Lemonade Stand - The Gen Z Protests Go Global | Ep. 035 Lemonade Stand 🍋

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

On this week's show... Doug is navigator, Atrioc is captain, and Aiden is dog tired. We launched a Patreon! - https://www.patreon.com/lemonadestand for bonus episodes, discord access, a book club, and many more ways to interact with the show! Episode: 035 Recorded on: October 28th, 2025 Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCurXaZAZPKtl8EgH1ymuZgg Follow us TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thelemonadecast Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thelemonadecast/ Twitter - https://x.com/LemonadeCast The C-suite Aiden - https://x.com/aidencalvin Atrioc - https://x.com/Atrioc DougDoug - https://x.com/DougDougFood Edited by Aedish - https://x.com/aedishedits Produced by Perry - https://x.com/perry_jh Segments 0:00 GenZ Protests 22:37 Shutdown Watch 34:03 China's Trump Card 47:05 Europe's problem 51:24 Trump and Xi's meeting 1:03:05 Poverty Rate Decline 1:13:08 Poland's Recent Growth 1:26:41 A quick note on last week New takes on Business, Tech, and Politics. Squeezed fresh every Wednesday. #lemonadestand #dougdoug #atrioc #aiden Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone, it's me, Luffy, here with Chombo and Zorro. And today we're going to be talking. I'm the One Piece. Oh, I'm here with One Piece and Chomba Mon. And you might be wondering, wait a minute, I've heard there's a whole lot of protests going on around the world that are apparently using the Jolly Roger Frague. I just learned about that. And that's why we're in these costumes. I didn't understand why we're in these costumes right now because I don't know One Piece.

Brendan, what is going on? Five minutes before then go, so what does this have to do with One Piece? We're like putting on one piece costumes wearing I thought you just picked a random theme. I had no clue. I don't know anything about one piece. You guys must be at one piece experts. I thought you, Japan, anime, die.

I am old. I am old like you. Aiden. Do I look like I know, would know about one piece? Yes. To be honest. Yes.

Okay. I got to level with you guys. Level with me. So I thought we. had a one piece costumes in the office that a lot do I get left around. Yeah. And I arrived this morning that we don't.

As far as I know, it could be. Because I know so little about One Piece that this could be the main character, the wolf. Surely there's a wolf in the 2000 episodes of One Piece. What's your favorite character in One Piece, Aiden? You know most of us. You're our expert. It's crazy

that I know the most. Oh, man. I hate to pick them Mario, but I think if you say Loufie I think Loufie's

this is a disgrace I don't know Usap's annoying uh huh don't really like son people are never gonna come to our show for anime takes again Aiden you're ruining it

we're trying to take over trash taste spot that's the whole we must encroge on both the yard and trash taste and Paula and Joe Rogan when Loopy

when Loopi goes gum gum gum Gatlin. Get off your fucking Yeah, we can't. What the heck's What the heck's going on in the world? Why this is important?

Why? Genuinely. That's the eye. It's sad, folks, because there's a lot of political unrest in Southeast Asia and Africa. I don't even want to talk about it anymore.

And it makes it so upset. So if you could pull up my screen here for a second. All right. Gen Z is becoming. the new force in global politics. And that's sort of what I wanted to bring this up, because we've talked a bit about Nepal specifically. Nepal had a Gen Z protest that led to some radical change and used the Jolly Roger flag. But this, despite having started a little bit before, Nepal was the moment it became a movement. And now it's spreading all over a lot of country.

So these countries specifically have all had Gen Z based protests that either radically changed or government got them to back down on some major legislation or issue you know led to the deposition of somebody in power led to protests or violence or death so it's all it's various stages of good

to bad that I would like to rank on my patented oh cool it's a tier list okay so you want to rank on this you okay you tell me how this works yeah absolutely so if a country

is having a good protest. That's obviously... A good protest. I know this guy... Nami tear. Because Nami's a heroine. That's a chef. I know that.

I watched 20 episodes. And then if it's a bad one, it's obviously skull fro. Okay. So look, we talked... Let's establish some ground rules here. We talked about Nepal, in Nepal, very small country in the east.

And they had this successful protest by Gen Z that basically, kicked out the existing government and has elected this new, there's a new parliament, all this craziness, and it's gone very well, it was our conclusion so far. Where did you rank them? Well, I reckon to Paul.

That's such a good question. Really? Because it's such a clear X and Y access. X and Y, and I've got the Nepalese flag. Right. But not the cool one, the square one.

And clearly, I mean, why do you like this guy so much, Aidan? Tell me. Sanji? I don't like Sanji. And that's why it's not a Sanji

to your thing, obviously. I was joking. but this guy right here. This guy, you know him, you love him. We know and love him. That guy. Okay. So that's our standard.

In the chopper, in the chopper captain tier, that's where Nepal falls, obviously. So I hate to be the bearer of bad news here. Tell me that that. But maybe we, maybe we scrap the chart. And just do things the old fashioned way, huh? We have to reach the kids, dude. Everybody knows one piece. I think, I'm going to be honest.

fashion way. I think if we go through... Buy a guy in a dog suit! I think we get that mask back on and you break down what's going on with the government shutdown. If we go through with this, I think the young will hate us more. We're trying to reach out to them. And we're trying to reach...

I wore this one piece outfit of the one piece. Okay, all right. Realistically, you guys both know, I think, the high level of Nepal. But I wanted to go through some of the other ones. Because here's the thing. These all would be seen as,

disparate, unconnected events, except they all have deep things in common. Number one, they pretty much all start with young people on social media mad about some change by the government. So it varies. Like, you know, I can go through some of these. So this is Philippines. This is the one trillion peso movement. They had corruption in the Philippines with regards to their water system. And a lot of money that was supposed to be used on getting clean water to people and building that out was getting siphoned off. And somebody told them, it all up and it was over one trillion pesos, which was like $33 billion.

And so they started this movement of like, we want our $1 trillion that you stole from us back and like used for, that's what it kicked off. So that starts getting posted about on social media. And then the government, in almost all these cases, tries to crack down on social media. Not all of them, but in, oh, geez, in many of them, they try to find some way

to contain or suppress a message that is going viral outside of their media channels. at which point, it almost always turns to public in-person protests like this that then march on the Capitol or parliament building and ask for real change. So this is the Charlie Mason's movement. I mean, they become massive. And again, these get a lot bigger than just Gen Z, but universally, they start with like students, Gen Z young people.

And the other thing they all have in common is they all have been using this flag. The One Piece Jolly Roger. Now, I am admittedly not an anime expert and not. a one-piece expert, but when I saw this, is the original one that went viral. We'll go back at this. This is the one that went viral. This is the one in Nepal of the burning,

it's like an iconic photo. And until this photo, it really wasn't popping up all over. After this photo, all of these movements, all over the world are like united in this one-piece Jolly Roger. Like many people that are protesting in Madagascar right now

were in, they directly said they were inspired by the Nepal movement. Because the Nepal movement is so far, probably the most public example and also the most successful. I mean, yeah, you can see that. It's clearly based on the tier list.

If you just took a quick glance of this, you would know that. You would know that. You would know. And you know, there's a quick recap. Students in Nepal started a hashtag nepo baby thing were young, broke people, were like looking at rich kids of well-connected people in Nepali society

and they tried to crack down on that. They had a big protest. Again, there was some violence and some death, relatively small for the size of the protest and they got rid of the leader who fled the country and the military did not have a coup which is one of the big things you have to worry about

and they on Discord elected a new prime minister, interim prime minister to hold new elections and she was considered to be a good choice, anti-corruption like it's considered to be the model outcome as you can get from a protest and so everybody wants to do this and not all of them are having the same level of the tier list

is like my yeah I think the flag's upside down too That's on Doug. That's not me. You wouldn't put the maple leaf upside down. You know what I'm saying? Okay. So, I mean, I could go through like kind of an order here.

Again, you can see it spread out. It started at Sri Lanka back in 2022 and 23. There's like the earliest. Here's one thing they all in common. I want to try to make that clear. You can look at this chart. Notice a certain part of the world is shaded a little bit lighter. Right there.

This is median age. As everyone else in the world gets increasingly older, as you can see, Europe's average age is 42, or median age. I'm sorry, median age is 42, America's 38, China's even older than that. I don't have the exact number on me. Japan's even older than that. Africa and Southeast Asia are shockingly young by comparison.

Burl. They were virile of 20 years ago or whatever. And so like Madagascar, where one of these big protests happening now, the median age is 19. So they have a lot of Gen Z. They have no political power. they have high youth unemployment, even higher than here or in a more established country, China, which have high youth unemployment.

And they are, you know, essentially screaming for opportunity. They're screaming for security, opportunity, economic opportunity, and to be heard in political enfranchisement. And because they're not getting these things, it's just waiting for a powder keg, waiting for something to happen. So it's been a lot of different things. Like in Sri Lanka, it was the online safety act, which again tried to ban social media. in Sri Lanka. That's what causing

to go off. In Bangladesh, they had a job quota system that gave you know, good paying government jobs to a specific group of people. Average students couldn't get. So this job quota thing got really, they got pissed off about that.

