they did given that they all switched, like, six months later after 1945 (laughs) . It's very- very hard to make the case they were ideologues.

13. 56:36 – 1:00:08

    Ideological Fervor in WW2 Japan

    1. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad56:36

       They were just opportunists.

    2. DPDwarkesh Patel56:38

       Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure about that. I mean, um, uh, I-... the- the... maybe this is specific to those elites. Uh, I'll tell you, but if you look at, like, the actual soldier class-

    3. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad56:50

       Right.

    4. DPDwarkesh Patel56:50

       ... there you cannot question that you- you had, like, just-

    5. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad56:54

       Right.

    6. DPDwarkesh Patel56:54

       ... ridiculous levels of devotion.

    7. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad56:56

       That's true.

    8. DPDwarkesh Patel56:57

       Yeah. Um, and it's-

    9. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad56:57

       That's true. But the... but the... but the soldier class were, like, sort of, like, selected out of the Japanese elite.

    10. DPDwarkesh Patel57:05

        Yeah, yeah. So, uh, th-... uh, uh, I was just thinking about this earlier, which was that, you know, one of the reason... one of the ways you could explain this, um, uh, like why... w- where does all this nationalistic fervor go is that it died in the Pacific, right? Like all-

    11. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad57:16

        Yeah.

    12. DPDwarkesh Patel57:16

        ... almost nationalistic people were sent out to the front lines and they were just, like, m- massacred. In some cases, like, literally by their own, uh, superiors. Like, there's- there's so many examples where-

    13. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad57:25

        Right.

    14. DPDwarkesh Patel57:25

        ... um, the- the ch-... the Japanese generals just send out their, uh... s- s- send out their-

    15. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad57:31

        Soldiers or whatever.

    16. DPDwarkesh Patel57:31

        ... soldiers to this, like, uh, useless charge, like, direct charges or, like, suicide missions basically. I'm not talking about kamikaze.

    17. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad57:36

        Yeah.

    18. DPDwarkesh Patel57:36

        I'm talking about, like, Vienna charges.

    19. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad57:38

        Or, like, yeah, the- the-

    20. DPDwarkesh Patel57:39

        Um, they're taking a mow down and it just, like-

    21. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad57:41

        The defense of, uh, of- of Okinawa was a great example of that. More people died in that than the, uh, atom bombings. So, yeah.

    22. DPDwarkesh Patel57:50

        Right. It was, like, 150,000 in Okinawa.

    23. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad57:51

        Yeah, 150,000 people. That's al- almost half the population of Okinawa.

    24. DPDwarkesh Patel57:55

        Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um-

    25. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad57:56

        But that was like... it was like very, very brutal.

    26. DPDwarkesh Patel57:58

        Th- there's a great quote, uh, that (laughs) , uh, uh, what was his name? The guy... you know one of those, like, famous gu-... uh, one of those legends that he was the guy in, um, one of these Pacific islands and he was a Japanese soldier.

    27. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad58:11

        Uh-huh.

    28. DPDwarkesh Patel58:11

        And he didn't realize that Japan had surrendered and it was, like-

    29. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad58:13

        Right.

    30. DPDwarkesh Patel58:13

        ... two decades later and he's still, like, killing-
14. 1:00:08 – 1:01:12

    Cynicism on Elites

    1. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:00:08

       who believes that we should nationalize the oil companies, but they never introduce it onto it. They never make the... they never make the- the arguments for it. They never... I mean, like, there are people who are ideologically left wing, they'll just never stay elected for too long. They'll just... the thing is i-... the competitive nature, I mean, to whatever extent it's competitive, of American democracy forces you to temper your- your views and the only way to get ahead is do what the public broadly defined wants. So, yeah.

