Official RU-vid channel of Metis Strategy and the Technovation with Peter High podcast. Metis Strategy is a strategy and management consulting firm focused on the intersection of business, technology, and innovation.
Seems his dislike of Trump has clouded his election prediction. Yes, it could go either way, but a blowout?? He is on an island with that opinion. If he is right, he truly is a genius.
The issue with the Russian nuclear threat is that the weapons and their delivery systems are neglected. Russia has just not allocated the funds needed to maintain and keep their nuclear weapons operational. And with what little may have been directed for that, much of it would have been prime for embezzlement by the top brass who would see those systems as doomsday options at any rate. Russia has not modernized their delivery systems or updated their warhead electronics, targeting, or guidance and maneuvering systems. They are using 32+ year old weapons that have had zero maintenance or modernization. Even the USA has been scrambling to keep their missile delivery systems operational after rebuilding the minuteman missiles in the silos twice and they allocate $63 billion a year to maintain their nuclear weapons. Keep in mind that is as much as Russia has been spending on Defense for an entire year prior to the Russo/Ukraine war.
31:14 the water in fuel is a mistranslation. Similar to gas in USA not running on a liquid fuel but on a gas, because it is usually called gas short for gasoline not for eg natural gas.
Peter just waves his hands and declares the Chinese incapable. Its true that Chinese manufacturing USED to be primarily low value-added, but they have been the worlds manufacturing hub for 25 frantic years. They have also developed tremendous technical sophistication. Witness BYD and electric cars. Or solar panel technology. And politically, Peter again waves his hands and suggests all the smart people were purged, and China can't address its issues. This is very wishful thinking.
At 41:00 his analysis of Trump is that he has no attention span. How does someone have the #1 TV show for a decade, build high rises and prestigous golf courses all over the planet, and become President, have no attention span? I think Peter threw his genius card out the window on that one.
Zeihan actually believes in man-made climate change. How can someone who is so intelligent and informed accept that craziness? This makes his other conclusions suspect.
I’m no longer quite so sure about a Biden landslide! ;) Peter is very good on concrete specifics like demographics, food and energy but I’m not so sure of his reasoning about people’s decisions. Example: he assumes that Trump being a “convicted felon” makes him look worse, as opposed to making the Democrats look corrupt and like. S.American dictatorship.
Peter speaks so quickly as if that lends credibility… at no point does he really identify any weakness in the current state of the US economy or its equivalent issues with demographics, labour and intellectual capital. (US will always be greatest, China, Russia bad, can only lose… US unbeatable)… Slow down on every sentence buddy, it will make a difference (it’s like Neil Degrass Tyson v Carl Sagan)… one is arrogant, one is a teacher… Peter is arrogant, settle petal… don’t speak down to people as if we are ignorant. As a counterpoint, globalisation is not new, it’s a very US centric viewpoint… globalisation was prevalent in the colonial era, England, the Netherlands (Dutch), France, Portugal, “Germany” etc., all established global empires, the US simply repeated that behaviour through economic colonialism… that’s just a variation on the status quo. Population decline in the developed world is a function of affluence, avarice and arrogance, as wealth and health of the middle class increases the more people want and less that they need to spend to support having lots of children, the more healthy a population the less need there is for a large family to bring in income simply to survive, and the more collective bargaining competes against capital the more growth there is increase in income… none of these factors are a result of US economic strength, that was just a catalyst for acceleration. The analysis is initially very focused on Peter’s perception of China’s economic and demographic weakness but fails to recognise the same dynamics in all tier one countries, the US included. All of those countries require increasing population growth to keep growing their economies, that’s the fundamental premise of Capitalism. I don’r argue against the benefits of Capitalism but it is xenophobic/religious exclusion that underpins the collapse of access to labour and growth in the numbers of consumers. In that sense way Peter’s analysis describes China’s fundamental aversion to ‘foreign’ labour and capital inflows (I.e. globalism but a Xenophobic intent to ‘take’ but never an intent to ‘share’). The US and Europe are facing the same fundamental issue, they want growth but not foreign ethnic labour and , irrelevant of their need… consumers are specifically not welcomed… Japan is the most obvious global example xenophobia v demographic collapse. I agree with some of the analysis but to suggest China is doomed is too simplistic, in a connected world that is simply a market opportunity, time will tell… it’s a fascinating era. So let’s summarise the assumptions: 1: Xi dies, something happens, incompetent people take control. I think that’s unrealistic. 2. China currently produces low end consumer products based on a competitive advantage of low cost labour but is incapable of moving up the value scale. Japan has proved that is a successful strategy. Government subsidies are supporting industry… mmm like the US agriculture subsidies fundamentally underpin the very survival of that sector, without those subsidies US agriculture would simply be unable to to compete in the domestic market, let alone in the global market. These arguments lack any sort of substance, politically motivated, and unable to recognise the paradox and the parallels with Japan post WWII from… “Japanese stuff is cheap crap, to hey it’s cheap but not really crap, better than the stuff we make here…”… And the we get the concepts of inevitable failure of Russian and China’s conflict strategies, Peter’s analysis are wildly optimistic about competence and capability.., a whole other discussion Short story, slow the heck down.
