The Liberal Empire Is Dying Finally Dr Andrey Ivanov

TITLE: The “liberal” Empire is Dying. Finally. | Dr. Andrey Ivanov CHANNEL: Neutrality Studies DATE: 2026-04-25 ---TRANSCRIPT--- Welcome back everybody to Neutrality Studies. My name is Pascalota and I am joined today by Andre Ivanov, a strategy consultant in New Zealand and occasional podcaster. Andre, welcome.

Thank Thank you very much, Pascal. I’m uh multi-time listener, first- time caller. Well, thank you very much for calling in so that we can discuss. You actually we had a good exchange and you described to me that there were a lot of experiences in your life that actually throw a very interesting light on what’s going on currently in geopolitics. First and foremost being born in Ukraine uh but now living in New Zealand uh and having a Jewish background. Um can you maybe tell me what that journey of yours is about and how you understand where we are currently at in in geopolitics? Sure. So I I would like to probably specify that I was born in Soviet Union because the part of Ukraine that I was born in wasn’t really uh Ukrainian. It’s a south of Ukraine. I’ve never heard Ukrainian spoken on on the streets anywhere. My my grandpa is actually ethnic Ukrainian from the middle of Ukraine. He had beautiful Ukrainian. I studied Ukrainian at school, but uh we all spoke Russian. And so from the uh from where I’m from the Ukrainianness like we considered ourselves Soviet I guess and so I since the break up of the Soviet Union and especially over the last 10 years I probably reflecting more and more about that I do think that I’m Soviet more than than uh in particular Ukrainian. In terms of my ethnic background it’s uh wide ranging. There is uh there are Jewish roots, there are Ukrainian roots, there are uh very strong German roots uh going back all the way through uh Prussia to mines. Uh and uh there was even apparently a French revolutionary who made his way to Russia way back when who was somehow involved in the and there’s also some Romani background apparently. So it’s it’s a very uh again from the south of Ukraine if you know anything about uh that part is sort of a melting pot of uh culture. So that’s that’s ethnic wise uh in terms of uh did you ask me about the uh political Oh right your politics right. So okay uh in terms of uh my political views or uh it was uh it started off probably in a very liberal camp and for a very long time I was uh very much part of a liberal camp. The reason why we left Ukraine in the first place is after the fall of the Soviet Union everything started falling apart and at that stage uh the um conscription service was mandatory and my parents didn’t want me to to be conscripted and uh and there were no prospects uh in in the middle of the ‘9s in in Ukraine and well I mean it’s even worse now but uh but even then there were and so they my parents started looking at where to go and we ended up in New Zealand. and uh finished high school in New Zealand, went to uh university at Oakland University and studied economics and very much got into a uh I guess sort of a free trade liberal camp which is the predominant economic theory um that’s that we studied. uh through that after finishing my first degree I went to do my PhD in Germany uh at the University of Manheim and stayed in Germany for 10 years uh mostly studying but then working as well um so that’s and I graduated uh exactly at the time of the GFC so in 2008 uh when the GFC hit and looking at the great financial crisis right correct sorry Yeah, I’m using acronyms and sorry I I just I I I Nope. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So the global financial uh crisis of the uh of uh like 2008 was basically right in the middle of it. And uh looking back at what we had studied and how we were taught uh basically that shouldn’t have happened. So when you’re looking at uh the empirical evidence where the theory tells you that something shouldn’t happen but the empirical evidence tells you that you’re in the middle of it uh you start revising the uh the theory behind uh you know behind to to explain that empirical evidence. And so I started looking uh at uh alternative uh schools of thought and I was familiar a little bit with uh Austrian school and Keynesian and so on. So uh but you know classical was the predominant one that we and that we studied and then I started looking at there is um yeah what could explain that and uh that that has been my journey ever since but I left academia so it wasn’t my journey professionally it was kind of more like uh a hobby of mine uh I left academia to become a strategy consultant and you know I’m glad that you said that when the empirical evidence contradicted the theory that you actually looked looked over the theory and started doubting the theory and not uh empirical reality because some economists do the opposite. I will never forget that that that article in the economist that said uh Japan’s u debt crisis is so is so bad um that it even breaks the laws of economics. Like you people you people really I mean theory over everything, theory over any kind of empirical evidence. But okay, let’s put that one aside. Um so when we when we look at the way that especially within economics like neocclassical economics but also neoliberal uh the neoliberal mindset actually approaches the world. What was it then that you thought that had to be revised once you came out of this 2008 crisis that kind of crushed the the certainties that we thought we had before. uh markets don’t work and uh ironically that’s uh that’s a um uh it is actually a well-known fact in economics. It’s just people kind of handwave around it. So if you look at uh the I mean the very fundamental thing is the this free market primacy. Uh and ironically we are taught in economics 101 the conditions under which that would work and deliver some sort of you know beneficial outcome. First of all the beneficial outcome that people are looking at is efficiency. It’s not uh you know the and it’s par efficiency. So first thing is economists look at not at any real result but at a result where uh something is called parto efficient when you cannot make anybody better off without making anybody else worse off. Okay. Yeah. The parto efficiency. Yeah. So you can easily have a situation where there is literally one person owning everything and then everybody else like 8 eight 8 and a half billion people are slaves and that would be para efficient because you wouldn’t be able to improve the lot