    2. DPDwarkesh Patel1:00:42

       ... yeah. Okay. So, uh, to bring it back to Hirohito, um, one thing, um, one thing that I found, like, very interesting and very confusing is how this guy got so much fucking adoration. Because, you know, uh, he physically, he was not so imposing. Um, interpersonally, he was not that charismatic, uh, from w- what it seems. Like, he, he just wasn't that, uh, uh, communicative. Um, eh, he wasn't like his grandfather, Meiji. Uh, you can... There's a p- a actually funny picture of him on the internet, where you can see, uh, him next to MacArthur,

15. 1:01:12 – 1:07:30

    The Legend of Godlike Hirohito

    1. DPDwarkesh Patel1:01:12

       uh, you know, the, the, the general that was in charge of occupying Japan after the war. And, you know, like, MacArthur is, like, two feet taller than him. It- it- it- it- it- it, like, he looks like a midget in comparison to MacArthur. Um, and so they-

    2. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:01:24

       Like, if Hirohito... Yeah.

    3. DPDwarkesh Patel1:01:24

       Yeah. So, like-

    4. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:01:25

       He was like-

    5. DPDwarkesh Patel1:01:25

       ... I- I don't understand, like, how are all these, like, super right-winged militaristic guys, uh, like the entire nation really, like... That they're- that they're willing to, like, die for their empire. You know, I- the- the- the one of the things that, like, really made him not like him was... Uh, not like Hirohito, was wha- wha- when the book is talking about how these, uh, Japanese soldiers are, you know, like, the- the last r- few years of the war, that they knew that Japan was going to lose. The reason that these Japanese soldiers are dying is so that w- the idea is instead of an unconditional surrender, we'll try to, like... Uh, we'll, we'll try to show the, uh, the West that we can... We can basically sustain, um, we- we- we can basically sustain this kind of, uh, uh, war for a long time, even if we're going to lose. And so if you want to avoid this, we won't do an unconditional surrender. And the purpose of that was so... Well, one of the purposes of that was so- so that to make sure that it is unconditional... In the conditional surrender, rather, that Hirohito is not tried as a war criminal. Like, that's- that's one of the things that these, uh, you know, like these millions of... What was it? More than a... How many? 1.5 million... No, three million Japanese died, but 1.5 million of Japanese died in the last year of the war.

    6. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:02:28

       Yeah.

    7. DPDwarkesh Patel1:02:28

       Um, and the- the... A lot of them died so that the, the emperor wouldn't be tried as a war criminal, right? And- and-

    8. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:02:34

       Yeah.

    9. DPDwarkesh Patel1:02:35

       ... like, I- I don't know. The- the- the idea that he could have stopped the war earlier, or at least potentially could have stopped the w- war earlier-

    10. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:02:40

        Yeah.

    11. DPDwarkesh Patel1:02:40

        ... but he didn't. And these people-

    12. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:02:41

        Why would they?

    13. DPDwarkesh Patel1:02:42

        ... are just dying for him, uh, in his name, I- I- I didn't like.

    14. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:02:45

        So, yeah. Well, people aren't dying in his name. There's this great, uh... Well, no. You- you should read the other book, which- which is, uh, Japan... So- so quickly, let- let me find this. Japan Prepares for... Yeah. The book is titled, uh, Japan Prepares for Total War. Okay? The thing is, nobody thought the emperor was God. They thought he was godlike. But it's sort of like, he- he- he was like a m- a... It's easier to- to imagine for Hindus, I guess. He was a godlike figure. He's a- he's not God. And they- they sort of saw him as their model leader. Right? The first thing is that they were dying... They- they went into war because the army paid a lot of money. It was a lot better than being in declining Japanese firms as the track quantity by pretty low. So, uh, they didn't have much of a thing. They didn't have much of things to do otherwise, you know? Uh, also interesting. Uh, the first original... The first public health system in Japan was encouraged by the military because they would... Saw all their conscripts being so undernourished and, uh, ill that they're like, "Oh, we can't solve this on- on a military level. We have to have a, uh, systemic response to this." Okay? The second thing is really that, um, why did they die for the emperor? A lot of them believed it, and so they- they died for it. Why did they believe it for such an unconvincing persona? Because he was not a politician. He was... His persona, his- his stature derived from the fact that he was the descendant of the gods. So, you know, it's- it's- it's- it's a... It's- it's- it's not a charisma thing. In authoritarian systems, people don't derive their power from the consent of the governed. They derive it from something else. In this case, something else was, "I'm the descendant of the- of the sun goddess."