As a counterpoint, globalisation is not new, it’s a very US centric viewpoint… globalisation was prevalent in the colonial era, England, the Netherlands (Dutch), France, Portugal, “Germany”etc at all established global empires, the US simply repeated that behaviour through economic colonialism… that’s just a variation on the status quo. Population decline in the developed world is a function of affluence, avarice and arrogance, as wealth and health of the middle class increases the more people want and less that they are willing to give up to support having children, the more healthy a population becomes the less need there is for a large family to bring in income simply to survive and the more collective bargaining competes against capital the more growth there is an in income… none of these factors are a result of US economic strength, that was just a catalyst for acceleration. The analysis is very focused on China but fails to recognise that the same dynamics in all tier one countries, the US included. All of those countries require increasing population growth to keep growing their economies, that’s fundamental premise of Capitalism. I don’r argue against the benefits of Capitalism but it is xenophobia/religious exclusion that underpins the collapse of access to labour and growth in the numbers of consumers. In that sense what the analysis describes is China’s fundamental aversion to ‘foreign’ labour and capital inflows (I.e. globalism). The US and Europe are facing the same fundamental issue, they want growth but foreign ethnic labour and consumers are specifically not welcomed… Japan is the most obvious global example. I agree with some of the analysis but to suggest we are all doomed is too simplistic, in a connected world that is simply a market opportunity, time will tell l… it’s a fascinating era.
Peter has completely underestimated the Trump crazies and their voting power and is dead wrong about Biden winning the general election. Also he obviously has not listened to RFK Jr. to be saying only the bat shit crazy are going to vote for him. The RFKJr. narrative is 100% main stream media driven by the entrenched liberalist woke crowd including his own dysfunctional family. Also with the Trump assassination attempt there will be a huge shift in Trump sentiment from my crowd; the independents. The question is; who is “out there” the most. Trump or Kennedy. It might be a close one.
Peter is lying and in this whole podcast he didn't mention anything about defence corridor of US, effects of petro - dollar which gave rise to infinite minting of dollars. Today it has stopped.
This was obviously recorded a while back. Love Peters commentary, even when he gets it wrong , which is usually surrounding US politics. He is a self admittedly a leftist. Therefore he his political bias shines through. Leftist cannot help themselves when they are dealing with TDS. However I totally enjoy his commentary regardless. I have learned to filter his bias and glean insight post bias filtering. Good job Peter.
I believe he considers himself a globalist. Not really what either party is offering at the moment. In so far as immigration is our superpower and “the greatest skills transfer” in history, the MAGA obsession with xenophobia is just counterproductive nonsense.
@@LoriNorwood-ew7xd You are probably correct. However, in my opinion all globalist are leftist. They want to control and oversee every aspect of our lives. They may be worst than just leftist.
The problem with your thought is that AI and 2 million engineer cant fix the problem that all western stysled economies have. That is, the idea that on a planet of limited resourceses endless growth is possible; Humanity has created a life style that nature can't support. If natures recycleing capasity colapses than we go back to the stone age.
Could China not try to evolve into a service economy with 500 million citizens fairly well off and well educated semi South Korea like and outsource the grunt work to VietNam region.