And again, they made progress. So in Bangladesh, the Supreme Court cut the quotas by July of 24. So it was successful. In Sri Lanka, they toppled the president, but then I think they toppled the next president like a year later. So they were like varying degrees of success until Nepal was then kicked off this,

then it just started spreading. And it started going on. Hit Africa, hit other Southeast Asia countries. And yeah, I mean, I can go through some more of them. In Timor-Lest here, which is the country I didn't know much about, they were trying to buy. What was the name of that?

Timor Lest? I never heard of that in my life. I'm sorry. This is also the first time I've heard of it. I'm so sorry to the people of Timor-Lest. I didn't know about it until this. They, again, a small country, not a big budget. So when they spent-

I can see why they're frustrated and not being heard. Just within that tiny country, maybe it's like a small town. The government bought 65 brand new, high-end SUVs for the people in power. We got to invest into the future. You know, it doesn't sound like in America, it's like that's not a really big expense,

but that was considered to be, like a huge, um, overspend that caused people. That was that that was the match that lit it off. Yeah. And so in, in, uh, Dealey, their capital city, uh, they had a big protest and they canceled the SDV purchase and then scrapped these lifetime pensions that were going to roll out also for parliament, politicians. So again, it's just, it's just more about people feeling like they can see.

I think with social media, it's becoming more apparent. They can see where the money being siphoned out of their country is going. It's going to the rich and well connected. And it's making them, and they don't have anything to lose. That's really what they care. I think why this is not happening so much and more well-developed countries is, even if it's worse for the young,

it's not so devastatingly bad like it is in some of these countries. You still have like a backstop of maybe more built-up material comfort that you have to think about forfeited when you lay it all on the line to fight for something. Yeah, exactly. And then also, based on the median ages, you know, it's like, you are just a bigger percentage of people.

You are just, you know that a lot of people are behind you. Whereas. Well, that has to be the largest impact, right? Like, it's, you have the numbers advantage in a way that we've talked about the opposite when we went through the generations episode. Yeah, how the boomers, because they're so big of a generation, have just dominated everything, their whole lives, because they can just vote whatever benefits them and vote themselves into power.

And it makes sense. If you look at the, I was looking at this earlier today, like the demographic. of a lot of countries in Africa, for example, the birth rate is insanely high. I think it was a decade or two ago, but the birth rate in Nigeria was the highest in the world. It was seven. So that's every woman on average is having seven kids, which means probably most people you know are having like eight or nine kids. It's down to only five right now, which is still compared to, for example, South Korea is what, point seven? It's like, it's an interesting thing going on where like the developed countries around the world are not having children and our populations are all like starting to

decline rapidly and then there's it is exploding still in particularly Africa. But in all these people, these places, you have the quantity of young people that demand the change. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Because then you, yes, then you have tens of millions of people. Nigeria has 200 million people. Do you know that? Yeah. That's an insanely large number of people and like a huge percentage of that are like Gen Z. That is crazy actually. I knew it was, I knew it was big, but 200 billion like two thirds of America in a much smaller size. Right, right. It's crazy.

Oh, excuse me, 232 million. It's like close to America. It's crazy how, and so, and again, if you think of the demographics of this, because their population has grown so rapidly over the past couple decades, it's like you're saying, massive sort of Gen Z band, right, in their demographic graph. It is funny that the Gen Z protests in South Korea in 20 years are going to be like five guys. Listen up. So yeah, I mean, look, the Jolly Roger is the core theme here after this.

It's, it's even hitting, I mean, this is France. So it's hitting all, it's hitting youth protest movements now worldwide. I did want to, I mean, you've seen more of it than me. Can you give at least like a base level of why this is, like, why is this not the cowboy Bbop below? Why is this not? It's making me nervous. FMA.

One piece fans will rip you apart. Please, please, One Piece fans, please forgive me. This is, I'm just the person. who happens to have consumed the most One Piece at this table, which is not that much. Put on the masks so you're anonymous. Yeah, no one will know it's you if you're wearing. Okay, so explain to me because I'm lost here. I've seen a couple episodes of One Piece.

I've seen none. I don't, I don't know why this is the protest. All right. I know you came to Lemonade Stand to hear this guy is pulling One Piece today. It was like dead serious. So it's fun. Where, do you have, so, sir scruffles. Can you, can you?

Do you gloves? I. If I'm actually going to explain this, I've got to take the mask up. The general idea, or the general themes of One Piece, is that piracy is about freedom. Luffy is this,

has this dream of becoming the king of pirates and finding the One Piece treasure, this fabled treasure, and living a life, like a free life on the sea as he chases these goals and makes friends and builds his crew. Okay.

But the main thing, impeding his ability to do this, or the thing that is uh, restricting the freedom of not only him, but people around the world is the sort of, is, is Jeff Bezos who's in one piece.

And is the, the Navy or like the military of the, of the empire that is ruling the world that one piece exists within. And they, it's a one, to one part. It's a one-state. It's a one-party world government.

It's a... I think so. It is. We have an actual one-case expert. I have to look at pay off screen. I was like, I'm pretty sure. He nodded so sagely. But...

And the military is bad? Isn't it? They're bad? Okay, they're bad. Yeah, they're in a constant battle with the military that is putting bounties on them and restricting their movement and impeding the overall goal of the franchise. There's also other pirates in groups of people that they conflict with, right? But it's generally, there's this.

like scrappy young group of people who desire freedom versus the establishment military that is in charge and I think that's the... Does the one world government ever try to ban Luffy's TikTok? They don't, they haven't gotten to that arc yet. They haven't got to that argument.

They've been teasing it. I've watched like 80 episodes to be clear. It's so funny that you're like, I don't like one. I don't even know much about it. I only seen 80 episodes. That's more than all of Breaking Bad. No, think about it. I've watched enough to,

say that like this is just too much. My problems with One Piece are not the themes. I really enjoyed reading it for the time that I did. But I think there's that, I think there's a very classical storyline of group of rebellious people take on the empire to a degree, right? And that is something that under Piece, One Piece, in the same way it plays out in something like Star Wars

or other popular pieces of media. All right. one piece, one piece pants. Tere into it. Crucify me. Tear me up. I probably summarized it poorly.

Pretty reasonable. I don't think, I mean, this is again from the outside. I don't think that everyone, uh, in these protests are deeply knowledgeable on one piece. I think it has become symbolic.

And I also think that, uh, it's a high level thing, not like a, you know, it's not like you need to see episode. I don't think they need to know about Skype to, to get the reference.

Yeah. Um, but you know, a couple more things that happened. but like, like, I just want to go. Morocco, because recently this spread to Africa. So like this was, it semi-started in Kenya, but that was over two years ago,

and that was the end. And then after the Nepal thing and the Southeast Asia one, it has spread back to Africa in kind of a major way. And Morocco is having massive protests under the banner, Gen Z-212, which is the, I think, the bill they're trying to defeat. And they are extra pissed because so much of the money, there has been siphoned towards the World Cup, which is coming up, I think,

maybe in 2030 there or something like that. Yeah. And so education's been defunding, like they're literally defunding the things that they want or need to use and putting it towards the World Cup pretty openly. And so they, you know, these people don't, they're furious about that.

In, uh, in Kenya, there was a major, like, tax hike on the lower class that was hitting young people. They had finance bill, 2024. Again, all these mobilized on social media. So I think like the, the, The key takeaway, the overall theme, because we don't have to go into too many details,

is just that, actually I saw a line that really summarizes this for me that I wanted to point up that I thought was great. It was, it was, it's putting entrenched elites on notice that politics is a social contract, not a license to loot. Many leaders will calculate their best chance of survivalists to crush protests. And we were going to tear list some of these, because again, not all of these have gone well. In Madagascar specifically, I want to make sure I'm getting this right. they ended in basically a military coup.

Like there was the protests and that caused the power to believe, but the power vacuum was quickly filled by the military stepping in. Now, in Nepal's case, the military is so gigachad that they stepped in, stopped the protest and then left the power. But that's not, in human history, that's pretty rare. And so in Madagascar, it was filled more dangerously. Anyway, so they should be aware that youth movements will keep coming back. a better way of surviving is to create an environment

conducive to jobs, services, and security. The leaders that cannot provide such basics will expect to see a skull and crossbones flag on a street near them soon. That's what it feels like. Yeah, I think that's pretty cool. So I don't know, I don't get any final thoughts. We don't have to, you know, I just want to give an update

that it's gone way farther than Nepal. And it has no sign of being over, by the way. I circled these. You know, Indonesia, Maddoch, Morocco, they're all still ongoing. And many of them have only been slightly buried. Like in Philippines, the president, Bongbong Marcos, he came out and tried to like pretend to be on the side. Like he was like, if I wasn't president, I'd be out there protesting with you.

It's like, we're protesting you. I watched one piece too. I was like, yeah. He was basically dressing up like me and being like, guys, I get it. But they were like, they haven't had an over, nothing's been overthrown. They just discontent and it's sort of simmered down. But it's like ready. It's boiling to happen again. One more, one more thing that happened. Has that ever happened in One Piece where the military heads dress up like pirates and try to pretend they're one of the good guys? Do you got to imagine? I think this actually does happen. That's happening.

That does happen. All right. This actually does happen. So, hey, that president really does watch One Piece. Dude, what if the real world just follows? Like, what if One Piece predicts everything that's coming? You actually watch all a thousand episodes?