    15. DPDwarkesh Patel1:04:35

        Mm-hmm. Yeah. Al- although I... Doesn't that contradict what you said earlier, where you said-

    16. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:04:40

        Where?

    17. DPDwarkesh Patel1:04:41

        ... soldiers didn't believe that he was, like, a literal deity or the descendant of the goddess?

    18. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:04:43

        Yeah, yeah. No, no. He- they didn't believe... Okay, see, there's a godlike figure and there's a god. So, the sun goddess, her name starts with A, I forgot it. She's the God, but he's a godlike figure.

    19. DPDwarkesh Patel1:04:57

        Right, so-

    20. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:04:58

        So, you...

    21. DPDwarkesh Patel1:04:58

        Yeah, but, uh-

    22. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:04:58

        Yeah, so-

    23. DPDwarkesh Patel1:04:59

        I- I- I- I... No, I mean, I understand that. I- I get... I- I guess e- it kind of feels like semantics to me, but, uh-

    24. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:05:05

        No, it-

    25. DPDwarkesh Patel1:05:05

        Like, I mean, do you think-

    26. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:05:06

        ... it wouldn't be semantics. I... I mean, if it, if it was semantics, they shouldn't have been happy about the surrender.

    27. DPDwarkesh Patel1:05:16

        Uh, oh, uh, but- but- but many of them weren't, right?

    28. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:05:20

        Yeah, no, but a large portion of the Japanese public were just, "Meh, okay, fine. Move on now." Which there is a case... So, let- let me- let me put you in, like, very economics terms. There is a, uh... There's a, uh, reservation price they have for a god, and they have a re- there's a reservation price they have for the godlike figure. And for the godlike figure, the reservation price was- was pretty low. It was two years of starvation, which for a god, two year... I mean, look at the e- look at the... Like, they weren't prepared to fight the Am- Americans for very long. If Hirohito was a real god figure, they- they would have prepa- been prepared to fight him for the... Fight the Americans and British for much longer.

    29. DPDwarkesh Patel1:06:02

        Yeah. Okay, uh, uh, I- I guess my point, my original point is that because they believed him to be a godlike figure-

    30. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:06:09

        Yeah.
16. 1:07:30 – 1:14:06

    Postwar Japanese Economy

    1. DPDwarkesh Patel1:07:30

       accumulate in democracies were abolished in, uh, abolished in the war. And so they basically got a fresh start without all this accumulative grudge. And because of that, they had extremely high growth rates and, you know, as you know, in the 1980s, um, they, you, there are fears, like, Japan's economy would, like, overtake America's. Um, and in fact, if they hadn't had a population collapse, uh, you know, who, who knows what would have happened. But-

    2. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:07:53

       Yeah. More or less correct. All the, uh, interest groups were destroyed so they could... I mean, actually all the interest groups weren't destroyed, they were just replaced with better ones. There, interest groups are bad, but there are good interest groups and bad interest groups, and they're (snaps fingers) it's not like the Japanese... The new in- in- interest group in Japan were the bureaucrats within the trade industry. I haven't... I know, I know a little about it, not too much, but (snaps fingers) there are a few big things here, right? One of the problems the Americans saw in Japan was that, uh, well, there were too many... The biggest interest group was these Zaibatsus, the, uh, Japanese conglomerates that liked the war 'cause it g- 'cause it gave demand for their goods. They- they- they tried to break them up, okay? And here's where the intersection between that and the new Japanese industrial policy comes. The Americans put a, sort of like an FTC thing where they said, "You know what? You can't get too big, 'cause then the commissioner is gonna sue you in court, and the court is gonna be independent, and the, and the prime minister can't bribe the judge." And whatever, okay? The thing is, the Japanese kept the, uh, form of this antitrust law, but just made enough loopholes in it for it to be like, "Yeah, we have antitrust law, but... And we have a trade commissioner," but nobody enforces it because, right, it's, it's, it's convenient not to. And then, so the Japanese economy changed. They (sniffs) they sort of used these previous Zaibatsus, they, they, they formed themselves into Keiretsus, which is, you know, probably just a more financialized version of a, of a Zaibatsu. And then they, uh... For, for, for the listeners who don't know, a Zaibatsu was just this huge conglomerate that emerged in Japan over the 19, er, the 1900s that was one of the biggest, um, uh... It was one of the entities that benefited the most from the war because they were mining and industrial ones. And wars require a lot of mining and industry. So, they made a lot of money and they, the Americans had to break up the Zaibatus for like... Almost all the Zaibatus still exist today in, in the form of Keiretsus. And the Keiretsu guys get really mad when you ask them about it 'cause they want, they don't want to be associated with the rape of Nanking. They want to be as- as- associated with nice Toyota cars, okay? So, that's one thing, that the Japanese post-war economy was very much influenced by the fact that the- the- the Americans were semi-incompetent at breaking down the Zaibatus, so they just re- emerged again. (sniffs) Uh, standard economic growth theory tells you when you have a lot of broken buildings, uh, it's, it's very easy to repair them back to what you got. So, that's where a- a- a lot of the initial growth came from. And-