of anybody else without making that one guy worse. Yeah. Right. That that’s in in the definition itself, right? Yeah. Exactly. So, so first first thing is to understand that uh the whole premise of what we’re talking about is is measuring the wrong thing. It’s just based from there. The second point is that even to achieve that free markets would be best if they satisfy somewhere between nine and a dozen uh very restrictive assumptions. Perfect information, no transaction costs, uh many uh many traders from both sides, so no monopolies and so on and so forth. Perfect foresight. Every actor in the economy knows exactly what the fight is going to be tomorrow. Everybody and that’s just assumed to be normal. Hey, very brief intermission because I was recently banned from YouTube and although I’m back, this can happen anytime again. So, please consider subscribing not only here but to my mailing list on Substack. That’s pascalota.substack. substack.com. The link is going to be in the description below. And now back to the video. Yeah. And it’s not only that. It’s also like uh perfect information uh goes. It’s not only that you know something, it’s that the other person knows that and you also know that the other person knows that and you know that the other person knows that you know that and so on and so forth. It’s like in kind of at infinity and it never happens. And so if you uh if you relax even uh some of those assumptions uh markets fail and there are people like Joseph Stiglets who have uh got the Nobel Prize by showing the failure of markets and there’s uh Acurof as well and so they showed that in particular if you uh relax the uh the perfect information if you or even symmetric okay so you maybe not perfect but you need symmetric information as soon as as long as you as soon as you have asymmetric information things fail. Oh, externalities are another big one. So, um for the markets to work uh and for the prices to convey all you need to know, you have to have no externalities. You have to have all the benefits and all the costs of uh doing something of consuming something or producing something need to be uh internalized into those prices. If you have externality, if you’re doing like secondhand smoking, right? When you smoke and there are people in the room, you paid for smoking and you assumed the cost of smoking, but you’re also poisoning others. They had not participated in that transaction at all. But they are uh and and so therefore the price of cost of of smoking does not reflect that. The price of cigarettes does not reflect that externality and we can have climate change and lots of other things like pollution is negative externality of production. As soon as you do not internalize those things, uh markets fail. So actually interestingly enough we have um a situation where in real world markets almost never work as intended because you never have perfect information. You have dominant players. You you have basically a kind of monopolization of and over time the the concentration of industries gets worse. So uh you tend to have more monopolies now than you had 100 years ago. Uh so basically recognizing that uh that part of the economic study is much more important than the the the free market absolutism led me to kind of start thinking about various other um alternative uh explanations. And I I eventually I came across the writings of Markx and Lenon and uh I kind of they resonated and they seem to have fit the um the empirical data much better in terms of explaining how the economy actually works than uh anything else. And then through that uh I I started getting more interested in uh in uh what Markx was writing. And actually one of the fundamental things that they recognized and ironically they als responding to the economists of his time and the and the classical economics was and so Smith Smith and Ricardo were also writing about classes and they were also writing so actually a lot of stuff that Markx was writing he was borrowing from Smith and Ricardo it’s and and so it’s not even like you know completely uh cuckoo that came out of nowhere. It was actually very much a development of the economic thought uh of the time. And one other thing that uh to me where neocclassical economics fails well let’s say Marxist writings uh actually reflect the reality more is that neocclassical economics kind of assumes that economy and politics are two separate things and economy sits outside of politics. So while in the neocclassical economics we do acknowledge that uh let’s say monopolies are bad right for uh in terms of you know they they uh basically abuse their economic power and they screw the consumers. Okay so that’s that’s economics 101 in in any economic zone. What they then say is that well that’s okay we don’t have to fix that problem inside economics because we have a regulator and the regulator sits in the political side and because politics is uh you know basically we have a democracy so the regulator will uh first of all the government will pass the laws in order to constrain the the uh competition of or the the abuse of the competition by the monopolists and second of all the regulator will also then implement those laws perfectly and there is no subject for you know corruption or anything like that. So, so that’s that’s why when you run around in the neocclassical world, you’re saying, well, the the markets are are working perfectly fine and if they don’t, we can fix that with democracy. And this is because uh clearly we have lobbying, right? It’s even institutionalized in the US. So we have we we we have uh influence of the where the the monopolies then influence the politics and so the uh laws that get passed have nothing to do with actually you know protecting the population as such. It’s it’s it’s very much class-driven. It’s very much driven for the benefit of uh you know very few people and we even have uh academic studies that are published uh in prestigious journals uh which show that so there is a study from 2014 uh that I can I can reference once I look at my notes uh which it says exactly that and that is yeah go on yeah I know I I have no I I you know the fascinating thing is that in academia Actually a lot of these mechanisms are are are wellstudied. I mean it’s not as if though the entire the entirety of western academia is blind. Not at all. Um these studies exist and these these links are being are being are being looked at. But the fascinating thing to me is that then despite all of