Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

For more on Rogan as anti-politics, here is Ben Burgis's Book:

For more on Rogan as anti-politics, here is Ben Burgis's Book:

For more on Rogan as anti-politics, here is Ben Burgis's Book.

He is an economist, he's also written a book critical of neoclassical economics called The Reformation in Economics.

Yeah, so it's um, I'm kind of making the case off a book that was released recently and has got a lot of attention in economic policy circles and also in finance, I've worked in finance for about 10 years so I know kind of both scenes. It's a book by Charles Goodheart and another economist called Pratam and they're making it, they're kind of laying out, we've known for a long time that uh that birth rates were becoming problematic probably for about 20 years and there have long been debates about it, I know in America it's long been debated about social security and whether it can maintain its um its its its solvency, but this book kind of was was talking about more of the kind of real forces that most people would face and I thought it was the first time that economists had actually tried to to think through what it would be like to live in a world that has serious problems with population growth and um although the book is very good and I much recommend it, it is a technical macroeconomics book and it focused really on the technicals and I thought that there was a case to be made to try and write an essay about that kind of imagining what that would look like through a political economy lens.

He's also written a book critical of neoclassical economics called The Reformation in Economics. Welcome.

Yeah so it's um I'm kind of making the case off a book that was released recently and has got a lot of attention in economic policy circles and also in finance I've worked in finance for about 10 years so I know kind of both scenes it's a book by Charles Goodheart and another economist called Pratam and they're making it they're kind of laying out we've known for a long time that uh that birth rates were becoming problematic probably for about 20 years and there have long been debates about it I know in America it's long been debated about social security and whether it can maintain its um its its its solvency but this book kind of was was talking about more of the kind of real forces that most people would face and I thought it was the first time that economists had actually tried to to think through what it would be like to live in a world that has serious problems with population growth and um although the book is very good and I much recommend it it is a technical macroeconomics book and it focused really on the technicals and I thought that there was a case to be made to try and write an essay about that kind of imagining what that would look like through a political economy lens.

He's also written a book critical of neoclassical economics called The Reformation in Economics.

Yeah so it's um I'm kind of making the case off a book that was released recently and has got a lot of attention in economic policy circles and also in finance.

It's a book by Charles Goodheart and another economist called Pratam and they're making it they're kind of laying out we've known for a long time that uh that birth rates were becoming problematic probably for about 20 years and there have long been debates about it I know in America it's long been debated about social security and whether it can maintain its um its its its solvency.

But this book kind of was was talking about more of the kind of real forces that most people would face and I thought it was the first time that economists had actually tried to to think through what it would be like to live in a world that has serious problems with population growth and um although the book is very good and I much recommend it it is a technical macroeconomics book and it focused really on the technicals.

And I thought that there was a case to be made to try and write an essay about that kind of imagining what that would look like through a political economy lens.

My book argues that I've been studying international relations sort of as you guys are as just a consumer of the news, but also in academically.

And I think that it just came to the conclusion that people are basically thinking about the whole thing wrong whether they think the US should have a prominent role in world affairs, whether they believe in support this war or that war. I think that the problem is we think that there's actually somebody in charge, that there is a grand strategy where sort of like wise men are sitting around and sort of determining what the US should be doing about Afghanistan, about Iraq, about the rise of China about any number of things.

I think that the money in Afghanistan, the war of Afghanistan just like the war in Iraq, the money runs into the spending runs into the trillions. A lot of it was government contractors and the government contractors would do everything from built girls schools to supply the US bases to provide security.

And these people got very, very wealthy. I mean, these people are one of the reasons why Washington DC has now all basically every single one of the wealthiest counties in the country are around Washington DC.

I think that even people who are skeptical of foreign policy, they sort of elevate the foreign policy elite by saying they have a grand strategy, but it just happens to be wrong. I don't think that's the correct way of looking at it. I think the correct way of looking at it is look there's these interests and they're trying to sell you something like a tobacco lobbyist online.

So my book argues that I've been studying international relations sort of as you guys are as just a consumer of the news, but also in academically. And so I've read pretty much all the important thinkers in international relations, the theories about what we're supposedly doing overseas. And I think that it just came to the conclusion that people are basically thinking about the whole thing wrong, whether they think the US should have a prominent role in world affairs, whether they believe in support this war or that war. I think that the problem is we think that there's actually somebody in charge that there is a grand strategy where sort of like wise men are sitting around and sort of determining what the US should be doing about Afghanistan, about Iraq, about the rise of China about any number of things. And I don't think that that's actually what's happening.