And we find the treasury at the end. Yeah. I want to talk today about how there's a lot of good happening across various countries in the world. actually, as much as it's so easy to focus and all the horrible things happening, the amount of poverty and people living extreme poverty has gone way down, and we're going to dive into example,

Poland, which has had a huge economic burst over the last 10 years. You look so sad about this. I'm not sad about Poland succeeded. You looked dead inside, and I mean that in the nice way. I've just never seen you, and I know you did a two and a half hour yard episode

before this in this same costume. It's been a long, it's been a long day. I think a good... He's a tired dog. Well, before that, we have, there's so many other, like, little stories to go over. So let's, before we talk about optimism in the world, let's eat you with more depression. You know what I mean? Okay.

Farm me up. Government shut down. It's day 28, ladies and gentlemen. Also, we're going to get out of these costumes. Government is still shut down. Very sadly, it is day 28 right now. By the time you were watching this video, it would probably be day 29. As a reminder, the longest ever government shutdown is 34 days.

So, we're six days. away from that. It's getting real close. And I felt somewhat strongly that it was going to end before 34 days because Trump cares a lot about, you know, the story. And it seems like he wouldn't want to have the longest shutdown ever. Right. But it, there's no movement on it still at all. But as a reminder, the one month bark is where shit really gets kind of crazy. I mean, it's already starting to happen. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So some things that are happening. U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said, um, what I see coming forward, you're going to see more staffing shortage in, in air, like air control towers, which means you're going to see more delays and more cancellations.

Then he's talking about, this is on Fox News, he's talking about the air traffic controllers. They got a big fat zero. No paycheck is coming on Tuesday. So I've been out talking to our air traffic controllers and you can see the stress. So the Department of Transportation is saying there's going to be more and more delays if this doesn't stop. The USDA, the Department of Agriculture, which we learned recently for some reason is responsible for food stamps. If you pull this, Perry. They are not sending out food stamps starting November 1st. That's in three days.

There are 40 million Americans who use food stamps to get by. So on their page, if you go there, it's a big warning thing that said Senate Democrats have now voted 12 times to not fund the food stamp program. Bottom line, the well has run dry. There will be no benefits issued November 1st. We are approaching an inflection. So it's very extremely politicized. they are saying, we do not have money.

This has to end on November 1st, which is a big play, let's say. I don't know if it is genuinely true that there isn't to the money to fund it or not, but this is going to dramatically... Well, it's wrong because they've found money for other things, right? They've found money for the military. Yes. The tariff money has been applied to other things. Yes.

And Snap is $100 billion a year, not a trillion, like I said, but it's $100 billion a year, which is a ton of money, right? So it's not like this is an easy thing to fund, but still, it's like a pretty critical thing to fund most people would consider. And even there are folks like Marjorie Taylor Green, who's, you know, very far right, who came out and said like, this is absolutely unacceptable. We have to make a deal. We have to get this finished. We cannot have 40 million Americans losing. It's just shocking number of people.

I think many people are also realizing how many people are on snap. Like a lot of people didn't realize the scale of this program. So there's part of that as well as like it's sort of forcing people to be aware. of it. Yeah, it's so, the use cases are so common. Like a really good friend of mine who was just out of work for a really long time, uh, I think a little over a year. He was on food stamps until really recently. That's how, that's how he was paying for his groceries. And he's my age, similar career trajectory was just out of work for the past year. And that's how he was, uh, getting by. I think it's way more people than people understand.

and people way closer to you than you might think if you happen to be in a position where you don't need a program like Snap. So I didn't realize the It's like one and eight people in the country. It's like a crazy high amount of people. That's way higher than I thought. I would say, I would say 15 of the max.

So in what three days, this is going to ramp up a lot. And it's going to be very interesting, I guess, to see what happens. I mean, I think no matter what this is, it's going to hit an inflection point soon. And so then the question is, you know, who gives in? So again, right now the high level Democrats are basic, Republicans want to keep funding the government at the, let's say, current

levels, the levels that have been used for the past two years that were voted in under Biden. And that's their argument. It's the same thing. Democrats are holding this and voting no until the subsidies for health insurance that are part of the ACA, yeah, until those get basically confirmed that those are not going to go away in two months at the end of this year. So they are basically fighting to say, we want to keep these benefits that you have for your health care. Republicans are saying, no, let's deal with that later. And that is the impasse. So it sounds like nothing's changed in a month. When we do next week's episode, we'll have a way bigger update on how this plays out, right? Because we'll be at the, we'll already be

past the longest shutdown ever if we make it all the way until next week. Yes. And it'll be past this month threshold where not only has the shutdown itself been more than 30 days, but we've passed the first of the following month when a lot of people owe payments, you know, you owe your rent payment, you owe your mortgage payment, uh, and little things like that. Yeah, millions, millions of people working for the federal government won't have a paycheck. 40 million people on Snap won't be able to get the food that they're accustomed to. Traffic control, like airports are probably going to become even more distracted. And it'll interesting to see if we can get in and out of the country because I'm planning on traveling

in two days. I know the timing. Yeah. So in theory I'm getting out right before. Then maybe I get to come back. Who knows? It's, this is a, yeah, next week. The air controllers are wearing thin. They're taking second jobs. They're out there looking, can I drive Uber? Can I find other source of income to make ends meet? Uh, like it's the people running the airports aren't being paid right now. Getting assigned your six day a week, 10 hour a day air traffic control schedule right now that was all understaffed and then being like, can I throw in a day or two of Uber into this so I can make ends meet? Dude, he's insane, dude.

The guy managing my life up there to be after like a nine hour Uber ship with Aiden in a dog costume in the bag seat talking about. Like, it's crazy. Somebody's screaming at him because he didn't pick up the right boba tea for DoorDash and now he has to make sure my flight gets off the ground. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we're just combine him and he can start taking Uber orders from like like Cincinnati and he puts the food on the airplane.

Let's get creative. Chicago deep dish. I really want that Chicago deep dish. Uber flight. Yeah. Next week, next week's going to be the big one. I mean,

dude, this is going to be crazy. These things do move fast at the end where it seems like there's nothing happening and then they, they get in a room. So it's like it has to happen in the next like four days. If we flash forward a week and, it hasn't moved.

That's crisis level. That's like a really bad, because I've been looking at, there's other countries, similarly like France, which are in political gridlocks. They can't pass a budget. They can't get anything done.

But they haven't written into their constitution in a way where if nothing gets figured out, it automatically pays out based on the previous budget. Like it defaults. We don't have that in America. Everything has to be done ad hoc

and it causes real problems until we get that figured out. It touches so many, people, even visiting the bank this week, I was in line and the person in front of me was asking questions about, you know, what available programs do you guys have to support people who are affected by the shutdown right now? And most, you know, most of the big banks in the U.S. have some sort of, some sort of like help or like deferral program or something like that if your income is missing for this period of time. But I think, you know, so many people have jobs that are tied to the federal

government. And yeah, and I'm surprised that we've reached day 28. Maybe I'm missing some big piece of news, but we've reached day 28 with so little update on the negotiation front. Right. So, you know, shockingly, this is political. And so both sides are, you know, are trying to basically get the public to sway onto their side, right? As we've talked about a bunch of times. One notable thing that I saw here is a major union that represents federal workers, the American Federation of government employees on Monday urged the Democrats and said stop like just just fund the government for now and and debate and work with the Democrats for long term demands around around the ACA subsidies just reopen the government now just open it now because again that's

what the Republicans are saying and that's their argument you know standpoint is we are tell we are we want to just continue the budget the way it's been for years the way it was under Biden let's just continue it right now Democrats are saying no there needs to be more so they have this union with 820,000 federal workers, like publicly telling the Democrats, stop this. It's interesting to see, because I'm not, I'm not saying that's the wrong call, but it's one of those things where you could choose

to point the finger in either direction right now, right? You could say, you can point the Republicans and say, agree to spend more. You know, it's like, yeah. Pave and figure this out. And this was the big question we asked, the first episode we introduced the shutdown,

is at the end of all of this pain for so many, people, who does the gamble pay off for? Typically, the party in power, which is the Republicans right now, seem to pay the political price the most often for extending this sort of situation. But I don't know, because of how unfavorable the Democrats are, and also how blatantly political messages are on a site, like we just like that, right? Every government agency website, the messaging is so intentionally angled at the Democrats. I, you know, is the payoff they were seeking the entire time even going to pan out? Will they just be the party that has ended up being blamed for this anyway?

Yeah, I mean, I read into that a bit. Part of it is that they don't have much to lose though. They were already polling atrociously. Yeah. And if they cave here, it's not like it's going to be like, oh, you know what? They're all right. We do. They have nothing to nowhere to go but up.

And a lot of their base is demanding something be done. about Trump and this is like their own we talked about this before this are their only bit of leverage like I am skeptical that they could cave here and then negotiate their way into getting the yeah what's the difference in going from like 20% approval to 15% approval at this point like yeah the up the potential upswing is really high and the downs thing is high like if they're seen as being weaker caving which already plays into a thing that people have by the democrats then they could face themselves with even worse polling by giving in. You know,

they're saying they're, they feel a bit trapped, I think. And as far as I've followed this, you know, Senate Republicans, they also poll pretty bad and has not been helpful for them. But Trump has main,

he's a pretty solid 40% or whatever. It's low. It's not great, you know, but it's flat. Out of a hundred? Yeah. Oh, that is bad.