this evidence then being there in economics and also in international relations. you know, we have a lot of very very good uh uh uh very useful studies sidushi and so on who study also the um the the the you know all the wars and and military interventions of the United States all of this is there but the fascinating thing is it then doesn’t translate into changes of the curriculum of how we teach that stuff. We still end up teaching like economics 101 and uh macro and micro under the neocclassical economic theory. We still like uh chase students for four years through these kind of through these schools of thought that that you know on an advanced level most people start debunking on the uh like in a lot of places and same for international relations. Um how do you explain that to yourself that that at the end of the day despite the research being there um we still end up in a pretty domatic view of the world of how we teach the stuff that we think is fundamental in order for students to go forward uh incentives and so like as an economist I always look at incentives who has the incentive to do what and I’ll get back to your point I’ll just read this bit about so there was a study by Martin Giles and Benjamin I page uh which was titled testing theories of American politics, elites, interest, groups and average citizens. And what they said is uh just read a little bit from their abstract is multivariat analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. Okay. Yeah. Welcome, welcome to democracy. Exactly. So uh the uh no okay in terms of incentives uh there are two levels of incentives there. First of all uh at at the research there is actually in an incentive to go against the dogma because that’s how you get published. you either show something that uh where you support some funding from 10 years ago uh you say you know that uh uh okay it still holds with the current data right or you take some big big uh something from again from some time ago and and you go no actually I’m smarter than you because here I give a counter example and so I show that it’s exactly the opposite right and you get invited to conferences and you get uh published in in in a a list journals and you make a career right okay So that’s uh your uh that’s why within the academic study you can have quite a bit of um of uh heterodoxy. Uh however when it comes to uh writing curricular and uh uh financing that is that who finances that what is the incentive? Well, the m the most funding from uh you know from the uh for the universities actually no let’s let let me rephrase all funding for the universities comes from three things uh central government local basically the government which as we’ve just discovered uh is captured by the business elites right or uh there are uh uh chairs uh uh which are or research projects or or even sometimes teaching projects which are financed by uh wealthy individuals or companies and again they like uh RAON is not going to finance a Marxist course okay so it’s it’s just not going to happen uh the uh or uh I guess the third level of funding is uh the university just has some public partnership and they just make something or contribute to something and sell AP whatever. Okay, but basically who’s going to finance uh the heterodox uh let’s say hetrodox economics? Nobody. So they still exist. There are several places in the US that actually do teach that and there you you are back to like it’s there’s I think University of Arizona which which teaches or something you know but basically some obscure places which uh do tremendous work but they’re not the the the primary drivers of uh of graduates who then go into the uh policy making and so you have you do have then end up having this sort of incestuous relationship between the top universities in particular and driving a a uh particular uh curriculum especially for the undergrads uh and and sometimes for graduate students who then go and and which is all financed by central banks and other banks and other companies and whatever and central government which then go and work for those places. So they have again they have no interest in uh that nobody inside the system who is working inside the system no matter what the system is is going to be interested in uh jeopardizing that system because nobody’s going to be uh cutting the branch on which they’re sitting which then creates this situation where we in in the political west as Richard Squa calls it have a lot of a lot of brilliant students and graduates and and PhDs and we also have well educated uh people who went through primary and secondary school. Um but they’re all we are all went through kind of the same kind of shaping right with with the the the boundaries often of what can be known or in what kind of in what kind of way it can be understood, right? The framework that we are given is is pretty is pretty darn strong, right? And what does that or lead to then or you know this something that fascinates me is that so many people in the political west actually have a very very strong framing of what’s happening in Ukraine and it is very very um government obedient right it’s obedient to Berlin obedient to Paris obedient to Washington their interpretation of what’s happening sorry um can you speak to that Um can you specify the question again? Sorry I got I got somehow distracted by the by the noise and I sorry sorry my it happens it’s fine. So the um the question was like this these frames that we are getting right that that that through education and so on the way that we can understand the world uh in the political west. Um, how is it that so many people then apply these very rigorous kind of of of frames of reference to also the the war in Ukraine or now the Iran the Iran war where where you see where you obviously see that there are problems in the narrative there are obvious obvious mistakes but still a large part of the population 60 70% actually just is willing to brush away these these obvious problems and just apply the frame that are given by Berlin, Paris and Washington. I think it goes back to uh us being human and all the invisible biases that we have and uh various like deviations from the quote unquote rationality. Uh you have uh echo chambers, you have uh people with you have like um group thing, right? I mean how was the uh I think the if I remember correctly Bay of Pigs uh disastrous invasion was uh basically as one of the uh prime examples of group think. So you would have in you know the very very