So yeah, that money, that money in Afghanistan, the war of Afghanistan just like the war in Iraq, the money runs into the spending runs into the trillions. A lot of it was government contractors and the government contractors would do everything from built girls schools to supply the US bases to provide security. And these people got very, very wealthy. I mean, these people are one of the reasons why Washington DC has now all basically every single one of the wealthiest counties in the country are around Washington DC. I mean, this is these people who made money off of Afghanistan who made money off Iraq. We left Afghanistan and the same people are in charge as they were when we originally went in.

So if you understand foreign policy this way, and this is a theme of my book, it's working the way the system is designed for certain interests and it's helping those interests and it's sort of working as design. While if you think in terms of national interest, you're gonna be constantly confused by what we're doing overseas.

I think we, I mean, I think we really underplay the money because you know, I don't think money is everything that they power and the ideology is very important, but look the money is absolutely huge. So when you have basically every three and four star general now when retiring going to work for a defense contractor, it's 100% or close to it in the last decade, decade and a half. Basically, you know, anytime you see a general he's gonna be go, he's gonna, you know and he's near the end of his career he's gonna be working for a weapons manufacturer some kind of government contractor soon.

I think that even people who are skeptical of foreign policy, they sort of elevate the foreign policy elite by saying they have a grand strategy but it just happens to be wrong. I don't think that's the correct way of looking at it. I think the correct way of looking at it is look there's these interests and they're trying to sell you something like a tobacco lobbyist online.

So my book argues that I've been studying international relations sort of as you guys are as just a consumer of the news but also in academically.

So I've read pretty much all the important thinkers in international relations, the theories about what we're supposedly doing overseas.

And I think that it just came to the conclusion that people are basically thinking about the whole thing wrong whether they think the US should have a prominent role in world affairs whether they believe in support this war or that war.

I think that the problem is we think that there's actually somebody in charge that there is a grand strategy where sort of like wise men are sitting around and sort of determining what the US should be doing about Afghanistan about Iraq about the rise of China about any number of things.

And I don't think that that's actually what's happening. I think Afghanistan is such a good way to sort of introduce people to the rest of what foreign policy is like because the mistakes and the blunders and how disastrous it is and the waste and everything else. I mean it's just so obvious and it's so clear. It's been like that for 20 years.

And then one of my favorite books is actually a biography of Harry Truman by David McCullough.

And then one of my favorite books is actually a biography of Harry Truman by David McCullough.

And then one of my favorite books is actually a biography of Harry Truman by David McCullough.

The book is all about a struggle for war and technology and specifically about the US and China.

As I write in the book, war has always been a spectrum and it's you're not either in a total state of war or a total state of peace.

And one of the things that technology has done over the last few years is it's allowed state actors to wage war in the gray zone, which is a concept that military experts referred to to talk about attacks that don't quite rise the conventional threshold of war.

And with Taiwan you have a situation that has been at the epicenter of gray zone conflict and what I call the gray war.

And unfortunately we're now reaching a point where it could potentially turn into a hot war.

War has always been a spectrum, and it's you're not either in a total state of war or a total state of peace. And one of the things that technology has done over the last few years is it's allowed state actors to wage war in the gray zone, which is a concept that military experts referred to to talk about attacks that don't quite rise the conventional threshold of war. That has become a pervasive aspect of international politics because technology now infuses every aspect of our lives.

The South China Sea is a major corridor for infrastructure, submarine cables which carries the bulk of information that connects North America and the Indo-Pacific, allowing China to take control of that it would be a huge setback to American national security, to intellectual property, to the sovereignty of a lot of countries in that region for reasons that I detail in the book.

Obviously an enormous amount of supply of computer chips get made in fabs that are in Taiwan by TSMC, and as I explained in the book, allowing China to control that would jeopardize our access to chips and also the integrity of the chips themselves.

Meauretime trade route is another major issue, and the last is precedent, and this has been a very thorny topic in the foreign policy community, but setting the precedent of allowing China to annex a democratic country like Taiwan is a really, really bad precedent to set, that is basically giving Russia the green light to invade Ukraine, it's letting China know that it can basically move forward and annex other parts of its disputed territories like the Senkaku Islands, China has disputed territories with 17 countries.

So Xi Jinping has made his intention of unification very very clear, so then the question is, what do we do about it? Do we want Taiwan to... The two scenarios that we have to avoid a war is scenario number one, we just let him take the island, or scenario number two, we prevent him from taking the island in the first place, we prevent him from trying to carry out an attempt to invade the island in the first place.

War has always been a spectrum, and it's you're not either in a total state of war or a total state of peace.

It's probably the most dire in our lifetimes. I don't think we've ever had a situation where we realistically face the scenario of an actual hot war between major powers that are nuclear powers nonetheless.