Well, no, but I mean, most American president. in our lifetime's poll around 40 to 48. Like nobody's ever been really positive except around 9-11 and like the beginning of your term. And so he's lower than he was in term one

and he's lower than average. But he's pulling right around like Biden 21. Oh. And, and it's not, it's steady. It's flat. Like people have decided pretty much where they fall. And it's going to take something bigger to make them shift out of that, I think.

Well, speaking of something bigger, Trump has been working day and night to get the shutdown resolved specifically by going to Asia and ignoring it. So he's been traveling to Malaysia and he'll be meeting with Xi Jinping in South Korea. So this is a big deal. Yeah, this is, so this is big. This is like a, yeah. And I wouldn't even necessarily say this is depressing news. This is just neutral news. So, uh, yeah, there's also all these trade wars going on. Remember that? Remember how my mugs are going to cost me fucking $100,000? I don't know what's going to happen with my mugs. I do recall that, Doug. I do recall, explain to me,

why this is a big deal? Because they've already met during his presidency this year, right? So why is it the timing with the trade war specifically? Why does this meeting matter so much more than any previous time? So there's an economic forum

that is happening that happens once a year in Asia. So a lot of Asian countries are all there and that's going to include Trump. So for a while now, there's been this meeting on the docket between Trump and G. And while it was not necessarily

going to be sorting out the trade war between the two countries over the past few months it has escalated, right? So it's just, it is just simply the case, there's maybe more context that I'm missing, but as we've seen and talked about, it's just gone back and forth the whole year, right? And so over the past few weeks, two things really, really, really ramped up the quote-unquote

trade war, which is we talked about, what, a week ago, two weeks ago, rare earth minerals. So China came out and said, we are putting this, you know, basic halt or oversight on rare earth minerals and essentially showed the rest of the world that we are dependent on China. Like the entire rest of the world is dependent on China's rare earth minerals. They have a monopoly.

And then in turn, Donald Trump's response was to say, oh yeah, well, Doug Doug needs to pay $100,000 on mugs now. That'll teach you China. That'll teach you, Xi Jinping. And so he put a 100% tariff on all Chinese goods. That number has been fucking swinging around wildly all year, as we've talked about. But, you know, it was, as of what, a few months ago, he made a tweet and he did the mission accomplished thing.

and he said it's only going to be 30%, right? That was, and I forget if that adds the 20 fentanyl tax, whatever, it's been changing constantly, but, yeah. But, you know, until somewhat recently, it was like, okay, there's a tepid kind of like we think it's an agreement, it's 30%. It's a lot more than before, but it's 30.

And now he, a week or two ago, was like, oh, yeah, gee, it's now 100. And so... Yeah, I mean, the framework I saw about this, which is, I think, really interesting, is that this is like the opening salvo of a trade World War III. I want to be clear that I don't think I overstated enough

on the last episode how big a deal the rare earth mineral thing is and how powerful it is. So Trump's strategy in most negotiations is he knows that he's the leader of America, the strongest country. And so he feels in all negotiations that he has what you might call escalation dominance,

which is like, if we're fighting and you go like, oh yeah, and you like flex and I go, oh yeah, and I stand up, and you go, oh yeah, you have a gun. Whoever's got the last thing. They, at the end of the day, we all know that if I push this too far,

you're going to win. Like that's, and Trump just knows that in general. And so whenever he's in a negotiation with anybody, he just, he throws shit at the, I'll give you a thousand percent tariff. He tweets crazy things about their leader.

He can throw everything at the wall knowing that at the end of the day, if push came to shove, he's got isolation dominance. The idea that I saw is that for the first time in 50 years, a country, credibly has escalation dominance over America because of how dependent everything is on these rare earth minerals, at least at least right now. Again, long term, they could find a way off them. But China has prepared for this for years now. Decades. Not, yeah. I mean, decades. Yeah, decades. But, but. And I say that just to emphasize, I've seen people on Twitter being like, talking about what I will get into in just a second about these trade deals that Trump is announcing, uh, being like, Trump just checkmated Xi. He just made a great.

with this country and this country, and we're gonna make our own supply of rare earth minerals. And it's like, you can't just do it. You don't just spend it on. It's not a key. You need millions of people who've learned to develop this industry and there's multiple layers. I forget the exact terminology.

It's like, if you wanna make gallium, I might be getting specific elements wrong here. But if you wanna make gallium, you need aluminum. And you need aluminum industry. But China controls the aluminum industry. So you have to make it aluminum. It's like you can't, you don't just go fucking like dig it out of the ground

and hire somebody out of college. And additionally, another layer to it. I didn't mention our last episode, is that China has put export restrictions and controls, not only on the minerals themselves, but on any of the technology used to refine, process, or mine them, that they all create. So anyone building a mine in France or in Australia

is buying Chinese technology, and therefore China goes, okay, you can't export that to America. We control that. That is part of our, in the same way that America does for high-end chips. I was going to say, this is the exact same thing as we do with chips, where we tell that one Dutch company that they can't sell the equipment because they're a piece from a house makes the chips.

A hundred percent. However, rare earth minerals are, it's just becoming more obvious. It's, it's so embedded in the supply chain of almost everything. I mean, EVs everywhere,

everything military created. The magnets that they make are, are just part of almost any, like high end appliance I can think of. It's just, you, the level of control of the current modern economy with this is really becoming more and more apparent.

And so, it is showcasing more of the blust, like the 100% tariff is not causing China to flinch as much as the rare earth metal is. And so, you know, I think from the outside, this keeps like, oh, they're going back and forth. But this really is never before seen in our lifetimes and decades before.

Like this, they plan for this, they prepare for this. And we said decades, but especially since the first mini trade war in Trump won, they have been like ironclad forward on reducing any dependency on America that can fire back. Yes, yes, yes. Yes.

And so, you know, people look for who to blame, and I can give you the little timeline, which is like there was this ongoing trade war. They negotiated it down there, like a 30%. It was okay. And this is all this year, right? And then, yeah, and then America would say they kicked it off by not buying our soybeans.

That's what it was. Yeah, and we're going to get to soybeans, dude. We're going to get to soybeans. So they just out of the blue basically didn't buy soybeans this year, which is causing, you know, the soybean farmers are in an area of America that is deep Trump, and it's causing a lot of unrest there. So that was an escalation on his part.

And so he fires back with, there was, you know, we already have export controls on a lot of countries for sending high-end stuff to China. We did secondary export controls, which is now like, it's just a massive layer up. So any company doing business with those companies is also on the list, which went from like, I don't know, 200 companies in the list to 20,000.

So it's like really trying to isolate China in a lot of ways. And so that was the moment China, went, okay, we're going to unveil the nuclear. That's when they brought out rare earth minerals and they did it. And it hasn't truly sunk in yet. It's like starting to sink in all these different countries and in America how powerful and how ironclad they are ready for this. Yeah, they've got our balls and a Chinese finger trap.

Yeah. And like even I, when I'm in the presentation last week, I've been reading more. And it's like, they are fucking ready. This is a big deal. Is this? And also, if we go to war with China, we don't have the ability to make any weapons. All of the weapons are made with these minerals and in factories in China. Like it's not, it's just unsustainable to do.

We're not going to go to war with China, God forbid. But like, it actually is impossible because all of the methods. It's another thing in the escalation war of like, even if we go to war with China and we have our awesome fucking military, whoopsie daisy, all of our stuff is made with Chinese resources and minerals. Even if you were to go to war with a Chinese ally, like if you decided to fight a war against Russia. Let's say just outright, ignoring all of the consequences that come with that.

Then China has such ability to impact your success in that war. No matter who you're fighting against. It's happening now with Ukraine, Russia. Again, drones are just a big part of it. China leads in drone technology. They can produce so much more. Is this a little bit, is this the first time that, yeah, that you're saying that this is the first time that the U.S. is really getting a taste of its own medicine on this front,

at least since World War II, right? Because in the wake of World War II, you've sort of intentionally structured a global economic system around your country being the dominant economic player, consumer base, having control of all the levers

that let you go into these negotiations and arguments with other countries and essentially bully them out of any situation that you really want to put your foot down on. And now this is the first time that the U.S. isn't encountering in a situation since then where another country has the upper hand. It is. It is the first time in our lifetimes and beyond, 50 plus years, that this has happened. And it really is a shifting of everything that the world order has been built on and understood.

Again, the countries that don't have that, which are not China, have in the end, you know, we've talked a lot about the insanity of Trump's, tactics and, but many of them have in some ways cave. Like, like countries that have U.S. military bases in them, like Japan, pretty much all of them have in the end, like the new PM of Japan, Takayichi is like, let's go Trump, all in, like, and the trade deals are broadly, um, at least even or maybe in the U.S. favor. They're, he's getting, I don't think the tariffs are a good idea in general, but he's getting the ones he wants.

But China is just flat out ready for it in a way that, that I don't think he's prepared for. I don't think his strategy works well against because they've done too much long-term prep for this. It seems like the entire world didn't realize, oh, whoopsie-dazy, we've let a critical component go entirely to China. Yeah, I mean, the chaos in Europe. As much as I would rather none of this is happening

from like a very kind of neutral third party, it's fucking brilliant. Like, oh my God. The game theory of it, it's crazy. Right. China has successfully established themselves as a world power that has our balls. And it's like, it's kind of incredible. You know when you get outplayed in a game you're playing?