smart people in the room coming up to a really bad decision. Why? Because they were not able or none of them nobody basically was able to be strong enough to uh just provide an alternative view or contradictory view to the to the to the consensus of the group and um it even gets to the point where you start censor yourself. So you’ve got a number of different uh things but for the vast majority of the people they would not like let’s let let me let me start putting it differently. I have gone personally myself from being like a midcore Ukrainian nationalist uh basically Russian is my first language Ukrainian is not. Um, but I was claiming that, you know, yeah, we should make everybody in Ukraine speak Ukrainian because even though the vast majority, by far the vast majority, so here’s another, this is a little bit of an aside. Gallup ran a poll in 200 n or some not so long ago and uh because there are many polls in Ukraine uh about uh what’s your primary language? Okay. But what Gallup did is they they offered they didn’t actually ask that question. Maybe they did, but more importantly, they offered two types of questionnaires. They offered a questionnaire in Ukrainian and they offered a questionnaire in Russian. And they led people to self- select which questionaire they wanted to reply to. Okay. And it’s a representative poll across all of Ukraine. somewhere like 83% of the people chose the Russian questionnaire to use the Russian questionnaire even if they then said yeah Ukrainian is my primary language or what not. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Which is consistent with my experiences of of Ukraine. Uh it’s it’s it’s different now but although I I I still keep in touch with some people I have relatives there. Uh but my my experience is as I said like growing up I basically never heard Ukrainian spoken and yes I’m from a Russian dominant part but even traveling through Ukraine I hardly ever uh heard it spoken. So uh that uh and another thing is uh uh my best friend again in 2009 uh who uh was my best friend uh from childhood. We we are on the different sides of the barricades in this particular conflict and we don’t speak any longer but um uh so his his wife works for USAD or so USAD uh which is you know no no no surprise why he holds the positions that he holds uh but he said that uh in 2009 and he was working for one of the uh sociological uh uh like research institutes in Kiev um that they were commissioned. So that’s my recollection of that. Okay. So they were commissioned back then by an NGO to uh run a uh study of the attitudes in in in Ukraine about certain things in the the relationship with Russia. And one of the things that they found was that something like 63% of Ukrainians, and I think that was all of Ukraine, but it might have been specifically in the east. I’m not sure. I I’m not sure, but a large percentage of basically more than majority of Ukrainians, if given a choice to join Russia tomorrow, they would vote yes. And they presented this study back to uh the NGO that asked them that commissioned that study. and the and the the NGO said yeah we can’t publish that like there’s there is no like this so that was the end of that study it was unpublished but uh because it was a prime research institute who specializes which you know that specializes in such questions I uh have no doubt that that was indeed the case and as I say he’s he’s actually uh he’s taking a different side in this conflict so anyway approaching this conflict from uh from that point of view and my being where I was, I I a I didn’t expect the war in 2022 and when it happened, it hit me really hard. Um, and I started uh because I couldn’t actually do anything about it. The only thing I could do is research and look. So, I started researching stuff and I specifically uh avoided Russian media because I didn’t want to be biased by the, you know, narrative propaganda way. So I actually started looking at uh at western media and I researched a lot. I probably spent like you know 40 hours a week uh out outside of my job like not not sleeping all that much but doing that for many many oh that was also the the postcoid years and and so on. So you know uh the work wasn’t really all that much there anyway. So I spent and I tried to launch my uh podcast which for different reasons and prior to that. So I was working a lot on that and then I basically pivoted because this this took a lot of kind of emotional capital and I’ve spent months of effectively full-time work investigating this analyzing the changes in the western media. So I basically took like New York, I had a New York uh Times subscription at the time. So I looked at the way that they were presenting the narrative back in 2014 uh versus through to 2022 and how they changed. Right? So basically that was my my uh type of analysis where I go okay you cannot really say that that’s uh propagandistic or anything because I’m showing you the quote unquote respectable media you know the same publication and how they change talking about stuff and so and especially like such a drastic change after the February 2022 that it cannot be like you were either writing some prior to that or you’re writing now but both things cannot be true because they had an article in uh I think at the early February uh saying something like uh Ukrainian nationalists could be a problem not only for the Russians where they were saying that uh Ukrainian nationalists were basically threatening uh Ukrainian politicians uh kind of into war or away from you know avoiding conflict. And then they they they uh post a tweet uh saying in March saying uh Ukrainian neo-Nazis are a figment of Russia’s imagination. Okay. So both things cannot be true. You either have Ukrainian nationalists which are a threat to to peace or they are a figment of the Russia’s imagination. Both of those things cannot be true. So when you look at that then I came to a particular conclusion of a particular you know kind of what what I would consider a more objective view of of the conflict uh whereby I came to the conclusion that actually Russia’s position is is closer to the like they lie less basically is is is uh how I how I would you know both sides lie but but the western side is completely delusional about stuff and uh uh but I’ve spent 6 to9 months of effectively full-time researching this topic. Who has that time? Nobody. So when you have like and and I and I’ve done that because I’m emotionally invested in that. If you do not do that or like you you’ve got Ivanka who uh studied the uh you know again that’s his job. He is a researcher and he researches this. That’s what he does for for a living. You’ve got uh various other people. Uh so a lot of academics do not have Nicolola Petro and others. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Uh you normal people do not have that time. So they have to uh they actually have to um rely on some short hand and that shorthand is uh uh and especially in the US it’s unfortunately very uh partisan. you have uh people. So I I actually like I wrote a little my last bit on the uh on uh on my uh in my newsletter is the is called home teams and halos. Basically, I looked at some research of um uh academic research into how voters um increasingly they rely on partisan cues from uh from uh the their favorite party. So, like Democrats would listen to what Biden says, right? Or or Obama, maybe not so much for what Biden anymore, but they definitely listen to what Obama says. uh Republicans, who the knows recently as to what Trump says, right? And so when if you identify with with this or that party and if they tell you something and in Ukraine case, none of that affects Americans really. Yeah. Uh so directly so whatever whatever somebody says, they would go and listen to that. And then also I interviewed um I interviewed a US professor who specializes in um in uh uh the Oliver Boyd Barrett by the way. Uh so I interviewed him a couple of uh years ago. So his specialized he’s a professor emeritus um of bowling green state university and uh he runs a newsletter on subject called empire communications and NATO wars and he specializes in uh uh war propaganda uh he’s a professor of media and uh he got into that as since I think either first or second Iraq war so he’s got 20 or 30 years he’s a maritist now but over the last 20 or 30 years he specialized in war propaganda in particular. And uh he taught me a lot about how uh media participates in propaganda. And the the title of this thing of this podcast episode is propaganda at its most innocent. And propaganda at its most innocent is uh where you give like who you give airtime to. So for example, in the Ukrainian uh conflict, uh Zilinski is front and center. Yeah. So he gives uh media interviews and so on. So a lot of people in the west are obviously under the mistaken uh uh and it is a mistaken uh opinion that Zilinski represents Ukraine that what he says is shared by most Ukrainians. Nobody is going to go uh and and interview somebody from Donbas who’s just as Ukrainian even more Ukrainian than Zilinski but who is basically on the other side of the Madame conflict. And going back to 2014, which which the Maidan uh coup, it was a coup. Um like anybody who was against that coup is not going to be given air time and therefore it’s as if they don’t exist. Uh you you’re seeing the same with Iran at the moment. Anybody on New Zealand TV who is interviewed is from the unhinged uh diaspora. And when they’re talking about their relatives in Iran, it’s always the relatives who went and did rioting during the, you know, it’s like, oh, these people are just kind of waiting to be liberated and so on and so forth. Do such people exist? Yes. Are they majority? No. They’re they in Iran, they’re very much a minority. But these are the ones that are given airtime in on New Zealand TV. And so you walk away with uh uh with with an impression that oh my god there’s such a brutal regime it’s not supported by anybody but people are just afraid to go out and you know so on which which is not the case the same with with Ukraine in this sense like the one thing that we really must give credit where credit is due to the political west is that it really managed to create a very very organic uh propaganda machine, right? It’s not only that the propaganda itself looks innocent, as you just said, and and and convincing. It’s also that the people who do it are convinced that they don’t do it, right? It’s like it’s it’s it’s very it’s very honest. It’s honest propaganda on both sides. And in that sense it’s then highly effective because if we contrast that with what we know about propaganda in the Soviet Union, we understand that a lot of people on the ground understood that what’s what was in the PRAA was more of what they were supposed to be to believe and you know people understood what the game was and you could actually use that right researchers actually used uh uh uh research on the praas in order to deduce what is current political uh what is the current political objective of the people in the Kremlin over and beyond what they themselves would say. So you could use that as a tool because you understood who understood what. But in the in the in the in the political west, we don’t have that, right? We we have honest liars and and honest sheep that that then create an honest bubble that that still ends up being like highly propagandized. Right. Correct. uh although uh I uh we in in the 80s I think we were uh very much would be a denters would be called and uh you know kind of my family was liberal. I was one of the only two people in my class who didn’t wear a uh red tie uh to the uh you know as as a schooly part of the school uniform. Um and uh so and and um I I wasn’t part of the uh kind of youth um communist youth group. Having said all of that, looking back at what we were told back then and and looking at the objective, like having lived in the West for the for the vast majority of my life now, I’m like that seems to have been more correct than than what is presented in the West. Like I got to say that I think what we were told actually is closer to the truth than than than the alternative. Yeah. And um I I would I would find that fascinating if we if we came up with a couple of studies that would actually you know try to assess the claims about you know reality from like let’s say 1960s Soviet Union and what we know today and try to do a matching of what we find of what actually empirically worked out and what doesn’t but that would go over and beyond but it would be fascinating. Yeah. No, but back to what you said. It’s it’s exact. So I’m reminded of this uh I think anecdote from uh uh Chomsky’s life and Chsky is a problematic figure. uh to quote fascinating one though uh definitely fascinating but that’s that’s not to say that he didn’t do some uh you know some positive things and uh was I actually think that in my own development and I’ve outgrown him uh but he was the right voice