    3. DPDwarkesh Patel1:10:28

       But, but, but then... But, uh, sorry, maybe you were going there anyways. But there's almost a super compensator- uh, compensatory back- mechanism here where it's like, you- you damage the thing to get more benefit than you would have had before.

    4. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:10:38

       Yeah, yeah. That's true. No, I mean, obviously it is suboptimal. Uh, it is obviously worse than not damaging them. But once you- you damage them... Like, it's- it's not like Bastiat's broken windows thing, right? If you, if you break the- the windows, it- it increases consumption. And Bastiat's like, "But it increases consumption here, but, you know, they're going to spend the money on something else, and those guys aren't hurt." I'm like, "Yeah, that's true. And same thing over here." Obviously-

    5. DPDwarkesh Patel1:11:05

       I'm making the opposite point. Uh-

    6. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:11:07

       Then?

    7. DPDwarkesh Patel1:11:07

       ... where that, that the damage, uh, kind of actually speaking in the long term, the damage actually causes a benefit, uh, in the long term because, uh, you're- you're getting rid of these, uh, special interest groups that would have, uh, hampered growth for a long time.

    8. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:11:21

       Yeah, probably. But I mean, yes, but also no, because special interest groups in Japan didn't really disappear. I mean, yes, in the sense that the bad ones went and slightly better ones came up, which is true, but (sniffs) that should not be your main explanation because a lot of Japanese growth in the '50s was- was- was just catch-up. The- the- the rebuilding the broken buildings and the bombed cities and foreign houses. So partly true is my Snopes fact check rating. No. And the other thing is, like, uh, Japanese industrial policy was very much a feature of the war. Without the war, you wouldn't have had this level of government control of the economy, which led to a higher level of, um, how do I put it? A higher level of, uh, planning. I don't think planning is the right word. There's too many connotations of 10:10. But basically, they got export-driven growth because of this, because of they had lots of social capital between the planners and the, uh, company executives, and it was really easy for them to say, "Okay, I'll give you a few, uh, billion yen. You're going to use this to sell cars in the US, but in three years, if you, if your cars don't sell well enough, you're going to shut down and, and merge with your rival, who will be more successful." So, that was one of the, uh, drivers of Japanese growth. That is one of the reasons why the Keiretsus and the, uh, and the industrial policy systems existed. So, that's been one of the parts of growth after the war. And also, having trade with America just makes you better off for the obvious reason that Americans are rich and they buy a lot of your stuff.

    9. DPDwarkesh Patel1:13:03

       Right. Yes.Um, all right. Yeah, yeah, the, okay. The, this was a very, ver- very interesting, uh... Th- this was extremely interesting, uh, and then, uh, yeah, I'm really glad we did this. I, I, I hope we do this with more books 'cause th- this was a ac- actually, like, a very good way to wrup-

    10. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:13:17

        Yeah.