And the play is, it's just such a savant move. And you're kind of like, damn, they, this is kind of sick. Yeah. And this is what, dude. It's not fun to be on the other end of this stick, but I, it's, it's interesting. There's a part of me that's glad because you can just tell the arrogance with, with which our country has been led in our lifetimes. And for the people in power to realize, hey, you don't just get to coast off the entire world.

You can't just make the rest of the world pay for our mistakes. there are other actual competitors. Like I, while I certainly do not want any kind of war of any kind, like there's a part of me that's going, okay, maybe we'll get our shit together a little bit as a country because we realize we can't just coast forever. I mean, that's the constant theme that we've brought up time and again, and again, right? It's some sort of crisis where this finally is such a prominent issue because you're facing the consequences of it that people take steps to remedy it finally.

build out the infrastructure that you need or the supply chain that you need to combat this leverage. But it'll take, it'll take, presumably, decades in return. Yes. That book, Breakneck. I mean, you know,

it really is about how we have consistently offshore, all manufacturing capability to China, including the ability to manufacture and refine rare earths. And this is the wake-up call, if anything is. Yeah. I think Breakneck does a really good job of breaking down what the author just calls process knowledge.

The idea that as we've lost manufacturing over the years, or as we've lost certain industries, not just to China, but to different countries all over the world, right? Wherever that industry may have shifted, we not only lose, you know, the jobs that came with that factory or maybe this single industry, you lose all of the components and factories and industries

and the way they interact and teach people different, skill sets, you lose this web of knowledge that allows you to quickly build new things or quickly add on new industries in reaction to things like this. But we're so far behind now that when you try to build something like a supply chain for refining rare earth minerals, you aren't able to because you don't even have the industries that exist, the in-between sort of industries that give you the people or the knowledge necessary to build up that new supply chain. 100%. I also want to throw some shade. You know, we're talking about how the mistakes in arrogance of America has led to some problems

here. But at Europe, I mean, if you're looking at Europe recently, they are also finding themselves possibly even a worse spot. They're caught between two Titans in this situation. A trade war with America. And then also China putting out restriction on all this stuff. And what happened recently, there's like a really illustrative example. that I think went under the radar.

There is a company called NextPyria. I believe it's a Dutch company. I want to make sure I got it. So NextPyria is a Dutch company that was not doing well. They make chips for like low-end chips. Chips that go in cars, chips that go in old phones,

just computer chips for mass production. Okay? And they're important. Like a lot of things built in Europe use these chips all over the world. Nextperia was a Dutch company. They weren't doing that well. A Chinese company bought them years ago.

turned them around, moved some of the factories to China, built it up. They still designed them in the Netherlands, but mostly built in China. Recently, the Dutch government, possibly under pressure from the United States, of course, but also based on leaks, like their own personal angst and feeling about this type of way, the way it's going, seized control of this company, you know, just by government authority. They seized it. They replaced the CEO. They wanted to make sure that, like, it was a Dutch company.

and had Dutch control. They were going to let the profits still go to China, but they wanted to have control of the company. Now, that's a pretty big escalation. And they didn't, I mean, it's the arrogance. It's like the thought that things are the way they used to be. You could just do this and there wouldn't be consequences. Yeah, another country owns a company in your country

and has worked to develop it for years and years and that you can come in and go, it's ours now. Well, that's just China. Yeah, that's ours now. We want it. And we're Europe and like you, and like that level of understanding of the way,

world is tiered is just different right now. It's just, and they're waking up to it. So they do this. They take it over. China immediately goes to the factory in China and goes, you no longer work for them. Like don't. And they throw Europe and the Netherlands on an export control for those chips. Like 58% of the cars in Europe use next period chips. So they're all freaking out right now. Plus all of the stuff they built uses rare earth minerals that are, like China has complete in this situation escalation dominance. They have no, they don't lose it. They keep the factory. They just literally told the people at the factory, you have a new boss now. It's someone in China. Don't respond to headquarters. And I don't know what they thought would happen in the Netherlands.

It's like, it's an idea from, I think, old system, old ways of thinking. And again, I'm not like. I mean, if you think about the timeline that this sort of world order has existed on, right? You're getting to a stage where everybody, working in these places has just existed within that framework for their entire life. You don't have a frame of reference for making these decisions

without having all that power behind you. And now somebody has changed the dynamic and you're like, oh, I've never had to think about this that way. I don't know, Wall Street and financials because I'm sure the person was like, well, the headquarters are here, right? If we take the headquarters, we own the company

or the total disconnect from like, oh, actually, if you don't make anything, that's fucking useless. All I have now is the brand. They have the brand and some designers, which is fine. I mean, this is also what the book talks about, right?

It's like she, uh, she has, has made a very concentrated effort of shifting China's innovation and money away from software in tech and really emphasizing hardware and physical,

like physical objects, controlling that rather than going down some software-led path instead, and for reasons like this. Because what it shows is like, look, the software is important and good, but if you could only do one and you want to figure out the other, doing the hardware and figuring out the software is just, they've proven they can do it. Like China has eventually gotten their own Windows OS. They've gotten their own version of Microsoft Word. They've gotten your- Harmony OS, baby.

Like, they can figure that out. And we have been even more than that. You just literally can't run software without hardware. Yeah, exactly. It's just, it was more important. So, wait, so, um, can you tell me how the soybeans are tied back? Yeah, yeah, right, right, so this, that was a long tangent that was fantastic and sets up the context. So that's why, in three days, Trump and G are meeting. And that's why everything we just said makes this a big fucking deal. Because unlike previous trade wars, quote unquote, China has real teeth and is showing it and the world is going, holy shit, wait a minute, what the fuck, US can't just come in and stomp all over them like normal. So, uh, we've talked about the escalation. This is going to be happening in

South Korea in a couple days leading up to this. So very recently, um, and here's actually, uh, pull it up. Okay, I didn't pull up the thing. Um, so Bloomberg article talked about how in the last couple days, Trump has announced trade agreements with Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam. They are super one-sided for the U.S. They, we're going to keep tariffs on these countries. Again, new tariffs that were imposed this year by Trump. And those countries are removing the tariffs that they have on American goods. And they're agreeing to pay for, buy billions of dollars of stuff from America. And that's it.

So it's just a pure one-sided. Multiple people are just like, this doesn't seem to have any clear benefits to these Southeast Asian countries. So going into this big negotiation with G to try to de-escalate things, he basically said, we just locked things in with these countries, and the U.S. is stronger than ever. Look at what we just did. So that's one piece.

And then going, so that's like the last two, three. This is one piece. Yeah. That's the last two, three days. And so going into this meeting, in theory, they'll talk it out. And they will both de-escalate all this shit because 100% tariff on China is insane for the U.S. And if China actually stops exporting rare earth minerals, the whole world goes crazy. Doug are refreshing the New York Times to see if he's going to have to pay for his mugs.

Yeah. So other things that are notable. I want to be clear. If they actually cut off rare earth minerals, right? It would be World War III. I'm not kidding. Absolute panic. It would cause economic fault lines collapse, stock market collapse.

It would, like, right now what they're doing is export controls where you have to apply for it. They're just proving we can do this. They're grabbing your balls, but not squeezing them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So they like, G is just big. And you realize, holy shit, those are muscled hands.

Those are big. You could feel the power. Right. The heat. Oh, my God. from an inch away. Like, it's like, oh my.

And you had no idea. You didn't realize he was building up this much muscle the last couple years. And imagine he's in a fur suit for Aiden. Imagine he's like wearing him. And he's like,

and he's whispering in my ear. He's like growling. So a couple, a couple things Trump is going to try to do. First off, he's going to try to get this rare earth thing de-escalated because that's disastrous.

But again, at the same time, he's trying to set up trade negotiations with other countries to start recreating these industries. Does that work in the next 20 years? No, like we just said. But it's something.

There's also, tariffs on Chinese cars. So for the past, what, four years now, we, America has had a 100% tariff on Chinese cars. China really doesn't want that. We still are the most lucrative car consumer base in the world. China would love to get into that industry. So it's a potential thing that we can give up a little bit that Trump could say will reduce those tariffs if you buy our soybeans again. So the soybeans have completely stopped. China won't buy our beans. They will not buy our beans. And they just started doing that this year like we talked about. Turns out I looked into this, and this is from a very neutral third-party source called the United Soybean.org.

I was like, how many people really gross soybeans? Come on. There's a 500,000 individuals who are involved with soybeans, including 223,000 full-time people. So, and then there's a lot of economic impact. Our country's so damn soy. Yeah. The problem is we actually, we're not because we don't buy it. We actually are not very soy. Was being soy based along? And me and my One Piece hat. Welcome to my analysis. So the soybean farmers desperately want this to end. Because again, China has been buying our soybeans up until this year when Xi was suddenly like, nope, no more beans.