at the right time to push me in in the different direction of where I developed. So, uh I I think that actually we can both acknowledge his problematic uh relationship with Epstein and and lots of other stuff uh but also credit where the credit is due and something. So anyway, he was uh being interviewed by somebody like an editor of the New York Times or whatever, maybe BBC or CNN and um he was talking about how you know that they are uh engaging in propaganda and um the editor said but you know do you really believe that like I am lying uh you know when I and I drive a particular agenda and said that’s that’s not how it works. you like I’m convinced that you believe in exactly what you’re saying. So it’s it’s very genuine but you wouldn’t be sitting here like you wouldn’t have been promoted to this spot if you held any other view. So the fact that you are promoted into this particular spot already tells me you know a lot which for me it’s again it’s about the incentives it’s about the systems it’s not about the individuals. Yeah. Uh I actually wanted to so the way we connected was uh by by listen when I listen to a lot of people on um um like some of the uh guests who I like I I I can respect certain views but then somebody says something like um like Stas on the podcast Kivnnik uh on you know a couple of podcasts ago uh said that uh um the US like Trump’s cabinet is not rational, right? So, and uh you had other uh people on the podcast and again it’s not even about you. It’s it’s about uh uh let’s say Judge Napolitano and and his whole crew and a lot of them uh like I I do listen to them uh as well and I respect what they’re saying but a lot of them are saying things like uh you know we like we moved away from you know it used to be this but now it’s this and it’s this because it’s corrupt and whatever. There is never really an acknowled or because of some individuals, right? Or because of uh some lobbying. There is never an acknowledgement that the system is what it is and actually is designed to do exactly this. Yeah. Uh and that what looks like a neighboration is actually not and and and I would I see much more of the connective tissue of uh the US foreign policy throughout the well since the fall of the Soviet Union is definitely different but even prior to that and and it’s different now than prior to that because there was a counterbalance. So they I think the the cold war was actually more responsible because each side kind of feared and respected the other side and the while there were various conflicts in uh in Vietnam and North Korea and so on and so forth there wasn’t a there was still like the rules of engagement were understood and there was a counterbalance. I think after 1991 uh like there was but it’s not that something changed. It’s just that there was I mean the only thing that changed was the lack of a counterbalance. It’s not that like people didn’t change. The objectives of people didn’t change the objectives of the system the system incentives didn’t change. Everything stayed the same dynamically. It we it culminated in Trump. But Trump isn’t a decision maker. He is a symptom of of this whole thing. Yeah. Uh it and and I would even claim that there was always going to be a Trump. It was always going to be a confrontation, call it third world war, whatever. So there was always always going to be an escalation. The Iran Iran uh thing is not somebody woke up one day and decided to bomb Iran. None of this would have been possible without decades of preparation. Yes, it is a multi-deade strategy. Yeah, the statistic itself is is a humongous undertaking. This is this is this is something that Berlettic Brian Berle keeps pointing out, right? It is it is maybe not the arrow of history, but it is the the yeah the underlying system that all points toward that and it works toward this, right? And my my my my main question then is like what is the best uh most fundamental layer that then explains the other layers. I think of it a little bit like an operating system on a computer, right? In order for us to use whatever some new AI app that we just installed, I mean there’s layers and layers and layers uh below that uh until you get to the kernel and so on in order to work. And at the moment when it comes to the operating system of the west, one of my fundamental layers that I think drives a lot of this is colonialism. But then there’s the Marxist scholars who will say like colonialism itself can be explained as a function of uh of you know capitalism. So if you use the class struggle and so on, you can actually explain how colonialism is part and parcel of how this system must work. And at the top end of that, the kind of, you know, the bug um or something that looks like a bug like Donald Trump is actually a feature of the entire system that keeps it running. Right. Well, I’ve come to the, as I say, like I’ve I’ve I’ve come to the conclusion that uh the the class struggle actually explains a lot and actually it explains a lot and way better than than something else. But we, you know, we’ve covered the economic side of it, right? and sort of like the predominant economic uh thought underpinning um the west which is the neocclassical economics. I I think I’ve shown like it to me it’s convincingly that it doesn’t work right like the all the theories are kind of Mickey Mouse theories that explain a reality which has nothing to do with our reality. No no no it it explains the reality that must be believed in order for the system to work. It does not know. So it it fulfills that function but it doesn’t it’s not actually the underlying system. No. Oh, which which reminds me. I’ve spotted on uh on X uh and uh like somebody was advocating and it was published I think in the Washington Post uh just just the other day where somebody was literally saying that we need to make everybody study economics because uh we have a problem that young people do not believe that capitalism works. It’s like Yeah, but that’s again very honest. Yeah. No, exactly. But why do they believe it’s like does it have anything to do with their lived reality? Maybe every day that they’re they’re seeing things getting worse and that they’re living worse than their parents and you know they can’t access jobs and so on. It’s like no no in real like everything is fine. They just need to be taught differently such that they understand that what they’re experiencing is in fact the best of all possible worlds. Yeah. And harder. We need to teach it harder