And the old saying that you're not...We are confronted in China with a pattern of behavior that is completely at variance with our own.

So if you want to live in a healthy prosperous, stable country for years to come, solving this problem seems to be one of the key things that you can do.

Xi Jinping has made his intention of unification very very clear. So then the question is, what do we do about it?

China will lose 5 to 10 million working age adults and gain 5 to 10 million senior citizens every year for the foreseeable future.

China will lose 5 to 10 million working age adults and gain 5 to 10 million senior citizens every year for the foreseeable future.

Trey and Matt, Book of Mormon, basketball, everything they've ever done, I've encouraged it.

novelis who earned a fortune representing the quote, the creators of South Park and the Book of Mormon, decided to pay the overdue taxes totaling over $2 million for Hunter Biden in the previous.

Something I think about a lot is uh The 48 Laws of Power, it's a great book if people haven't have read it, one of my favorite ones is called create compelling spectacles.

Something I think about a lot is uh The 48 Laws of Power, it's a great book if people haven't have read it, one of my favorite ones is called create compelling spectacles.

I thought it was a bit of a weak response because I think he should have just led with that. I think it would have been had some gravitas to it.

Brody did an incredible job. He outlined the careers of three mega lobbyists, people that changed the field.

And also terribly for us as a country. Nobody won here. Even the winners lost.

I loved it. Brody did an incredible job.

And the way he's survived for so many years is making contacts with the most important people in Washington, working for President Reagan, working for President Bush after that.

I think the culture has changed in Washington. That was very, you know, Mad Men 1950s mentality that we had in Washington through the 1980s. I think a lot of that has cleaned up.

It's called "The Wolves of K Street."

Wolves of K Street.

Matt Stoller has made this on his sub stack Goliath which is uh or it's called big I'm sorry the book is Goliath about bob iger a lot which is that he basically under iger he was he was the ceo of disney for a long time transformed disney into like a a hedge fund with an entertainment or with theme parks um because what they did was just buy up all of this other stuff and there was so much consolidation under iger

Like that he was, one book that he would actually read like according to Ivana Trump.

He's, I mean the man is on a book tour right now going and sitting down Sean Hannity of course it's like the biggest Trump booster of all time and trying to get back in good with conservative media.

Martin Heidegger's book, Being and Time, which helped to define continental existentialism, took its title from the notion that life or what he called being got its meaning from time or more to the point, the lack of time that we get.

Martin Heidegger's book, Being in Time, which helped to define continental existentialism, took its title from the notion that life or what he called being got its meaning from time or more to the point, the lack of time that we get.

every day since 2005 that David and I woke up and went to sleep and shared and built our lives and careers together and then began raising our children together, we assumed due to our age and health and hubris that we would have that for decades to come as if it were a guarantee, as if the universe had provided us with some enforceable contract that entitled us to assume this belonged to us and could not be taken away.

And because we assumed it, we took it for granted. And because we took it for granted, we often ceased valuing it the way it deserved to be valued.

What remains most astounding to me is that after all these years, these decades of running and chasing and striving and reaching and grabbing and struggling and pursuing, everything that I actually need for core happiness, fulfillment and gratitude are things I already have and have had for a long time.

the lack of permanence of those things that provide us the greatest happiness does not make them less valuable. That is what makes them valuable.

He is, of course, the author of Big by Matt Stoller over on Substack

smoking drugs and making arrangements to buy drugs at the exact time that he was buying the gun.

It felt like a lie so brazen that it wasn't a lie. It's like we have photos of him doing things wrong all the time. It's in his book. He wrote about it in his book.

I read your book, The Israel Lobby, many, many years ago.

It really opened my eyes as to the influence here in Washington.

Again, I recommend the book Israel Lobby by John Mearsheimer, which at the time was also smeared as anti-Semitic.

Authors of books that have changed my life.

Now you're talking about sympathy, which is different than empathy, right?

Authors of books that have changed my life.

Authors of books that have changed my life.

Authors of books that have changed my life.

Authors of books that have changed my life.

Authors of books that have changed my life.

Emily and I interviewed the author of the new biography of Patrice Lumumba.

The Lumumba Plot. I know you love these kinds of books.

I haven't read that one yet.

I would like to.

Put that on your audible. It's so good.

The CIA played a key role in green lighting Lumumba's transfer to a place where everyone knew he was going to die.

If you like books like Devil's Chessboard and Chaos, you will like The Lumumba Plot.

Make sure to pick up a copy.

You read the book, Bad Blood and all the cases here.

People made real time medical decisions with her bullshit tests.

John Kerry used Bad Blood book