And so they're freaking out. That's something to leverage. There's also hostages that Trump is trying to get released. Most notably is Jimmy Lai, who is a Hong Kong businessman who pushed for democracy. This very famous sort of, you know, he created a new. newspaper in Hong Kong, incredibly successful. It was the most successful pro-democracy newspaper. He's a billionaire, tons of success across Hong Kong and has been very critical of China. He was imprisoned by the Chinese government in 2020. He's been in prison since. The allegations are

clearly bullshit and that's just because he is a political dissident. And he's in solitary confinement right now. He's like a Hong Kong hero and he's just in solitary confinement in China. So there's real pressure. Trump has himself said several times that, Li's freedom is, in quotes, on my list for this meeting and told Secretary Scott Besant to make his freedom part of the trade negotiations. There's all these weird things going on. It's, and in theory we come out of this and everybody says, yeah, we're good, we're good now and, you know, it'll cool off for a month or whatever. But in three, four, five days, we're going to, we're going to see what is actually happening with this. Because if it escalates, that, that's really scary.

But, you know, knock on wood, nobody actually wants this. Nobody actually wants this. Neither side wants it. It would be bad for China too. Yeah, right. No one wants us. But it's just, but it's, there's tension.

Different. And it is, it's hard because it's hard to trust Trump's negotiating style when you finally run into something that you can't, the usual tactic doesn't have you always on top. Right.

That, he just four times went and bullied four countries. Yeah. Right before this. And it's worked great those times. Substantial country. I mean, these are big, Vietnam is a huge economy now.

We do a ton of work. business with them and ton of trade. And they just fucking caved. So yeah, it is going to be interesting to see. I do think, um, my worry is not, I mean, my worry is World War III, obviously. My worries like, uh, explanation. My worry is in the short term is that he will have a deal that he can sell, which is that he's going to get them to buy soybeans, which they just stopped in order to have this leverage with negotiation. They can, they can turn them on anytime they can buy it again. We're going to get soybeans and maybe a prisoner released. And that's the, bone we get thrown as part of this trade deal. Right. But no fundamental change in our dependency on

China, probably a real chance that we're giving up our defense of Taiwan in some way, like reducing our. Yeah, that'd be another lever that we could implode play. So I don't know. I mean, it feels like we're going in, as you might have said about Zelensky with not enough cards. Like it's not, that's what it feels like. But yeah. And I do want to say America still has a lot going for the biggest consumer economy in the world and also the power of the U.S. dollar is still very important. China still holds a lot of dollars. It's not, but they've, they've done a lot to reduce their dependency. And this is the first big negotiation where it's different. Yeah. So Dan Wang, who wrote the book Breakneck, which is, again, phenomenal. He talked about this in the free press today and said,

even if there is a truce. And then in quotes, this history suggests no truce is likely to be enduring. Both Trump and G have shown they are not very good at keeping their word, quick as they are to walk away or renegotiate if they feel like a deal no longer suits them. And so that's my kind of sense is this is incredibly important what happens in three days and also not because either one of them will change their mind. Like we've seen it change a hundred times this year. So unfortunately you would love it if it's like this is the day it definitely will settle in one way or the other. And I don't know, man, who knows? What we shouldn't talk about this episode, but little thing for the future. The big next, um, I don't know, earthquake point

friction point in this gigantic struggle is Ukraine, Russia, in that like, if it resolves one way or another, if one side wins or Russia ends up getting, because they made progress in the past few days to a city they thought they couldn't get. If that happens, it is a big shift. Right now, there is a struggle on the European and American side to find continuous sources of money to give, everybody's been trying to point the finger at someone else to give the money. nobody wants to do it, everyone spends money on themselves. And the money and the shipments to Ukraine have been drying up. And so while they're fighting incredibly bravely and valiantly,

and I'm fully in support of Zelensky and Ukraine on this one, it's like it is feel like they're getting grinded down. And if that was to end, and aside for the Russia, China, Dragon Bear Alliance, I mean, it's a big shift in how not only NATO and America sees themselves, but how the rest of the global South sees the order of the world, like, sees how they see this rare thing and they see how Ukraine-Russia goes

and it changes the tier-like. It changes how you see it. The world order shifts after those moments. And it's worth talking on. We're got to follow it up on it. Luckily, we're doing it in fucking One Piece outfits. Yeah. But it's just fascinating.

My 28-year-old podcaster analysis, I guess I had a question. This meeting off of the back of forming four trade agreements with four Southeast Asian countries that are heavily favoring the U.S. I feel like at the same time that you're losing a battle of leverage to China, you're making massive decisions where you sort of blow your load of leverage and push those people away to another side in the future. Like you're making a decision that in the long run, feels like it unravels your ability to have that leverage you're using in the future.

There's a perfect example of that, which is Canada, which is right. Canada should be the closest U.S. ally there is. Just by all geographical and cultural and historical reasons should be our closest ally. But because we have such a strained relationship to Canada because of this trade war and because they ran an ad of Ronald Reagan being anti-tariffs during the Dodgers Blue Jays World Series, Trump got pissed through no tariff on him. because of that, this just happened. What?

Oh, you know what? Yeah, during the World Series, it just happened, Canada ran an ad, because it's a Canadian team, the Blue Jays. Yeah. They ran an ad showing, it's just Ronald Reagan speaking to camera. They just took an old clip of him saying,

tariffs are, they seem good at first, but in the end, they lead to reprisal and reduced alliances and reduced trade. That was taken out of context. Yeah, and that's what Trump said. He's like, it's not real.

He's like, it's fake. It's a real quote. Anyway, so he threw a or tariff on him, and Canada is now, in talks with China to get rid of the Canadian 100% EV tariff because they are, that's their leverage, is to go to China. And so like these things, I think, have consequences. Even if you can get an extraction in the short term, you are pushing people into a system

that is proving itself to be stronger. I mean, it's, to me, it's a little spooky. Because I love my country and I love, you know, I'm, the, you love dominating Canada. We should be able to dominate them forever. But I wanted the, you know, a web of connected alliances is a good thing. it makes your country feel safer. It makes you feel more prosperous. It makes you feel like you can travel freer.

The idea that, you know, we're headed into a more multipolar rule order is, multipolar will be okay. Chinese-led one is even spookier. Like it's a, it's a thing worth thinking about. So, yeah,

I mean, that's a great question. I think that's the Canadian example is like what might happen in a few years with some of these countries where we've pushed them in such extractive terms. Yeah. I'm going to start switching sides, huh?

Yeah. If you're listening, China's number one. I've been saying it a long time. Hey, you know what? Let's talk about one of the ways China's number one, dude. Let's talk about it because there is some good news. Did you know that the share of people living below the global poverty line of $3 has dropped a ton over the past couple decades?

I have heard this. Yes, sir. Now, that probably, maybe you've heard that and you've gone, yeah, cool. And then you start worrying about the price of eggs again because that makes sense. Sure. But I just want to, we're going to talk about polls. and how Poland has actually had an incredible, I don't know what to say, advancement. I'd say, I'd say trajectory or like an, a huge wind of economic growth.

I don't know. Divine presence. The Lord has chosen Poland. Right. There's, right. Some sort of commandment. Supposedly, there's a Jesus in there somewhere. Like he is hiding in Poland somewhere, but he's working at one of them.

Yeah, Jesus has come back and he's in Poland. And he's in Poland. I never knew he'd be Polish. shit. That one TikTok, it's like, it's a, you're in heaven and I just didn't know it's being Polish. So if you pull this up, Perry, so to set up, I, you know, I do think optimism is important. I, I, and it's so easy for us and everybody on the internet to just talk about how shitty everything is. But as a reminder, over the past, let's say 50 years, the amount of people living globally in extreme poverty, including in China, which has a dramatic transformation, um, has decreased dramatically

For people who are watching on YouTube, here's a little visual of watching countries. Dark red means an extremely high percentage of people are in extreme poverty. And as the timeline moves forward, Africa starts popping up because they start measuring it. You can see that basically all of Asia just starts to drop off of this thing. And in fact, if you pull up a line chart and you go to the world here, and this is from your world and data, which is really, really excellent, you will see that the percentage of people around the world living in extreme poverty, 1990 was 43%. It is now at 10. So that's a big number. And it might not mean them enough, or mean very much. But what does that specifically means? It means that if you're in extreme poverty,

you have $3 of purchasing power in your respective country. And when I heard that up until like this week researching this, I was like, well, okay, well, $3. Obviously you couldn't live off $3 a day in America, but you know, $3 could get you a lot of stuff in C's. or whatever. But that's not what it is. The metric that the World Bank uses is adjusted. So it's the same amount of purchasing power. So when you say someone is living in extreme poverty right now in South Sudan, it doesn't mean they have three United States dollars every day. They're living in the equivalent of having three United States dollars in America. It is the same living condition. So that means most likely you're getting one, two meals a day, maybe. Housing, you probably

you're not able to afford, you're probably sharing something that is very temporary, no electricity, no pipe water, there's dirt on the floors, no real sanitation, no ability to access health care of any kind, there's no real education opportunities except maybe if something is available in your region. Could I give some context to this too? This is from this recent call I had with somebody who's been living in Sudan for 20 years. I think he helped shape my understanding of how people really interact with this poverty day to day. Most people in areas operate like self-sustaining operations

to just eat. Like they have a garden or do local farming with their community and that is the way they get food. There isn't, they don't go to a market or travel or go to go somewhere else to purchase their food from them. They have to make it for themselves

or for their local communities. get like a $20 water. I don't understand that. Your skin gets closed. And I think it really clicked for me when you see a lot of articles about famine hitting areas that are war-torn, right?