so people understand that they believe just like Dr. Carlson the other day he really dismantled you know this this kind of thing like what is a dogma today he he went into that question he’s like yeah this is this we we have the 2026 you know our modern version of indoctrination and one of them is economics the other one is uh um what is an what what is anti-semitism I mean the the the country that cannot be attacked right that cannot be criticized the religion that cannot be criticized like those are the dogmas of the day and they function like sociological ally exactly like the dogmas of the past. We just frame them in 2026 terms. So, uh a couple of things that I wanted to introduce to uh specifically I just move to different uh so just to see my notes. Um the so one thing is I I already uh let’s just run through them and I think it will it’ll be clear about the things that I think that we need to be pushing back. So I think that every time that somebody says something like these people are not rational or something like we should get back to liberalism maybe it’s in classical s in its classical sense or something like uh this is a ridiculous behavior because it goes against uh American interests right or it doesn’t benefit the Americans or it doesn’t benefit you know XY Z I think we one should push back against all of those things right including uh the uh in geopolitics the rationalist school by by Mia Shimemer and uh okay so let’s let’s let’s go quickly through them um I can go for longer by the way it’s it’s up to you with yeah I have a hard stop at five past but let’s go cool so we have 10 minutes uh let’s uh so rationality okay so um people like like okay so St says oh Pascal if we’re dealing with absolutely irrational players players. Of course, of course, if we were dealing with rational players, this whole war wouldn’t have started. Okay. So, the definition of rationality is the like there are many and whether you want economic definition or some other but if you look in in economics, you go something like the decision-m process where individuals aim to maximize their subjective utility or benefit based on their preferences and available information. Okay. So if you believe that these people are irrational, that means that they’re not maximizing their subjective utility or benefit based on their preferences and available information. Now, do we really think that these people who who get into there are not maximizing their benefit? Like that’s a ridiculous proposition. I think they’re maximizing their benefit very well. Uh it’s just not the benefit that you think that they should be maximizing such as, you know, looking after the country and so on. But nowhere in that definition does it say that they should be looking after the country. They should be like because who is the decision maker? What is their costbenefit analysis? Like do you really believe that these actors yet do not look after their own interests? Well, no. Of course they look I think they’re hyperrational. I think they’re very rational. I think the biggest problem of all of this is that um uh yeah so related to that sentiments like this war is not in America’s best interest are faulty because they completely confuse the point America is not a decision maker. Mhm. average American uh taxpayer and I already cited the research basically clearly suffers from not only this but in fact from most American policies but that still doesn’t preclude these policies from being passed. Why are they being passed? Because nobody gives a about the average American taxpayer because people who are making these policies are doing it. And we can look at uh you know if you look up Nancy Pelosi index uh you know where where she is like got tremendously outperforming the market uh all the time that she was in the Senate uh and she was outperforming the likes of Warren Buffett and so on with her investments because because clearly looking after her own portfolio was more important for her than uh passing laws that would benefit the average American taxpayer. So uh when uh when it comes to war, no senior American official was ever prosecuted for war crimes. Yep. And will not be no president suffered consequences of any wars that they started. Therefore, it makes perfectly sense for them to go to war. Exactly. And many were celebrated. Barack Obama got celebrated, but he basically started the same he bombed the same number of countries as as Donald Trump in his second term. Um he is celebrated still. So, uh, you can even have a system where the vast majority like forget about the taxpayers, right? The vast majority of businesses can suffer because again, the vast majority of businesses in the US are small and medium enterprises. Nobody gives a about them. When you have Black Rockck that that owns pretty much every single monopolist in the in the US, you only need to listen to to very few very powerful, very wealthy entities or individuals. And it almost doesn’t matter anymore uh because in the US they pass I don’t remember the name but basically they passed a law equating uh companies to to individuals uh allowing them to uh basically lobby and finance campaigns. So uh it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about uh large corporates or billionaires. And so if powerful American interests benefit from the US foreign policy and no government official will ever suffer the consequences of these decisions but will get the benefits how can we say that these people are anything other than rational. Yeah. No no no you’re absolutely right. I mean your point is very very well taken also when it comes to Mirheimer. Every time Mirheimer says uh it’s irrational. It makes no sense. It’s it’s actually what he says is this makes no sense under my understanding of how these people should work. So it’s it’s more of a crisis of rationalism or r or or or realist theory offensive realist theory or or the theory of how we think that stuff works rather than a a crisis of rationalism. Yep. So uh and here come we we we come to the point about you know what is a state. Yep. And so and I think this is a very very important point that again liberals get wrong because they either treat a state as an actor which it isn’t a state does not make decisions humans do and they have their own agendas or they they treat so the classical uh liberal view is that the state is some sort of a neutral arbiter right that it sits you know that there is a social contract and people are you know these