    11. DPDwarkesh Patel1:13:17

        ... and y- you, you happen to know a lot about, uh, 10 digital topics, so this is, um, it's very useful. Um, I don't-

    12. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:13:22

        Super fun for me too.

    13. DPDwarkesh Patel1:13:23

        ... know if you feel, uh, is there anything else we're talking about, uh, with regard to, uh, Japan and, um, uh, uh, Hirohito or...

    14. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:13:29

        No, nothing else. I'm, I'm to- probably hitting some edge of my knowledge in, like, one more question. So let's not go there.

    15. DPDwarkesh Patel1:13:35

        (laughs) Okay. Um, all right. So if we're done with that topic, I guess we could talk about, uh, general things, uh, which is that, uh, w- we're kind of doing, uh, similar things, at least for the time being, I guess.

    16. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:13:46

        Yep.

    17. DPDwarkesh Patel1:13:46

        Uh, you're, you're doing it, uh, uh... I guess we're both doing it part-time. Um, so, like, if you're... What, what's your age?

    18. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:13:55

        I'm 18. I turned 18 last October.

    19. DPDwarkesh Patel1:13:57

        Okay. So-

    20. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:13:58

        (laughs)

    21. DPDwarkesh Patel1:13:58

        ... I mean, how are you structuring your reading, writing, p- podcast?

    22. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:14:02

        Oh, man, man. Oh, my God.

    23. DPDwarkesh Patel1:14:03

        How, how are you managing all that?

    24. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:14:04

        (laughs) Okay, so,

17. 1:14:06 – 1:21:48

    Blogging and Podcasting

    1. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:14:06

       uh, mornings and when I travel, I get a lot of my Twitter time done, right? 'Cause Twitter is, like, my biggest source of things that go on because- and it's not a good source, but it's my good source. So, uh, yeah. Uh, how do I structure my reading? Right now, uh, I think a lot of my reading is I go for, I go for deep dives in books. I was doing Japan, so I read Hirohito. I read, uh, Embracing Defeat. I read Japan: Prepared for Total War. I read Mark Harrison's The Economics of World War II. Uh, not a very d- detailed book, but a very good book in terms of the statistics it, it, it gives you, right? So I'm gonna do that, and I, I like to have my stuff, uh, to combine. So learning data visualization in Python, so I'm going to do that with a bunch of World War II economic numbers. So, like, I both, like, learn how to use the very difficult Matplotlib and (laughs) you know-

    2. DPDwarkesh Patel1:15:00

       (laughs)

    3. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:15:00

       ... this and that. Uh, a lot of my reading is ad hoc. I have this set of PDFs I read, which is, uh, a lot of my time is just spent staring at my phone, so I guess it's, it's, it's second nature. A lot of my writing is a lot more difficult to structure because... First, because it, it, it requires a level of calm that I usually don't get, apart from weekends. So, that, that is much harder. And as for your question of how do I get my, my reading? Uh, all the usual sources, the listeners of this podcast will know about, you know, Revolution, EconLog. Uh, I re- I re- I read a lot of Rohit Krishnan, Matt, Matt Clifford. I read a lot of, I don't know, uh, LessWrong, E.A. Folem, and ... And Astral, Codex Dead. But really, a lot of my, uh, stuff comes from just going through the bibliographies of books I like to read. So that is where a good... So, luckily, uh... Don't pirate books. Pirating books is bad, but yeah (laughs) -

    4. DPDwarkesh Patel1:16:01

       (laughs)

    5. PPPradyumna (Pradyu) Prasad1:16:01

       ... it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the cheapest way for, for (laughs) , for most people. So basically that. Um, what else? I think being in the immersion thing gives me a better sense of ideas because I get to talk to other people. My biggest source of, like, things I, I should work on is talking to people like you, or other people, or, um, other things. I also have a lot of time staring at a wall doing nothing because the nature of my work. That gives me a lot of time to contemplate. Finally, I'm, I'm applying to college. So I have to, you know, figure out how to legibilize... How to make my achievements legible to a college, uh, admissions person. So a lot of my time is... Goes around doing that.

Episode duration: 1:40:00