Why? It's not just because the, you know, the supply chain that fills like the market or grocery store where people go and buy things in their city is compromised. For a lot of people,

it's literally because they had to leave their home and they aren't able to garden and grow their food anymore. Right. Like, you have no backup. You have no savings. If there's a medical emergency war, your home is ruined, you have nothing. Yeah, and nothing.

I think it's really like you, I think you come into these with like our ideas of the way we live. Like, like just, just if I need food, I go to the store or market or equivalent and I go buy, it somewhere. But there's, you know, a lot of people don't even have access to that layer of interacting with. Like, it doesn't matter if they have the money or not. They're, the place to go get

the food doesn't exist to begin with. Right. And that is, you know, that was a really important illustration to me of, oh, that's how these famines play out and develop. That's the level of poverty that people in areas of Sudan are dealing with when you, when you read these headlines. Yeah. And so I was shocked to understand this because I thought, could I live off of $3 a day in the United States? And the answer is, you could probably live, right? You can probably get, you get like a meal or two from the, you know, you get instant ramen and maybe slice bread and peanut butter or something, maybe a drink, maybe a bus ride, but you definitely, you need shelter from other people, which in most of America, it's like not consistent. You maybe have shelter some of the time. No health care, no, like nothing, right? Do they contextualize or do you know? One question I've always had is why that happens to be the threshold, especially given that it's purchasing power. Like, why isn't it four or ten?

Because none of those amounts would be a lot either, right? I was reading about this today. So they adjusted over time to basically reflect how purchasing has changed. So it was $1 for a long time, which again is not really a U.S. dollar. It's the purchasing power in America. And then it became $1.90 something like a decade ago. and then four years ago was upgraded to $3. So I was reading through the methodology.

I don't remember the specifics right now, but essentially they do update it. So as of the last couple years, it's $3 a day is the equivalent. And so now that we've set up the fact that living in extreme poverty is incredibly brutal and sad, and it's something we desperately would not hope for anybody on earth,

it is truly astounding to look at how many people have been pulled out of that. If you look at China in 1981, that is 44 years ago, 97% of China was in that state. That is over a billion people, a billion people. And now zero, 2022. Now, I'm sure. Yeah. No, there might be some, you know, it's estimated in America.

It's like, you know, less than one percentage. But obviously, you know, people homeless living on the street, they fall into this category, right? So presumably that's true in China as well. But it is pretty irrefutable that these, that this type of trajectory has happened. If you look at India, India, 60% were living in extreme poverty, 1977. Right now, it is five. And India is notable for being one of the most impoverished and sort of, you know, horrific slums, horrific living conditions, just unbelievable poverty for people who've

traveled there decades ago. Like my mom lived there for a while. Yeah. These are also the two key countries in lowering the global stat because their, their populations are so large. and they've generally made so much progress over the last few decades that they have helped lower the global average by the amount that is felt. You're talking about two billion people and just the scale of that is so unbelievably mind-boggling

and this has happened essentially in our lifetimes that it's just as much as there are problems in the world like, man, that's encouraging. Like it's so good to hear that humanity has done this. Vietnam, similar thing. 30 years ago, 57% of people were living in extreme. poverty, now it is 1.6%. I have Vietnamese friends who've talked about the change. Rwanda, Africa is struggling. Africa has not made that big of a difference, but there are a couple outliers. Rwanda, 25 years ago, 82% of people are living in extreme poverty. It is now 38%. I also was reading

articles about how in the last like 15 years, something like that, 6% of people had electricity in Rwanda, now 75% have electricity. So Rwanda, you know, asterisks there. It's kind of a dictator But, you know, there are these. Well, I mean, that's what I want to say is like, you know, the human condition is inherently some sort of struggle. As you, we've all, even in America, we went from like people on the, the frontier dying to dysentery to, you know, you move up the value chain of problems. In Rwanda, once you get past, we're starving in electricity, you move into, we want

political enfranchisement. We want, you know, that. So I think some of the struggles we're seeing in the world are because we've gotten past the phase where these countries are in. desperate poverty. Right. Now they are in like, okay,

we have strong men, we have problems elsewhere. Yeah. So in a way, progress in a way. Yes, yes. And you look here,

these are the four, these are the four countries that are four of the countries that are having protests. All of them. I mean, Indonesia and Nepal were like 90% poverty. And these have all plummeted

down to like five percent. And so while yes, it's sad to hear about protests happening in these countries where political corruptions that led to the protests. I was to say, Yeah, I don't even know if it's sad, right?

Because it's also the symbol of... There's people being lifted up out of poverty and wanting a better life. And like, these protests are happening online from Gen Z because so much of the society was able to pull themselves up. And so I'm appreciative of humanity for the unbelievable scale at which we've been able to improve people's lives. Obviously, lots more to do. But fuck, man.

So much good happening as well. And leading into that is, Poland, which Poland was not poor, not like extreme poverty poor, but a poor country until pretty recently. And they've had this I mean, my understanding is St. Gabriel literally descended into parliament

and told them to build a certain type of infrastructure inside Krakow. Yeah. They did. It's all, it's all Christ based. It's all religious, really. That's all I cracked. It's Jesus saved them. I I think Poland has been in a tough situation historically where they geographically exist in a spot

that is difficult to defend between world powers. Not just world powers, Stalin and Hitler. In history has also been in a position where they're a power in their region as well, like in further back history. But in the wake of World War II being invaded, having a lot of their infrastructure damage, a lot of their wealth and like gold,

reserves taken. They were... And many people killed. And many, many, oh my God, dude, the number of people, it was like 20%, I think it was like 20% of the population of Poland died in World War II. Horrific. Like one in five people. Yeah, it's horrific.

The, after World War II ends, they fall under Soviet control. They're not literally a part of the Soviet Union, which I didn't really know. But they are under the U.S. of the Soviet Union. And they're turned into, you know, a Soviet manufacturing state.

And a lot of nationalized industry exists. And although agriculture is never nationalized, which is something that I didn't know, they do experience a lot of economic stagnation throughout this period, like over the long term of that century, right? Most of the Soviet Union did, right? Yeah, yeah.

kind of economic stagnation, yeah. Yeah, they're in a very similar spot to a lot of these like Eastern European countries that end up splitting off like the fall of the Soviet Union happens. And then we arrive to 2004 and Poland becomes a part

of the European Union. And this isn't the only thing that moves them forward but in their time being in the EU, they've been the number one beneficiary of EU directed funds to their country. received about 245 billion euros. Oh, down. Through the end of 2023 from when they joined.

And they transitioned out of kind of Soviet era economics in a bit of a different, slower way than a lot of these other Eastern bloc countries did. And they also had the benefit of since a large portion of their economic output was this agricultural sector that was never nationalized to begin with, at least under Soviet rules. they had sort of an economic buffer from that industry that allowed them to slowly transition the remainder of their industry out of just this nationalized system that they had before.

And then once they start receiving this massive amount of money from the European Union, they use it to develop infrastructure, things like developing better roads, developing better train networks, more manufacturing infrastructure, programs, educational programs for people, better healthcare infrastructure.

All of these things are slowly built up over time. And then also something they did was invest heavily in like technological education and digital infrastructure. So we're building and providing really good internet access to businesses and people all over the country. They have a pretty thriving game dev scene in my understanding because of education,

their internet opportunities cost. Like a lot of, a lot of big games come out of Poland. Yeah, yeah. And alongside of this, this tech sector that they're building, like they're educating kids at a really young age to

become, like, technologically savvy. A lot of like software engineers, devs, a lot of people that work in IT. And then on top of that, all the huge advancements in their manufacturing industry where they're building things like automobiles, machinery, electronic parts.

And they position themselves because of their place in the EU as this source for either higher-end services or higher-end manufacturing and even low-end manufacturing too that can be supplied to the rest of the EU because they have relatively low labor costs.

Like they are in a position where average salary there has increased a ton over the last 20 years, right? I think it's, I was looking at like since 2004, the average monthly wage has like seven X'd or eight X. It's something crazy. And, uh, but that's still a lot cheaper than hiring somebody from Germany or hiring somebody

from France. So they have this economic advantage of providing, uh, services and goods to the rest of the European Union. So they're all, because of that, they have a bunch of growth. You have a bunch of people who are educated in these unique fields. And also effectively combating the brain drain that they had experienced for a long time. At the beginning of joining the EU, a lot of educated young people in Poland because the prospects weren't as good were leaving to other European countries for better opportunities. But as Poland has managed to build up so much industry within its own place, even though salaries are still lower, the cost of living is low.

and they've become attractive enough of a business sector for a lot of Polish people who left to come back and a lot of people who are becoming educated or growing up in Poland to just stay and build their careers there. So they're on a really, really strong trajectory. I first heard about this British newspapers were reporting. You know, it's kind of a shocker.

Again, like old order versus new order, right? People have always had a certain tier list of economic power in Europe. And very recently, the Poland per capita income didn't quite reach it, but it's knocking on the door of the UK. It's like, and the line goes from like low, flat to vertical to catch up to where. So it's like, it's like a shifting of like, oh, Poland is, you know, the lifestyle of Poland will be thought of to be way lower than that of like the developed ones in Europe. And now it's, it's a lot, lot closer. Yeah, it's catching up.