are human lock’s ideas about social contract and that people allow themselves to be gued and so on and so forth right and even I think lo actually had a uh a uh provision there that uh basically supported revolutions like if if if your elites are not serving you you must revolt something like that but uh I think you uh actually said he he was against that so if you look at that right then uh yeah you would believe all of this that that’s the point that’s the point with with every liberal who ever said like I don’t like there’s something wrong right now in general like we it would be and that’s the problem with with Russian liberals it’s a problem with uh kind of my generation is slightly older who believed in all of that trash about uh you know who who basically let um uh Yelen uh effectively sell uh or even gift uh the the resources of the of of a huge country to the foreign uh foreign financial interests and uh I mean frankly speaking even even Putin is a liberal uh he was just pushed by uh by you know the Russia’s version of conservatives to to do certain things but his inclinations are the same the same sort of uh and I I think a lot of Russians would would uh trash me for this but his inclination ations really are kind of continuation of the Yeltson stuff. I mean the fact that it was a peaceful handover and he never prosecuted Yeltson I think speaks a lot. So uh but but you know again Putin is is like he he he works in the uh within a system of multiple different u forces. Let’s it’s not just one person doing stuff or centers. Yes. Yeah. So uh anyway this this this liberal stuff is really problematic versus if you think about the Marxist view uh which is um so the the nature of the state is is basically state is a repressive tool for one class against another and I think all evidence points to so the role in society right liberal view is the limited safeguard for rights and property so the state is the liberals limited safeguard for rights and property and the Marxist view is that It’s a repressive tool for one class against another. So which of those if you look at at uh at the what’s happening with ICE, if you look at uh well at literally everything, which of those views is more consistent with the reality? Yeah. If you if you if you look at Ukraine and how the state is now just a tool for funneling money into through the pockets of some people while funneling the the lower class, all of those pesky people who actually would like to have peace funneling them straight into the meat grinder where they then disappear and stop being there and now the German state and so on is even going to help the funneling. It’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful machine that really turns out profits on the one end and meat and and and so on on the other. So everything remains quiet and silent and and everything is good for the for these classes. Yeah. I mean that that does have a lot of explan explanatory power. So and and if you if you think about uh if you think from that point of view then I think a lot of actions start making a lot of sense. Mhm. uh even even even up to the point where you know European uh union at the EU level basically European business interests decided that uh individual uh states are kind of you know uh relevant or not interesting for them anymore and they would rather act through the you know the the supra kind of national thing and so it’s okay for business interests to it’s it’s just like it was okay for business or it was very useful for business interests to actually have a stake. during the rise of the capitalism and uh you know after the industrial revolution and the rise of the imperialism uh like British business interests needed British empire to go and do stuff in order to to access markets and access resources and by the way imperialism like one thing that I used to get it get get wrong it’s not just after like extracting resources somewhere it’s also and which is probably even more important it’s about accessing the markets Once you go and become a monopolist in some market uh like in the British Empire uh New Zealand was like had preferential agreements with using the British technology so they could you know the same but with India and so on every colony basically must buy the advanced goods from the metropole and couldn’t make their own decisions. So that access to markets was as important if not more important than actually access to resources. So uh and once you find that states actually prohibit you from doing that you start looking at the the institutions like the uh European Union. Um and so you can get rid of the you know kind of German statehood and whatever statethood. So uh and I’m not even saying that uh you know I’m not not like pro-state or anti-state as a as as I say it’s it’s just we need to understand what it is. Yeah. and and why it’s important or why the certain powerful usually financial interests behind that do something and then it becomes really really I think a lot of things fall into place about why certain things are happening the way that they are happening. Yeah. So in I I I we have we have to continue this discussion in another podcast because I do have to leave. But the the the the the thing is that no like look taking Marxism as as the operating system as the as the kernel of the operating system might be might be the right point in order to understand and to integrate these viewpoints including integrating um Brian Berlettic’s argument about the trajectory of US force and so on. uh uh um as as as as an underlying premise. Um Andre, we have to continue this discussion. Um um because I I find it very very important to to go into this. Um people who want to follow you, where should they go? Uh www.busyengames.ai, which is my uh and there are lots of other links there to the podcast. uh business games uh is is the name of the podcast and they could also find me on X. I’m quite uh and again it’s business games AI. I think I will I will make sure that uh you send me these links via email. I’ll put them into the description box below and then we will continue this discussion in a in a in a couple of weeks. Thank you very much. I would love to thank you very much. Thank you. You’re doing you’re doing great work by the way. I did you you can’t say that enough. I I I should have said it at the beginning. I’m thinking now. Very amazing. No, no, no need for praise, but um I do appreciate it. There’s always need for praise. Thank you, Andre. Talk soon. Bye.