I live in Russia, and i like Peter, but i hate him for using "security" and "defend" when talking about Russia. Russia never felt insecurity. Moscow wants to expand the empire that's all
Idk about China not being able to compete in high end production. BYD and Hauwei have made insane strides. China by far leads the world in battery technology. China now has luxury cars that outcompete european luxury brands in terms of mileage and reliability. Their ranges as far as EV's are concerned absolutely destroy the competition. , Hauwei just unveiled a phone that can charge from 0-100% in 8 minutes. They have the best cameras a phone can have. They have replicated and are catching up on generative AI, and as far as general AI applications they're the best. Toyota just partnered with Hauwei to use components for autonomous driving. I just don't see it. I'd love to be proven wrong.
Oops! Biden by a landslide? Unfortunately Biden is mentally failing fast. See Zeihan’s more recent views on Biden vs. Trump. Like me, he doesn’t think either one is fit for another term.
Does anyone know of a site of an economist who is making any predictions on the future economy when we all have a falling demography? I see a huge problem with a falling demography, the chaos of failing major nation states, and an aggressively growing multi-trillion dollar deficit (US) as the government tries to borrow to keep our standard of living fairly level and tries to subsidize industry for jobs and equipment. ... I am not a conspiracy theorist or anything but I have said for a decade that an economy based on growth is nothing but a Ponzi scheme. It is simple logic to know that the planet cannot have a growing population forever.
Good points! And neoliberal capitalism has always been a Ponzi scheme. We humans have so far overdrawn the world’s resources and ecological capital that our resource and ecological deficits make the US debt look like a manageable problem. And the climate crisis, as the US Military calls it, is the big threat multiplier. Our economic and societal collapse is ensured.
Peter's great and I have tons of respect for him but the thing I never see acknowledged is that if his theory about Russia being dead-set on plugging/occupying land gaps to their motherland is incorrect then the entire raison d'etre for the supporting Ukraine to ever increasing degrees is completely invalidated and we're rushing hyper-aggressively into a conflict that has a very high likelihood of triggering the 90-minute nuclear war that permanently ends civilization and virtually all human life on earth. To me, that's an insane amount of confidence to put behind a course of action for which we only have our interpretation of historical analogs as evidence. When I consider this in context of how our government has been made a disaster of every conflict since Vietnam (perhaps with the exception of GW I), I'm not left with a great deal of confidence that they're operating with a great deal of competency or clarity in executing this conflict either. If it turns out that Ukraine is on par with Afghanistan (in terms of modeling and execution of the conflict) then we (i.e. the entire human race) is very likely in grave danger.
The problem is old and the solution inevitable, although insane. When someone with access to nuclear weapons threatens to use them "unless..." then the only logical solution is to forcefully push back. No leader can get away with nuclear blackmail. Allowing that would inevitably lead to further blackmail by that leader or another. Eventually, the blackmail price will hit the point where an all-out nuclear exchange is inevitable. So, we might as well get it on now. This is the undeniable logic of MAD. Was the initial support for Ukraine wise? It's possible to debate that. But, we did and then Putin made veiled threats about nukes. That's it, it's done, we're in. If we back out, Putin, Kim, or the next one will do it again, and again, and again, until the world ends. Threatening nukes to gain some offensive advantage cannot be allowed to work, our survival depends on this. There is no longer any logical argument to be made for not supporting Ukraine such that it will not lose. Though, that will not stop all the arguments about how much support we might give for it to win. And yes, I also don't think the logic of "a defensible border" makes a lot of sense for invading Ukraine and that the 2022 prediction was just luck,. I think it was just Putin messing with Ukrainian politics, losing to Maidan, then annexing Crimea because he was worried about losing Sevastopol. Then, the Ukrainians cut off the water to Crimea and when (in 2022) the reservoirs were down to 7%, he had to either invade or evacuate the civilians... he chose wrong again. It's not always driven by demographics and geography. Sometimes, a lot of times, it all starts with a mistake that snowballs... there was an old lady that swallowed a fly.
I don't think PZ believes the humanoid robot is a reality. China copies everything, and their global strength is mass production. AI coupled with emerging humanoid robotics could be what China will use to counter their population short falls for labor/ military.