It's closing this gap that it's existed for so long. so much faster. So it's like the trend line is, is what's causing people to get, you know. They also have a culture of working so hard. Sure. So hard. And I guess that's a common theme for countries

that have like lifted themselves up. For example, China like and Japan and South Korea. Like brutal unhealthy levels of work. And that's my experience working with Polish people when I was in e-sports. Like day, uh, I did the first e-sports show.

I went to Poland. I went to Katowice and I was in their office. and they were like, yeah, we're doing a World of Tank Show today. And I was like, what are you talking about? We have the Harstone show tomorrow that we've been building for months. Like, no, no, it's fine. We're going to do it today and then we'll do rehearsal tonight. I'm like, what are you talking about?

I was like, oh, no, we just won't sleep. And so they didn't. And so they stayed 24 hours. They did an eight hour show for World of Tanks. And then eight hours rehearsing. And then we did 12-hour show. And then they went to bed. And this was normal.

It was just like, obviously not every day, but like this was a not uncommon on a weekly basis. It was like, holy shit. I've heard that from other folks as well. Like that is a common thing of part of this culturally is Polish people going, we are willing to work unbelievably hard. And then with all due respect, compare that to the French. French love to take some time off.

I love to take Friday's off. I love to hit my French coworker up with the on email. And then it's like, they're gone. I'm gone for the next three weeks. Oh, you hit me up on Friday. Friday's not a work day here. Oh, Mondays we leave at 2 p.m. Sorry.

Yeah. Those things are good, too, though. Well, what's the French birth rate versus Poland is what I want to know. Because they're probably, France is pretty high, right? Yeah, Francis is like, uh, is, is higher than Poland.

Yeah, but higher than, way higher than Poland. So like that's, way higher than Poland. It's funny because, uh, 1.16. Holy. That's bad. Yes.

That's so much like South Korea that are like killing themselves to move the economic ladder aren't they're getting a different. Yeah, then they aren't working, man. It's like, it's tough. There's another big, economic mover here, and it's the amount of military investment and spending that Poland is making

too. So they, compared to a lot of Europe, right, that's lagging behind, making these commitments to start spending like two to three percent of their GDP on military defense spending in the next 10 years or whatever. Yeah. I forget what the term is. Well, they said five, but they're not doing it. And Poland is already spending about 5% of its GDP. I think for way more underst, understandable historic raisins. They have been burned. Yeah, they've been burned a few times. So this is, but this is also a vehicle

for economic growth in the country because so many people are either employed through the sector or tied in through the, you know, technological innovations that have to happen because of that or the manufacturing that has to happen because of that. And one question I did have

is so much of the economic success that they have found themselves in from my reading, and I'd love if anybody lives in Poland or can weigh in on this and share their experience of living there, because I'd really, really like to hear. But what I've gathered is it depends so largely on their cheap labor. Like, they're able to provide things at a cost

that is just very, very effective. And if you continue to raise the standard of living and continue to raise wages, over time, which I'm not saying that shouldn't happen. Sure. But eventually, if you are to catch up, because there's this constant conversation around Poland that I've seen of,

are they going to surpass the France's and the Germany's in the European Union? But if so much of your competitive advantage comes from just beating those people on price, basically, how will, can you actually outgrow them? I would love to hear what they say, but like this is exactly the argument people made about China a few decades.

ago, which is like they do cheap labor and that, how are they going to ever get out of that? So I have the built-in counter argument, which is that at least in the, like in the tech sector, let's say in Poland, they've really angled themselves towards building out companies that are new or innovative in some way that differentiates them from the tech sectors that have managed to build up in places like France or Germany. So that they have some sort of, sort of like expertise or advantage in these spaces that even after the prices catch up. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That even after they catch up to these, because they have the skill set that these countries or cities in those countries haven't developed in their own tech sector, they still have something of value. No, and that's the China model, right? Which you have cheap labor.

So everybody moves their manufacturing or whatever to you. Then you get really good at it. And then as your standard living improves, you still make things that no one else can make. Yeah. And you have money. off that. You're, you become a, become wealthier. It's like me paying the tariff because nobody else can make that goddamn chess boxing honey.

What am I supposed to do? Oh, that was from Poland? That's not. Oh, I was from Polish factory. Made by God. Made by God God, God bless him. I talked to, I hope he doesn't mind me saying, my Polish editor who is here last week and asked him as like the last 10 years for Poland have been incredible. You know, it's like, going up? Do you actually notice that? Or is that one of that, is it one of those situations where all the time you hear, you know, on the news here in America, like the economy is doing great.

Right. When you see the Ireland GDP per capita graph explode, but nobody there is. Right, right. Is it just going to their richest people? Like what's going on? He was like, no, it's, you really can tell just in last 10 years. Like growing up, you go to Friends houses, all the buildings were like crumbling, stairs are broken. Most appliances don't work. Cars on the road are from the 60s. And everything has just been improved. and getting nicer and everybody's noticing it and appreciating it. Just again, it's like there is this happening in the world. People's lives are getting better.

We want to hear. It's not all fire. There's good things happening. And I'm like, ah, it's awesome. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this was nice to, I want to, like, because you had shared a bit of that anecdote last week.

Again, if you worked in Poland, studied in Poland, you're from Poland, live there. I really would like to hear more anecdotes from your experience and how they line up or differ from this because it's a country that I've, you know, I got to travel around so much, especially for Smash and I feel like I have friends all over the world. And Polid just is a place where I think I literally know, no way. Yeah, I really want to go. So, yeah. Anyway, that's, that's this week's, uh, Lemonade's Day. Thanks for watching Lemonade's Day. Real quick, final note, we talk about this on our Patreon in more detail. I just want to address last week's episode. I know there were a lot of critical comments. While I completely understand frustration with

the way a guest word something. In the case of prime, I think he worded things in a way that did not come off as very understanding to the plate of many people right now. And that was a miss, I think frankly. And I chatted with him and I think he agrees.

He think it was not well worded. There's a lot of frustration with the way he kind of ended the episode. And I would just ask to please, you don't have to, but just assume the people are not dumb. I don't know. Like, you know,

that people are well intention. This is a person who's so, he is so smart and caring and thoughtful towards people. I think the way he phrased that was not particularly, it didn't make somebody feel heard who's really struggling right now. I think it was framed in a way that sort of dismisses,

sounds very dismissive of what a lot of people are experiencing. It's something that I'm only aware of because of this show and how much we've talked to people and read the Discord messages and all these things, but like somebody like that is not stupid, is not, is fully aware that situations are different for different people and I would just hope there's more empathy

and understanding. To be frustrated with what somebody said, obviously, that is completely legit. To not agree completely legit. There's a little disheartening how many people seem to be like, if somebody isn't fully 100% saying my narrative, that's bad. And I just like, man, we should assume something better in each other, man. Yeah, I think also that conversation, if we, you know,

if we had just talked through it more, knowing what Prime, like, actually thinks about the subject at large, I think people would not have had the same reaction. And we, you know, we just wanted to basically cap the episode at two hours and, like, came up to time. But yeah, exactly that. It's like, I think if you were sitting down one-on-one with Prime and we're talking about this with him, I think you'd understand that it's a- Certainly you don't think every single person who can't get a job is this. And he obviously would say, oh, no, not obviously not that.

I'm focusing on that example case, which does exist. Yeah. But there's met anyway, so. And then, uh, I guess, As a last thing, because a lot of people came at the water stat cited specifically, it does, it does sound like the water you should stat about golf courses was incorrect. Yes and no. Yes.

Like, so I've been looking into a bunch since then. So I hadn't been familiar with it. But there are sources of people, it's hard to calculate. And when you say that this is much, this is how much water, that can mean many different things. So by some interpretations, by some people, that's a legit number. Golf courses use a ton of water. I think that was presented in a way that was overgeneralized, though,

without giving the specific context. Yeah, and I think some people just were complaining about other issues related to water that we didn't touch on. I think with all of these topics, there's so many directions to push and pull in. And I, and I would, you know. I'll just film this in advance. And for the future, I know you guys have a lot of comments on our depicting of one piece and how it wasn't accurate in any way

and that Aiden did a really bad job. I did do a pretty bad job. I did do a pretty bad job. And I just want to apologize for that and say we will do better and I'm really working on telling Aiden to do more reading around here. If you want to see me do more reading on One Piece

or you want to see our longer thoughts on the prime episode in general, you can subscribe to our Patreon. You can check it out at patreon.com slash lemonade stand where we release a bunch of extra content per month. We do extra episodes of the show. other bonus shows for higher tiers.

And we had a really long, good conversation about the feedback to the episode, why it happens and how we felt about it and, you know, giving, listening to people in good faith and all, all these sorts of things. So thank you. There were, there were, I don't want to be too negative. There were tons of comments of people say, hey, Prime, I respectfully disagree with you. And here's why. Here's been my experience.

And those comments were great. And I appreciate them a ton. So I just want to make that clear. Lots of really good discussion. Our community is awesome. Yeah. Yeah, it really is. So I don't want to end on that negative note.

No. All right. Thanks so much. Thank you. See all next. Wait, no, I won't see you next week. Doug won't be here next week because he's leaving on vacation.

Funny, he could learn a thing from the polls. From the Polish. I'm out. Vacation time. Later, everybody. Bye. Bye.